That Was NOT Part of the Plan! May/June 2017 TR *NEW* 12/1 *COMPLETE*

Finally catching up. Loved the Pooh character meet pictures. Looks like your DD is turning the corner and loving her some characters!
 
Got so far behind on this (and other) reports. Work has really been kicking my butt lately.

Really cute meet with Tigger and gang. It's great that DD warmed up to them.
 
Sure enough, she was starting to doze off when we entered the park and DH begrudgingly agreed to keep walking her around so she could fall fully asleep while DS and I went on the Jungle Cruise.
Well, it is impressive that she was able to fall asleep on that long torturous walk from one park to the other. :rolleyes1

Seriously though, great when a stroller nap works out. Too bad you couldn't find a ride with FP and RS for DH though!

This turned out to be such a great decision! As soon as we got up towards the front of the line, DD just started going nuts for Tigger. She was waving, yelling his name, and blowing kisses, all before it was our turn to meet him. She got a little shy again as we walked over for our meet, but was much more receptive to approaching Tigger than she had been for any other characters so far.
That's awesome! I'm so glad that she opened up to the characters a little bit. The pictures are great!
 
Ha, I feel like i'm constantly juggling anytime I enter any theme park! Everyone's tickets, the stroller, my camera, water, etc, etc. Seriously recipe for disaster.

It really is. Especially having to take everything out and putting it back in for security, then trying to get everything tucked away before going through the gates.

Fantastic idea! Sorry you had to find out the hard way, but thanks for sharing this tip.

While it was not an ideal situation, it could have been a lot worse, so I'm glad it worked out fine and that I learned a valuable lesson in the process! We always used to do this with our Disney World tickets pre-Magic Bands but really haven't had an actual ticket with us ever since so I didn't even think about it for Disneyland!

Haven't gotten the chance to ride this yet but have heard amazing things about this ride!

I hope you get the chance to soon! It's awesome!

Yep, haven't done this one yet either...

Another cute one that the kids will love, I'm sure. It's not mind blowing for adults or anything, but something fun to keep them occupied.

The queue is woah!

They did an incredible job transforming the attraction from TOT!

Another great tip, thanks! About to get me a better, smaller camera and didn't know what to do with my Sony Cybershot (takes TERRIBLE video/audio!) Never thought about passing it down to Calvin.

He absolutely loved having his own camera to take photos with and be just like Dad!

Calvin was just like your DD and now he loves them! I'm hoping Quentin will love them straight off. We haven't done many character meets at DLR or when we went to Aulani since having Q, so anxious to see what he'll do in January.

Hopefully he enjoys them! It's so much more fun to have a little one that takes to them immediately!

How exciting that DD finally warmed up so well to a character! Tigger must have worked some of his magic on her :) And the pictures with Rabbit are super! You never see Rabbit at WDW!

Excellent photos in this update—especially of Fantasyland. Looks like DH is training up DS to also be a photographer with his little photo crawl adventure.

It was one of my favorite moments of the trip, for sure! To see her finally come around and enjoy a character was really special to watch. Ironically, DS really loved Tigger too on his first trip. Must be something about that guy!

I've never seen Rabbit ANYWHERE so when we heard he was coming out, meeting him was a must! It may not be all that rare for Disneyland, but since it's not our home park it was definitely rare for us.

DS always wants to be just like Dad, so I may end up with two shutterbugs in the family!

So many great photos around Disneyland!

Oh my gosh, DD looks so adorable with the characters. I'm glad she finally warmed up to them!

I was so glad she decided they weren't so bad after all. We love meeting characters, and it's always more fun when your kid isn't terrified of them! lol

Finally catching up. Loved the Pooh character meet pictures. Looks like your DD is turning the corner and loving her some characters!

Yes, hopefully it keeps up for our next trip and she doesn't start over at the beginning of being scared of them!!

Got so far behind on this (and other) reports. Work has really been kicking my butt lately.

Really cute meet with Tigger and gang. It's great that DD warmed up to them.

Totally understandable. I find myself with less and less time to poke around the DIS lately. Life has gotten so busy!

It was so heartwarming to see her have such a special moment with Tigger and finally get over her fear!

Well, it is impressive that she was able to fall asleep on that long torturous walk from one park to the other. :rolleyes1

Seriously though, great when a stroller nap works out. Too bad you couldn't find a ride with FP and RS for DH though!

