Our second day at Disneyland is the day we regretted not heeding the advice of a friend. You see, each park does an early open "Magic Morning," where a select number of people can get into the park an hour early if you have a special pass. Enticing, right? My friend told me that they let way too many people into the park for early opening and to go to the opposite park. But, feeling very special and select, we joined the literally THOUSANDS of people that had magic morning passes. As we arrived at the gates of Disneyland and they were totally packed with people, we should have jumped ship and headed to California Adventure instead! But we didn't. Even though we got in by about 8:30, Disneyland was already packed.
I thought it would be a good morning to take a picture of my parents with the kids in front of the castle. Nope. Hundreds of people speed walking to their selective ride lines. So frustrating! This unfortunately is our only castle picture.
Snow White's fountain was a much better place for a family picture.
Thankfully, the line for the carousel was short. We found carousel's to be a great "bang for your wait."
Here is Seth
Sammy
Titi and Josh
Next, we headed to "It's a Small World." Notice the look on my Dad's face: he's not a fan and humored the kids by going. Notice my mom's smile in the row behind: she LOVES the ride! The kids loved it too!
Look at the wonder on Josh's face.
Another place where the crowds were manageable was Toon Town. It's towards the back of Disneyland and not as popular as other places.
There were fun places to explore and all of the character's "houses."
Before we went to Disneyland, I had given the boys their Mickey Mouse shirts. Josh was very excited about his and told me one day before our trip, "I'm going to wear my Mickey shirt in Disneyland and go poop in it." That dream indeed came true.
The boys loved "Goofy's Gadget Coaster." This is Ben and Seth.
I wanted the boys to find a hat for a souvenir, so we spent some time in a shop trying on silly hats.
Joshy quickly became attached to his "Donald Ducky" hat. Of all the hats to pick out, this was the only one Josh wanted. He wore it the whole rest of the trip and we didn't see one other person wearing it. The overly large bill constantly smacked us in the face as we were holding him.
Next we went over to Tomorrow Land, which is total madness because of all the Star Wars stuff. The kids all really enjoyed the Buzz Lightyear ride, though. Then we had our fast passes for Space Mountain. Me, Josh, and the Donald Ducky hat waited for everyone else to get out of Space Mountain and ate lunch.
Sam didn't love Space Mountain because it was so loud. Seth loved it though and went on it again with Ben and I with our stroller pass.
We left the park after eating a packed lunch to rest and swim. Ben took Josh back to put him down for a nap and I let Seth and Sam play at the Lego Store for a bit. They made cars to race and Seth's won. It was a nice, calm non-ride thing to do.
I loved the hat that Sam picked out!
Seth's was pretty cute too.
My parents and I then took the twins swimming at the amazing Disneyland hotel pool. It's designed to look like the monorail and had slides of three different sizes.
Small slide
Medium slide
And large slide! (This was the boys on their way up to the top of the big slide).
Having already done big slides at Great Wolf Lodge, the boys were pros and bravely went down.
Swimming was fun and a great break from the parks.
In the late afternoon, we switched parks and went to California Adventure. It was noticeably less busy. We spent some time in Bug's Land doing some little kid rides for Josh. The kids all really enjoyed the Mater Ride with grandparents while Ben and I watched "It's a Bug's Life," in 4D.
Then we walked through Radiator springs, which was absolutely amazing! We couldn't wait to further explore it on another day. This is one of my favorite pictures of the trip! (Seth, Sam)
And I know this next one isn't a great picture, but I had to include it because I have such funny memories of Josh being totally wired and crazy while waiting for our dinner. He kept running in circles and laughing. Sometimes you just have to embrace your kids craziness when you know they are tired and hungry! I'm sure the people around us were too impressed!
After dinner we went on a couple more rides as a family.
The big boys loved the Goofy roller coaster in this park too. We quickly learned that they loved the fast rides! (Seth, Sam)
After going on "Soaring Over California," my parents went back to the hotel for the night, and we decided to head back over to Disney to try to catch the parade and fireworks. We arrived just before the parade started and that was kind of a disaster. We couldn't find anywhere that the kids could stop and watch because the walk ways all have to stay open. We were all getting frustrated until a really nice lady let the kids stand in front of her to get a glimpse of the lighted up floats. Thankfully, it ended up being a pretty good spot for the firework show over the castle and we were able to stay and watch that. It was an absolutely amazing show, complete with a couple minutes of Frozen's "Let it Go," song and real snow coming down on us. Truly magical.
As we slogged back to the hotel after fireworks, we were all absolutely exhausted! Remember, we had started the day at Disney, then went to the hotel, went swimming, went to California Adventure, then back to Disney. So. Much. Walking. The kids were troopers and it was a great day! Least to say, everyone slept amazing that night!
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