Disneyland 2019

(Longest post ever!!)

Our Disneyland Trip was fast and jam packed with fun.

My girls are getting sneaky as they age.

It started like this...

Tayler has been applying every week for the last year to go to the Ellen show.

In mid September she received an email that informed her she had been chosen and could bring 3 lucky friends to the show on October 8th in Burbank California.

Tayler was ECSTATIC...

She invited Saige, Kenna and I to go with her.

We were going to have a quick trip to California to see Ellen.

Everyone paying their own way.

We booked our flights using our $100 credits from our long China trip delay... making out tickets $29.

This is where the story starts sounding like the "If you give a Mouse a Cookie" book.

* Since we were already going to California... we might as well go to the "Oogie Boogie Bash" at Disneyland one evening. (Disney's Halloween Party.)

*We booked flights before finding out that "the Oogie Boogie Bash" was sold out... so we might as well go to Disneyland that day instead.

* Saige was feeling SO bad that Jadyn and Lydia would feel so left out if we all go to Disneyland without them..

* Plus if we used out United vouchers we would still want to take another trip to use theirs before April.

*  Valid points... so I booked Lydia and Jadyn tickets and now it turned into a full "girls trip".

*  But... if they come, and I stay with the younger girls during Ellen... there'll be an extra ticket that shouldn't go to waste.

* So... I invited Shane (who still hadn't heard any of this trip since it transpired over a 4 hour period, pretty much through text hahaha) and he would stay with Lydia and Jadyn while we go to the Ellen show so we wouldn't waste the Ellen ticket.

*  Which then only left Jaden out. :(  (I invited him, but he had to work because of all of his hunting. haha)

* Of course the $29 "cheap" ticket prices using out vouchers on our flight were sold out by now.  So Shane's was going to be $250 using the voucher...  I ended up booking him on a Delta flight using miles.  We'd have to wait an hour each way for each other, but it would be fine.

(Which actually turned out that I had accidently booked him on a 7 am flight coming home NOT 7 pm...

that added some confusion when he noticed standing in line at California Adventure!!  Grrrr)

* Then my girls made the point that it was only logical that if we're going to Disneyland anyway... we should probably get a 2 day pass instead of a 1 day park hopper ticket.

*  Which then led to... how do I pay for the 2 youngest and make the older 3 pay for themselves?

Can you see the scenario playing out?

The moral to the story is...

Our quick, cheap trip.

Was not CHEAP at all! ;)

I'm going to add the price here for future reference. 

The other night we were looking through scrapbooks and saw that our...

5 DAY park HOPPER tickets to Disney World in 2001...

were $115 per person!

bahahahahahahaa

That is Crazy!!

Currently in 2019... 

a 2 DAY non-park hopper ticket to Disneyland...

 is $225...

Or $1575 for a family of 7.

It's no wonder Shane doesn't like Disney...

I told them all it was their Christmas...

but since it's almost Christmas now and I keep buying more than I should...

...it was a very smart way for my kids to get an extra trip in!!

Kudos to them. ;) ;) ;)

***

If you watched Tayler's video you can see that we surprised Lydia and Jadyn.

It wasn't easy... some of us are better at secrets than others...

cough cough... Shane and Saige.

We told them the night before that the "girls" were going to SLC for the weekend (hence no Jaden) and that we would be staying in a hotel and watching conference there.

+

Shane had a "job" in California so we'd be dropping him off at the airport BEFORE going to the hotel.

We did a pretty great job with that plan.

I think Jadyn MAY have had an idea something was up... but Lydia was clueless!

It was soooo fun!!

The "girls" flight was great...

We landed at 7 PM at LAX and walked from terminal 2 - to terminal 7 to wait for Shane's flight.

His was delayed an hour.

He finally arrived at 8:45.

We were all anxious to get to the hotel for a good nights sleep and an early morning start.

Of course the car rental took longer than we wanted.

And we finally arrived at our hotel @ approx. 10:45 PM. (11:45 our time).

The Clarion.

We've stayed there before.

It's fine.

