President's Day at Disneyland

Last December when my family was planning their big Christmas trip to Disneyland, I was faced with a challenge, which tickets do I purchase. We were going to be there 6 days, and they only sell 5 day tickets, so I would have to buy another day, which was going to be a ridiculous amount of money for one day, or I was going to have to sit at the hotel – right next to Disneyland – and not be able to go in. I didn’t think that would work well for me either. So I went to a third alternative, and purchased Annual Passes for myself and Matt. OK, so that cost more than even just adding the one day, but we could go back as much as we wanted. And of course we would want to go to Disneyland a lot right? Hey – it made sense at the time.

So we decided to take a trip to Disneyland for President’s Day, since we both had it off of work. I haven’t had a vacation in February for years, since I had been working in public accounting and February is one of the “dark months”. So I was SO excited to go. I like to think that Matt was excited too. I also played it off that this was our 6 month anniversary, and we deserved a trip for having made it six months without anyone getting hurt.

So, on Saturday morning at 3:30 I woke up and started to get ready to go. Our flight left at 6:05am from the Salt Lake City airport, and I am a weirdo when it comes to flying. I have to be to the airport early! I just HAVE TO. So we left about four and parked the car and rode the shuttle, stood in the line, then stood in the security line, then we made it to the gate not too early. I was happy to be there and to see the plane waiting for us. We flew Jet Blue which is nice. It does have more leg room, and I love the DirectTV they have in the seats. That is fun. Matt was good and slept the flight away, I was wide awake and watched TV.

We got to Long Beach, or as we call it “Bob’s Airport” (because it looks like some guy just decided to have an airport and put some pre-fab buildings up and called them terminals) and waited for our bag to come off. Then we went over to the rental car counter and incountered a problem. When I first made the reservation I went for cheap, and rented the economy (that’s car rental lingo for “very little car”). We decided to change that and I found a coupon that would let us pay for midsize and upgrade for free to intermediate. I thought I had booked that, but we got to the counter and I car was an economy. To upgrade would have cost another $40 or so, so Matt bit the bullet and we took the tiny car.

Actually, the car worked out well. It was a bright yellow – something (I can’t remember!) but if you pushed the chairs all the way back, we fit nicely. No one else could have fit, but they didn’t have to. So we were off. I had borrowed Preston’s friend Stu (a GPS) and he set us on our way to Disneyland. We happily followed his directions – except for a small stop at McDonalds for breakfast – and he got us safely to Disneyland. We played most of the day, and went to the Jazz kitchen to eat lunch (I LOVE the grits there. Yummy YUMMY!) Then we checked into our hotel and took a nap (since I had been up since 3:30mountain time) it was nice, but we made it back to Disneyland in time to watch the Electric Light Parade. Good day.

Sunday we went back to Disneyland, this time with the mission of finding Hidden Mickey’s. We purchased a book at the park that tried to explain where a bunch of these Mickey’s were. At first I was very discouraged because it seemed like some of the Mickeys were not that “hidden” and others were not really “Mickeys”. But there were a few that we saw that made me smile, and that is what we were going for. We had another great day at Disneyland. It was wonderful weather, if not a little crowded. Saturday is also the day that I took Matt on the Canoes. We went so fast that we passed two other canoes and the river boat. We would have had the pirate ship too, but we had to dock. But it was fun. We also watched the fireworks, which were fun.

Monday was our last day of vacation, so we took it kind of slow. We went to the park and made sure we had purchased all needed souvenirs and such, then we used our last few fastpasses and found a few more Mickeys and then it was time for Stu to lead us back to the airport. This is where he tried to get us killed by telling us our exit was on the left when it was on the right, but luckily I was paying attention and we made the exit safely (and hopefully legally). I was afraid of LA traffic, since we were leaving the park around 5, but it was not bad at all and we had time to stop for some food before getting to the airport, and time in the airport for Matt to do the world’s easiest crossword puzzle. I learned from the girl sitting next to us on the flight that sushi is not good airplane food. Our flight got in at about 11, and we were home and in bed by 12:30am, and to work by 8:00 the next morning (that is the sad part) but it was a good trip.