Haha right?! I do love me a well-timed stroller nap though. That's the one drawback (somewhat) to the old FP system. We couldn't just hop on the app and pick up a FP for something distributing right away. Maybe now with Maxpass it would work out better.

That's awesome! I'm so glad that she opened up to the characters a little bit. The pictures are great!

It was one of the best character meets of the week! I was so happy she had decided they weren't so bad after all.
 


Day 10: Friday June 2nd

After an early night to bed, we were up at 6 am for another early morning at Disneyland. It was so different having the park open at 8 am every single day for regular park opening. Our last 2 family trips have been enough in the off season that the park wasn’t opening until 10 am every day. We spent a lot of mornings sitting around and twiddling our thumbs until it was time to leave to go to the parks.

This morning, DH and DS were ready first and headed down to get us a spot as close to the gates as possible while DD and I followed once we were ready. This morning, we met up with another family who was on their first park day, and the mom was unsure how to get to the park from our resort, so she asked me where to go. I explained the route to her at the crosswalk and then I got kind of ahead of them because her teens didn’t have nearly as much pep in their step as she did. It was kind of funny when I got to those Miserable Stairs and the mom started to holler to her kids to hurry up because she didn’t want to lose the nice lady (me) showing them where to go, and then as she saw me crisscrossing back and forth across those ridiculous stairs, she said, “Aw, the poor lady.” Haha!


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DS was obsessed with these monster trash cans


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DH and DS had gotten us a fairly close position to the gates, so we joined up with them once we had made it through security and had our breakfast while waiting in line. The park was officially opening at 8 am, but at 7:30 they started letting people in.

A couple of the things we had been wanting to do up until now but hadn’t because the lines had always been enormous was Pirates of the Caribbean and Haunted Mansion. So instead of gathering with all of the other folks heading to Fantasyland and Tomorrowland, we were over by the Adventureland rope.


There were some Jungle Cruise skippers down by the rope chatting with people, and one of them was an older CM who started asking people what they were heading to first. A group of adults made a joke that they always say they are heading to the Jungle Cruise first because they don’t want everyone around them to hear where they are REALLY heading and follow them there, making the line long. The CM evidently didn’t hear anything they said past “Jungle Cruise” or didn’t understand the joke they were making, because he pulled them past the rope before the park was officially open, I’m guessing to bring them on a private Jungle Cruise boat. Less than 2 minutes later they all returned and retook their spot behind the rope as they had evidently fessed up to him that they were not actually heading the JC first. I couldn’t believe they had not just taken the pixie dust!! DH and I actually commented to each other that we wished we had said Jungle Cruise instead of Pirates.

Soon enough, the announcement came overhead officially opening the park and we all headed into Adventureland. Plenty of people seemed to be hurrying over to Indiana Jones only to find out it was actually closed! So suddenly WAY more people were following us over to Pirates, so we had to hustle a little bit not to get too far behind!!

We still walked right through the queue and onto one of my very favorite Disneyland rides! I couldn’t believe we had been there so many days already and not been on it! Sadly, although we normally ride this one several times a trip, this was the one and only ride we got to do on it this time around.

Another great ride!! I really love the double drops on this one, and it really makes me appreciate the length of it when I ride the one in WDW again and it feels incredibly short.

Continued in next post...
 
Day 10 Continued: Friday June 2nd

Over the past several trips, we have skipped doing the Haunted Mansion as a family because it made DS nervous. However, with this trip having had to rider swap so many things and taking up extra time to do so, we weren’t interested in swapping this one, so we didn’t give him much time to think about it and just hopped in line. He actually did totally fine on this one. I think he’s now old enough to only be a little scared of it and not terrified as he had been when younger. DD was nervous, but sat with her face in my neck some of the time so she was fine like that.

DH wasn’t sure where the Hatbox Ghost was, so it came up on him by surprise and he was only able to get this blurry photo, but still cool to see him in the ride!

We were so happy to have knocked the two of those out, even if it wasn’t the “best” use of rope drop, because the wait times had consistently been 40+ minutes the rest of the week! Even Pirates had gotten an extended queue every day just out in the walkway made with ropes and tape on the ground to show you which way to go. I’ve never seen either one of those rides so nuts!

