Disneyland Day 1

Finally it is time to go to Disneyland! I had grand intentions of getting there early. I found a great service called Ridemax that helps you plan your day at Disney. You tell it when you are going to arrive, leave, take breaks and what you want to do and it prints an itinerary for you to minimize walking and waiting in line. It sounded great but it did not work for our group as we moved a little slow. Katherine had a few meltdowns in the morning and we arrived about 90 minutes later than our schedule. Luckily it was a slow week at Disney and we were still able to do a lot without a lot of waiting.

After getting our tickets and going in the park we headed to Fantasyland. Katherine loved Sleeping Beauty's castle and somehow immediately found a store with princess things in it.

First we rode the Peter Pan ride. You get in little cars that fly through the air over the scenes from Peter Pan. Katherine enjoyed it but thought it was a little bit scary. You realize when watching Disney movies and going to Disneyland with a 2 and 3 year old that every fairy tale has a scary character or scene. Next we rode the carousel. They are always a big hit.

After the carousel we went on Dumbo. It was another fun ride for Katherine. She had fun controlling if we went up or down. Dad and Pops were in the elephant in front of us and Will and Sophia were in the elephant behind us.

I think we then rode Mr. Toad's Wild Ride and Pinocchio. Katherine chickened out on Mr. Toad which was a good thing because Sophia hated it.

After Pinocchio, Sophia was done with dark rides. We rode Casey Jr. Train and then we took a break and went to see the princesses and eat lunch.

Neither Katherine nor Sophia wanted to nap in their strollers though they were exhausted. Finally we decided that we needed to go back to the hotel for nap time. We had not really planned on that. I had hoped that they would sleep in their strollers so we could just keep going, stay for parades, eat dinner in the park and ride more rides. Luckily we were close and had a very convenient shuttle. The pain was loading up the strollers, going through security, etc.

On the way out we stopped by Snow White's wishing well. She would sing and it would echo. Katherine and Sophia got a kick out of that.

After naps we returned to the park for dinner at Cafe Orleans in the New Orleans section of the park. We walked through Adventureland to get there and Frontier land to get back. That was all of those sections of the park that we ever saw. Dinner was very yummy and it was a lot of fun to watch the people.

Critter Country was close so we went on the Winnie the Pooh Ride. It was a dark ride so Sophia covered her eyes the entire time which was unfortunate because it was not scary and very cute.

Day 1 was very fun and very tiring so we all crashed back at the hotel.