Disneyland Part 3 The rest of the day.

I know it's taken a while for me to get around to the rest of our California trip. 

Life is busy.

So the story for the following picture.

Sweet Cheeks was the only one who wanted to see the princesses so we decided to divide and conquer.

I was going to take her to see the royalty while MDH took everyone else to see the King of the Magical Kingdom -- Mickey Mouse.

On our way to get in the line for the princesses this sweet little girl fell asleep.....so I made the decision to skip the princesses and found a nice shady place to take a load off and call my sister and chat it up while everyone else visited with Mickey.

I don't think she was too disappointed especially after her experience with Jessie later......keep reading.

When we started planning this trip we gave the kids the choice of multiple days at Disneyland or 1 day at Disneyland and 1 or more days at Sea World.

The kids chose 1 day at D-land and Sea World.

As a result we knew we weren't going to get to see everything, we decided to have each person in our family make a list of what they wanted to see and do while at DL and choose their top 1 thing that they absolutely didn't want to miss.

This worked out unbelievably well. We weren't stressed trying to see and do everything and the kids coordinated what they chose as their #1 thing so everyone was happy.

What it also did was wet our appetite for more. (We are so going back soon!)

Doodle's # uno thing was the Finding Nemo ride.

We went during a parade time (just like our guide book recommended) and our wait time was only about 20 min. (btw that was our longest wait of the day. Not bad.)

He was so happy and excited to be there.

Mr. Man however, was not happy to be there. His ability to distinguish between reality and make-believe is sketchy at best at this time in his life and the magic worked by the Magic Kingdom on this ride was a little too vivid. 

Mix his fear of water with the magic of the ride, going underwater in a submarine, and then have the submarine experience "technical difficulties" and it turns into a little panic attack for my guy.

My mantra for him through out that ride was, "It's okay, it's just pretend, we're going to be okay."

At the end of the ride I said, "See, that wasn't too bad. Wasn't that fun? We're back safe and sound."

He said, "Yeah, that was okay. That was fun."

I said, "Do you want to go again?"

His answer, (very quickly, as low as his little voice goes, and as strong as his little voice goes) "NO!"

You can see the fear in his face.

From there we went to Jedi Training.

Sadly, none of my boys were chosen. But, Duder is sure Darth Mal has a crush on Banana.

After Jedi training we got slush lemonade (I think it was the most delicious thing I've ever had)

We rode the train and made our way to the parade.

So here's the Sweet Cheeks - Jessie story.

We let each of the kids choose 1 souvenir from Disneyland. Sweet Cheeks chose a baby Jessie doll. Out of all the toys and princesses she chose Jessie. I wasn't that surprised because she absolutely loves Jessie but I was a little. (She's holding her doll in the picture below.) That doll didn't leave her arms the whole rest of the day.

When we were watching the parade all of the floats with characters come out and drive down the street but the one with Woody and Jessie stopped right in front of us.

We thought it was great but right away Jessie noticed our little girl holding a Jessie doll and she came over and waved at SC and made a motion of rocking a baby in her arms and pointed at SC.

Then when SC got down to dance Jessie came over and danced with her a little and gave her a hug.

(Did I get a video? NOPE...I guess I'll have to watch that one in heaven.)

SC was beyond happy.

Then when it was time for the characters and floats to leave she waved at SC again. (the picture below with Jessie, The one with SC is our girl watching Jessie leave and she just kept waving.)

Truly a priceless experience.

The rest of the evening was spent at the Indiana Jones ride (my favorite), Star Tours, doing a couple of the kids ones again and watching the fireworks.

The crowd during the fireworks was CRAZY!

And so were the fireworks...CRAZY GOOD!

Right after the fireworks I took the youngest 3 and headed back to the hotel while MDH stayed until closing with the oldest 2.

As we walked back Doodle didn't trust that I knew where I was going and kept worrying that we were going to wrong direction. It turned out to be a much longer walk than I thought it would be so I ended up carrying Mr.Man on my back while I pushed the stroller and Doodle carried our stuff.

It was quite a workout after 15 hours at the park.

But we made it.

When we finally got to where we could see our hotel sign Doodle sighed, "Oh, whew, you were right."

My thoughts were, "Oh, whew, we made it. Only a few more steps and I can collapse on the bed."

Which I did.

The next day we were all a great big grumpy, tired group but we were still happy.

Here we are almost 5 months later and the kids still talk about Disneyland on a daily basis.

They still pull out their little maps that they got at the park and study them.

As they do I know they're going through each part of the park in their minds and remembering that perfect day.

This video was taken after the parade as Sweet Cheeks was talking and singing to her baby!

Enjoy.

Okay so I've been waiting for almost an hour for this to upload.

I'll try again tomorrow. 

PS during the parade there was confetti everywhere. I couldn't help but wonder how they were going to clean it up.

After the parade park employees walked down the street with blowers and giant vacuums.

Genius!

That's what the noise is in the video.

PPS AND if you've made it this far thanks for reading through this whole long travel log.

I can be a bit long winded at times.