Monday 3rd of March – The day we were supposed to be going to L.A

I set the alarm clock for 7:45am this morning. We had booked a tour to take us around L.A for the day. The tour started at 9:15am.

So we got up and had showers and got dressed, and just before we were going to head to the breakfast room to get some breakky before we headed to the bus stop, I looked through my emails to double check if we needed to take anything in particular with us for the tour – like booking confirmations and the like. No, we didn’t need to take anything, they’d have our name, there was the tour start time 9:15am, and further down the page was the tour pickup time 8:15am… What!?!?!

It was currently 8:20am…

Luckily I’m not generally panicky… So I continued to scan through the email and dialled a contact number that was provided. I left a message on the machine explaining what had happened and hung up feeling completely helpless.

Now I had spent the last 6 months doing nothing but planning this trip all by myself and with the help of the Dis board, no input from Chris or anything. I had spent the whole time sick and partially blind (partially blind is an overstatement, but it’s how I felt). Sitting there on the hotel bed at 8:30am – I’m not a morning person – I began to think that nothing had gone right on this trip that I’d spent so much time planning.

Chris was angry at me for getting the time wrong, usually I’d be angry back and say something like “Well you could have taken care of it!!” Instead I was just about to give up, and I started crying… I’m not a crier at all, and Chris knows this, so when he saw he’d made me cry he was very quick to do a turn around and try and help out. When I cry, it means something’s terribly wrong.

So I sat and calmed myself down, but still felt helpless. Then finally – the phone rang! It was the lady from the tour office, I went through the problem again with her and we found that yes, we could change it for another day! This of course cheered me up, especially knowing that it meant I could spend another day in Disneyland!!!

So we went and got breakfast and headed into the parks.

We went into DCA first this morning, because I’d realised that we’d forgotten to ride soarin’! After the great comments about this ride I knew we had to ride it, and ride it soon. So we got directions on how to get straight there and went and rode that first.

Now everything was still slightly fuzzy, but this was still a great ride!!! I enjoyed it so much! So did Chris, and then another surprise! When we got off the ride and headed out, we were dreamed!!!

Yay Dream Fast Passes! We found that it wasn’t busy enough to need them, so we kept them as souvenirs. This is another thing that I had to explain to Chris was special – not something that happens all the time. Once he realised that not many other people had them he got quite excited.





Next up we went on GRR, it was still early in the morning and a little cold, so we were a bit dubious about going on it, but so was everyone else – there was no line at all! So on we hoped.



I enjoyed this ride, but I must admit it’s not the best rapids ride I’d ever been on. Or maybe it’s just that I enjoy these rides so much that they seem to finish too soon and leave me disappointed…

We then had a bit of fun around the Redwood Creek challenge, then I saw the two moose’s in a totem formation. They were unfortunately roped off… But I had to get a photo of them. So quickly we jumped the rope and snapped a photo and then ran back… I felt so naughty!



After this we headed over to Tower of Terror.



I couldn’t wait to ride this ride! There was no line for it either so on we toddled. Chris was again very nervous! But we chatted to some 60-somethings from England in the line about how scary the ride looked, but we all figured that you had to do it at least once in your life, and they helped calm him down a little. He must have figured if they can do it he can do it…



I thought it was an excellent ride, and would have ridden it several times… Except Chris hated it! He was shaky when we got off and his legs felt all wobbly. He told me that he wasn’t going to trust me with rides ever again… So I took him over to the Animation Building. I figured this would calm him down.

We went and saw Turtle Talk with crush, which was cute. We enjoyed it, but it wasn’t quite the laugh a minute I was hoping for. But it did the job, and Chris had settled down.
We played around in there for a while and found that I’m most like Belle.



And Chris is most like Lumiere



I loved this fire place!



Next up we lined up for the Sun Wheel. I figured Chris would want to go on the stationary gondola, but no, he was happy to go on one of the swinging ones! I wanted him to snap a photo of the Mickey head on screamin while we were going around, but he wouldn’t. He had to hold on! So I proved to him how simple taking a photo was, and I snapped several of him.



He looks quite happy in this photo, but in reality he is gripping the cage for grim death!
The ride wasn’t as scary as I was expecting though… I think it was hyped up a little, especially because there are sick bags available…

Next I think we finally found “It’s Tough To Be A Bug” and went and saw it. That was pretty good! The effects were great too!

It was starting to heat up so we rode GRR again. We got DRENCHED this time!





