Our Epic Adventure: Disneyland and California Adventure

After our trip to Sea World on Monday, we booked it over to Anaheim to begin our 3-day Disney adventure.  We checked into our hotel, which despite being a little old and run down ended up being very comfortable and fit our family well.  It had a separate room for Zac and I and two queen size beds for the kids to share, not to mention a fridge and microwave which was nice for cheap dinners and snacks.

Monday morning we got up and found that Tinker Bell had left us all Mickey and Minnie shirts to wear to Disneyland!

Coming into the park was like nothing the kids had ever seen or done before.  Everything was done up for Halloween and it was just magical... there is no other word for it.

Taking a picture of your wife taking a picture... classic!

Autotopia:

Mickey's Soundsational Parade

We had to send Whitlee text messages with all the pictures of the Princesses.  She would have loved seeing them!

Bronson is totally obsessed with Peter Pan and Jake and the Neverland Pirates, so this was his favorite part:

Our Disney Visa also gave us a few "Park Perks" which meant that there were a few places around the park that only card holders could get into to take pictures with special characters.  One of those was Kylo Ren (Han Solo and Princess Leia's son).  We have seen the Star Wars movies, but none of us were super fans, but it was still fun meeting him.

Sleeping Beauty's Castle!

Lots of waiting in lines... although we never had to wait more than about 20 minutes.  This is a really good time of year to go!

The Jungle Cruise:

King Arthur's Carousel

Magical end to a first day (how many times can I use the word "magic" in one post?)

Day 2:  California Adventure

California Screamin'

Guess which kid dragged us all to California Screamin' the crazy roller coaster that takes you upside down... It was the 6-year old, Charlotte.  Ian jumped on board right away with that idea, but Ashlyn took a little convincing and had to see Ian and Charlotte do it once to make sure they survived.  Tanner said, "No Thanks!" to that one, but he was a trooper and tried everything else.

And I got to catch up with an old roommate from my Rick's College Day.  Esther and her family live a couple of hours away from the park and come often and just so happened to plan a Disney day trip while we were there.  It was so fun to catch up and meet her family.

California Adventure had a fun event called "Talk with Crush".  Crush is the turtle from Finding Nemo.  They have this really amazing screen that looks like Crush swimming around in a tank.  The kids are invited to sit up front on the floor.  Crush interacts with the kids teaching them "turtle talk" and asks them questions.  The kids can also ask Crush questions back.  It is amazing and was so funny!  Of the very few kids who got picked to interact with Crush, Charlotte and Bronson both got picked!!  They were so cute and so funny.  The videos aren't great, but you can hear my little cuties talking to a turtle:

We were told to get fast passes to Cars Land early in the day and that is no joke.  We got our fast passes around noon and couldn't return until 5:30 p.m.  But it was worth the wait.  Cars Land is incredible!  And coming back towards night was amazing because they lit up the town and it was spectacular.

Can you see the sign in the background?  "Fillmore"  HA!

I am a little sad that so many of our pictures turned out so fuzzy.  But this is Radiator Springs at night.  So cool!

Getting ready for the World of Color.  It is so fun to see everything lit up at night.  I wish we had gotten some video of the World of Color.  It was SO amazing!

Bronson got a souvenir Jake and the Neverland Pirates sword.  He absolutely loved that thing and dragged it everywhere.  He was cracking us up on our way back to the suburban when he was showing us how to fight pirates with it.

Day 3: Back to Disneyland to finish off the rides we didn't get to on day 1 and ride our favorite rides to our hearts content.

I think about every kid said their favorite ride was Splash Mountain:

Even Bronson loved it.  I was so amazed that my sweet four year old was so brave and tried everything.  There wasn't one ride that was too scary for him and he was over the moon thrilled that he was big enough to do all of the rides.

Bronson's favorite was probably Pirates of the Caribbean (He calls them Pirates of the Never Bean... combination of Caribbean with Neverland maybe?)  He watched the first Pirates movie with his dad and absolutely loved it because it fits with his all things Pirate theme of late.

Teacups:

Toon Town:

Mickey's House:

This was probably the highlight of the trip for all of us.  Bronson had been dying to meet Peter Pan and couldn't find him anywhere, but on our last day of the trip, guess who should be walking down the street but that codfish, Captain Hook.  Bronson ran as fast as he could to get his Jake sword and had an epic battle with Hook.

Families were stopped all over the street watching Bronson take on Hook.  It was the cutest thing ever!!  He will never forget it.  He has talked about it non-stop.

Space Mountain:

The Monorail:

One of the last things we did was ride the monorail to Downtown Disney.  I have to say the Lego store was just as cool as any ride we did at Disneyland.  The life sized creations that they had made with Lego's were mind blowing!!

Charlotte made herself with Legos!

Here are a few pictures that the Disney photographers took for us while we were in the park.  We didn't realize you had to actually pay exorbitant prices to get the photopass watermark off the photos.  So here they are in all their watermark glory:

We met Anna and Elsa!

Bronson told us, "Anna was making me nervous!  I didn't like holding her hand."

Family at the front entrance

And last but not least, we conquered "It's a Small World"

Ian's feelings about Small World

Weird ride or not, those bushes are amazing!

The kids actually hated this ride!  After a while they were plugging their ears saying "Make it stop!!!" and it just went on and on and on.  That song played over and over probably 50 times.  We couldn't get it out of our heads.  Afterwords, we saw a t-shirt in the gift shop that said "I Conquered It's a Small World!"  We all wanted it... but of course I didn't really want to spend $50 to buy it.

All in all it was the most magical and memorable of all the trips we have ever taken.  I was so proud of the kids.  We survived the 14 hour car ride beautifully with NO fights!  Seriously!  Very few puking episodes, and very little complaining.  They were very appreciative and respectful.  We all came away from this with amazing memories.  We are SO going back in a couple of years.  I just need to spend A LOT of money on my Visa to wrack up those points fast!