The Lee Family: Disney Day 1: Arriving in California and California Adventure

This year, the girls had a four day weekend for Columbus Day, so we decided to do something that CK and I have talked about for about a year. One of my friends took her daughter to Disneyland for a long weekend a few years ago, and we always thought it would be a great way to spend solo time with our girls and to maximize a Disney visit for each of them. Since Sofia loves Star Wars and Olivia loves princesses, we figured they could each have their own visit and do whatever they wanted to do! As a little bit of a surprise, I planned on picking Sofia up from school on Thursday and going directly to the airport. However, as the day grew closer I worried she might forget and get on the bus from Glenhope to CES, so I ended up telling her the news on Wednesday night. She was super excited, since she assumed we'd be leaving Friday morning. On Thursday, I packed for both of us and CK and Olivia ended up driving us to the airport! We were off on our adventure while Olivia and her Papa planned a fun weekend together. As I drove Olivia to school Thursday morning, she told me all about the "To Do" list she planned on writing for her long weekend and said "I'll have Papa help me, since you won't be here." When we first made our Disney plans, I was worried Olivia would be upset. She said she knew Sofia would go and have a great time and then come home to tell her all about it, which would mean her visit wouldn't be as special. But once I explained to her that Sofia loved Star Wars and she preferred princesses which meant their visits would be completely different, she was fine with not going with us and really looked forward to her fun weekend with her Papa.

The flight to Orange County's John Wayne Airport was uneventful and went smoothly. Sofia and I both read our own books for a bit, and then asked the flight attendant for earbuds so we could watch something. Each of the seats had their own screen and we could pick whatever we wanted to watch! Obviously, I don't fly commercially often, since it was all new to me. Sofia watched Night at the Museum, one of her favorite movies and I watched Baby Driver, which was good except that we landed when there was only 5 minutes left in the film, so I'd have to wait for our return flight to find out how it ended!

We gathered our bag and made our way to the Super Shuttle, which I thought would be cheaper and easier than Uber or a taxi. We decided against renting a car, since our hotel has a free shuttle to Disney every 30 minutes and also charged for parking. We figured we'd really have no need or our own car. Unfortunately, the Super Shuttle took over an hour before we left the airport and by then it was rush hour traffic. Sofia ended up falling asleep on my lap on the drive to our hotel and we arrived at 730pm California time, which is 9:30pm our time! We were both hungry and tired! Of course, before our flight Sofia bought a bunch of "snacks" including gummy bears, pretzels and Swedish Fish, so she'd had plenty of snacks on the plane. We checked into our room at the Majestic Garden Hotel and were given a king size junior suite, which ended up being really comfortable. We ate in the hotel's restaurant and were pleasantly surprised to find the food delicious! We were both really tired and were asleep before 10pm (midnight Texas time).

We were awake early on Friday morning and ready to start our fun weekend adventure! The evening before, I stopped by the Disneyland sales desk in our hotel and bought our tickets which saved us a lot of time and money. Plus, the saleswoman was really helpful in explaining our options and suggested how to optimize our visit. So, based on her recommendations we decided to visit California Adventure all day Friday and visit Disney proper on Saturday. We ate the breakfast buffet at our hotel before getting on the shuttle to Disney. Sofia loved having the breakfast buffet and loaded up on french toast, cereal, bacon and scrambled eggs along with orange juice. We then got on the 8am shuttle, arriving 15 minutes after California Adventure opened! It was perfect timing and we walked right in! I was surprised by the lack of crowds and looked forward to a fun visit. We both grabbed a map of the California Adventure park and set off to explore. Our first stop was the "Bugs" show which was a combination of "real" and 3D show that was cute and a lot of fun. From there we headed off to Grizzly Peak and decided to go on the ride Soarin' Around the World, which several of my friends highly suggested. Thankfully there was hardly a line and we waited for maybe 20 minutes before we were on the ride. It was beyond spectacular! It was a simulated flight across various wonders of the world, including the Great Wall of China, the pyramids, the Eiffel Tower, the wildlife of Tanzania and other incredible sights. Along with the feeling that it is real, there is a slight wind in my face and even the smell of grass when flying over Tanzania! It was amazing and a breathtaking! At the end of the ride, about half of the people clapped! Sofia wanted to go on the Grizzly River Run, but I convinced her that we should wait until it was a bit hotter out before we got all wet. So, we then made our way to the Redwood Creek Challenge Trail, which was really fun with rope obstacles, climbing walls, trails and Sofia's favorite which was a cave that could identify what spirit animal you are. From there, we decided to hit the Grizzly River Run and we both got wet, although Sofia really got soaked and her shorts were wet for hours!

