Disneyland August 2018

Tuesday, August 14

I found the cutest phone case that was perfect for this trip because it’s a mash-up of Winnie the Pooh and Up…I mean, look at the glasses and bow tie!

We flew to LAX first thing in the morning and arrived around 10:30. One thing that struck me as we were flying over Los Angeles – as it always does – is how a place I've never lived can feel so much like home. I can't even describe what I feel when I'm in California. We've been to a lot of wonderful places in our travels, but Los Angeles always feels like I'm coming home. I suppose it's because I have so many happy memories of long family trips in the summer to visit my YaYa in Huntington Beach. Whatever the reason, I absolutely love California!

Since we didn't check any bags, as soon as we were off the plane, we grabbed an Uber and headed to our hotel. As I have mentioned before, there are only three hotels at Disneyland and the two we love to stay at are very pricey. And since we were planning on spending a lot of time in the parks, we decided to try the Fairfield Inn, which is one of the "good neighbor" hotels and is across the street from Disneyland. We tried another "good neighbor" hotel when we visited in 2015 (I cannot believe we hadn't been to Disneyland in almost three years!), and it was a very nice hotel, so we decided this was worth a try because it was pretty reasonably priced.

From the outside, it looked fine, but frankly, not great…but once we got to our room later that afternoon, I was pleasantly surprised! All of the rooms had been updated and it was really nice! And as I said, we didn't really anticipate spending too much time in the room anyway because there were too many things to do in the parks!

Since it was still before noon, we were not expecting our room to ready, and it wasn't, so we dropped our backpacks off at the hotel and headed to Disneyland – less than a ten-minute walk from our hotel! We were super excited to see everything related to Pixar Fest, which was the reason for the trip because it was only running through September 3.

Since we have the Premier Passports, we scanned our cards to enter the park and the cast member mentioned that C's card had my photo on it and vice versa. Which was certainly strange, but we had noticed that when our Annual Passholder Magic Bands were mailed to us, they were reversed as well (mine was addressed to C and vice versa).

Nonetheless, we went into the park and had a wonderful afternoon – we had some lunch at Jolly Holiday Bakery Café, which is always delicious, and then spent some time wandering around the park just taking it all in. We ended up back in Critter Country, and decided to hop on The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh because it had almost no wait and it's a super cute attraction. Well, it stopped running when we were partway through and we had to be walked off the ride by cast members. I am not at all complaining; it is awesome when this happens because you get to see all sorts of details that you miss when the ride is in motion! One of those details was from the former Country Bear Jamboree (which is admittedly my all-time LEAST favorite Disney attraction ever) – and there's no way you'd ever see it if the ride was operating! Very similar to the idea behind the portrait of Mr. Toad handing over the deed in the same attraction at WDW! AND we have been evacuated from the WDW version, too!

One of the things we set out to do was to try as many Pixar-themed treats as possible and our first finds were the Grape Soda cake pop from Up and a Pixar Ball caramel apple. Both were adorable and delicious! We then went to It's a Small World (as I've shared before, there are Disney characters throughout the attraction and I love it!) and also spotted the Up balloons I'd seen all over Instagram. Seriously the cutest balloons! I really, really, really wanted to buy one, but did talk myself out of it! We also spent some time wandering around Star Wars Launch Bay before finding a spot for the Pixar Play Parade. It was soooooooooo great! I mean, LOOK at the Inside Out float!!! All the heart eyes!!!

We had gotten a text that our hotel room was ready, so after the parade, we left the park, first making a stop at Guest Relations. We wanted to see what they could do to correct the mix-up with our photos. We had a very nice lady work on the issue for about ten minutes before reassuring us everything was corrected, and then we walked over to the hotel to get settled in our room.

After a brief rest, we went back to Disneyland because we had a dinner reservation, but again we ran into problems with our passes. Clearly, the issue had not been resolved! One of the cast members took our passes into the office for a few minutes, then assured us that the problem had been corrected, after which time a second cast member re-took our photos and sent us on our way.

