Disneyland Everyday

Here is a great picture of some Diaz folks going off the big drop on Splash Mountain.  Look at Lissa, Kaiden, Christian, and Christian-they are all making distinct faces!  So fun!  You can try to make up a good caption for this photo in the comments!

Mickey's Fun Wheel, known more generally as the Ferris wheel, is a ride I have never been on.  However, sometimes you can get a great family picture with the Ferris wheel in the background.

The kids seem to scream much more than warranted for such a little drop.  Do they know a big drop is coming soon?  At any rate, I hope this little video gets you excited to be there in January!

I don't know what this ride is, but Granddad and Reagan seem to be having a great time!  Is that a 1955 Chevy Bel Air?

Look at these two!  Where are all the kids?  Is it possible that Lissa and Christian went to Disneyland by themselves and didn't tell anyone?

Radiator Springs Racers, which we all know as Cars Land, or just Cars, is a great little ride!  I wish it would go a bit faster, but at a top speed of 40 miles per hour it still causes an increased heart rate.  The attraction cost over $200 million to construct and is the most expensive of all rides at Disneyland.  Of course, based on a recent review of ticket prices and the number of park visitors it seems Disney will make up the cost in about three hours!

Here are a few pictures of Brandon and Lissa.  Lissa is his second favorite sibling!

The shuttle ride from the Mickey and Friends parking garage to the ticket window is great...or not great...or something.  The workers are very strict about keeping behind the yellow line and keeping your arms and legs in.  The "ride" doesn't have much of a view, except for a few Halloween things during the season, but I suppose the anticipation of being so close to the fun makes the shuttle a great ride!  Plus, nobody's tired yet.

GRR is a great ride.  It spins enough to get me sick.  Not vomit in a trash can or need to lay down for a bit sick, but just a little light headed and general misery!  Plus, when it's hot out the cold water feels great!  The last time I road this ride my shoes were completely soaked...

Mater's Junkyard Jamboree is a forgettable ride, for sure.  Is it fun?  I suppose.  Does it bother me if I don't ride it when we go to Disney?  No.  Do you like it when I ask questions of myself and then answer them?

The internet says we should really try to do this ride when it gets dark.  It does look cool at night.  Mandy likes this ride.  I have to be careful to not talk while the Disney worker is giving the tour.  Also, how bad are the speakers on the boats?  I've been on this ride a few different times and have no idea what they say!

Mickey's Toontown came out on the heels of the movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit.  It opened in 1993 and as I recall we went shortly after the opening.  It seemed light on rides and was more of a playground, but did have the ride Roger Rabbit's Cartoon Spin.  That ride is a fun, more herky jerky (if you can believe it), version of Mr. Toad's.  Since then they added Gadget's Go Coaster and a few other odds and ends.  It's a nice place to visit before or after It's a Small World!

Never mind my finger in this video.  Somewhere near the back of the train sits Mandy and one or two of my kids.  It's hard to get good video when the ride goes by so quickly.  However, it is fun to hear the sound the ride makes as it passes.  It's also fun to hear the screaming!

As we all know, when we go over the big drop at Splash Mountain there is a camera waiting to take our picture.  Some poses are awesome!

The jungle cruise was part of the opening day of Disneyland way back in the 50s.  The original plan was to use real animals, but Walt Disney realized that the animals wouldn't cooperate.  For instance, it is really difficult to get a rino to keep an entire safari party treed all day long!  The original intent of the ride was to provide a realistic voyage through the jungle.  The current version is much better with all of the intentionally bad puns.

Some of the rides can be a bit scary to younger children.  Here we have Roman plugging his ears and if you look close you can see that Lissa has her hand firmly placed over Titan's mouth to dampen the screams of terror!  Even Pirates can be a scary ride...

Even though we normally have to wait in a line to see a character, we caught Jasmine and Aladdin just as they were getting set up and we got a picture.  Reagan was not super excited to meet them, but Jasmine was so nice to her!

