Disneyland. 2011. Again!

We are back! 

Back from our second Disneyland trip in 2011. 

We had a wonderful time.  To be perfectly honest it wasn't as awesome as when we went in January, but it was still an excellent trip.

There were several reasons why we didn't have quite as good of a time this time around.  Some of them were BIG reasons.  Some were small reasons.  Don't get me wrong. We really did have a fabulous time, but these were the main "issues" we had, ordered from minor to major:

1) Pirates of the Caribbean (our favorite ride) was closed for refurbishment.  It's closed for several months so it's not like we could have changed our trip by a few weeks to have gone on it.

2) There were way fewer characters available for autographs and pictures.  See number 4 for an explanation as to why there weren't a lot of employees milling about in body encapsulating fur covered costumes.

3) It was just ever so slightly more crowded.  Still not crowded like during the summer or over winter break, but there were noticeably more crowds than in January (when we shared the park with about 27 other people).

4) The heat.  My god, the heat.  Tuesday it was in the low 90's.  Wednesday it was 103.  Thursday it was 101.  If it hadn't been so hot we wouldn't have really noticed that there were more people, but waiting in line for 10 minutes when it is 70 degrees is way more tolerable than waiting in line for 10 minutes when it's 103 degrees.

5) There was the issue of me being a patient at Anaheim Regional Medical Center for 17 hours.  I'll talk about that in a future post.  I'm fine.  Elliott is fine.  Those 17 hours were a real damper on the trip though.

It was reeeeeeeeeeeally hard to do, but we kept the whole trip a secret from Spencer until the morning we left.  We told him right after he woke up on Monday.  We actually had the foresight to take a video of us telling him.  It's really cute. I've been working on trying to upload it for, like, 2 hours.  I'm giving up.  I'll try to share it at some other time.

This is Spencer on Monday morning right before we left.

He was ready to go!

Tuesday morning.
On the way to DISNEYLAND!

It was all decked out for Halloween.

We went to Fantasyland first.  For some reason the Peter Pan ride always has a long line and we wanted to go on it first while the line was short(ish).

We bought a real Disneyland sanctioned photo/autograph book this time.  That's why it was disappointing that we didn't meet quite as many characters.

This is Pirates of the Caribbean.

They are either remodeling or fumigating.  Not sure.  Those dirty pirates do go from port to port.

Critter Country was closed in January, so Spencer was pretty thrilled to meet the Winnie the Pooh characters.  And go on the ride.  About 100 times.

The Haunted Mansion was extra spookified for Halloween.

We got our daily dose of ice cream.

This time we actually watched the parade.  We had a great spot and it was a really fun parade.

Spencer was ROCKIN' out to the music.

Best picture.  Ever.

Disneyland closed early on Tuesday  for a special trick or treating night.  Tickets for that were an additonal $50 (each) so we headed to California Adventure to end the day.

Here's what you can look forward to on Day 2:

More characters

Us looking hot and sweaty

Me heading to the ER