Day 2 – First day at Disneyland

The last time my wife and I were in Disneyland was 14 years ago for our honeymoon. Philip got to go on a day trip thanks to Dreams Take Flight 4 years ago. The other two had never been before. So it was exciting for me to walk through those gates again. Even more exciting was watching the expressions on my kids faces. The first ride of the day was Space Mountain. I am not a roller coaster fan but my wife is and she convinced me that I went on it 14 years ago. I am still sure that I didn’t. This time it was also Halloween so it had added scary projections. The bottom line is that only Mommy and Philip liked it. Ian spent the ride with his head buried in mommy’s arm. I practically crushed Margaret’s arm and she kept her eyes closed. I had promised her before the ride that I would not make her go on it again and I would not let mommy make her go either. We both swore we would never go on it again.

The next ride I can’t remember the name of but the cool thing was the Praying Mantis sitting on a leaf as we were waiting in line. I always like finding wildlife in strange places. Margaret also saw a lizard of some kind on the sidewalk but it scooted into the brush before anyone else saw it.

They had a display of all the Iron Man suits that was cool to look at but even better was the interactive where you could become Iron Man on a screen. It used a camera to put you on the screen and then it built the suit around you. Ian was the most fun to watch as he got so excited. There was a bunch of teens recording him on their phones. I checked for Youtube uploads but I couldn’t find one of him.

My favorite ride was Pirates of the Caribbean. The last time we were here was before the movies so it was cool to see the changes that had been made. Since the movies had been based on the ride there were not a lot of changes. They did however put in references to Captain Jack. I also remember the ride from the very first time I was there and that was back in 1978 so it obviously left an impression on me then.

Lunch was good but I came to the conclusion that I needed to plan food. Eating wherever we happen to be when we get hungry results in burgers. While that was fine I was not willing to do it everyday and I knew there was good food in the parks.

We also went on the Finding Nemo ride that had been updated from the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. That was actually the first ride that made us realize the changes that had occurred to some of the rides since our last visit, 14 years ago. The funniest bit was the three animatronic seagulls that woke every once in a while with a chorus or ‘mine mine mine mine…’ I grabbed a photo of them with one of their real brethren. We also went on Star Tours that didn’t exist 14 years ago. That was cool as I am a Star wars fan.

We got through to about 8pm, by that point everyone was to tired to continue and we walked back to our hotel room. It was a bit of a long walk after a day at the park but we made it.

I will be posting more on our trip on a mostly daily basis so come back tomorrow to hear more.

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