TK&E's Adventures: Disneyland!

This year, Tom and I decided to take the girls to Disneyland for our "big" vacation of the year. I had won a trip for 2 to Paris last fall at a seminar that I went to, and the downfall to the winning (I know how can there be a down fall right?) was that it had to be used by the end of last year. Well, going to Paris would be awesome, I don't think I could manage leaving my little newbie at home with the Grandparents while I traveled to Europe. Panic attack aside, I don't think I was physically ready for that trip. So in lieu of the Paris trip, they offered a cash type settlement. So Tom and I decided to use the money for a family trip to Disneyland.

We spent 5 days in Anaheim this fall, and had an awesome time. We had a Park hopper pass, and spent 4 continuous days in the Parks. The girls (and us!) had a great time. Disneyland is quite possibly the nicest theme park I have ever been to. It was soooo clean, so convienent, and EVERYONE was so willing to help, answer questions, and were overly polite. It was just an overall great experience. I highly recommend it.

Before we left, Tom and I got a book on Disneyland to get an idea of what to expect and the like. It is the best travel book that I have purchased. They gave us TONS of advice on traveling with kids, what to expect, and even if you are a die hard visitor, how to ride all the rides in either a 2 day or 1 day trip to the Park. We didn't follow these plans, but they did give us a great idea of when to hit what rides, and which ones would seem to be available whenever we wanted to ride them.

Ellie's favorite ride (as of today) was the Peter Pan ride. She LOVED that ride. I would say that Mackenzie's favorite was either the Disney Playhouse theater at California Adventure, or Its a Small World. She was completely infatuated with both experiences, and interacted with both. There were a lot of rides that we could take her on with us, so that was really nice.

Disney also offers a couple of options for those parents that have a little one that can't ride all of the rides. They have the "switch off" which involves (for us) all 4 of us getting in line for a ride. Then when it gets to be our turn, we tell them we want to do the Switchoff, and Tom and Ellie will get on the ride, while Mackenzie and I hang out at the loading station. When Tom and Ellie get back, Tom gets off and takes Mackenzie, and I jump on with Ellie. So both adults get to ride it, we don't have to wait in line twice, and Ellie got to ride the ride twice! We did this several times with the rides that E really enjoyed so she would get ample opportunity to ride them.

The other nice feature was the "single's line". This came in super handy on the rides that neither kid wanted or could ride. For example, Splash Mountain. Ellie is elligable to ride the ride, but didn't want to. So I went and rode it by myself. I went into the exit, waited in the singles line, and got right on the ride. No waiting. When I was done, I took over for Tom, and he did the same thing. We both rode Splash Mountain in less than 20 minutes, where the standard wait time when we did this was 30 minutes! Well worth it.

The trip also gave us a chance to visit some friends that live in So Cal. They came up to Anaheim for 3 days, stayed with us, and went to the parks with us. We had a great time!

Without further ado, here are a few pictures of our trip!