The Land of Disney Pt. 1

Sunday, June 5th – Angeles Mountains, Los Angeles, California - Day 115

Today is a big day, today we complete the full North American Disney experience. On a warm Wednesday, on the 9th of March we visited Disneyworld. Today we visit Disneyland.

I woke up at 7:30 but I’m not sure Gen slept a wink in anticipation, we were out the door at 8:30. The drive was an hour from mountain to Disney. We arrived at the Toy Story parking lot and got locked and loaded; our bags were packed anticipating we were closing the park. We jumped on the shuttle after security and a line. We were in the front gates and talking to Disney characters by 10:50 am.

The first thing you notice about Disneyland is everything is so much smaller. Disneyworld is huge where at Disneyland everything feels more comfortable. We met Pluto before boarding the Disneyland Railroad bound for Fantasyland.

We hopped off the train and directly into Pinocchio’s Daring Journey with no line followed by a trip through the Sleeping Beauty Castle Walkthrough. Another difference between the two Disney’s is Disneyworld has Cinderella’s castle while Disneyland has Sleeping Beauty’s castle.

We finally got stuck in a line when we stopped to take pictures with princesses. Gen started distributing the two backpacks full of food she packed. To sustain us Gen brought: two containers of hummus, brie, package of crackers, full celery stalk, baby carrots, pita, nuts, nectarines, bananas, apples, gummy worms, loaf of bread worth of peanut butter and jam sandwiches, and boiled eggs. We were ready to go when we met Cinderella and the human version of Ariel. They are so delightfully in character and super friendly.

Gen was furiously working the app to minimize line times, we switched to Frontierland to ride the Sailing Ship Columbia. The coolest thing was you could go below deck and see how the ship was set-up. We took a ride around the Pirates Lair on Tom Sawyer Island, and it looked cool so off we went.

Comments

Mary in Malibu

Tuesday, June 7th - Angeles Mountains, Los Angeles to Santa Monica Mountains, Malibu, California - Day 117 It is great to welcome Mary back on the trip. The kids gave her a huge hug as we picked her up at the airport. They are all really excited to talk to someone other than their parents. We are all driving to our wedding on June 25th. Sixteen days until we need to be in Victoria, British Columbia. Our plan was to drive up the coast from Los Angeles, halfway to San Fran cut inland to Sequoia National Park and Kings Canyon National Park (which is close by) and then head north to Yosemite, before driving back down to Big Sur and then into San Francisco, potentially north east to Lake Tahoe and north to Redwoods National Park. It’s a busy schedule, we’ll see how it goes. On the way to pick up Mary we got a well-deserved oil change for the Santa Fe, courtesy of Valvoline. It was expensive but quick and easy. We were thinking of driving throu...

Back to the Coast

Tuesday, June 14th - Sacramento to Big Sur State Park, California - Day 123 In the morning, we got on the road and drove along the Sacramento river which watered acres and acres of fields on all sides of us. We took a scenic drive before getting on the highway. A brief stop at Walmart and Dollar tree replenished our supplies. We phoned Big Sur State Park to try to get a spot for the night. They had nine spots available, we were three hours away, we needed to hurry. When we finally reached the coast, we drove along a curvy cliffside road that was very beautiful. Views of waves crashing into the rocks on the coastline below were exquisite. Gen was behind the wheel. There were no passing lanes, she finally found a spot to pull off the road and subsequently had several minutes of vehicles continuing to pass us before we could get back on. We finally reached Big Sur State Park and were welcomed with a grove of Red Woods towering over the drive into...

Simnett Travels

Search This Blog