Wednesday, January 7, 2009

After a cancelled flight, a missed flight, and a 22 hour drive...

...we finally made it to "The Happiest Place on Earth."

Getting down there consisted of two of the absolute worst days of my life, but it was worth it, and we ended up having a wonderful time at Disneyland with David's family! Thanks for everything Jan and Dan!

Now for tons of photo spam:

David and I spent Christmas Eve at a cheap hotel in Roseburg, OR eating takeout Chinese food.


The only upside of Christmas Day (aka - hands down the worst day of my life)...was seeing these lovely snow-covered mountains.


The day after Christmas...Southern California at last!


First day at Disneyland.



The castle all decorated for Christmas.


That night we had a scrumptious dinner at the Blue Bayou, which is the restaurant inside the Pirates of the Caribbean ride.


The next day we spent at California Adventure.




We watched the Pixar Play Parade that night, which was actually really neat.



Then we all went to Bubba Gump's for a yummy dinner.







The next day we got up really early in order to use our one Magic Morning pass (this lets you get into the park an hour before it opens). It was kinda nice getting to see the park and all the pretty decorations before the giant crowds were there.





I'm normally not a huge fan of the "It's a Small World" ride, but the holiday version was actually really cute.



Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters - one of my favorite rides! The first time we rode this ride I beat David (clearly a miracle), but by the second time around he had far surpassed me and I sabotaged myself by spending to much time trying to thwart his efforts and not enough time scoring points myself!



New Orleans Square is probably my favorite part of Disneyland!



That night David and I stayed pretty late and watched Fantasmic! and the holiday fireworks show.


The next morning David and I had an awesome breakfast at The LaBrea Bakery and Cafe in Downtown Disney, then we headed to California Adventure again.


We saw a lot of super cool shows at California Adventure over the days. A few of my favorites were a Broadway-style production of Aladdin, Talk Time with Crush, and a 3-D show called "It's Tough to be a Bug."



That night we met up with the family for dinner at the Rainforest Cafe in Downtown Disney.




I loved the way they decorated all of the trees in Downtwon Disney. They were so beautiful in person!


After dinner, we all took the monorail back into Disneyland, as this was the rest of the family's last night at Disney.






The next day David's family flew home, but David and I stayed a couple extra nights because we'd driven down. We took a Disney break on this day and just spent some time relaxing. We saw a movie in the afternoon (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, good film) and then went back to the Rainforest Cafe for dinner. Since it was just the two of us, we split a chicken salad and then got the famous Volcano for dessert! I think we ate about half of it, lol.


The next day was New Years Eve. David and I spent the day at California Adventure, and finally got to go on the best ride ever...Toy Story Midway Mania! The two previous times we'd tried to ride it, it had been broken. It is such a fun ride though!!




That night, after we'd taken a nap and changed into nicer clothes, we headed to Downtown Disney for a fabulous dinner at Ralph Brennan's Jazz Kitchen.



After dinner, we stopped by the "O" in California (outside of California Adventure) for an Olson family picture.


Then we headed into Disneyland. It was so CROWDED!! Seriously, you could barely walk, it was insane. It was a fun, but crazy, way to end our vacation!