When Can We Do This Again? May 2018 Finished 2/2 The End

It sounds like you were having a pretty good day! Love love the Woody and Buzz cars picture! I'm glad she got to meet Tiana! And, actually, that outdoor seating area at Pizza Planet is one of my favorite places to chill and eat. Especially if it's empty, as it often is. :)
 
It sounds like you were having a pretty good day! Love love the Woody and Buzz cars picture! I'm glad she got to meet Tiana! And, actually, that outdoor seating area at Pizza Planet is one of my favorite places to chill and eat. Especially if it's empty, as it often is. :)

This all seems like I wrote it weeks ago. We did have a good day. We knocked some things off our list and even though I'm pretty sure the next part involves a classic Kim meltdown, it was good until it wasn't. If you know what I mean...
 
Personal update: We are moved in. The old house is moved out. I got an email from the cable company saying they were deleting my email address I've had for 15 years, but it turns out it's fine. I'm sitting in my bedroom watching the sun set. Never got to do that before. For my birthday a few weeks ago, my mom gave me an Etsy gift card (because support small business). I spent the whole thing on this:

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Personal update: We are moved in. The old house is moved out. I got an email from the cable company saying they were deleting my email address I've had for 15 years, but it turns out it's fine. I'm sitting in my bedroom watching the sun set. Never got to do that before. For my birthday a few weeks ago, my mom gave me an Etsy gift card (because support small business). I spent the whole thing on this:

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Love that doormat. Which Etsy store?
 
Day Three, Part Four:

We still hadn’t been on It’s a Small World and the app was showing a 20 minute wait so I grabbed a MaxPass for it. By the time we walked over there after the boat, we walked right on. Ches was pretty amazed to realize we boarded outside, but then a duck decided to jump in the canal and swim around and Ches about had a breakdown trying to convince it to get out of the way. She loves animals and every little duck was instantly her best friend and it probably would have crushed her to see the duck… well, get crushed. He eventually hopped out of the water and onto the dock. We took our spin around the world with the dancing dolls then got backed up in the white room because unloading was backed up so we got to experience that one a long time. We got stuck in that same room in 2009 with the other kids, so I took a video and sent it to remind them of good times. They love me.

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While we were in the Small World line, I’d booked a Buzz MP, so we left there and went over to Buzz. While we were in line at Buzz, I booked a MP for Indy for later in the evening. When we got off Buzz, we went over and they rode Hyperspace Mountain. By this time we had discovered the restrooms at the exit of Space so I used the restroom while waiting and then they used it after getting off.

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The group that was supposed to ride with them fussed around about who was sitting where and the cast members working Hyperspace just sent the vehicle out without them, so we got this great picture of Ches and Dan on the ride alone. The best ride photo of the trip.
It was around 4 pm and we still had an hour before our Carnation Cafe reservation, and no idea what to do really. I was starting to get tired and cranky; I’d been sick enough that morning that I’d ordered cold medicine delivered and we hadn’t been back to the hotel so I could get it, so miserable pretty much describes how I was feeling. And my feet hurt. I had happened to pick up a time guide on the way into the park with all the times for shows and saw that the Royal Theater in Fantasyland had a show starting at 4:15, so I just marched my group over there so I could get off my feet for awhile.

We were super close to starting time but managed to squeeze onto a bench in the back row, not really knowing what we were about to see… and we sort of loved it. It’s a short little retelling of a classic Disney tale -- we got Tangled this time -- and it’s done in Renaissance style. The two “hosts” tell a lot of corny jokes, which totally hooked Dan. Rapunzel and Flynn come out and help with the retelling and we enjoyed it so much more than expected. We found it to be a quite the perfect show in the middle of a busy park.

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I'm almost at my photo liimit and I have photos from dinner, so I'll stop here. I just want to say again, I think this little theater and particularly this Tangled show is an overlooked little gem in the park. It made me fall for Tangled all over again (if I'm gonna have to choose a Disney princess, it's going to be Punzie) and it made Dan laugh out loud several times because it was exactly his type of humor, and by extension, Chesney's. When I think back to the unexpectedly magical moments in the park, this is one of them.


 


What a nice thing to be able to see that show just when you needed a break, and to enjoy it so much!
 