Once we were done with Haunted Mansion, we made the decision to split up. I was taking our three tickets with the plan to get two FPs for Star Tours so one of us could ride with DS and get a swap for the other to ride with him, then using the third ticket to get just one FP for Space Mountain and we’d get a rider swap for the other of us to ride. It was really our first morning in the park since it had reopened after losing the Hyperspace Mountain overlay and going back to the original, and it’s another of our DL favorites, so we really wanted to ride! While I was doing that, DH took the kids over to the Jungle Cruise since he hadn’t ridden it yet and the wait time was still low.


Unfortunately only half of our plan had worked out. I was able to get the Star Tours FPs easy enough (though they do make it incredibly confusing because the kiosks are right next to the ones for Buzz Lightyear so I spent a good long time making sure I was getting FPs for the correct attraction!) but not so much for Space Mountain. The ride was down so they weren’t distributing FPs, and we were actually never able to go back over and get some because every time we checked on it that morning it was still down.

UP NEXT: A Royal Welcome
 
Pirates being closed on my DL trip still makes me sad! One day I will get on it haha

I don't think it was a waste of your rope drop time at all! You got to do 2 rides you still hadn't done with a short wait!

Bummer about not being able to get Space Mountain FPs :(
 


I just finished reading your trip report so far. You have a lovely family. It looks like all of you are having a great time. My DH and I will be heading to Disneyland for two days (I know not long enough) in late November and looking at your pictures is making me wish it was sooner. Looking forward to reading more.
 
I've heard the Disneyland Paris version of Pirates is very similar to the DL version, and if that's the case I can understand why you really wanted to ride it at least once on your trip! Sorry that was your only time getting to enjoy the attraction, though. It seems like in the last few years people have really come to like Pirates and the wait times are always crazy. But I guess getting on it once is better than nothing...

Even blurry, the hatbox ghost looks really cool!
 
It was kind of funny when I got to those Miserable Stairs and the mom started to holler to her kids to hurry up because she didn’t want to lose the nice lady (me) showing them where to go, and then as she saw me crisscrossing back and forth across those ridiculous stairs, she said, “Aw, the poor lady.” Haha!

Bahaha this is hilarious! Those stairs!

Another great ride!! I really love the double drops on this one, and it really makes me appreciate the length of it when I ride the one in WDW again and it feels incredibly short.

I'm so excited to go on the DL Pirates someday and see the differences. Every time people talk about it they always prefer it to WDW.

Over the past several trips, we have skipped doing the Haunted Mansion as a family because it made DS nervous. However, with this trip having had to rider swap so many things and taking up extra time to do so, we weren’t interested in swapping this one, so we didn’t give him much time to think about it and just hopped in line. He actually did totally fine on this one.

Yay for DS! Haunted Mansion is awesome, so it's great that he's getting more comfortable :)

The ride was down so they weren’t distributing FPs, and we were actually never able to go back over and get some because every time we checked on it that morning it was still down.

Aww man, that's too bad! :(
 
I wouldn't call Pirates a waste of rope drop, because the lines build pretty huge. However, we've often walked on HM at DLR, so maybe that one wasn't the best. Seems like it worked out better than if you'd picked Space Mountain though! I love DLR Space Mountain, and would be very excited to do the standard version again. (We did hyperspace mountain last time, and it was fine, but I think I prefer the normal music.)
 
Our last 2 family trips have been enough in the off season that the park wasn’t opening until 10 am every day. We spent a lot of mornings sitting around and twiddling our thumbs until it was time to leave to go to the parks.
That's how it was when we got to go. We were always crazy early for Rope Drop. Combine the late opening time with the fact that we were still kind of waking up on Eastern time and it made the mornings really drag.

There were some Jungle Cruise skippers down by the rope chatting with people, and one of them was an older CM who started asking people what they were heading to first. A group of adults made a joke that they always say they are heading to the Jungle Cruise first because they don’t want everyone around them to hear where they are REALLY heading and follow them there, making the line long. The CM evidently didn’t hear anything they said past “Jungle Cruise” or didn’t understand the joke they were making, because he pulled them past the rope before the park was officially open, I’m guessing to bring them on a private Jungle Cruise boat. Less than 2 minutes later they all returned and retook their spot behind the rope as they had evidently fessed up to him that they were not actually heading the JC first. I couldn’t believe they had not just taken the pixie dust!! DH and I actually commented to each other that we wished we had said Jungle Cruise instead of Pirates.
I don't know what top secret plans they had that involved entering through Adventureland, but I can't believe it was anything worth missing out on an opportunity like that!