We went back to New Orleans Square to ride Pirates of the Caribbean, which we do prefer to the WDW version (both are fun, but we think the DL version is better) before heading to dinner. We ate at the Blue Bayou, which is inside of Pirates of the Caribbean! My first trip to Disneyland was in 1983 and I have wanted to eat at this restaurant for 35 years, but I have never been able to get a reservation before this trip! I wish I had better photos because it was a super cool place, but the lighting is not the best and certainly not good enough for a phone camera operated by an amateur photographer to get any quality pictures!

We spent the rest of the evening wandering around the park and then finding a spot on Main Street to watch the fireworks. They were amazing! I love how there are projections on all of the buildings on Main Street so you feel completely immersed in the show! I don't have a single picture of the fireworks because I find when I try to take pictures, I really miss the essence of the show, and I'm so glad I kept my phone in my pocket the whole time so I was able to fully experience it!

Wednesday, August 15

We went over to Disney California Adventure first thing and we had no trouble with our tickets. Or so we thought! We stopped at Starbucks to grab a quick breakfast and as we were sitting drinking coffee, C tried to get fast passes for us. Our Premier Passports come with Max Pass, and it is super easy to select times and reserve fast passes as a result. Well, according to the Disneyland app, only one of us was in the park – even though both of us scanned our pass at the turnstiles and now had the correct photo on each of our passes. Which meant we couldn't both get fast passes for any attraction because it wasn't recognizing that both of us were in the park! C called the number on the back of our passes to try to sort things out, and long story short, the person on the phone was not able to fix whatever was going on. So he gave us fast passes for Radiator Springs Racers later in the day and recommended we go back to the gate and speak with a cast member. So that's what we did, and we had the pleasure of dealing with the NICEST cast member, who knew exactly what he was doing. He took our passes to guest relations so that the technology department could work on the issue. When he returned with them, he told us that since it might take 3-5 days for things to get straightened out, he created paper tickets for us so that we'd still be able to go in and out of the parks and select fast passes. While the whole ordeal took more than half an hour, he really was one of the best cast members we've ever dealt with! And then just as we were walking back into the park, another cast member asked if we were annual pass holders and when I told him we were, he gave us fast passes for the Incredicoaster, so that certainly turned our morning around! After that, we spent a good chunk of time in the Animation building because it is my favorite place in the park. I could sit in there all day!

We had a lunch reservation at Café Orleans, which back over at Disneyland, so we walked over for that. We do love eating there, but since we were also all about all of the Pixar treats on this trip, we shared the Monte Cristo sandwich so as to save room for more snacks! After lunch, we were fortunate to catch a performance by the Disneyland Band, which is always entertaining!

We returned to DCA to finally visit the new Pixar Pier and we were not disappointed! As we walked under the sign for the first time, the song from the pixar short Lava was playing! Perfection! We rode the Incredicoaster and Toy Story Midway Mania, and then went over to Bing Bong's Sweet Stuff. When I say I want to live in there, I mean it! One whole wall was dedicated to Rainbow Unicorn and I've made my feelings about Bing Bong very clear in several other posts! The theming is so perfect! And there are so many snacks to choose from! We ended up getting a Bing Bong caramel apple and a Rainbow Unicorn slush…admittedly a bit of a sugar overload, but both were super yum!

We wandered around Pixar Pier for a while longer before heading over to Cars Land to take advantage of our fast pass for Radiator Springs Racers. Once we were already in line, the ride stopped operating for about half an hour, but we just waited it our because it is such a fun attraction! We also grabbed a quick snack at the Cozy Cone Motel and found a spot in the shade because it was pretty hot and we'd pretty much be on the go since about 8 am (if you've read any of my other posts about Disney Parks, you already know that it is highly unusual for us to spend more than a few hours in any park, especially during the day and when it is hot out).

