Ok…I’m not talking about the somewhat dodgy song, but actually Disneyland in Los Angeles which is where we spent our Saturday just gone. Tom kindly let me leave work a bit early on Friday and I came home to get the three girlies. We got in the car and headed for I-5, the interstate down […]
Ok…I’m not talking about the somewhat dodgy song, but actually Disneyland in Los Angeles which is where we spent our Saturday just gone.
Tom kindly let me leave work a bit early on Friday and I came home to get the three girlies. We got in the car and headed for I-5, the interstate down to LA. It was a long journey – About 5 and a half hours all together and was a really tiring drive due to the fact that I-5 is just a big long straight with nothing to keep your mind on the edge, but we made it safe and sound without any drama. We checked into the Castle Inn hotel about a five to ten minute walk from Disneyland park entrance and swiftly headed into the bed for a long overdue sleep as by now it was about 1am after a long drive.
Saturday morning we woke up and got ready albeit later than planned. Before heading into the park we went to IHOP and got breakfast where I enjoyed a stack of pancakes with original style Maple syrup…..hmmm 🙂
After buying our tickets and getting let into the park and getting in we didn’t really know where to start to decided on working around clockwise. The park is massive and there is so much to do you can easily see how people will take two or maybe even three days to do the place. The park neighbours with California Adventures which is aimed at bigger people so based on the time available we didn’t buy a combo ticket for this park and stayed in Disneyland.
We worked our way around the park until 3pm when they have the parade of all the in park characters on their tour floats which was a really great thing to see. We managed to get pretty close so saw the whole thing pretty good with Maddy on my shoulders and Jessie on Nicky’s shoulders although afterwards I’d wished Maddy was younger and hence lighter!
After the parade we went back to the hotel for a quick swim and a sleep – Reason? The park is open until midnight and wanted to recharge ourselves and the girls for the evening ahead.
After some sleep and dinner at IHOP – Repetitive I know but it was nice we headed back into the park to carry on our great day. In a way it was a shame that Maddy and Jessie weren’t older for the day because they probably would have appreciated it more but there is always years ahead for that experience.
At 9pm we headed to Maine Street which is the main road in the park to try to get to the castle to see the fireworks display. We didn’t manage to get as close as we’d liked because while we were enjoying the rides etc everyone else was negotiating the temporary one way system they construct in the park to traffic everyone around ready for the fireworks, but we got close enough to get a fairly decent view. The fireworks where really good although Nicky was a little disappointed with the size of the ending and was expecting a little more but nonetheless it was great to see. They even had a woman dressed as Tinkerbell who fell across the top of the park – Bet she gets paid well for that. The display was all themed to different events in the park so there was a Pirates of the Caribbean part and a Star Wars part. I liked the Star Wars part as they fired giant greed laser miles and miles up into the sky to try to simulate the cannons and other weapons they have in Star Wars.
After the fireworks we carried on around the park getting every last ounce out of the place until about 12pm when we realised they where going to start kicking people out soon and we hadn’t been to a shop yet to buy anything so we headed for a shop to buy some gifts and things for us too which are all on the street on the way out of the park. We bought quite a few things but I didn’t mind buying things from there as it’s a great memory for us as a family.
After this, we went to sleep to try to appease our almost broken feet after the miles and miles or walking around ready for some more walking.
Sunday morning we woke up and packed up the case and checked out of the hotel before heading for Hollywood Boulevard. It took us best part of an hour to get there down Route 101. I was slightly disappointed when we arrived because although we felt cool being there and there was an aura of excitement amongst us it didn’t look, feel or smell as glamorous and special as it all seems to be on TV and the movies, but we were still pleased to be there.
We parked the car in a multi-underground-story round the back of the famous Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard and headed up to street level. Walking out of the theatre and the shopping mall entrance we saw loads of people dressed up in costume and street people doing this and that – Good luck to them being dressed like that in the heat of America because I know I wouldn’t want to be. One of the first people to approach us was a tour guide selling person. Although I was a little skeptical he looked fairly reputable and he took us to his companies little stand which looked cool so was happy with it in the end and we booked ourselves on a tour around Hollywood and the famous peoples homes.
We walked around for a while and started taking pictures of the Hollywood stars when our camera decided it was a great time to break – Thanks. I tried my hardest to get the thing working but it refused to zoom making it kind of useless for the tour as none of the pictures would be zoomed to the subject, so we headed back down Hollywood Boulevard to a shop we saw earlier selling cameras and bought the new version of our current camera, the Cybershot W300 – It’s really nice and because it’s 99% the same as our old camera it didn’t take much for me to get used to it.
After lunch in a burger joint we headed 
over for our tour which was a two hour tour around Hollywood and Beverly Hills. It was really great and we got some cool pictures although because I was holding Jessie in the car and taking pictures at the same time I had no way of making notes on who’s house each picture was, so it’s going to take us a while of sifting through the Hollywood tour book we bought to decipher which house is which, but we’ll get there.
After the tour we considered going to the Wax museum and the Guinness World of Records but it was starting to get near 5pm and figured it would be best it we just walked around for a bit and then headed home due to the time.
That’s about it – I will probably write another blog at some point embellishing on the Disney trip but it’s too much for my brain to try to take in in one writing session and lets face it, I ain’t no budding author, and as usual these are just a couple of snippet pictures. Nicky has uploaded all of them to Facebook and I will sort the website when were home. I will try to update the Live Maps 3D Tour I started in the next day or two so you can see all the extra places on there if you have been looking at it since I posted the link to it a few blogs ago.
Night x