Disneyland!

This week's post shouldn't need a lot of explanation: after talking about a possible Disneyland trip for some time, we finally made all the arrangements and went. We drove down with my sister Jeni and her family Tuesday night (spending the night in Cedar City with Dan's parents--thank you Bubby and Poppy!) and Wednesday, arriving in Anaheim around 3 p.m. local time. Unfortunately, we were a bit under the weather at our arrival--both literally and figuratively. Andrew managed to come down with the flu Monday evening, and was still recuperating on Wednesday (we tried, more or less successfully, to keep him away from Jeni's kids until he was over the flu so we wouldn't have a repeat of our family vacation two summers ago, where the flu went through three of our five families while we were on a cruise in Alaska--you've never experienced the flu until you've been quarantined in a miniscule cabin for twenty-four hours.) And Anaheim was being drenched with rain when we drove in. Still, since we'd purchased a five-day pass for the price of a three-day pass (even though we were only intending to spend three full days at the park), we decided to make the most of the late afternoon to initiate Andrew to the wonders that are the Disney resort. In a torrential downpour, we rode the train around the Disneyland park, and went on a couple of rides, including the new Finding Nemo ride (the line was shorter that evening than any other time we saw it, so I suppose it was a good thing we went). Our consensus: it was fun, but if you've seen Finding Nemo you've seen a lot of the ride, and it certainly wasn't worth a long line.

After arriving at the hotel we all took off our soaking clothes (Andrew seemed to have a strange affinity for puddles and came back drenched) and caught this lovely shot of Andrew parading around the hotel room in his diaper and some shirts. Not quite Risky Business--but close.


After the downpour the night before, we were braced for another cold, wet day on Thursday, but it actually wasn't too bad. It was overcast and drizzly, but nothing like the previous evening. And despite a rather grim weather forecast on our arrival, the weather got progressively better and we actually had a glorious day of sunshine on Saturday. Most of the pictures can, I think, speak for themselves (probably better than I can), so I'll try not to comment on every single one!

We discovered fairly quickly that the children loved the carosel, dumbo rides, and tea cups, but Jacob was particularly put off by anything dark or loud (which ruled out approximately half of the rides). We made the mistake of taking the children on "Snow White's Scary Adventure" first thing on Thursday, and ended up with three very scared (and crying) children. Dan told me (a little late, in my opinion, since it was as we were starting the ride) that this was the same ride that gave his sister Sarah nightmares for weeks as a small child ("scary witch!" "scary witch!"). Anyway, we then compounded our mistake by taking them on Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, a fast, dark, very loud ride that left Andrew in tears. (Although inexplicably he then proceeded to insist for the next several days that his favorite ride was the "froggy ride"--we can only assume he meant this one, since there weren't really any other rides with frogs--and told his grandpa that he liked the toad ride. Go figure.) But we learned from that and tried to stick with milder rides--and didn't take the kids on any rides they didn't want to go on. The grown-ups tried to shift around a little bit so that we actually got to go on some of the grown-up rides--well, all except for me, since most of the really exciting rides (Space Mountain, Thunder Mountain, Star Tours, Matterhorn, etc.) all carried a warning that expectant mothers should not ride. In fact, Andrew had fewer limitations on rides than I did! Andrew's favorite rides (judging by his reactions and the number of times we went on them) were the carosel, tea cups (which made him giggle madly and try to help his daddy spin the cup faster), jungle cruise, and this incredibly boring short train ride in Disney's California Adventure called Heimlich's Chew Chew Train. Andrew refused to get off the ride the first time around (literally, he had a melt-down), so the nice attendant told us we could stay on again (not that there was a line!). (Incidentally, although we spent a few hours in Disney's California Adventure on Friday, we didn't stay there too long, since most of the rides are geared for older children and there wasn't much to keep the kids occupied. Not to mention the fact that Dan and Andrew left early that day for Andrew to take a nap--after several minor and major meltdowns, it was pretty obvious that he'd had enough).





(You may be wondering why, despite the obvious sunshine, Andrew is wearing a rain poncho. Well, all I can say is that it was Andrew's idea.)

