Spontaneous Disney, Part 3

Our third day in the park was a Saturday...the first Saturday of Christmas in Disney and it was NUTS!  We saw a definite increase in the crowds and lines.  Though this day was designed to be the park-hopper day that allowed us to go back and revisit all our favorite things, we couldn't help but feel a bit entitled.  It was hard to wait over an hour for things we had walked right onto the day before!  So, we adjusted the plan and took it a bit easier instead, trying to see and do things we'd never done before.

We started the day in California Adventure, and before the crowds got too bad, we did manage one more ride on our new favorite roller coaster!

We also took a couple different classes at the Animation Academy, where you sit in cushy seats for one peaceful half hour, being led through the step-by-step instructions for how to draw classic Disney characters from one of their legit animators.  Ella found her Disney dream job here!

After lunch we made our way back to Disneyland.

 The day before, while we were waiting at the entrance for Kara, we bumped into some friends from school!  What are the chances?!  This wonderful family actually has a son in Delia's grade who has been a long-time friend (and sometimes crush ;) of hers!  It was fun to see them initially, but even more crazy to bump into them another FOUR times over the weekend!!  And once could not have been more random-- on the somewhat deserted Pirate's Lair Island, where we both had the idea to escape crowds!  We finally made plans to intentionally meet up with them later in the day and had the best time riding Big Thunder Mountain together, which Delia did ride with Drew...much to her delight! 

On the Pirate's Lair Island we had some more fun with picture recreating at the treasure that marks the end of the adventure hike.

 Not really being in a hurry to get on rides, or cross things off a to-do list, we said "Sure!" when an old-fashioned fire truck driver asked if we wanted to ride around Main Street with him!  We also walked around the Main Street shops that we'd never paid attention to and stopped in the Disney museum to see some incredible pieces of history from the park.  We took a long train ride, which was actually pretty unimpressive, but became full of more funny family jokes.  And we checked out all the little kiddie rides that strangely the kids had never been on in our rush to do bigger things in the past-- like Snow White, Pinocchio, or the Storybook Land boats.   The day was much slower-paced, but still full of fun memories!

 On the day we headed home, we spent the morning at Downtown Disney.

 And then met Anna for a couple hours for lunch and a sweet life catch-up sesh!  How we love this girl and what a treat to hear all about the exciting progress on the movie she wrote or Derek's new job with NBC/Universal!  We said goodbye with long hugs and plans to reunite sometime soon in Colorado (you up for it, Heather?!).

And then, after an average of 15 hours spent walking 15 miles each day for the past 3 days, we spent our 5 hour drive home doing this!  Another perk to doing Disney with teenagers!  

This whole trip was the greatest gift-- given to us by Kara, by members of our congregation, and by God who opened all the doors for us to spontaneously pause life for some silly time together meeting Spiderman, dancing with Starlord, screaming on rides, watching fireworks go off right in front of us, riding roller coasters with boys we kinda like, crashing the Millennium Falcon, getting in the Christmas spirit, making new memories, and sharing lots of laughter.

Spontaneous Disney, Part 2

Our second free day had us at the Disneyland park.  This was the first day that all the Christmas things opened.  This was something we had never experienced and was so impressive, it was worth the trip all by itself!

 We stayed at a little off-property hotel that had us driving into the parks each day and taking our first ride on the tram from the parking garage.  Oh the excitement of that tram ride taking you to a day that you just knew was going to be full of fun!

Even though our day before at California Adventure was so great and full of some of what would be our favorite memories, the girls were still most excited about revisiting Disneyland.  Those classic rides, like Pirates of the Caribbean, the Haunted Mansion, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, Matterhorn Bobsleds and Space Mountain, never disappoint and just can't be beat!