Day Four, The End: Dinner and a *small* meltdown

It was almost perfect timing to leave the theater, walk down Main Street and check into the restaurant for dinner. I barely let our poor waiter get his welcome out of his mouth before I ordered the fried pickle appetizer. I have a thing for fried pickles. These were really good, crispy on the outside and were brought to the table quickly.

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And I lied when I said our only burger of the week was Smoke Jumpers. I’d forgotten about this meal. Ches had the Chicken Fried Chicken, Dan had the regular cheeseburger and I had a patty melt. It was a good meal, nothing spectacular, but service was great, and it got us off our feet for the better part of an hour. We also got to sit inside the restaurant again and it was nice to have that buffer between us and the park.

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My patty melt

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Dan's burger

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Chesney's Chicken Fried Chicken. That roll was gone in no time.

At this point we were still hoping to stay until fireworks and Dan insisted we go watch the Pixar Play parade again. It was really strange because we found a spot in the entrance hub area and then at 5:55 pm, they came around and told us we had to be in front of the rope in order to stay there and otherwise we’d have to move. There were probably 10-15 people standing directly behind the rope and we all just looked at each other and didn’t move… because almost as soon as they announced we’d have to move, they came along and put up another rope behind us. We were just in a strange little triangle where there was a rope for the parade in front of us, with people sitting on the curb, and then we were standing behind and then the rope to direct through traffic was behind us.

I made it through about one float of the parade before I realized I wasn’t going to be able to stand through the parade. My feet were just hurting too much. So I sat in our spot and watched the rest of the parade. It seemed to be having some technical issues; we were right in the area where it started and it started a few minutes late, kept stalling and the dancers would have to go through their routine a couple of times, and lots of official looking people were walking the route talking into ear pieces.

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Anyway, parade got over, people deserted the area, I went over to the curb where I could sit looking at the castle down Main Street and said I was done. I was upset because I wasn’t feeling good, I *really* wanted to see fireworks, and I knew I wasn’t going to be able to make it. I mean… it isn’t Disney unless I have at least one melt down. Dan was irritated because if we were going to be in the park, he wanted to be doing something and I was telling him I absolutely could not do another thing. I told him I’d just sit on the curb there and he and Ches could go do things and that wasn’t acceptable either. If I was going to sit and wait, I should at least go down closer to the castle in case we decided to stay (the man would not believe me that the best spot for fireworks was not right in front of the castle but that I wanted to be farther back on Main Street). So I ended up walking down Main Street and sitting on a bench and sending them to ride Indy with the MP. There was a lot more arguing in there because I both wanted to stay for fireworks and knew I was done for the day, and Dan was mad because he did not want to be in the park for another 3 hours and sit around but also didn’t want me to leave before I saw fireworks.

Finally they left to ride Indy and when they got there, it was down. Which just tells you how my day was going. Somehow we just agreed to leave finally, but I insisted we hit up a bakery or something for a treat. Dan and I ended up with Rice Krispie Treats and Ches got a Mickey cake pop, which we took back to the room. While we ate, I pulled out my handy little traveler’s notebook and made pages for the last two days of our trip and wrote down everything that was a “must do” for those last two days. It was kind of a depressing ending to what had been a pretty good day, but the next day was our “break day” and we were more than ready for it.


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Maybe cried a little this night, mostly because I was tired and sick. This was delicious and I got my medicine and everything was so good the second half of this trip, so don't feel too bad about one rough night...​
 
Oh man, I've so been there. One of my biggest ones was when I was 6 weeks pregnant with my first baby (surprise!!) and fairly sick, but had done okay for our first two park days. But on the last park day (Friday, the only day the 50th fireworks were happening, which was my biggest must-do that trip) I was much sicker than the other two days, and absolutely couldn't handle it anymore. I had to call my friend to come pick us up at like 5:30 PM because I was so done. I'm still a little sad about that, and it was 12 years ago! I don't always have meltdowns at Disney (almost like clockwork at Sea World, usually at the Sea Lion show, when I get hot, haha) but I had one last year too when I got frustrated, and it was so hard to recover from that! You just want to ENJOY YOURSELF, dang it!
 
I'm really enjoying your trip report. It is making me miss DL more than normal. It has been fun living through you and your family. Can't wait for the next update :)


PS- I LOVE your glasses!
 