It's pretty cheap and close enough to walk to Disney.

But this stay didn't go as smoothly.

I waited in line for an hour.

A FULL HOUR before I even spoke to anyone.

They were frazzled... me too.

I knew something was wrong as soon as she typed our name in and said oh crap...

They were overbooked.

They didn't have the "Junior Suite" I had booked.

(I booked it through Getaway today before I knew we would have Shane... there were no cancellations.. so that suite slept 6.  Lydia would already need to be on the floor.)

They had one room left.

with 2 double beds.

I told them that would NOT work and they would need to find us a comparable hotel.

The lady called around and said everywhere was booked.

(PS I could see on travelocity that there was availability but then at midnight it didn't show anything for that day... just the next night).

They were not helpful, nor very apologetic and told me I would need to work something out with "Getaway Today" because they couldn't offer me a refund or discount.

Oh... and we would need to check out in the am BEFORE leaving for Disney @ 7:30 am.

Have all of our luggage stored in their "closet" and then recheck in that night.

Remember we stay at the park until the 12 am closing.

Long story short at 1:15 am... 2.5 hours after arriving at the hotel... we got into our room... the one with the 2 double beds for 7 of us.

We were all bugged.

But actually in pretty good spirits... I mean we were going to Disneyland the next day!

The night was short + not very comfortable for the 3 on the floor... and btw not very comfortable for Shane and I in the double bed.

+ Poor Tayler had a nasty cold and was not feeling well at all... of course we all wanted to avoid that!

(I didn't avoid it... but at least I didn't come down with it until the day we were home.)

We headed downstairs for breakfast.
Checked out of our room... with a promise all would be well when we checked back it.
 Checked in all our luggage at the luggage hold place.
And were off for our day @ Disneyland!!

We had payed for the "max pass tickets" and it was worth it.
We did everything more than once and had a fantastic time all day.

Lydia loved to be our navigator... and REALLY didn't like it when she wasn't the only one with an idea of where we should go next. haha



We waited for pictures with a few characters, but not that many... which the older girls were happy about!

It's super nice having lots of photographers in the family!

Who doesn't want a laughing pic with Minnie?!?

Well now that I say that I guess not Shane. hahahaha

We all love Space Mountain.

Disney has some seriously good food...

You may notice we "ate" a few things in these 2 days.  hahaha

Shane wasn't ready...

Good thing we got one last picture on this bridge...
apparently the next week someone was jumping and broke through.
They closed it indefinitely!

Splash Mountain was an adventure.
We had a fast pass and got right on.
But then got stuck on the ride half-way through.
After 30 minutes of sitting on the ride we "evacuated" and went out through the back lot.
It was fun to see "behind the scenes" + we got another fast pass to go on any other ride.

Jadyn was overjoyed that we hadn't finished the ride and didn't have to go down the "big hill".
(The big hill that I think isn't nearly as big as she remembers it as...)
But she hates it.
She was NOT happy when we made her go again.
You can't see Jadyn because she's ducking down behind Shane so we can't see her and laugh at her face in the picture. :(
Tayler and I were happy for our ponchos.
Kenna was soaked all the way through even before the big drop hahahaha
Hence her "I'm pissed" face.

Star Wars Land.
We aren't huge Star Wars fans, but the details were amazing.
The ride was fun.
I'm sure once they add more rides it will be even cooler.
Jaden would have loved it, we wished he was with us to see it!

Kenna got this tiny diet coke in a star wars bottle.
It was $6... and tasted just like diet coke...

Shane left around 10 pm with Lydia.
Pretty sure that Shane was more than ready to go... but he also wanted to get over to the hotel and make sure everything was in order with our room.
We appreciated him taking care of that for us.
The 5 of us took in more rides and ended the night with more treats.

Churro Toffee.
It's delicious.
It's also $6 for a 3" square piece.
But man it's good, I can taste it right now!

We were exhausted when we got back to our "new" room.
Shane and Lydia had showered.
And guess what...
the shower wasn't draining.  Like 8" up the tub.
That's disgusting and we still had 5 more people to shower.
Shane was NOT happy and called down to tell them so.
They brought us a plunger...