We were so happy to have knocked the two of those out, even if it wasn’t the “best” use of rope drop, because the wait times had consistently been 40+ minutes the rest of the week!
Seems like a great use of rope drop to me! Doing rides that don't have FP and tend to back up is always a prime objective!
 
Pirates being closed on my DL trip still makes me sad! One day I will get on it haha

I don't think it was a waste of your rope drop time at all! You got to do 2 rides you still hadn't done with a short wait!

Bummer about not being able to get Space Mountain FPs :(

Oh no!! Just a reason to plan another trip!! It's always a must do for us. It would be a bummer if we went and it was closed.

That's true, it was definitely necessary this trip in particular because the lines had been so long the whole time, but we have always gone when it was slower and we didn't have to wait at all.

Yeah, Space ended up being quite elusive for this trip...

I just finished reading your trip report so far. You have a lovely family. It looks like all of you are having a great time. My DH and I will be heading to Disneyland for two days (I know not long enough) in late November and looking at your pictures is making me wish it was sooner. Looking forward to reading more.

Thank you so much!! We absolutely love going to Disneyland, so we have a great time when we go. November will be here before you know it!! You'll have a great 2 days, I'm sure. Who can really have a bad time when they're at Disneyland?!

I've heard the Disneyland Paris version of Pirates is very similar to the DL version, and if that's the case I can understand why you really wanted to ride it at least once on your trip! Sorry that was your only time getting to enjoy the attraction, though. It seems like in the last few years people have really come to like Pirates and the wait times are always crazy. But I guess getting on it once is better than nothing...

Even blurry, the hatbox ghost looks really cool!

Comparing the three rides, DLP and DL definitely have similar Pirates rides with WDW being the outlier. Pirates was so crazy the whole week, and it's never been like that on previous trips. We usually get to ride multiple times! Once was definitely better than missing it entirely. I would have been so sad to miss it completely!

It's a very cool addition to HM!

Bahaha this is hilarious! Those stairs!

Those friggin' stairs were the bane of my existence that week!!!

I'm so excited to go on the DL Pirates someday and see the differences. Every time people talk about it they always prefer it to WDW.

So much so!!! I absolutely love it. The first time I rode it I thought, "Wow this is so much longer than WDW's" but then after getting to ride it more now I go to WDW and think "Wow this is so short!!" lol

Yay for DS! Haunted Mansion is awesome, so it's great that he's getting more comfortable :)

I was happy we kind of "forced" him because I think in his mind he had made it scarier than it is after not going on it for so many trips.

Aww man, that's too bad! :(

Yeah, it was a bummer because that's one of our favorites while there!

I wouldn't call Pirates a waste of rope drop, because the lines build pretty huge. However, we've often walked on HM at DLR, so maybe that one wasn't the best. Seems like it worked out better than if you'd picked Space Mountain though! I love DLR Space Mountain, and would be very excited to do the standard version again. (We did hyperspace mountain last time, and it was fine, but I think I prefer the normal music.)

Both of them seemed to have longer wait times than we are used to, so I was glad to at least get to do both once.

Haha yes probably a good think we weren't hurrying over to Space Mountain or that would have been a lot of wasted time!! lol We both love that version too. It would have been cool to try Hyperspace at least once. I was disappointed we didn't make it early enough to try that version before it went down to go back to the regular version.

That's how it was when we got to go. We were always crazy early for Rope Drop. Combine the late opening time with the fact that we were still kind of waking up on Eastern time and it made the mornings really drag.

We had so many mornings we just sat and sat and were anxious to head to the parks! This time getting up so early we were so tired. lol A happy medium would be perfect. Maybe one day we will visit at a time of year that it works out that way.

I don't know what top secret plans they had that involved entering through Adventureland, but I can't believe it was anything worth missing out on an opportunity like that!

I know!! I have a feeling they just wanted to hurry over to Indiana Jones, but joke was on them again when the park opened and it was closed. :rotfl: Now not only did they miss a private ride on Jungle Cruise, now they missed Indiana Jones too!

