ok, so I never got most of our vacation pictures up here. . . So, rewind with me for a little bit, to our summer vacation. . .
We decided to go to Disneyland early in our vacation to "get it out of the way." As a young child I LOVED Disneyland. But the older I got the more I loved the roller coasters at Magic Mountain and the less enamored I was with Disneyland. But, then kids came along. Now I LOVE the magic kingdom again because it is so fun to see it through the eyes of my children. They LOVED it, all three of them. We had a great (albeit LONG) day.
We started our morning on the rockets. . .
(pictured: Mama T & Caelleb in the forefront, Bryndyn and Vanessa in the background)
Then, I HIGHLY recommend this next part, we went to breakfast with Minnie Mouse and friends. I had never heard of this before, but had found out through a friend that you can have breakfast with the characters. It was such a perfect way to start the day. The food was amazing (waffles, omelettes, basically every breakfast food you can imagine). The best part was that the characters came around to your table and interacted with the kids, posed for pictures, signed autographs etc. So, it kind of felt like we got that out of the way and could just focus on going on rides and enjoying ourselves rather than worrying about what characters we may or may not run into. We saw people waiting in LONG lines to take one hurried picture with different characters. Even though the breakfast was on the pricey side, it was definitely WELL worth it!
Caelleb and Vanessa loved giving all the characters hugs & high fives. Tia was perfectly content to wave at them from her spot at the table. She did NOT want them to get too close. But by the end of breakfast we were able to get a couple photos of her too.
Ummmmm, doesn't this picture say it all. . .
After breakfast we were off. . . we hit just about every ride imagineable. We even took Caelleb and Vanessa on space mountain (they both loved it, especially Vanessa). Tia was tall enough to go on the Matterhorn--she went, but wasn't a big fan. We went on Buzz lightyear, Casey's train, pirates of the carribean, the haunted house, dumbo, small world, the cars, splash mountain (twice), just to mention a few. . .
the kids being monkeys on Casey Jr's train ride
we didn't actually ride on the teapots, just took the picture--but that would have been funny! :)
Tia LOVED small world--pretty sure that was her favorite.
the kids had fun at toon town as well. . .
Mama & Papa T with the grandkids. . .
Waiting patiently for the parade (which was awesome, I might add)
By FAR, splash mt. was Caelleb's favorite ride. Vanessa liked it as well, but I think her favorite may have been space mt.
This is a picture I took of the picture they took of us coming down the big hill on splash mt., thats why its not too good of quality. This was our first time on the ride. We purchased the picture that disneyland took of our second time on the ride. It is hilarious. I will try to get that scanned in on here at a later time.
If you can believe it, we did not leave the park until it CLOSED, which in the summer months is MIDNIGHT. Yes, MIDNIGHT. We did not intend to stay that long. We were heading out of the park around 10:30pm (which even that was much later than we had anticipated staying) when we walked past the new finding nemo ride. We had been trying all day to get on that (mostly because it was new and I wanted to see how they'd changed it from the old submarine ride). Anyway, the wait was 2.5 hours all day long. Ummm no. But at 10:30pm we were told the wait was 20 minutes. Ummmmm, we were lied to. It was more like 75 minutes. Caelleb and Vanessa both hit a major wall while we were in line. They were exhausted. It was one of those things we kept thinking we were almost there only to discover a whole other section of line in front of us but we had gotten so far we just figured we'd stick it out. It wasn't worth it. The ride was pretty disappointing. But it did not damper the day. While Caelleb and Vanessa were like walking zombies at this point (as was I), Tia got her second wind (she had taken a nap during the day in her stroller). She was hilarious. The finding nemo ride is right next to the stage with shows/live music in tomorrow land. There was music playing and Tia was DANCING. She was past delirious. It was hilarious. All in all, it was a GREAT day. The kids were well behaved TROOPERS. A good time had by all.
