We're back from a wonderful trip to California to visit family. The only snafu that we ran into was that EVERYONE in my extended family came down with COVID at one point or another during the trip. Somehow, we avoided catching it (or at least everyone was asymptomatic), which was a huge blessing, especially since one of our days out there was a trip to Disneyland!
Megan and I have wanted to do a family trip to Disneyland for some time now. We also knew that we wanted to wait until the kids were old enough to have memories of the trip. Ezra and Megan went to Disneyland about 6 years ago when her cousin got married but Ezra was too small to remember any of it. As an added bonus, Jonah is exactly 40 inches tall, which means he can ride most of the rides too!
Thanks to the generosity of my mom and some family friends who work for Disneyland, we were even able to get free tickets! That was a huge blessing as well, as those tickets are NOT cheap... We did pay for the Genie+ addition, which was totally worth it (more on that later).
Disneyland's parking lot opens at 7 and the rope drops at 8, so we were motivated to get there early. I grabbed some donuts to entice the kids to hop out of bed at 6 so we could get to the parking lot right at 7. Our family friend with the pass met us at the park and we were in!
Friends, it really was a practically perfect day. Here were a few highlights:
- Right off the bat, we went to Toon Town. Mickey Mouse was in front of his house and while JoJo (the biggest Mickey Mouse fan in the family) didn't want his photo taken with him, we did get Mickey to wave at him. The smile on JoJo's face was priceless.
- I'm not a roller coaster guy but I love me some Big Thunder Mountain. I was really glad that we were able to go on that as a family and the kids really enjoyed it too.
- The Genie+ pass was absolutely worth the money. We were able to get in the "Lightening Lane" for a ride once every 2 hours, which saved us a ton of time. By my count, we went on 20 rides (some we did twice and sometimes we split up) and watched 5 shows (including 2 parades).
- Thaliea lost a tooth!
- The kids really did great. We stayed until 11pm and everyone was in mostly good spirits.
- The meal food wasn't terribly priced! The dinner we got at the Cantina was actually about what I would expect to pay at a restaurant and the things we got for lunch were maybe only a dollar more than it would be at other places.
- Matching shirts are always a good call.
Of course, it wasn't perfect. There were a few rides that were shut down that we couldn't ride. The snacks (churros, popcorn, ice cream, etc.) were DEFINITELY overpriced. And, because my watch doesn't track my steps when I'm pushing the stroller, I fell just short of 30k steps. Still, we'll call the day a definite win.
The hope is to make it to Disney World at some point. There may even be a week long Disney/Universal Studios trip in our future at some point. Either way, it was a really great trip and hopefully the kids will remember it for the rest of their lives.
Have an excellent day!
~Adam