Oh man, I've so been there. One of my biggest ones was when I was 6 weeks pregnant with my first baby (surprise!!) and fairly sick, but had done okay for our first two park days. But on the last park day (Friday, the only day the 50th fireworks were happening, which was my biggest must-do that trip) I was much sicker than the other two days, and absolutely couldn't handle it anymore. I had to call my friend to come pick us up at like 5:30 PM because I was so done. I'm still a little sad about that, and it was 12 years ago! I don't always have meltdowns at Disney (almost like clockwork at Sea World, usually at the Sea Lion show, when I get hot, haha) but I had one last year too when I got frustrated, and it was so hard to recover from that! You just want to ENJOY YOURSELF, dang it!

I can't imagine going to Disney with morning sickness. You're a saint.

I'm really enjoying your trip report. It is making me miss DL more than normal. It has been fun living through you and your family. Can't wait for the next update :)


PS- I LOVE your glasses!

Thank you. My glasses are all from Zenni.
 
Day Five
And at last I see the light
Woo Hoo! We got to sleep in until 6:45 this morning! OK, well Dan was up well before this and my Fitbit shows I was awake at 5:45, but I know I stayed in bed until at least 6:45, which was by far the latest we slept while in California.

The only thing on our agenda for this day was a 10 am reservation for the Surf’s Up breakfast at Paradise Pier Hotel. We debated for a bit because I wanted to use Uber or Lyft to get us there rather than wear out our feet walking… and it would have been under $5 to do it. In the end, Dan won because I’d gotten my way a lot during the trip and we didn’t seem to have a big day planned.

I was thinking a half hour or so to walk from our hotel clear across the esplanade and Downtown Disney and then over to the hotel but we were ready early so we left about 9 am… and thank heavens we did. I forgot all about bag check. It took us a good amount of time (15 minutes or more) to get through bag check, although this would not be the longest security line of the week.

We took our time walking, took some pictures in the hotel lobby and then sort of wandered through a gift shop. We checked in exactly 15 minutes early for our reservation and waited maybe five minutes before we were called to go have our picture taken with Mickey in his beach gear. Ches was wearing her Hawaiian Roller Coaster ride shirt with her Ohana ears and Mickey immediately picked up on her shirt and pointed to the surfboard behind him and started surfing. Yup, Mickster. We are down for this whole beach theme.

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We were seated and I got a little anxious/annoyed because it was at least another five minutes before our waiter showed up to take our drink order. It’s just one of my pet peeves at any restaurant when we’re sat and then it takes a chunk of time for a wait person to show up and acknowledge us. I mean… even a “Hi, I’m your waiter, I’ll be right back to get your drink order.” And I know five minutes isn’t that much but the first guy had basically just sat us and so we didn’t really know what was going on as far as the characters and whether we should go start filling plates… and honestly we never really were told. We just figured it out.

My memory of the meal is entirely dependent on my pictures, but I show a picture of my plate first. I actually had Dan and Ches go get food first and I stayed at the table while they went. I don’t know, I just have issues with leaving a table empty while at a buffet. I just have buffet issues really. We rarely eat them. Anyway, here’s my plate:

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They had lots of bacon, I grabbed one sausage, I think we all had biscuits and gravy, and I loved those potatoes. Dan doesn’t do onions and peppers so the potatoes were not his thing, but I had multiple servings.

We weren’t sitting long before Miss Daisy came to visit.


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Gosh, I love Daisy. Girl can POSE.

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Minnie came along fairly soon after Daisy and she loved Chesney’s ears and then she started motioning to my hair, which was pretty darn purple that day. I guess Minnie liked it and then told her my mom was not a huge fan. Minnie pooh-poohed that. As do I.

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After their visits, we went back for fruit and Ches had to have a Mickey waffle. I got some Mickey pancakes which is strange because I’m not even a fan of pancakes, but I think I was hungry and feeling like I’d had too many potatoes.

Anyway, we had another 2 or three plates while sitting there waiting for Stitch. In fact, the waiter brought our check and we still hadn’t seen Stitch (this actually happened to us nine years ago at this exact same meal) so we just sat there until he finally visited.

More to come, because at last the Guest of Honor visited us. Truly the best memory of our trip. I was hoping to be done posting this by now, but back to school is more than I expected. Once a week seems to be what I can do, so we'll see you back here next weekend. Hope everyone is having fun getting back into the school groove!
 
