Disneyland

This post is a little overwhelming (and there are so many pictures! I'm sorry!). Good thing it was at the end of our trip so I could put it off for just a little longer. We had so much fun, Alli loved it (and it was great cause we didn't have to pay for her!) and because we had her we waited in virtually NO lines! It was so nice! We used fast passes and then the child switch passes so two people would watch her and take her on a ride and the other group would go and then we'd swap. She loved the parade (sadly she missed the best one because she was sleeping and it wasn't "showing" again til after we were leaving Friday and we didn't want to wait for it), but she got to be in the one she saw so she thought that was pretty darn cool. I love that no matter how old you are, there is still a "magical feeling" at Disneyland/California Adventure. It is such a happy, fun place! I also was very appreciative of the fact that the big kid rides and the little kid stuff is mostly mixed together.
We did CA Adventure first and went into A Bug's Life 4-D movie thing and Alli was a little nervous, but then thought everything was hilarious! Then we went on some rides-California Screamin' and the Malliboomer (?) for us big kids and the carousel (about 6 times for her-she never got sick of it!) and the ferris wheel-waste of time and made me more nauseous than any of the other rides. She got a Minnie Mouse cell phone and bracelet and pretty much the rest of the time she loved talking to Minnie on her phone. She was super careful to know where both of these were at ALL times to make sure they were "safe" in a special pocket in mama's purse. We were able to go on so many things in not much time with our little system we had figured out. Alli met Minnie Mouse, Mickey Mouse, and Cinderella.





Alli's favorites were-the carousels-in Disney and CA adventure, the Playhouse Disney show (so fun for little kids!), It's A Small World, the teacups, and the Dumbo ride. Her NOT favorites-the Matterhorn (one extremely smart parent thought that since she was tall enough she should ride it-the other thought perhaps the dark, fast, and BEARS would scare her-yep she still tells us about the scary bears), The Finding Nemo submarine (because it got dark and the speaker was super loud), and the little kids' rollercoaster in ToonTown. We took her on it after it was dark and it was surprisingly fast, but other than that she thought it was okay. She doesn't continue to tell us about that one. :)





We found a cool thing that we took full advantage of with Splash Mountain-the Single Rider line so we went on in three or four times super fast with that. And my mom seriously has the worst luck with water rides-the water ride in CA for example- the other three of us got somewhat wet, not too bad-she got SOAKED (took til after we walked back to the hotel like 6 hours later for her to be completely dry). On Splash Mountain-the three of us went a couple times and were splattered at best. She (seeing our un-wetness) thinks maybe she'll give it a try with a different outcome than the previous water ride-she got wetter on her one ride than any of us with all of our rides together. At least she was a good sport about it :)
Hollywood Tower of Terrer was awesome-At one point I wasn't sure if I was going up or down.









This little outfit was super cute, but the juicy suit was 98 and the flip flops were 60 too. Seriously 60 for flip flops with a ribbon bow on them??? It was a fun store in DownTown Disney, but super expensive!

The second parade was so fun because there were different dancers (I think it was the Celebrate Parade?) anyway, Alli got picked to go out and dance two different times so it was fun watching her and the dancers all interacted so cutely with the kids! And as we were leaving we saw a friend from high school who is working there as a photographer so she took some pictures for us! It was fun seeing her!