The Tuesday Ten, Our Trip To Disneyland!

Today's Tuesday Ten post is a Personal Post about our trip to Disneyland. 

We had the privilege of taking Kira to Disneyland last weekend. We planned this trip months ago and so we looked forward to going and seeing Kira's reactions for a while now. One major downer is that I was diagnosed with Strep Throat on Wednesday and we left Friday. After spending a few hours in the ER and getting a penicillin shot in the hip, a pain pill and some steroids I was sent home with about 5 medications to take to get over this dang thing. I'd never had Strep before so this was pretty new too me... and it made for an interesting trip to say the least! 

So here are 10 fun facts about our trip, and in no particular order with some extra pictures too. :)

1. Disneyland is the Happiest Place on Earth. While I don't 100% agree on this topic it's true that being at Disneyland can make just about anyone smile. Our Disneyland and California Adventure was filled with fun, characters, adventure, food, and more.

2. Breakfast with the Characters. I was pretty excited about this myself and I think overall it was worth it. We didn't see these princesses anywhere in the park except at breakfast so I'm super glad we went. Kira and I got up and dressed her up like a princess herself. She even got to wear a tiara to go along with her makeup and Ariel Dress which she had picked out to wear.  I did miss the picture of Ariel ( crap :( ) but I managed to get all the others. We met Cinderella, Aurora, Tiana and Tangled. The hard part is that they don't tell you who will be at the breakfast other than Ariel so we didn't get to meet Merida but that's ok. It was super fun. We even got a cupcake because we were celebrating Kira's Birthday. Notice her um ok just take the picture look on her face!
One of Kira's favorite things was to dress up while we were there. It was hot and I assumed she'd get tired of it but nope! She wanted to dress up the next day too.

 

3. We got our fair share of Meet-N-Greet Character sightings but it's not the most I've seen before. I was surprised how few characters we saw out and about in the park. When I was in Disneyworld years ago we met so many I can't count. It was epic for some teenage and twenty somethings to wait in line to see characters but it was fun. This time around was different. Seeing Kira's face as she met some of the characters was well worth the wait. She was OH so excited and we had made a list of characters she wanted to meet. We didn't get to check all of them off but I think we were only missing 2. The wait for the two Frozen Characters is what had me stumped. They gave out "Reservations" in the park for those characters and if you didn't get a reservation you didn't get in. We picked up our reservation at about 10 am and didn't get in to see them until after 6:30 pm. It was fun and she loved it. I've heard people had waited in line for over 2-4 hours so I'm glad we didn't have to tackle that one. 

4. Wear your Mickey ears! I had told Andy we were ALL going to get some ears and wear them and we actually did. Kira made sure of it too.

5. My Favorite Rides: It's true we didn't go on too many rides because of the little one and she isn't too inclined to go any any rides unless we kinda just did so this is skewed a little. My favorite we went on this time were the Toy Story Ride and the Cars Ride. Any of the 3D rides are pretty fun, Kira wasn't too sure about any of them except the Toy Story one cause it's interactive. She did ok on Soarin' though to my surprise and loved the smell of the Oranges. 

6. HOT and HUMID. It's California right? Well we weren't quite expecting 100 Deg Weather so that made it super hard for us to be out in the sun and park for too long. I suggest taking advantage of the few water fun spots and cool off! Kira and Andy had fun in the Bugs Life area. We wore Kira out both days and headed back to the Hotel for nap time during the hottest part of the day. Totally worth the short distance to the Hotel. 

7. Fireworks! We all loved the Firework show. We only got to see it one night because Kira had fallen asleep near 8 pm the first night but the second night was spectacular. Kira sat on dad's shoulders and watched from above the crowd. The firework show was neat with music and fireworks nearly all the way down main street Disneyland. We even saw Tinkerbell! 

8. Disney Photo Pass. We took advantage of the Disney photo pass and just used the pass to take a lot of pictures in conjunction with our cell phones. It made it nice not to carry a camera around and I was actually a little relieved to be honest. Well worth it if you are going to be there a few days and want all the pictures. Plus we had a fun photographer add Olaf into Kira's picture too :) 

 9. Traveling! Kira has always traveled fairly easy. We were talking about how many times she's been on a plane - which is 9 as far as I know without counting layovers. She did amazing on the plane there and on the way home. Flying doesn't seem to bother her (much like some of the rides :)) She was super excited to get to her seat and was totally content playing with her Jig-a-lee puff toy the entire time. (Thanks Michelle!)

10. Hotel Hotel Hotel. We stayed at the Hilton Anaheim hotel which is actually really close but about a 30 min walk from the hotel entrance. We rode the shuttle back and forth, totally worth it. The hotel was super big, we even got sorta lost finding our room once but it was worth the stay. The rooms were big, air conditioned, beds comfortable and we had a walk out room to the garden patio. All in all it was a great compliment to the hot Disneyland Park. 

And then some other random photos!