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And visit he did. He saw Chesney’s ears first, then read the shirt, then realized she was dressed for him and I may have also mentioned Stitch is her favorite. Then it really began. We got the regular pictures

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Stitch reading Chesney's shirt...

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and then I laid my phone on the edge of the table, thinking he’d be leaving. Oh no. He picked up my camera, swiped up to get to the camera, switched it to selfie mode and took a series of selfies. It was the greatest. And now I have a Stitch selfie as my home screen. I mean… the alien steals your phone, what else can you do?

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After he left, we paid and then made our way back to Downtown Disney. We walked around the Lego store and took silly pictures, and then we drooled all over the Wonderground Gallery again. I picked up a couple of postcards by Jared Maruyama, who I follow on Instagram and whose art I wanted to support.

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We picked up a new leash for our Jake the Doxie and then walked back to the AMC theater right about 11:30 to buy tickets for Deadpool 2. Dan loves movies… he probably watches 4-6 on any given weekend at home between Netflix, Hulu, Redbox, our collection of 400+ DVD/BluRays, and regular cable. So watching a movie on our day off was his thing. And hey, who doesn’t enjoy Deadpool?

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[Irony alert... we bought Deadpool 2 on Blu Ray today and it just started as I sat down to update this trip report... we really like Deadpool. OK, I really like Ryan Reynolds.]

We’re kind of obsessive here at home about getting the center top row of the movie theater, just under the projection booth. So when Ches and I went to use the restroom while Dan got our seats, I expected to turn into the theater and find him in “our spot.” I did not expect the theater to be so huge. I took a picture because I’ve always thought we had fairly big theaters here, but this was gigantor.

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Anyway, good movie. Ryan Reynolds is everything.
 
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When we left the theater, all I could think was “Sprinkles.” I’d actually woke up thinking it. So the next stop was Sprinkles bakery, where we got three cupcakes. I think Dan and Ches both went for dark chocolate, which would usually be my choice, but it felt wrong to be in a Sprinkles bakery and not get a Sprinkles cupcake. So I did.

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They boxed them up super nicely and we took them with us to do some more shopping. We all had gift cards and we wanted to pick some things up for our kids back home, so we hit World of Disney for that. In the end, we got each of our other kids something, but they didn’t have the shirt I really wanted for Brady -- a tee that had Grumpy on it and said “Born a genius, Grumpy by choice” -- which is so him, so we got an old style Disneyland shirt for him and a Minnie shirt for Mykiah (her favorite).I really didn’t keep track of our souvenir shopping well. From my pictures, it appears Dan got a long sleeve thermal with the 2018 logo on it and I got a t-shirt with a foiled logo. We ended up also finding Brady’s shirt later in the week, and then things sort of fell apart back home and Kiah ended up doing an extra night of dog duty, so we got her a rose gold spirit jersey as well. In the end, I had bought a spirit jersey earlier in the week, Ches wanted to get one this day but World of Disney didn’t have her size, and then we got Mykiah one. I almost tried to talk Dan into getting one of the darker colors but there was no way he was wearing it ever again once we got home, so the long sleeve thermal is a better choice for him.

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After shopping, we went back to the room and ate our cupcakes while sprawling on the beds. At some point in the late afternoon, we decided to walk down to Mimi’s Cafe to eat dinner. I had a really delicious cobb salad, but Dan ordered a turkey dinner which was way too much for him (he does this often) and Ches got a grilled cheese and the minute she picked it up, her stomach got upset. She ended up leaving early and going back to the room (and I’m just enough of a hovering mom I followed her progress on Find My Friends). When we got back to the room, I started worrying about her getting dehydrated -- she tends to get dehydrated and pass out randomly -- so I went to find her a gatorade. There were none in the vending machine on our floor so I went down to the 3rd floor food court area. I had $3 with me and with tax, a Gatorade was $3.11. Of course. But they had a tip jar thing and the girl working offered to take the extra out of it, then decided just to charge me for a bottle of water when I told her I had a sick daughter, and I dropped all my change back into the tip jar. It was a nice moment of kindness and Ches drank it and went to sleep and all was well in the morning.

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Before I went to sleep, I took a picture of my notes in my notebook to remind me what we wanted to get done the next day. We were down to two days left in our trip… could we finish up in style?