One of the nice things about a three-day pass is that it gives you lots of time to see the sites and go on the rides that you want to without feeling rushed. On Saturday, when the nice weekend weather lured out hordes of visitors who weren't there during the week (and the lines were approximately double what they had been), we generally tried to avoid crowds and do the things we hadn't done earlier in the week, like take pictures and meet some of the Disney characters. Andrew finally got a chance to talk to Goofy after dodging his footsteps for five or ten minutes, and then had spent a blissful twenty minutes playing in Goofy's Garden (basically nothing more than a themed playground). Dan and Samuel took advantage of the kid's preoccupation with the garden to go on Star Tours, and Jeni and I discovered that it was a little harder to keep track of all four kids than we'd thought. Enoch was asleep in the stroller, so Jeni couldn't leave the stroller, nor could we go on any rides. We tried to take the kids through some of the houses in Toon Town (Mickey's and Minnie's, to be precise), but it turned out to be harder than we'd thought to keep all of them in the same room with us, so it was with great relief that we loaded them in strollers and went to meet our respective spouses.

And of course, after we spotted Captain Hook, Andrew was the only one brave enough to line up to get a picture with him--and then Andrew chickened out at the last minute and Jacob and Emi got the picture. I think Jacob was actually pretty thrilled to get his picture with a pirate, once he determined that he wasn't *really* that scary. Actually, I think one of the highlights of the trip for Jacob was an accidental encounter with Captain Jack Sparrow the previous day, who had stopped by where Jacob was standing with Samuel to tell Samuel that he had a barnacle growing on him (i.e., Enoch, who was in a baby carrier).

Andrew also got to meet Winnie the Pooh, Tigger, and Eeyore. It was actually pretty fortuitous. We had some time to kill before meeting Jeni and Samuel for lunch (and we refused to go on the Jungle Cruise again--we'd just gone twice in a row), so we wandered over to Critter Country where I'd been informed that we could meet Winnie the Pooh at 11:00. However, when we got there, there was no sign of the famous bear. Just as we were about to give up and figure that we were misinformed, Winnie the Pooh and friends walked out from a door--so Andrew was one of the first little kids who got to greet him, and didn't have to wait in line. I think he was pretty excited to see someone he recognized, although he was surprisingly scared of Eeyore, and wouldn't get close to him--that's why you have a picture of me, as well.

But I think our favorite character encounter happened just as we were about to leave the park for the day on Saturday afternoon. (Dan will tell you that I was possibly more excited about this than Andrew was--probably some latent princess longing left over from my childhood, when I insisted on dressing as a princess every year for Halloween long past when I probably should have). Anyway, as we were approaching the exit, we saw four of the Disney princesses playing ring around the rosy with a couple of little girls. Since Andrew hadn't gotten a good look at the princesses before this, we stopped to watch. (He was particularly excited to see his "dolly," as he persists in calling Belle). Andrew was eating some rapidly melting ice cream at the time, but when the princesses segued from ring around the rosy to singing "I'm a little tea pot," he insisted on being let out of his stroller to go join in the fun. Now you have to understand that not only was he sticky with ice cream, but his pants were muddy since he'd sat in a mud puddle near the tea cups just a little while before. Add this to the fact that he was one of only two little boys in the crowd, and you can begin to picture how incongruous he was. Anyway, Andrew found a spot near Belle and stuck to her side like a little burr as the crowd gradually increased. (He also told Belle, "you're my dolly"--and I had to explain to her that he slept with a little Belle doll). Andrew was in his element--they sang "Old MacDonald has a farm," and Andrew sang along, and they played "duck, duck, goose," which Andrew had never played, but that didn't stop him from getting up to try and run several times (without being tagged).

Here you can see Snow White and Sleeping Beauty playing duck, duck, goose.

Even when Andrew got displaced from his spot on Belle's right hand, he still stuck pretty close--to the point where he was practically sitting on her dress (in his muddy pants, no less). We don't know what exactly he was telling her here, but he was clearly monopolizing her attention.

After several minutes of this, we decided that we really did need to get back to the hotel, and it might be nice if Andrew let some other little child have his spot. I told Andrew that we needed to go, and told him to say good-bye to Belle. I think that confused him (after all, "dolly" is Belle, not Belle), so he trotted across the circle to where Cinderella was sitting. I guess she thought he was cute or something, because she tried to get him to sit in her lap, but, obedient to instructions Andrew was intent on saying good-bye to all the princesses and wouldn't stay there. He said good-bye to Snow White, and then said, "bye-bye dolly," to Belle, and we were off.

I have to say, I was pretty thrilled that Andrew got to experience all this, because how many little kids at Disneyland get to have this much personal interaction with some of their favorite characters? (Again, Dan would say I'm trying to relive some of my own childhood through Andrew. Maybe so, but it was sure fun to watch, all the same.)

All the excitement clearly took it's toll: Andrew fell asleep about a block into our two-block walk back to the hotel.