Hey Mickey, Long Time No See

Oh was it a happy moment when we got out of the car at the Disneyland hotel! And boy do we love the bell hop service! The last time we were at Disneyland was three years ago. Angela was 1 year old. We stayed at the Disneyland hotel, but for some reason we couldn't find a bell hop (it was later at night) or didn't know where to get cart, so poor Melvin* walked the very long distance from our van to the hotel room 3-4 times to bring everything to our room! This time, we were smarter and made sure to use the bell hop service! While we waited for daddy to park the car, the girls pretended to jump into Disneyland (like on Mary Poppins). They were very, very excited! So was I!
Hey there Mickey - we've missed you!

We love staying at the Disneyland hotel. Besides being very convenient, it's just fun to keep the Disney magic the whole vacation! We love the princess bedtime stories, the fun Disney decor, the awesome Peter Pan themed pool - which we made a point to visit this time even though it wasn't exactly a warm day. It is a beautiful place to stay and they have rooms that perfectly accommodate a family of 5.

The girls getting into a story by Belle.

Natalie getting "comfortable".

These pictures are a little mixed up. This was our dinner the first night at the Rainforest Cafe in Downtown Disney. It is a fun restaurant with a lot of ambiance. It looks like a rainforest inside and every few minutes the animals come alive and a big "rainstorm" happens. Before we were even in the restaurant and the first rainstorm hit in the gift shop, Angela freaked out. She was terrified. Natalie took the cue and started getting scared too. This was not a good start on a vacation full of pretend things. I didn't know if we were even going to get through dinner, but Neville* has a way of talking the girls into calming down and trying new things. So it was a little tense for a while, but we ended up having a fun dinner. I hoped this would not be a theme for the trip...

Unfortunately, the next day it seemed like it would be a theme...

We did our Magic Morning entrance the next day. (Early entry into the park.) It was a rough start, for some reason Natalie's tummy was hurting and Sarah felt queasy too. I think it was all the excitement and anticipation. (Sarah had also been dealing with ongoing nausea for a few days before the trip as explained in the "Finally Getting Into the Swing of Things" post. This problem continued to haunt us at least once a day on our trip. That first morning, as we waited in line, I just prayed everyone would feel good and we could just have fun! Luckily, it wasn't long before Sarah and Natalie perked up. We headed right toward the Nemo submarine ride just as RideMax suggested to avoid horrendous lines. (I'm so glad we did, every other time we walked by during our trip the line was ridiculous.)

As we waited to get on our first ride, Angela began to panic. "Is it going to be scary?" "Will it be dark?" "Do we have to go down in there?". Here little heart was racing and no amount of consoling was helping. As we descending down into the submarine she panicked and screamed. It was a little claustrophobic to her. This probably wasn't to best ride to start with for her. I thought we were going to have to get out and panicked a little myself when they closed the door above us. Natalie started getting scared too as the lights dimmed and it felt like we were losing all control. Angela finally listened to my reasoning and when we started seeing the cute fish from Nemo, she started peeking out the round windows and realizing this was fun. The volcano part was a bit scary for her, but in the end the verdict was that Nemo was a fun ride. Phew! That was a very stressful start to our day at Disneyland.

After that, if a ride showed any signs of being dark or questionable, Angela would ask a million times, "Is this ride scawy?" She learned to trust us and realize that most of the rides were fun. There were a few exceptions. She did not like Pirates of the Caribbean, but she tolerated it. She hated Splash Mountain and the big hills, but did much better than Natalie - who I was afraid was going to throw up on the lady in front of us. And every time we did a rider switch on Space Mountain, Angela reminded us several times that she was NOT going on that ride. (o: Other than those times, she did great. The thing that actually scared Angela the MOST in Disneyland were the automatic flushing toilets! More on that later...

The Astrorbiters were lots of fun, especially at night.

Some of our best memories on the trip were our experiences with the characters. We LOVED our visit with some of the Disney villains! The queen from Snow White was a total crack up and ended up being one of my favorites. She was so talented at scowling and her reaction to Sarah's comment that she was prettier to Snow White was priceless. She broke into a huge grin and gave Sarah a big hug. (This comment was daddy's idea.) And Captain Hook was hilarious. He liked to use the girls' heads to sign their books and in one of the girls' books he wrote, "Tinker Smells - Captain Hook" (o: We love the Disney characters!!