The Disneyland app is a must-have!  You should get it right now so that when you start to day dream about being at the park you can open up the app and check the wait times!  You can also use the app to find restaurants and make reservations, find characters, find bathrooms, and manage Max and Fast passes.  It is incredibly useful!  

The Dumbo ride is an iconic ride based on a pretty dumb movie from a million years ago.  The "imagineers" designed the ride to bring me to within about 4 seconds of throwing up and then the ride stops!

Have you noticed that there's some dead space between the Enchanted Tiki Room and the Jungle Cruise?  Well, in an effort to make sure every square inch of the park give ample opportunity for us to enjoy good food, they are filling in that space with a new restaurant!  It will be called the Tropical Hideaway.  It's supposed to open sometime this year.  It will serve Bao Buns, Chilled Ramen Salad, and Sweet Pineapple Lumpia, which is a pineapple and cream cheese spring roll.  The best part of this will be the ambiance.  They are setting it up so that there is an open-air eating space that will give views of the Jungle River.  At night there will be torch lights and soft musical sounds of the tropics will play!  Let's put this on our "maybe" pile for now, though I would love to try one of those spring rolls...deep fried cream cheese?  Oh Yeah!

One time we were in California on Mandy's (not pictured) birthday.  We did not go to Disneyland on her birthday, but we did go to Buca Di Beppo!  Happy birthday Mandy!

Ah, the Indiana Jones ride...It has to be the loudest ride at the entire park!  Why can't they turn down the sound a few decibels?  This ride opened March 4, 1995, so it is one of the newer ones.  It also has the best line, but only rookies wait in line!

This is not another post about the teacups!  One time we ate at Redd Rocket's Pizza Port and Jenna got sick right after.  We went home and she threw up.  As I recall, many (but not all) of us threw up on that trip!  Disneyland!

Mom and Dad really like to get their picture taken!  This was on Buzz Light Year on October 27, 2015.  The picture quality is bad, but in my defense I was working with less-than-willing subjects and I'm pretty sure Trevor was controlling our

It may seem odd that we would choose to go to Disneyland in the middle of the week at the end of January.  The fact is, we picked January 28-February 1 for one reason: Crowds.  Or, in this case, the lack thereof.  I am a consistent, faithful visitor to the website isitpacked.com.  This site provides a crowd calendar for most major theme parks, but all I look at is Disneyland.  If you look at the days we chose you can see that it should be like a ghost town at the park!  Here's to hoping...

The Mad Tea Party, better know as the teacups, is a great ride!  Just kidding.  I'll ride it when we go in January, but I'll also do my best to keep the cup from spinning!

The Storybook Canal opened on July 17, 1955, but all the miniature houses and stuff were not added until the following year.  We were there on September 14, 2016:

The Disneyland Castle is known as the Sleeping Beauty Castle.  It opened July 17, 1955 and it's based on the Neuschwanstein Castle in Germany.  It stands 77 feet tall, and while it is iconic, it's also kinda lame when compared to all the great rides!

Family, My favorite ride (and a family favorite) is Pirates of the Caribbean.  It is a long ride, clocking in at some 16 minutes of temperature controlled joy!  The original ride opened in 1967 and was overseen by Walt Disney himself.  He died three months before the ride opened.  The ride spawned the song "Yo Ho (A Pirate's Life for Me)." This picture is hard to see, but it is from pirates on October 26, 2015!

Family, This is the first of what I intend to be daily posts (but might be less than daily!) to get us all excited for our next Disneyland trip!  Plan on reading a new post here every day.  The posts will be short and fun, but it is all so that the anticipation of the trip builds up until we get there!  As a reminder, the plan is to drive to California on Monday January 28, spend January 29-31 at Disney, and drive home on Friday February 1, 2019. This photo was taken on our second trip, September 12, 2016!  From the looks of it, I'd say it was Mickey t-shirt day.  Mom and dad apparently didn't get the texts where we planned which shirts to wear.