You've got to be kidding.
Nope, the plunger didn't work.
So Shane went down to say we would need another room for us to shower in.
They gave us one.
That night we slept in two seperate rooms.
Personally I was secretly happy for the plugged shower because we sent poor Tayler to the other room with her snotty nose.
One of the sisters went with her, but she wasn't super excited about sharing a bed with her either. hahaha

The next morning we all woke up late...
Some how none of us set an alarm in the main room.
We wanted to be there at opening.
We were not.
The day before we went right through the security line.
This morning... was crammed with people.  It took almost 1/2 hour just to get through security.
There were an exceptional amount of people for a weekday.
Sad.

This picture of Lydia cracks me up.

We also aren't Guardians of the Galaxy fans.
But gosh that was a fun ride!!

We scored fast passes twice so we got to see the "After dark" changes too.

Look at Lydi in the second one, she's trying to be Jaden with his sleeping pics on rides. hahaha

Lobster Nachos...
Yum!  These delicious nachos might just keep Shane coming back to Disneyland.
We had made reservations a couple days before and it was totally worth it!
The comfy chairs and relaxing atmosphere at the Lamplight Lounge was just what we needed.
Kenna, Jadyn and Lydia... they didn't want Lobster Nachos.
They miss out in my opinion.  But they didn't seem to mind letting us eat what we wanted while they had Mac' n cheese cones in Cars Land.

More treats...

and rides...

Lydia :)

Photography by Lydia

What a good day!
We had a blast.
Laughed a lot and loved being together.
We were happy to get back to our room and find that our shower was fixed.
(PS we did end up getting one of the nights reimbursed so we were happy with that. :))

The next morning we slept in just a little and then packed up and headed to Burbank.
We were going to the Ellen show... the whole purpose for the trip.
We had such a fun time!!
It was awesome to see how they run everything and be in the audience!!
We did get chosen for an "interview" to see if we were going to help with parts of the show but ended up not being chosen. hahaha

It was so fun!!
We saw Ellen of course...
and Woody Harrelson,
and Michael Douglas,
and Super M - a Korean boy band hahaha
What awesome memories!!
"cuz when we jumping and popping we jopping"
insert laughing face. hahahha

When Jadyn found out we were going to Disneyland, one of the 1st things she asked was "is there a Temple close??"
I knew she would ask that, so I planned for Shane to take her to the LA Temple while we were at Ellen.
Lydia waited in the front lobby, poor kid.
But of course Jadyn LOVED it.
Gosh I love her love for the Temple. (heart eyes).

Dinner in Burbank @ the Boiling Crab.
Yum Yum Yum At least for me, Tayler and Shane.
Luckily there were lots of other restaurants nearby and the waiter didn't mind at all if they brought food to our table from somewhere else.
They had Chipotle and Panera.

Win, win for all of us!!

Lydia and Jadyn hated everything about this hahaha

Then we were off to our hotel near LAX.
As I mentioned at the first.
I booked Shane's flight wrong.
Sad... but there were some tender mercies.
First, Shane noticed before he missed that morning flight.
Second, I hadn't booked a hotel for that last night.
I don't know why, I honestly never do that.  But if I had, I would have done it late and got a non-refundable hotel.  We probably would have ended up staying in Burbank and I would have had to drive Shane to the airport. Yikes!

So while in California Adventure I booked the Embassy Suites right next to the airport.
Shane was able to take the shuttle at the crack of dawn, (sorry Shane) then drive home from SLC, work that day and came back to get us when our flight got in @ 10 pm.

He missed out on this fun, memorable day though.
We drove to Santa Monica Pier for a couple hours where we explored, shopped and relaxed on the beach.
Then did some more shopping @ "The Grove" in LA.
It was a super fun, restful day.

All in all our quick California trip was totally awesome!!

PS Tay, thanks for getting Ellen tickets....it might not have all happened like we planned...
But it was PERFECT!!!

Merry Christmas! ;)