Seems like a great use of rope drop to me! Doing rides that don't have FP and tend to back up is always a prime objective!

Yeah, that's a good point!
 
Day 10: Friday June 2nd

I had finished up first and walked over to Royal Theatre to check on the show times because I wanted to make sure we saw the Tangled show at some point during the week. While we were there, the morning show times were for Beauty and the Beast and the afternoon ones were for Tangled. I was able to grab a photo of the showtimes for future reference and chat with the CM to see how much time we needed to allow to make it into one of the later shows. Since I was over there, I noticed the wait time at the Fantasy Faire princess meet was pretty short, so I texted DH to meet me over there with the kids and we got in line.


DD was showing a lot of interest in the princesses before this trip, so I was pretty excited to see how she would react. Not as excited as I would have hoped, but it was still a fun meet. I think she would be even more into it now that she has had a little more time to discover the princesses and shows interest in Ariel, Rapunzel, Cinderella, Snow White, and Tiana.

First up, we met Snow White.

DD was not sure about all this at first, but eventually Snow coaxed her over for some photos.

Then we went over to see Ariel, but I don’t think DD was as excited about her because she wasn’t in her mermaid form. I could see her now getting very excited about going to meet her in the Grotto at WDW!


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DS always expresses his displeasure at meeting the princesses but I think he secretly still likes the attention! Lol
Finally we met Cinderella!
And DD promptly went to the floor to check out her shoes! LMAO!


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“Are y’all seeing this?! It’s Cinderella!”

It was a great princess meet, and I was so happy I had stumbled upon it with a super short wait. By the time we came out it had already grown quite a bit! We stopped at my insistence to get a photo with the Tangled tower.

It came out perfect lol

By then, we could use our Star Tours FPs so we headed over there for DS and I to ride together and grab a rider swap for DH.

Tomorrowland in Disneyland is always SO packed!!!

I don’t know what DD and DH did while we were riding, but once we were done, DH and DS went on immediately after while I took advantage of the Space Mountain exit/bathroom area being nearly deserted and let DD run around and burn off some energy.


We met up after the ride and decided to head over to DCA before it got much later because we wanted to pick up some FPs for World of Color. They had recently before our trip closed the loophole in the system where we could have sent DH over with all of our tickets to get the FPs and now each ticket had to be scanned in to DCA before it would work to get any FPs.


DH headed over to the World of Color FP distribution spot while I took the kids over to get in line for the free face painting being done as part of the Summer of Heroes so DS could get his face painted. Once DH had the FPs he came over to meet us in line.


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Black Widow coming out for her meet & greet.
DD had fallen asleep in the stroller, and DH had decided he wanted his face painted too. So he offered to stay with the kids while I went over to Paradise Pier and tried to get on California Screamin’ in the single rider line.


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I went over to California Screamin’ and it took me a minute to figure out where to go for the single rider line, but it ended up being a bust anyway. I stood in the exact same spot for a good 10-15 minutes without moving an inch, so I decided to abandon that.

DH had finished with face painting and was at Smokejumpers with the kids so I got him to order me a chicken sandwich and went to meet them there to eat.


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Their awesome face paint!
DD was still sleeping but DH had gotten her a Kids Power Pack for whenever she woke up. In the meantime, they had decided they wanted to give Grizzly River Run a try, so once they had finished eating they went to do that while I stayed with DD, who had finally woken up and was ready to eat. Luckily I was pretty much done by the time she woke, so it was fairly easy to get her fed.

DH left the nice camera with me while they went to do GRR, but took a few on his phone.


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He survived!
DS really enjoyed it and asked to ride again another time during the trip. He did spend a lot of time worrying about his face paint getting messed up (probably not a good idea to do a water ride right after that lol) but it stayed looking nice and dry.

Continued in next post...
 
Day 10 Continued: Friday June 2nd

After lunch, I saw Nick Wilde and Judy Hopps had a meet and greet set about to begin, so we headed over there to get in line and wait for them to come out. While we were set up in line, DH was able to run over to California Screamin’ to get us a couple of FPs and got back to us in plenty of time for the meet.


Judy knocked DS’s hat off and Nick called her out!


After meeting Nick and Judy, we hurried over to the gazebo to see if we could catch Elena of Avalor but she had just gone in and wouldn’t be back out for awhile. We weren’t that interested in meeting her, so we didn’t stick it out in her line.

