Okay, the pics are taking forever... so I am not going to put many on here... but I'll put a few to make you pic crazy people happy!
Okay, so the alarm went off at 3:30 am, and I woke dd up at 3:45 am. She was still trying to sleep, and I asked her if she wanted to go on vacation with me instead of school. She nodded. But kept trying to sleep. I then asked where would she like to go? She shrugs, but then says "I'm listening."
By, now dh is dying and about ready to pop... so he says "How about the happiest place on earth?" DD rolls over, sits up, and slides out of bed, and says "I'm up, let's go!"
So, we were off to the airport a few minutes after 4. Had no issues parking and catching a shuttle. Even had time to sit and eat a little something before going to our gate. At the gate we met another family with a 3 year old who were also headed to DL, we took turns watching each other's stuff for potty breaks before the flight. A short 2 hours later we landed at LGB, gathered everything up (1 carryon, 1 stroller, 1 carseat, 2 backpacks) and crossed the street and got a cab. It was a $45 flat fee, and took about 20 minutes to get to PPH.
By now it was 10 am, and we headed up to the concierge lounge, check in went smoothly, but of course our room wasn't ready. We relaxed a bit and then dropped half our stuff at the bell desk and headed into the park. It was POURING down rain!!
Okay, no problem, we're from Oregon right? Then, my cell phone rang--thought maybe our room was ready. Nope, it was Disney Dining, cancelling our 2:30 pm Carnation Cafe ressie. Crap!
So, I asked if anything was open for that time, where we could sit down, and she said due to the rain almost all the sit down restaurants were closed... and the ones that weren't did not have any ressies available. Okay, fine, plan B.
We toured Sleeping Beauty's castle, and rode the Carousel, then decided to go check out Pixie Hollow, since all the lines we could see were super long. Surprise!! No lines for Pixie Hollow... well, maybe 20 people in front of us, and yes, fairies are out in the rain.
We got to meet Vidia and Tink, and Vidia was awesome! She asked dd if she had seen her new movie "The one where I save Tinkerbell's life?!" It was great!
By now we were starving, so we grabbed a corndog, and thankfully it was only sprinkling at this point. Pretty soon, we gave up on DL, and headed over to DCA. DCA was pretty quiet. We got Soarin' FPs, rode Monster's Inc (twice!)--Roz sang Happy Birthday to me!
Then we did Bug's Land, and got a little dinner at Cucina Cucamonga (good, but not great), and then caught the PPP from across from the Bug's Life entrance.
After that we rode Soarin, then we walked back to DL, bought a bat shaped chocolate cookie, and a steamer for dd and a decaf latte for me, and planted ourselves near Carnation Cafe on the curb to wait for Celebrate.
DD loves both parades... PPP is a favorite of ours, and Celebrate was fun because she got to dance, do the conga line, and they gave her a drum to beat during another part of it. After the parade we were beat, and we finally went to check out our room at the PPH.
Okay, I did concierge for the 1st time ever this trip. But, because of the short hours, we barely took advantage of it. However... our room on the 14th floor had a killer view. We walked in right as WOC was starting, cracked the windows and could hear perfectly (there is a channel on tv for audio too though), and watched some of the show. We could see the fountains and the water effects really well, but the screens were just blobs of color.
Daytime room view:
WOC room view:
The bad part was, even that high up, the construction around where the boat used to be in DCA is noisy--and goes all night long. I did bring a white noise machine. And we used that, but figured out that it in combination with the room a/c on "fan mode" was perfect for drowning out the "beep beep beep" of the construction equipment.
We've now stayed at all 3 on-site hotels. Have not yet stayed in the renovated rooms at the DLH however. But, I would rank the hotels like this: GCH (for how close it is to the park), PPH (loved that it really felt close since we cut through GCH and avoided DTD mostly--and our view was awesome!), then DLH--which just seems soooo far away, even though it is supposedly the same to the PPH if you use the short-cut.
Okay, I need to do some work... Day #2 coming later!