We had dinner reservations at another new-to-us restaurant, Carthay Circle. It is named and themed after the theater where Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs premiered in 1937. It is just beautiful inside and our server was another phenomenal cast member, so we had a wonderful time. AND they had the same Fairy Tale Celebration Cuvee that we had at both our wedding and our vow renewal, so we shared a bottle of that and relived all of those happy memories!

To end our long but fabulous day at the parks, we watched Paint the Night. I LOVE this parade! All of the floats are incredible, but naturally my favorite is the GIANT Slinky! AHHHHHHHH! The BEST!

Thursday, August 16

We had a bit of a walk to get to our breakfast reservation at Storytellers Café because it is at the Grand Californian and so we had to go around the parks. Luckily it wasn't hot or particularly humid yet, so we didn't mind. This is a fun character breakfast and as usual I made a bit of a fool of myself in front of Pluto, but I have no regrets!

After breakfast, we wandered around Downtown Disney, which is going through some major refurbishments. We stopped by Marceline's and I spotted a Rainbow Unicorn caramel apple – actually, an entire tray of them! – but when I asked to buy one, I was told they were unable to sell them because they were "in training." I was not happy. They looked perfect to me! They said they'd be available in September, and we are going back, so I will have to get one then.

We went into DCA and spent some time over in Hollywood Land where we rode Monsters, Inc. – Mike and Sulley to the Rescue! and discovered some cool walls which made for awesome photos. We then wandered back over to Pixar Pier to ride the Incredicoaster again before our lunch reservation at the Lamplight Lounge. This is a new restaurant where Cove Bar and Ariel's Grotto used to be and I was very fortunate to get a reservation! C has a friend that lives in California and is also a passholder, and he and his wife met us for lunch, which ended up being super fun and about three hours long! The Lamplight Lounge was amazing and I wandered around and took photos of just about everything!

After lunch, we rode Radiator Springs Racers again, wandered around Cars Land and A Bug's Land (which is being replaced with some Marvel thing…booooooooooo), before ending our night at Pixar Pier.

Friday, August 17

Friday was somewhat of a shortened day because we had to head to the airport around 5 pm, but we tried to pack as much in as possible! We checked out of the hotel, left our backpacks with bell services, and walked over to DL. I had been on the lookout for this Up donut since we arrived, but it was always sold out, so I was thrilled to finally get one early in the morning at DL. I thought it was so cute that it matched my park bag! (On another note, I have never gotten so many compliments from other guests and cast members alike as I did on this short trip about this particular bag!)

We had a breakfast reservation at Carnation Café, and again, our server was fantastic. We had a very long and involved conversation with him about the Maple Leafs (C's hat caught his attention) and he really made our day. THEN we happened to come across Mary Poppins and Bert, and Mary Poppins really liked the shirt I was wearing (complete coincidence!).

We rode the Mark Twain Riverboat (which Princess Tiana also happened to be riding!), Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, Splash Mountain, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, and Haunted Mansion before walking to the Disneyland Hotel (we tried to take the monorail, but as is typically our experience with the DL monorail, it wasn't running). I love it there so much and while I certainly would have loved to stay there, I just couldn't justify the cost when I knew we'd be in the parks for most of the time!

We went to Trader Sam's for a snack and every time I go there I always hope they still have the Paradise Falls jar from Up on the shelf and it was indeed still there! We have one in our kitchen that I gave C for Valentine's Day one year and we collect all of our loose change in it, so I love seeing the one in Trader Sam's!

We spent the rest of our afternoon at DL; we rode Space Mountain, It's a Small World, Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, and King Arthur Carrousel before slowly making our way to the park exit. We stopped at the train station for some photos and then walked back to our hotel to get our bags and take an Uber to the airport.

We had such a great trip! And despite Disneyland Resort being so much more compact than Walt Disney World, we ended up walking a little over 35 miles in just 78 hours!

Happy Tails to you!