Finally Back At Disneyland (or Enjoying An Average Day At The Parks)

I finally made it back to Disneyland this week! It had been a while since I was there because of the holiday blackout and then being busy on my days off. I really had missed being at Disneyland and I was so happy to be back there! The only odd thing was that it was pretty hot that day (it would have been hot even if it was in the summer), but we didn’t let that bring us down.

We got to the parks a bit later than we normally would, so we headed straight to California Adventure to get some lunch first. They are celebrating the Lunar New Year right now in that park and have some fun and new food offerings. I got the sticky rice with pork and a sugar cane shrimp skewer. They were both pretty good and the perfect lunch before going on some rides!

After enjoying our lunch, we headed over to Guardians of the Galaxy to ride it. This is still one of my favorite rides and we always have a great time on it. While we didn’t plan on how to pose for our photos, I think we still got a pretty funny one!

Since it was hot out, we decided to go into some air conditioning next. We went to the Animation Academy to do some drawing where it listed the character we were drawing as “artist choice”. It ended up being Dante from “Coco” which I haven’t seen yet. So we were all a bit confused on what the finished product would look like until we were done. Mine looks a bit weird, but I think all of our photos look enough like the character.

We thought about if there were any other rides we wanted to go on at California Adventure, but we decided to head over to the Disneyland side for the rest of our day. And our first stop was Space Mountain where we tried to recreate our poses from the Guardian ride for this photo.

Then we headed toward Fantasyland to check out the Mickey and the Magical Map show. I had never seen this show completely through so I was excited to check it out. It was really cute and the performers were really good. We all had grabbed some snacks before the show and enjoyed a break in the shade while watching the show.

Last year, my friend Michelle and I had a year-long battle on Buzz Lightyear’s Astro Blasters. We kept track of our scores whenever we rode it together over the entire year. This year the battle is going to be Michelle, Dani, and me and we are not going to just do the total score for the year (I only won last year because I had one really amazing game), but instead the average for the entire year. I’m glad we made that decision because on the first game Michelle and I both had laser guns that didn’t seem to work and Dani had the best game! It was so good that she ended up in 4th place for the entire day at Disneyland!

By this time, it had gotten dark and we have all discovered how much better it is to ride the Jungle Cruise at nighttime. It’s still silly, but it looks more interesting in the dark than it does when it’s light out. And the skipper we had this time had some pretty funny jokes that we hadn’t heard before. I love that they are getting more creative with the jokes and I hear new material more often.

Even though we were all a bit tired (and it still felt warm outside), we weren’t quite ready to end our Disney day. We went over to Indiana Jones to ride that because it had been a while since we had been on it and we ended our day with some Dole Whips and watching the show in the Enchanted Tiki Room.

While there was nothing too exceptional about this Disney day (except Dani and her crazy high score on Buzz Lightyear), it was still an amazing day. I just love getting to spend time with my friends at Disneyland and I love that we don’t have to make it into an event each time we are there. We can relax, take our time, and ride or not ride whatever we want. There is no stress to make it a special day and I realize how privileged I am to have that. I know that not everyone can have an average day at Disneyland and I love that that’s exactly what I had this week.

My pass is up for renewal in 2 weeks and I’ll be renewing it again for sure. It is not a cheap thing, but it’s so worth it to me. I would want to go to the parks as often as I do if I didn’t have a pass, and that would be so expensive. I easily get my money’s worth with my pass and it saves me so much money. I’ve been trying to budget for it all year and I think I should be fine with getting it. But if not, I will figure out a way to make it affordable for me.

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