Trip to LA

I had decided to take the kids to Disneyland. We drove down there on Friday, 5/22/09, after work. We left at 4:30pm, and we still hit some traffic in Gilroy. We stopped for dinner at In'n'Out. Augustin discovered he loved ketchup.

We arrived at like 2am in our beds. The next morning, we purchased two-day park hopper tickets in the hotel lobby, before walking across to the resort.

We were there at 8am, which you have to do if you want to do a few rides. We arrived a bit earlier, and waited by the Magic Morning gate (the early gate for the VIPs) which turns into a regular gate at 8am. So we did not have to line up like the people waiting for the regular gates to open. We did a boat ride in the jungle, then pirate of the Caribbeans, in the New-Orleans corner of the park.

Eustache did Splash Mountain, and loved it. Aema was too short for it.

We did a few more rides: Toy Story, Star Wars, and here, pictures of Autopia and of riding the horse pulled car.

Then we left the park for a lunch at Millies...

...and for fun play in the hotel pool. We stayed at the Howard Johnson across the park, mostly because we wanted to be walking distance so we could go in and out. But the hotel turned out great, because: 1) they comped us a night because they canceled our reservation due to our late arrival; 2) they had this pirate pool play area that the kids loved.

We went back to the park for "It's a Small World" ride and fireworks. We tried to go back to Fantasyland, but it was too seriously backed up with crowds of people, it was not fun at all.

The next morning, bright and early again, we went to Fantasyland so we could fly on Dumbo the Flying Elephant (just a short ride on a merry-go-round) and then we went to Toon's Town. The Roger Rabbit ride was a hit, the kids did it 3 times. They met Mickey and Minnie.

There is a petting zoo, where they are obsessive about picking up the poop. Don't even think about changing a diaper in plain sight at Disney.

Eustache climbed up Tarzan's tree house as we walked back.

We had a mediocre lunch at Denny's, and after a nap (in the car, we had checked out) and some swimming in the other HoJo pool (a deep pool where Aema figured out it was fun to jump. She used to be scared of it, but no more! She jumped maybe a hundred times), we went to the other park next door, California Adventure. It was much less crowded, much more relaxing, with plenty of fun rides to do. That's where we should have gone in the afternoon the day before as well.

We drove up to LA, where I had reserved a room at the Marriott. We arrived there at 11pm, the kids pretty much had some McDonald's fries for dinner, Yoriko and I ordered some Thai noodles for the hotel room. I had picked the hotel because it was a block off the starting line of the LA marathon.

The hotel also was walking distance from the LA Modern Art Museum and Disney Hall.

We drove back at around 7pm, and were home by 12:30am. The kids had a blast, and I ran my race, so everyone was super happy.