Continued from Southern California Day 1.

Free breakfast at the hotel, makes a lot more sense with 3 kids who wake up super early. They have no idea what’s in store for them today. There were a lot of people in the breakfast room dressed in disney gear, our kids didn’t notice at all.

We ate breakfast and got in our car and drove to the giant parking lot next to our hotel.

Kids still have no idea. We told them that their hats (disney hats) are the clue. All they could guess was that we were going to beach where it’s sunny.

Still no clue. People are here with mouse ears and disney shirts and the kids are still making wild guesses.

Short ride on the shuttle drops us off at the park entrance. Disneyland is so much smaller and more accessible than Disney World. I remember the shuttle takes a super long drive just from the hotel to the actual parks.

They still can’t guess…Come on now!

As I went to rent a stroller for the day, the kids finally figured out that we are at Disneyland. They had asked if they could go to Disneyland a few weeks back just out of blue, we said maybe, but probably not. What a fun surprise for the kids, I wish I had nice surprises like this when I was a kid.

They don’t have 3 kid strollers, so they’ll just all have to cram onto a double one.

Tried to find coffee, but Starbucks had line out the door. This was before rope drop, so we are trying to get to the front so that when it opens, we can hopefully hit a couple of rides quickly without the lines getting too long.

CL has decided that this will be her new smile since her two top front teeth are just now growing out.

Lots of people here already waiting for the gates to open.

We are headed somewhere in that direction.

Almost there…

Go go go, mad dash to the first ride!

Mad dash worked, we got to the first ride and the wait was maybe 5 min. Let’s do this!

The girls really enjoy rollercoaster rides.

Little KL does not enjoy rollercoaster rides. In fact, he started refusing rides soon after this ride.

Someone had a lot of fun.

OK, what’s next?

Pirates of the Caribbean, not a rollercoaster but little KL didn’t wanna go on it because he thought it might be a rollercoaster and we had to try hard to convince him that this wasn’t one.

Park hasn’t been opened for long, so we are trying to hit as many attractions as we can before more people show up.

Haunted Mansion is Nightmare Before Christmas themed for the holidays.

Realized that we didn’t get any photos from inside the haunted mansion. It was pretty cool.

They are all about churros at Disneyland.

I appreciate the attention to detail at the Star Wars section the most.

Lightening Lane this baby since our previous attractions had such short lines.

I think for this same Smuggler’s run at Disneyworld, I remember the wait being over 3 hours long. So far, the lines at Disneyland are proving much much shorter.

Oh, look, it’s the booth on the Millennium Falcon.

This is pretty cool. 2 pilots, 2 gunners, and I believe 2 engineers or something like that. You push buttons and they light up next to your seat to “fix” or “shoot”.

Cool pic.

Well that was fun. The kids had fun pushing all the buttons when called for.

The set up for the Disneyland starwars section is set up identically to the Disneyworld one. But since this one was much less crowded we felt like we could really take our time to look around at it this time.

Time for a drink. I believe this is the only bar here in this entire park. There are very few seats and we got a standing only table. Of course, the kids were too short for the table so they just got restless standing there.

Got our drinks, honestly not very good. But kids are losing their shit, time to chug and move on.

Cheers! Too bad we couldn’t just hang out here without kids for a bit longer and actually enjoy this out of this world bar.

Of course, little KL wanted a light saber.

Lunch spot.

Nothing to write home about at all.

Weather finally starting to warm up a little, jackets are off. All things considered, the weather has been great. A giant Arctic blast is moving through most of US and we are still getting sunny weather here in SoCal.

Inside Sleeping Beauty Castle.

Charge!

Space Mountain. I haven’t ridden on this in like 30 years…

And has it happens, I’ll need to wait longer to ride on it again. After waiting to the end of the line, Little KL just refused to ride on another rollercoaster, so I took him to the exit while RL, PL, and CL rode on the ride. Sigh.

RL found coffee. Cold Brew coffee has been really hard to find inside the park. She got these with Little KL while I was waiting in another line with the girls for another rollercoaster.

Snacking while waiting.

While I waited in line with the girls, RL strolled little KL around and fed him popcorn. They even got to see a parade.

In the mean time, as we were maybe 45min into the wait and 15min from getting on the ride, the ride breaks down. Everything stops and they said it’ll be a while to fix. Doh!

RL and little KL sees the parade.

Meanwhile, I am still waiting in line with the girls while the ride is getting fixed. 20min they said…let’s hope so.

Still waiting, but now popcorn delivered to us by RL.

If he would just like rollercoasters a little more, we could all wait in line together as a family…

They fixed the ride and we got on it. Yay. Was it worth the 1.5 hour wait…nope. In fact, that long wait took most of the energy out of us. The park is in full swing now with a lot of people here and lines getting long, probably time to call it quits soon.

LOL.

Daddy looks tired.

Insert Kelvin chopping horse video!!!

Time to go before we all start getting over tired and lose all our shit.

Of course, a shield and sword.

I was determined to eat Din Tai Fung, so we drove another almost 30min to another mall here in LA looking for DTF.

Mall was crowded, and it’s only 4:30pm, but the wait to eat at DTF is already over 3 hours….ugh. All that effort only to be turned away, damnit.

We quickly found a pizza spot on our phone that’s not located inside a mall.

Exhausted and hungry after a long day at Disneyland.

I’ll enjoy a quick beer while the kids watch the employees make pizza.

Dinner. This will do I guess.

We’ve got a lot more activities planned over the next few days, must pace ourselves. Still had an awesome day at Disneyland with the kids. Excited for them to have this trip.

To be continued at Southern California Day 3.