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Somehow I missed the last few updates! I love your Stitch selfies - they are the best! I also love the shirt you wore to the breakfast. So cute! I'm glad she wasn't actually sick, and felt better the next day. That's always one of my fears: a stomach virus while at Disney!
 
Somehow I missed the last few updates! I love your Stitch selfies - they are the best! I also love the shirt you wore to the breakfast. So cute! I'm glad she wasn't actually sick, and felt better the next day. That's always one of my fears: a stomach virus while at Disney!

Oh, we're not quite done with being sick, but we sure didn't let it ruin our trip!
 
Day Six
Kick your heels up when you join the fun

Well, I sure enjoyed sleeping late yesterday… because today it was not happening. We left the room at 6:15 am because this was the day we were using our Magic Morning! I had strategically saved it to use today because I knew we’d be coming off the easy day yesterday and thought we’d have more energy. In retrospect, it was a great planning decision. The typical thing would have been to use it on Tuesday, the first day we could, but I’m so glad we saved it for today (I also made sure we entered CA first on Tuesday so there would be no confusion at the gates).

Also working in our favor today… it was raining. We were all in hoodies and there was no line when we got there. We were 2nd in our line, but we could have easily been first in another line. They scanned our tickets a few minutes before 7 am (so I could buy MaxPass and grab Matterhorn passes) but let us in right at 7.

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We walked right down Main Street and right to Peter Pan, only to find it not up and running yet. Which…. Boo. We’d been saving it all trip for this day and it was pretty sad not to be able to ride. Still, we shrugged and got on Mr Toad followed by Snow White. Again, these dark rides are really dark. We saw no toads in Mr Toad (except at the entrance) and Snow White would give anyone some nightmarish thoughts.

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Rainy, empty Main Street

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A little blurry. I just didn't try very hard with ride photos this trip.
Luckily, as we came off Snow, they were just opening the line for Peter Pan. We were the 3rd group on it and it’s wonderful. I got no pictures. The photos you see here are pretty much the photos I took on the trip. I’d get one or two pictures to establish what we were doing -- and a lot of times they were bad because of a moving vehicle -- and then put the phone away and enjoy. If it was a ride with a photo, I didn’t even take my phone out most of the time. We saw so many people watching entire rides through their phone for snapchat or insta or whatever, and I made a conscious choice not to do that. I’m not going back for years. I wanted a nice balance between memories and photos to help me remember.

After Pan, we didn’t have a real solid plan but decided to walk over and see how long the line for Nemo was. None of us was very enthusiastic about Nemo (it’s my least favorite Pixar movie) but if the line was short, we’d go. As we walked past Matterhorn, we realized it was a walk on, so I cancelled the MaxPass I was holding for it and sent Dan and Ches to ride. I booked Indy for 8:30 am instead and watched them ride.

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Earlier in the week, Dan had said he wanted to ride AstroOrbiter because he never had. He’d never ridden it because you can find the same ride at any generic theme park or carnival (or at least the same type of ride) and I’d never let my family waste time in line. This morning there were no lines for anything, so he finally got his ride.

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After the Orbiter, we walked onto Buzz because it was there and then went back to Small World so I could get some pictures of my Small World outfit.

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I wanted to ride the Storybookland Canal Boats but didn’t think they opened until 9, but when we walked by there was a line so we hopped in. This was probably one of the longest lines we waited in the whole trip. We also got lucky because they added a boat just as we were getting to the front of the line so they loaded two boats pretty much back to back. It’s cute and pretty much uniquely Disneyland, so it was fun.

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When we came off this ride, the constant drizzle was getting to us. I suggested the other two might want some hot chocolate (I don’t really do hot drinks) We ducked into Red Rose and were happy to see they had hot chocolate so we could take a break indoors for a bit. The decor in there is so pretty. I just love Beauty and the Beast and it looked so cute and I really wanted to come back and eat the next day…

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As we walked out of Red Rose, Captain Hook was right outside so we hopped up and met him,

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Horrible picture of me but it's the only one where Ches and I were trying to make hooks with our fingers. I may have been a little loopy from lack of sleep.
and then walked over to Indy. Once we scanned into it, I booked Big Thunder for 5 minutes out and we rode Indy.
 

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