Disneyland

The day we planned to spend at Disneyland, Zane woke up with a swollen eye. He must have gotten bit by something creepy. It's still a mystery. Anyways, luckily by the time we got to Disneyland his eye had cleared up.

Now I've mentioned before that Curtis is not a lover of Disneyland. Okay, he hates it. Well, at least he hates all the money-spending. I told him last year that we were going to Disneyland this summer and that was final. Grace is going to be 8 and this is her magical time to experience the princesses and Fantasyland and all that. So he relented and said we could go for one day.

One day:(

We sure had a lot to squeeze into that day.

Where we camp is exactly 1 hour south of the Happiest Place on Earth. We got there around 9:00 a.m. We had our day all planned out. We decided to go straight to Tomorrowland and get all those rides out of the way before it got too crowded in the afternoon.

Violet and I waited while everyone else went on Autopia.

Hannah and Grace don't look too enthused but they assure me they had a great time!

Hallie loved driving her own car and said it felt great. However, Curtis, who was in the car behind her with Zane, stated that she should have had her license revoked because her driving was so terrible. Hallie then complained that it wasn't her fault because her car just kept jerking to the right and the left and she had no control over it. We informed her that you actually have to steer it with the steering wheel.

"Oh", she said. "I thought the car drove itself."

Note how in the picture above she does not have either of her hands on the steering wheel.

*sigh*

(Funny observation: As I sat with Violet watching motorists speed by I noticed something funny. If a child was driving and a mother was seated next to them, the mother every time was frantic-looking and leaning over the child taking control of the car trying to drive it straight. If the child-driver had a dad sitting next to them, the dad was relaxed looking and laughing as they jerked along the road, not trying to take over at all but letting the child learn as they went. Hmmm.)


Standing on line for the Nemo Submarine ride. I guess Violet had had enough. And it was only 10:00 a.m.

After happily going on Star Tours and Matterhorn, Zane was ready to sit out the Teacups. He was content to watch his sisters spin by.

As we walked around Tomorrowland Grace said, "This doesn't look how I thought Disneyland would look." I remembered that she hadn't been to Disneyland before and had no idea that there were different "lands". I had to assure her that it would look like Disneyland when we hit Fantasyland.

Did we go to Fantasyland next? No. We went to Adventureland. Then Frontierland. Zane was game for every ride. He kept saying that he wanted to go on Matterhorn four times. He liked the Haunted Mansion and loved Splash Mountain. In fact, in our Splash Mountain picture he looks positively bored.

Finally in the afternoon we hit Fantasyland (minus Matterhorn and The Teacups--we had done those earlier.)

Grace finally proclaimed "Now this is what Disneyland is supposed to look like."

Oddly, in the middle of the day we didn't take many pictures.

At 10:00 that night we still needed to go on Space Mountain, so we left Hallie, Grace and a sleeping Violet on a bench and went to stand in the ridiculously long line. We had just missed getting a fast pass so it took an hour to get through the line. Zane fell asleep while we were standing there. When it was time to get in our little cars we had to shake him awake.

"Come on, Zane. Wake up. It's time to go on the ride."

He barely opened his eyes before he and Curtis zoomed off on the ride.

After the ride he said it was cool then fell back to sleep. He hadn't screamed or anything during any of the big rides we took him on. Not even Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. That's my kind of kid.


The kids still had their souvenir money to spend so Violet Zane and I waited on a bench while they shopped. Time 11:30. We were pooped. As they were coming out of the store Curtis spotted Minnie and rushed Grace over to get a picture with her. Poor Grace, we didn't see one single princess all day because we were always in such a hurry to get to the next ride. So at 11:45 p.m. she got a picture with Minnie, the original princess, and a kiss on her forehead.


As we walked out to the tram, she kept saying over and over that she could still feel that kiss on her forehead. Curtis told her it was magical kiss.

The next morning the first thing she said was, "I can still feel that magical kiss."

I hope she can feel it forever.