We decided to kill time until we could use our Screamin’ FPs over in Cars Land and Bug’s Land, so off we went in that direction, coming across the adorable Mr. & Mrs. Incredible as we did so.


Trusty old Luigi had a short wait, so off we went to DD’s favorite to do some dancing.

DH headed back to the Pier to use his FP while I took the kids over to Bug’s Land for a ride on Heimlich’s Chew Chew Train and Flik’s Flyers.


See that kid in the bright green shirt in the top left? There were TONS of kids with that color shirt on and they all shoved to the front of the loading area, and then all their parents came up to meet them. They were rowdy and loud and climbing on everything, not caring who they ran into. Then when it was time to get on the ride, it had to be stopped at least 3 times to tell the kids to stop standing up in their ride vehicles while it was operating. They were totally obnoxious!!!


DH collected the kids after his ride, and they stopped near Guardians of the Galaxy on their way out of the park for this photo op.


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Walking through the Plaza
Then they were ready to head out of the park to get the kids back for a break while I stayed behind by myself to use my California Screamin’ FP. It was so fun! As always, one of my favorites over on the west coast. I love the launch and the inversion. The absolute worst part was leaving after that ride…it’s literally in the back corner of the park, and my feet were absolutely killing me on day 4 in a row of hitting the parks hard. Longest. Walk. Ever.

I saw Mater coming out for his meet and greet as I made my way to the front of the park.


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There were literally times as I walked through Garden Walk that I contemplated just sitting and taking a break on a bench, but I thought if I did end up sitting down, I might never get back up so I just kept on moving.

Once I got back, I was really surprised that DD had gone down for a second nap. We thought for sure she wouldn’t since she had napped in the park that morning, but I guess all of the early mornings and long days were catching up with her! DS took advantage and relaxed in the room for the entirety of our break as well.

UP NEXT: Mickey & the Magical Map
 
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Cute pics with the princesses! I absolutely love the one of DD checking out Cinderella's shoes! And even if he shows distaste for meeting them, DS sure does look pretty happy in the pics!

The boys look great with their face paintings! What a nice free treat over at DCA.

Great pics with Nick & Judy!

I'm sorry your feet were killing you! It always stinks when you get to that point in a trip. Sounds like the break was needed for everyone!
 
I just wanted to let everyone know I'm starting a TR for our Universal-only trip that we took last month! I have the rest of this one typed up on my computer so I was able to start working on that one and have already gotten most of it typed up since it was a short trip and DH doesn't tend to take as many photos in Universal since he can't take a lot of ride photos. Don't worry, this TR won't be completely Disney-free as we did sneak over for a little Halloween fun! I hope you'll check it out and follow along as I recap our amazing Universal Orlando adventure!

 
How sweet are your princess meets?! I love that! DD was coming around, it seems. Hopefully next time she'll be even more into it.

It came out perfect lol


Bahah! Sometimes these types of photos are actually the best memories though :)

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Omg, I love this!! I love Zootopia, so I'd be totally into this meet!

See that kid in the bright green shirt in the top left? There were TONS of kids with that color shirt on and they all shoved to the front of the loading area, and then all their parents came up to meet them. They were rowdy and loud and climbing on everything, not caring who they ran into. Then when it was time to get on the ride, it had to be stopped at least 3 times to tell the kids to stop standing up in their ride vehicles while it was operating. They were totally obnoxious!!!

Oh no! That's soo frustrating! I always get really peeved when you see kids like this because I expect their parents/chaperones to be on top of this. I know things happen with kids and meltdowns sometimes, that's different. But it's not fair to all the guests around them.

There were literally times as I walked through Garden Walk that I contemplated just sitting and taking a break on a bench, but I thought if I did end up sitting down, I might never get back up so I just kept on moving.

Aww man! Been there!! I'm sure you were all getting exhausted at this point in the busy trip.

On my way over to the new TR soon!
 
DS always expresses his displeasure at meeting the princesses but I think he secretly still likes the attention! Lol
::yes:: Seems to be the case!

And DD promptly went to the floor to check out her shoes! LMAO!
:rotfl2::rotfl::lmao: Gotta check Cinderella's shoes!

