So, next year I hit the Big Six Oh. This year, we went to Disneyland.  🙂
A few weeks ago I found The Disneyland Encyclopedia at the library. It’s a fascinating compendium of everything that’s been at Disneyland from the beginning to sometime last year (a few things have changed since then). When we figured out that yes, we could afford to go this year, I went out and bought our own copy of the book. It was well worth the investment.
I made copies of all the maps in the front of the book, and then marked the attractions we wanted to get a better look at, and we took those pages along with us rather than toting the whole book. Thus, we spent probably 60% of the day walking around looking at interesting stuff, 30% riding rides and 10% eating. We’ve been to Disneyland multiple times, but there was still a lot to look at that we’d never seen before.
For some reason, we’d never really gotten around to going into the shops that are on the right hand side of Main street as you walk toward the castle. Made up for that this time around, and then some. We found the Disney Gallery, which is now right next to the right-hand gate and much expanded from when it was upstairs over the Pirates. We were delighted to see that the Big Thunder BBQ had been revived, but disgusted to find out what it costs these days (ate dinner at Casa del Zocalo instead).  I was dismayed to find out that the Jack Sparrow mouse ears I’d passed up buying two years ago were discontinued. Pfui. I did buy a pin with Minnie (my favorite character) as Princess Leia, though.
The benches in the center of the circle right by the entrance were amazingly empty when it came time for the Christmas parade, and thus we got to see it from nice comfortable seats instead of cold, hard pavement. This is a definite plus for an old lady like me. 🙂
We even braved It’s A Small World for the first time since we had small children. They’d mixed Jingle Bells in with the usual music so it didn’t turn into an earworm. And we got out just in time for the fireworks, and right by Small World is one of the best, and least crowded, places to watch.
We were there from about 45 minutes after the park opened till about 20 minutes past closing time. I don’t think we’ve ever stayed that long. And, thanks to the book, we never ran out of things to do.
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