So, a quick word about lines and crowds.  These first two days in the parks were week days and the day before and the day of Christmas stuff opening.  The crowds were pleasantly light.  In fact, we walked onto most things with little lines and it was awesome!  Splash Mountain was a new ride for Delia, who was too young and scared to ride it on previous visits.  As we were making our way to the new Star Wars land we passed this ride and it had NO line at all. Since it is a headliner, and tends to get busy, Dave suggested we just quick hop on.  It was morning and still cool.  The girls and I were hesitant, but Dave assured us over and over that "we wouldn't get that wet."  Well, you probably guessed it, some of us got completely soaked!  It became a funny joke for the rest of the day, as was this picture of us on the drop with complete terror on our faces!

Star Wars Galaxy's Edge was really cool!  This land was so immersive, we couldn't help but be impressed by it from an artistic perspective.  We kept quoting that line in Jurassic Park, "We spared no expense", because it seemed every single detail was intentional and contributed to a feeling of really being in an alien land.  We walked through the market.

 We stood right by the life-sized Millennium Falcon.  We walked through the droid shop.  We were threatened by a Storm Trooper.  

And we rode the Smugglers' Run ride.  This is an interactive, changes each time you ride it, kind of ride.  The line alone was so neat!  At one point you can sit in that famous round booth inside the Falcon.

  

The ride is fun because each person is assigned a different job and how well you do it actually impacts the ride.  We rode a few times and were able to try all the different jobs. Delia loved being the gunner because she got to aim and shoot at bad guys while on the wild ride and it was like the best video game ever.

Dave and Ella liked being the captains and actually steering the Falcon, but it was hard!  When they crashed it into things, we all felt it!  The ride is a creative idea, but it did make those of us prone to motion sickness feel a little ill.  I liked the engineer job because then I didn't have to look at what was happening around us and could just focus on pressing all my buttons and switches as they lit up.  Though it was sometimes bumpy, we did succeed at all our missions!

So fun on this Disney trip was having brave kids who had no problem riding all the bigger, darker rides.  Except for Indiana Jones.  Being our more sensory triggered kid, Delia was not so sure about this one that famously has things pop out at you.  As we took off, I took this picture that also had us giggling all day.  This is a real look of fear and bravery on her sweet face!  She ended up liking the ride, but didn't need to do it more than once. :)

  

Christmas at Disney is quite the thing to see!  Entire rides, like It's a Small World and the Haunted Mansion, got complete festive makeovers. 

The parades and shows were all Christmas themed.

The castle is lit up with icicles and lights.

Disney's magic even makes it snow on Main Street a couple times each night!!

And the facade of It's a Small World is simply jaw-dropping!

Another favorite memory of the whole trip happened in this spot as the nighttime fireworks show was about to begin.  Not being huge fans of huge crowds, we opted to skip the battle for a good viewing spot and hop on a ride instead.  We walked past what seemed like every person in the park camped out on blankets that they'd spread hours earlier in front of It's a Small World and got in line for it.  Then, as we stood in line, with the most magnificent front row seats ever, that we WALKED RIGHT UP TO, the fireworks and light show started!  We could not have planned it better!  We actually sat in our little Small World boat watching this show with no one closer.  We couldn't even believe how lucky we got and how amazing it was-- it felt like the show was just for us. :)

A similar thing happened again at the Fantasmic show late at night.  We were just strolling, considering stopping to watch it, when a section of VIP seats that never got used opened right up as we walked by. The cast member asked if we wanted them and of course we did!  So, again, without waiting at all, we scored the best seats to another iconic and amazing show, and one we'd never seen before and LOVED.

We started the day with high expectations and lots of excitement and our second day in Disneyland was all we hoped it would be!  Lots of fun new things, like Star Wars, Christmas, and new shows and rides, for us to experience and marvel over!

Spontaneous Disney, Part 1

This is a story about our family, who is on the Type A, make plans way in advance and overthink things, end of the spectrum doing something totally out of character.  It stars a former babysitter, named Kara, who took care of our girls for the 4 years she was in high school.  Kara now goes to college in the LA area and works at Disneyland in her spare time.  We've stayed in touch and this summer she told me if we were ever interested in Disneyland, she could get us in for free.  