It was a great princess meet, and I was so happy I had stumbled upon it with a super short wait.
::yes:: always nice to catch a short wait for the princesses. I'm glad that DD seemed to have some nice interactions with them even if she was a bit unsure about it.

They had recently before our trip closed the loophole in the system where we could have sent DH over with all of our tickets to get the FPs and now each ticket had to be scanned in to DCA before it would work to get any FPs.
I hate that they closed that. That was the best thing about the parks being so close together!

After lunch, I saw Nick Wilde and Judy Hopps had a meet and greet set about to begin, so we headed over there to get in line and wait for them to come out
Awesome! I love that they have so many different characters easily available at Disneyland.

Trusty old Luigi had a short wait, so off we went to DD’s favorite to do some dancing.
I'm glad to see that the new Luigi ride entertains the kids as well as the old one did!

See that kid in the bright green shirt in the top left? There were TONS of kids with that color shirt on and they all shoved to the front of the loading area, and then all their parents came up to meet them. They were rowdy and loud and climbing on everything, not caring who they ran into. Then when it was time to get on the ride, it had to be stopped at least 3 times to tell the kids to stop standing up in their ride vehicles while it was operating. They were totally obnoxious!!!
Yuck... that's always frustrating.
 
Cute pics with the princesses! I absolutely love the one of DD checking out Cinderella's shoes! And even if he shows distaste for meeting them, DS sure does look pretty happy in the pics!

The boys look great with their face paintings! What a nice free treat over at DCA.

Great pics with Nick & Judy!

I'm sorry your feet were killing you! It always stinks when you get to that point in a trip. Sounds like the break was needed for everyone!

It's one of my favorite photos!! She is really obsessed with shoes, so it was just perfect that she wanted to see Cinderella's!

When do you hear Disney & free in the same sentence, am I right?! It was a cool addition to the Summer of Heroes activities and DS thought it was the greatest thing.

It was rough doing so many park days in a row, but that was just the best way that it worked out for us to try and avoid the crowds. My feet were really feeling it that day, though!

How sweet are your princess meets?! I love that! DD was coming around, it seems. Hopefully next time she'll be even more into it.

I really hope so! We are going to try for a return trip next year when she is 3, but if we can't make it happen, we will have a chance for more princess meets on our Disney cruise in 2019.

Bahah! Sometimes these types of photos are actually the best memories though :)

They definitely are! I have a hilarious picture of DS from a trip to Tennessee with this epic pout on his face, and it is one of my favorite memories of that trip!

Omg, I love this!! I love Zootopia, so I'd be totally into this meet!

It's crazy to me that they don't have a meet at WDW! I was so excited to meet them in DL, probably more than either of the kids although we do really like Zootopia.

Oh no! That's soo frustrating! I always get really peeved when you see kids like this because I expect their parents/chaperones to be on top of this. I know things happen with kids and meltdowns sometimes, that's different. But it's not fair to all the guests around them.

YES, kids having a rough time is understandable, but this was just unruly kids with no supervision! Totally inexcusable and rude to other guests.

Aww man! Been there!! I'm sure you were all getting exhausted at this point in the busy trip.

Yeah it had been a full 4 days, so we were all feeling it by then.

::yes:: Seems to be the case!

He's definitely consistent!

:rotfl2::rotfl::lmao: Gotta check Cinderella's shoes!

Haha it was so funny!! She really does love shoes, so she and Cinderella have that to bond over lol

::yes:: always nice to catch a short wait for the princesses. I'm glad that DD seemed to have some nice interactions with them even if she was a bit unsure about it.

I don't know if we just got lucky or what, but the princess meet in DL is so tucked away, maybe it doesn't get as crazy as Fairytale Hall in MK. I love taking her to meet the princesses, especially now that she really knows who each one is.

I hate that they closed that. That was the best thing about the parks being so close together!

Totally agree!! Although now with Maxpass you can do it, but at a cost.

Awesome! I love that they have so many different characters easily available at Disneyland.

I do too, it was fun to get to do some different meets that we can't do at WDW. But I do think it's pretty crazy that they don't have Nick & Judy available in the FL parks somewhere. Seems like a big missed opportunity!

I'm glad to see that the new Luigi ride entertains the kids as well as the old one did!

Cars Land was definitely our go-to spot!

Yuck... that's always frustrating.

Yeah, unruly unsupervised kids are my pet peeve!
 

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