We decided to ride Soarin’ again – to dry off, which was a mistake. It just made us cold! Then we stopped in at Taste Pilots Grill for lunch. Let me tell you, it wasn’t much, but I’m still dreaming about this hamburger!!! It was simply the beef patty, cheese, a pickle, ketchup, mustard and the fries on it, but for some reason it was so good and it hit the spot! Sorry, no photos, I was too hungry.

Next we decided to head over to DL. Stopping by the letters first.



And then getting more photos inside.







We then stopped in to see the 50 first years thingy. But we didn’t hang around to see the show; we sort of just looked around the stuff on display, like the pic of Walt & Mickey, that’s made up of tiny little pics.



Like these ones!



and then headed back out into it.

More later!

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Posted in: anaheim,disney dream,Disneyland,grizzly river rapids,holiday,holidays,pictures,travel,year of a million dreams

First Day! - Part 2

Now this being Chris’ first time out of Australia, and my first time out of Australia since 1995, neither of us had experienced DCA yet. I’d heard about how it was a good place to skip the crowds of the middle of the day, so I thought it was a good time to be heading over.

We first went and saw Muppets 3D, as a fan of the Muppets I thought this show was great, I also enjoyed the room where the preshow is, I took lots of photos of random stuff. This is a really great show, and I’m a bit disappointed that they’re planning on getting rid of it...









We spent a little time wandering around the Hollywood back lot. I knew that there was a cheerleading thing the following weekend, so I was a bit worried when I saw several large groups of them walking around. I sort of hoped that perhaps I’d gotten the wrong information and the cheerleading weekend was this weekend and not the following one, because it was bound to be busy enough as it was... Stupid Spring Break...

The cheerleaders were making the place pretty busy though... So we headed over to the other side of DCA. There we waited in line for Screamin'. This was hard work for Chris. He gets so worked up about this sort of stuff. We decided it was best to get this big scary ride out of the way earlier in the trip, so that way we would be able to go on it several times if he did like it... Eventually we got to the front of the line and jumped on. Let's just say we rode it several times this trip...

Yes, he loved it. I knew he would. I knew he'd love every ride there though... However that knowledge turned out to be wrong... But more on that later!

We then headed over to the redwood creek area – not the challenge, just the general area… We took photos with the water falls,



and of Grizzly peak and stuff




and then we ran into Push!!


Push is great! We couldn’t talk to him because he was swamped with kids, but we fell in love with him! Chris was hoping that he’d be there all of the time, but I had to explain to him that it was a special thing!

I don't think we did too much more over at DCA at this time... My photos aren't helping me remember much either... So let's say that we headed back over to DL.




We stopped in at the town hall to get a first timer badge for Chris - because I'd forgotten about it earlier. Unfortunately they were out of first timer badges. They did however have plenty of Honorary Citizen ones, and they gave us each one of those. I think I was happier with this!

We noticed that some people were sitting down waiting for the 3:30 parade already, and we didn't know what else to do at that time, so we sat down too. I'm not sure what time it was when we sat down, but we weren't too worried.

Now while we were waiting a lovely couple approached us. They explained that they come to Disneyland all the time and love it, and asked if we'd been before, now I have, but it was 13 years ago, so when people ask me this, most of the time I say no, because I knew how much it had changed since I was there last. And as mentioned before, Chris hadn't ever been before. So we told them no, it was our first time. They then brought out a little Disney bag and inside it was a Dream! They had been dreamed earlier in the day for PS to the Billy Hill & The Hillbillies show. They had to leave early that day though and wouldn't be able to make it to the show. So they were giving it to us, to pass on the Disney magic!!

I was going to ask them if they were from the Dis, but I didn’t really get the time while I was talking to them. So if you gave your Billy Hill seating up to an Australian couple on the 2nd of March 2008 at around 3pm… Thank you!!

So we watched the parade and I took lots of pictures.




I tried to take several photos of the rhino, but every time I snapped a photo a cat managed to get in the way...






After the parade we headed over to Indiana Jones and rode it. We'd gotten a fast pass for it earlier - this was our first FP usage, and it was great to walk straight past everyone! I love this ride, it was one of my favourites from my last visit – it was the Finding Nemo ride of that time, it was brand new and a long wait! This time around it was either a walk on or a walk on with FP...




More of day 1 still to come!

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Posted in: disney dream,Disneyland,grizzly river rapids,parade,push,year of a million dreams