Visiting Mickey

We are back from a wonderful vacation to Disneyland. Shawn's work has a yearly private party at Dsineyland, we have been once but it is usally right after Christmas and during school so we haven't made it back since the first time. This year it happened to fall on Athena's early realease day for the month and right before MLK weekend so we could make a real vacation out of it! The weather was wonderful, more like June most days. And we got to pretty much walk onto all the rides during the private party so that left plenty of time to do a bunch of things we never get around to doing. We went in Inoventions and Athena got to play in a band.
We rode the Mark Twain, and even made the kids sit through Great Moments With Mr. Lincoln. We all tried out the shooting gallery (I didn't even know it was still there) We also managed to get Athena on the last two rides she was afraid of, Splash Mountain and Tower of Terror. I got to enjoy the best Monte Cristo ever made, and no visit is complete without having a soup bowl.

It was also a lot of fun for me that my kids got to see Captain EO. It is back for a tribute run for a while, I had such a flashback to my teenage years watching it. Then as we were walking out I said I wish they made a t-shirt like the one Michael wears. Guess what? They do! I just had to have it, the funny thing that Hailey noticed in one of the dark rides though is that it glows in the opposite way that his does.

I don't think we missed a single ride in all of Disneyland. I even rode Dumbo, which is something I haven't done since Hailey was old enough to take Athena on herself.

Over in California Adventure we went into the Redwood Wilderness Trail for the first time and had fun climbing, swinging and meeting a bear. We were all a little shocked at how fast the swinging gondolas swung on Mickey's fun wheel, but managed to survive the ride.

I have to say one of my favorite things about this trip was the new water show, World of Color. It was truly amazing, I recommend planning a trip this year just to see that! I will never need to stop in Vegas to see the fountains at the Bellagio again.

There was also a nighttime thing going on called ElecTRONica. They had the Hollywood Pictures back lot all decked out like TRON, complete with Flynn's arcade. There were a bunch of great authentic 80's video games in there. And the cases were amazing, we even saw one like ours. Wish we could find a TRON case that would be cool!

One day Athena got her face painted like a puppy. It was so hard to tell if she was smiling because of the face paint. She got pulled out of the audience to be in a show with the Incredibles and I couldn't tell if she was having a good time or not because the puppy mouth made her look sad the whole time.

It was a wonderful trip. I loved having Athena at an age, height, bravery level that we never had to split up. Yet her face would still light up at the sight of one of her favorite characters. I can't wait to go back after the new Ariel ride opens to check that out!