The story continues with Dave finding a super rare Sunday where he actually didn't have to preach at either service... a Sunday that happened to fall over a long Veteran's Day weekend!  So, two weeks out, we hatched this crazy idea to take some days off school and head down to Disneyland.  The concept of just throwing together a big trip like this (one we've made in the past, but planned for a year), felt so foreign and overwhelming, we left it in the hands of the Lord.  IF I could get a substitute teacher, IF we could get a dog-sitter, IF the dates we were looking at were not black-out dates for Kara, IF we could find a hotel at the last minute...

 All the IFs quickly got resolved, so we took it as God's blessing and off we went to the Happiest Place on Earth!  We were happy to reconnect a bit with Kara, who simply scanned her cast member pass and ushered us right into the parks for a couple days! We're so thankful to have done this trip 3 times now with the girls.  Each Disney trip is SO special and had its own memorable moments.  We went when the kids were 3 and 5, with belief in princesses and magic in their hearts.  We went when we shocked them with the surprise of Grandma and Grandpa.  And this time we loved taking older kids-- who could make it open to close in the park, who weren't afraid of any rides, who were hilarious and fun to wait in lines with, and who skipped princess visits for ones with Marvel characters!  It was THE BEST trip, reminding us in another busy season of life what a gift time together with these favorite people is!!

 Delia was excited to ride the big California Adventure roller coaster for the first time, the Incredicoaster.  She LOVED it.  Ella's not a fan of drops, and this ride had two huge ones, so she sat out and played photographer instead.  She snapped this pic right before Dash yells "Ready in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 GOOOOO!" and you blast off!

A favorite ride is always the Toy Story Mania, experiential 4-D video game ride. We rode 3 times and none of us were ever able to beat Dave's impressive score.

We love Cars Land too!

Something new for us to see was the transformation of Pixar Pier.  We thought the theme was super well done and enjoyed recognizing lots of special little details from some of our favorite movies.  We all love Inside Out best and thought the Emotional Whirlwind ride was fun.

We met Spiderman and Captain America!  After a summer soaked in Marvel movies, this was a highlight for the girls.  Did you notice the girls' fun mouse ears?  I found them in an Etsy shop and managed to get them to us in time for our trip.  Spiderman and Cap liked them too. ;)

Though the tickets into the park each day were free and Kara shared lots of other perks (like certificates for certain food items and gift shop discounts), the trip was not totally without expense.  But, another amazing blessing was that Dave was just coming off the month of October, which is Pastor Appreciation Month, and had a wad of cash that the wonderful people of our church had been gifting him.  He said he'd love to use that to treat us to some special meals we would have not otherwise tried.  Our best was our lunch at the famous Lamplight Lounge.  Here we ordered fancy lobster nachos, ratatouille, and carne asada sushi rolls.  We were delighted in the walls plastered with Pixar quotes and original artwork from the movies.  We loved the creative, thematic food and drink names, all inspired by the movies we know so well.  We are still talking about this cool meal!  And the restaurant sits right on the lagoon, so the views are pretty!

  

Delia went three for three in her record for getting chosen from the audience to come dance with a character in a little Disney show.  This time it was Peter Quill in the "Guardians of the Galaxy Awesome Dance Off".  A new core memory!

Getting later and getting tired?  No worries, we were in the company of energetic teenagers this time!  By going in the late fall season, instead of summer, we enjoyed it getting dark sooner and seeing the lights of the park come on more around dinner time.

  

 We entertained ourselves in some of the lines by recreating Disney pictures we knew we had taken in the past! :)

Our first day in California Adventure ended with one of our favorite memories of the whole trip.  We were in line to ride a favorite, Radiator Springs Racers, as the park's opening hours wound down.  When we hopped off the ride, it was two minutes to closing.  The girls came up with the idea to really RUN and see if we could get back in line again before it officially shut down.  We ended a long day of walking 15 miles with a major sprint and MADE IT!  We were the LAST ones to get on this ride for the day and were rewarded with a car all to ourselves and giddy joy that we pulled off back-to-back rides on this headliner!  These little things were the big things that made us just fall in love with our cool and so fun older kids all over again and realize that the magic of Disney grows with you.