Our first trip to Disneyland as a family - October 2013
Our trip is now complete and I'm about to start the trip report. If you are interested in following along, here's a summary of the vacation:
Saturday, Oct 12 - Travel, Disneyland Hotel, and Downtown Disney
Sunday, Oct 13 - Disneyland and Trader Sam's
Monday, Oct 14 - California Adventure
Tuesday, Oct 15 - Shopping in Downtown Disney, Swimming, Trader Sam's, and Halloween Party
Wednesday, Oct 16 - Little Tokyo in LA, Griffith Observatory, Seal Beach, and Vans Skatepark
Thursday, Oct 17 - Disneyland and California Adventure
Friday, Oct 18 - California Adventure, Disneyland, and Back to California Adventure
Saturday, Oct 19 - Packing, Downtown Disney, and Travel Back Home
Click here for this first post in the Trip Report, or continue reading the Pre-Trip Report below.
Also,
see the next post for the table of contents.
Original Pre-Trip Report:
How our original July trip got delayed to October:
I've been laying in this same exact spot for 4.5 days straight.
(Not counting bio breaks, of course.) What makes it even worse, is that I've been planning to take these same days off from work for at least six months now. According to the original plans, we'd be hanging out in San Francisco right now. Heading to Yosemite this Thursday, spending most of next week at DIsneyland, with a final stop at Grand Canyon before driving back to St. Louis.
The bright side is that we'll still be able to go to Disneyland for a week in October!!!
If you are interesting in reading about the plans for this new trip and/or sharing some occasional advice/opinions, then please follow along
So what happened?
I have a fairly detailed summary of the original plans in my pre-trip report thread titled,
Trip Report: Are we there yet? A 5,000 Mile Road Trip from Missouri to Disneyland. In a nutshell, we had decided that we needed to take the kids to visit/experience more things in the country that aren't Disney related. After exploring options, we decided to take a 16 day epic road trip from St. Louis to California with lots of stops and seeing some major sites. And that we'd still sprinkle in a little bit of Disney by visiting Disneyland for a couple days. Well, everything was going perfectly. Except for I broke my foot skateboarding in early May. No worries, they said it would heal in 4 to 6 weeks, and I still had about 10 weeks left. Wrong! My bones healed up, but there was ligament damage that wasn't originally detected in the X-Rays. We had two weeks to go, and the doc said that surgery was required and that it couldn't wait until after the trip. So, we had to cancel it. I was crushed. The kids were crushed. My wife was bummed, but kept perspective and helped us get over the disappointment. If you read the original pre-trip report, it was going to be awesome, wasn't it? This was one for the record books. We might try again the summer after next.
Fast forward another two weeks or so, and I'm lying in bed recovering from surgery. Bored out of my mind, with almost no attention span due to the pain meds making me feel so loopy. I figured, that I'm "with it" enough now that I can start a new pre-trip report. In short, we'll be flying from STL to LAX on Saturday, October 12 and return on Saturday, October 19. We'll be staying at the Disneyland Hotel the entire time. We have 4 day hopper tickets for Sun/Monday. And separate tickets for Mickey's Halloween Party on Tuesday. Taking the day off on Wed (will probably go to Little Tokyo in LA and then to a beach for the afternoon/evening). Then using the last of the park hoppers on Thurs/Fri. For the most part, we have the skeleton of the trip pretty well defined, but I'm sure that we'll have some questions or things to sort out.
About Us
DW and I have been Disney fans most of our lives. Both enjoying the classic movies and cartoons as kids, and we went on family vacations to WDW a several times. (She had gone 4 times and I had been twice.) The first movie that we saw in a theater together was 101 Dalmatians in 1996. And when we were first dating, I remember she mentioned that as a little girl, she dreamed of going to WDW on her honeymoon. So, later when get got married, the decision on where to go for our honeymoon was a no brainer! That started the tradition of including Disney in family vacations and we've been going back for more ever since. We often travel with my parents and sometimes even with my sister and her family.
Matt (me) - Don't ask how/why I came up with the MarbleBob screen name, because I don't remember. I'm not related to anyone named Bob and I don't even own any marbles. Some might argue, that I've lost a few marbles, but that's a different story. About me? I'm a web applications developer, avid skateboarder (well until recently - darn foot!), gardener, and of course, a Disney fan. I tend to go through phases where I'm super into Disney, and then I focus my interest on other things. But I always come back
This is still going to be my first real trip report. I'm not going to count the initial 1.0 version, since it didn't happen. And I also have an experimental trip report to Marceline, MO from last year. See my signature for it. Marceline is really a cool place!!!
Stephanie (DW) - My best friend and awesome mother to our 3 kids. She's isn't really any more or less into Disney than I am, but she's certainly more consistently plugged in. I think she's listened to every DIS Unplugged podcast through the years (both WDW and DL) and she's probably listened to every one of Ricky Brigante's Inside the Magic podcasts too. Stay tuned for a future post, because I just scanned 650 photo slides from her 4 family vacations (78,81,84,& 86). This took a ridiculous amount of time, but being stuck in bed since Friday, it's not like I had anything else to do
Ninja Potato (DD13) - My oldest daughter. Obviously, that's not her real name, but that's the name she uses a lot online. She must have inherited the knack for random screen names from my side of the family. We'll just refer to her as Ninja going forward. As mentioned above, she's grown up going to Disney World, and loving Disney princesses. She outgrew the princess loving stage a few years ago, but her love for Disney hasn't diminished. She also loves everything Nintendo and Japan, and of course, her favorite Disney attraction is the Japan Pavilion in Epcot.
Buddy (DS10) - Also not his real name, but this is what we usually call him around the house. He's our engineer. He loves building things with his monorail sets, Legos, Rokenbok, trains, etc. And of course, his favorite past time is playing Minecraft on the computer. Visiting the various Disney World Minecraft servers makes it ever better
His favorite Disney attractions are the trains, monorails, Expedition Everest, and California Screamin'.
Pickle (DD6) - We don't really call her this too much in person, but she owns up to her nickname, and it fits her well. Very sweet and loving, but she can be a bit ornery and spicey too! She's very much still in the princess stage, and her favorite is Cinderella.
Well, I guess that's a good start. Stay tuned for more details and updates