Solvang & Disneyland!

Days 10-12

We wanted to get an early start this morning and for the first time since we have been in California we were all ready to go at 9:30!!!! Yay for us!!!

Today was the day that my 2 “babies” were looking forward to. No more looking at trees, waterfalls, jails & castles. Well, not that kind of castle anyways. We are going to Disneyland!!! Being South Floridians, we are WDW vets. I personally have been going to WDW at LEAST 3x a year since Jan. 1972. My girls have been going practically since they were born! Not really, I would never even consider taking a newborn, and I have seen them at WDW too! I bet they even smell new! They each did start going at about 1 ½ though. And now at 16 & 17, they were sitting in the back of the van chanting Disneyland! Disneyland! Disneyland!
We had about a 4-½ hour drive ahead of us so we decided, actually I decided, to split up our
drive with a pit stop in Solvang. Just a quick look around, stretch our legs, use the potty and maybe buy some pastries. We arrived in Solvang at 11:30AM. We parked the car and walked around for a bit. It was getting warm about this time. We had left Cambria at 52 degrees and it was about 78 in Solvang. This is a quaint little town with lots of CLEAN public restrooms.

We looked around some of the shops. Kat found a shop called Katrina’s but they didn’t have anything with her name on it except a magnet. We also bought ice cream & some pastries at one of the bakeries because we are so thin that I was afraid the folks at Disney might think we are anorexic!
We were back on the road at about 12:30 with an ETA at Anaheim of about 3:30.



We had a nice, smooth ride first on the 154 then on the 101. We just had less than 25 miles to go. We were so close to Disneyland that we could practically smell it. It was 3:00 we were right on schedule. Hurray! We start singing It's a world of laughter..... Screeeeeeeeech! That’s the sound of us coming to a complete standstill on I-5. It took us exactly an hour and 16 minutes to get to get off on the Harbor Blvd exit. We live in Miami, we thought we knew what traffic was, I guess not. For the rest of our trip, I promise not to complain about Miami traffic ever again. Well, we pass right in front of Disneyland and point it out to the girls who do not believe that it is the park. “But it’s in the middle of the street!” I told them, just wait…. For once in our life we will get to the Magic Kingdom by actually walking from our motel in about 20 minutes. It felt like when they were younger and I was showing them WDW for the 1st time. Only this time I would be experiencing it myself for the 1st time as well! Just Wait......

We were just a bit off schedule, we arrived at the Candy Cane Inn just a little past 4:30 and check in was a breeze so we were in our room 15 minutes later. The room was better than expected. It was nicely decorated and really clean. I would actually rate it on par with WDW’s moderates maybe even better since it includes breakfast. We unloaded all our crap and Danny got his 1st taste of no elevators! Imagine lugging all our luggage including his over-weight one up the stairs. We freshened up a bit then walked to the most magical place on earth! We walk through the turnstile and totally forget that god-awful traffic. The first thing the girls ask is why there is not a castle. Mind you we haven’t gotten to Main St. yet. Then they see it.

Kari: (pointing at it) There it is! It’s soooo little
Kat: Why is it so tiny?
Anyone hearing this at this point, without knowing what they were talking about, might wonder?????? OK, now get your minds out of the gutter and let’s get back to the castle.
Kari then says: “Ours” is so much bigger, ours is a real castle.
Now I bet ya’ll did not know that “we” had a castle did ya??? That’s Queen Lissy to you!

Anyhoo, we went right into Disneyland’s 1st 50 Years of Film, which is quite cute. Then we decided to just explore a bit and get a lay of the land, per se. Well, it didn’t take that long. So we made our 1st line to ride something that we have at home, Buzz Lightyear. Then we watched the parade and got in line for the Matterhorn. I even rode it, although I hate coasters. It was ok. I won’t ride again but at least I can say I did. Everyone else liked it. We went to see my original Tiki Birds, which I miss dearly! Everybody! “In the tiki, tiki, tiki .. tiki room” Plus I had my Dole Whip Float while we waited. Doesn’t get any better than that. We also rode the Haunted Mansion, It’s a Small World, Pooh, and Danny & the girls rode Thunder Mountain before we left.

They close out entire areas of the park for the fireworks which we weren’t aware of so we spent about 1/2 hour just wandering around along with the herd trying to figure out where to go. We passed by Pirates and lamented the fact that we wouldn’t be able to ride it this trip. We finally decided to just go back to the motel since we were supposed to get a very early start the next day. The park opens at 6:30 AM! So we drag our bodies out to the shuttle stop at 10:45, did you really think we were going to walk back???? The magic of walking to & from the park wore off really quick! Enough for today. I guess Disneyland needs more than 1 entry!

I LOVE DOPEY!!!