After, we headed over to the Paradise Pier and rode on The Little Mermaid Ariel's Undersea Adventure, which I was surprised how much Sofia enjoyed it. Again, the line was so short that we ended up going on it again. We stopped by the Ariel gift shop and Sofia picked out a cute jewelry box for Olivia, which we knew she would use to keep her collected "treasures." The girl loves collecting favorite things. After we left the gift shop, there was a cotton candy stand, so we bought a bag and Sofia started enjoying it. We stopped in one of the many gift shops and Sofia fell in love with a little purple stuffed pegasus-lion named Jaquin. It's from one of the Disney shows that we aren't familiar with, but she loved him and decided to use her money to buy him. Sofia has $120 in her own purse to spend on this trip, so she has to chose wisely! From the on, Jaquin was by Sofia's side for everything! We continued on to walk toward the Paradise Pier and rode on the Golden Zephyr, Jumpin' Jellyfish, and the Silly Symphony Swings. From there, we decided to stop for a bit of lunch. We stopped at the Boardwalk Pizza and Pasta to get a slice of pizza for Sofia and I picked up beef tacos from the Paradise Garden Grill, which ended up being pretty decent. We continued walking through Paradise Pier and then ended up in Cars Land and walked around enjoying the Car's-themed area. It was done really well and was decorated for Halloween, which was cute too. We rode on Luigi's Honkin' Haul-O-Ween, which was super cute and fun and then tried to ride on the Radiator Springs Racers, but the line was super long so we decided to return later. From there we headed to Hollywood Land. Hollywood Land offers a cute little backdrop of Hollywood and also has several movies or shows, but Sofia was much more interested in rides and exploring. We continued on and returned to Grizzly Peak where we went on Soarin' again and then rode the River Run again (and barely got wet) and then returned to the Challenge Trail. As we were heading over, we happened upon Pluto! Pluto was "out for a walk" with his handler and stopped to meet a few kids and take photos! It was so sweet and Pluto's handler took some adorable photos of Sofia and I with my iPhone! Once we made it to the Challenge Trail, I sat down near the spirit cave while Sofia ran all over the place, climbing, running down rope bridges and returning to the cave. I don't know how she has so much energy!

We decided to return to the Radiator Springs Racers and decided to get a churro on the way. Since the churros are $4.50, I decided we could split one and even thought hey are totally overpriced they are delicious! We made it to the Racers ride and the line didn't look "too bad" even though the wait said it was over an hour. We slowly crept in the line and ended up playing a charades game with a cute family of mom, dad and young college-aged son, in line behind us. Strangely the dad and Sofia were completely on the same wave length and he could guess very quickly when she acted them out. Sofia also took a few turns guessing and she was pretty good at it! It was a fun way to pass the time and the wait was well over an hour. Finally we made it to our "car" and took off. The ride was awesome! Easily on par, although totally different, than Soarin'. It was so much fun and really well done! If we'd known about it earlier I would have raced up to ride on it as soon as we arrived and then try to return later in the day to go again. It was so much fun!!

By the time we were done with the Racers ride, it was after 6pm and the park had become significantly more crowded. Sofia and I were ready to head back to our hotel, although more to real and because of the time change than being actually tired from walking all day. We walked around a little bit and Sofia asked if she could get a pair of mouse ears! It was pretty funny that she wanted some because as we headed out that morning, she turned to me out of nowhere and said "Ok, here's the deal: you can take me to Disneyland, but you are not buying me Mickey Mouse ears!" Throughout the day she has enjoyed looking at and trying on the many different mouse ear options and when we came to a gift store with a great selection she ended up buying the "princess ear" which surprised me! They looked super cute on her and she was very proud to have her own pair! She also decided that we should buy a pair for Olivia so she can have her own for her trip to Disney! We decided to wait until Disney to pick a pair!

The Disney representative in our hotel suggested we visit California Adventure on Friday since Disney closes at 7pm so they can prepare for Mickey's Halloween Party that starts at 8pm. She said California Adventure would become very crowded after 7pm, since everyone would be coming over from Disney, but we could stay until midnight if we wanted. We planned to stay until 9pm to see the World of Color show, which is apparently really spectacular. We noticed that the park started getting busy around 4pm and just became more and more crowded. When we finally ran out of energy and decided to leave at 7pm, we'd been at the park for 11 hours and Sofia still had a lot of energy left! We noticed that being on Texas' timezone affected us and we were really getting sleepy more than physically tired.

As we walked out of California Adventure, there were droves of people entering Disney in their costumes and dressed and ready for Halloween, most of them adults! We were excited to see our shuttle show up and happy to be able to sit down and rest our legs after so many hours of walking. Once we returned to our hotel, Sofia said she just wanted to order room service and read her book, but I knew room service would likely take forever so I convinced her that we should go to the restaurant and could bring our books. She agreed and off we went. I ordered the same salad with salmon that was so delicious and Sofia ordered what she called the "me burger" that has meat, cheese, onion and ketchup. She loved it. It was fun to be "social" and people watch and also just relax and read while we waited for our food. Sofia had book 8, 9 and 10 of "Wings of Fire" and I decided to only bring book 8 and 9, figuring she would never get through both of them. However, she was already nearly done with number 8! After dinner, we headed back to our room and got into bed. I was so tired, I fell asleep around 8:30pm and was woken up around 9pm by the fireworks. Sofia was actually still reading, so we turned off all our lights and looked out our hotel room window and watched the spectacular show! We had a fantastic view! It was so great and the show went on for a really long time! Once it was done, we climbed into bed and I convinced Sofia that she needed to go to bed so she would be ready for yet another fun day. She begrudgingly went to bed, even though I'm sure she could have stayed up reading for another hour! I don't know how she does it! It was such a fun day and we couldn't wait for our Disney visit!

In the airport with this crazy girl!!