I’ve been back from Disneyland for a couple of days now. I’m all rested up (haha, funny you you need rest from a vacation) and unpacked (finally). I’m not going to blabber too much about my trip — if you have me on Facebook, you can probably see the pictures there, at least the ones tagged of me. They pretty much speak for themselves. But I’ll also give a short run down of what went down in California:
We left around 11pm or midnight and drove down to Seattle, arriving at about 3 or 4am. Our flight doesn’t take off till 9:20am and we didn’t have to be at the airport until 7am — the reason we arrived so ridiculously early is because we got bored of waiting to go, so we thought, “Hey … let’s just go NOW!” So we did. And somehow, the universe decided us arriving at the airport extremely early and waiting an extra 3-4 hours isn’t enough; our flight got delayed until 11:30am!
We eventually made it to Long Beach Airport (one of my friends doesn’t like LAX apparently), got our stuff and shuttled our way to our hotel. We pretty much did nothing the first day as it was the middle of the afternoon when we arrived, so we just napped in our hotel and ate at the Disney Jazz Kitchen in Downtown Disney (easily the most expensive meal we had all vacation). Speaking of our hotel though (er, motel, really), I have a feeling two of my friends have never been in a motel before. They appeared to be accustomed to HOTELS because they acted as if our motel was “ghetto”. One of the two friends did an extensive search of the mattress and sheets for bugs >> Honestly, it was a cheap motel, but it was by no means a dirty place or anything. It’s a Travelodge =\ Which is kind of like a Holiday Inn.
We went to Universal Studios the first day, where I got both my shoulders severely burnt and couldn’t wear any tank tops or shoulder-exposing tops for the rest of the week. I bought an Audrey Hepburn poster there; sadly that was the only Audrey Hepburn related thing I saw. Kind of irked me when my Marilyn Monroe obsessed friend whined about there being no Marilyn Monroe stuff. There was Marilyn Monroe stuff EVERYWHERE. And next to zero Audrey Hepburn stuff. I think I have a better right to complain.
The rest of the week we spent at Disneyland and California Adventure. Favourite rides were Indiana Jones and Space Mountain. We took a bunch of pictures with the Disney characters, except Disney princesses because they’re all in this one place called the Princess Pavilion now, instead of spread out throughout the park, and we did not want to wait over an hour to take a picture with them. We watched Fantasmic, the night show, and we were there for the premiere of California Adventure’s World of Colour show, which was absolutely amazing, amazing, amazing. Totally would have watched it the second night too, but you needed a ticket for it and it took forever to line up for our tickets.
Speaking of the shows, one night when we watched Fantasmic, we arrived an hour and a half early in order to secure a really good spot to watch the show, right by the railing by the river’s edge. We waited there for an hour and a half. Then, ten minutes before the show was supposed to start, a parent shows up with his kid and asks if he and his kid can stand in front of us, in OUR spot! His reason is that he has a kid. Uh sorry, just because you have a kid doesn’t mean you can expect a spot for you ten minutes before the show, especially when we were there so damn early. We seemed to run into a lot of parents like that, who think their kids deserve to cut in front of us or get special treatment over us because Disneyland should be meant for children (in their opinion anyway). I mean, we let kids stand in front of us for parades and whatnot, because we know they can’t see over us, but we did NOT appreciate being treated as if we aren’t allowed there by many parents. No, you cannot take our spots. No, you cannot cut in front of us in line. It’s just so rude. The happiest place on earth is meant for everybody! (BTW my friend politely told the father he could not take our spot and he left without confrontation, whew).
Also, we despise strollers. People don’t LOOK when they’re pushing those things, and if they ram it into YOU, it’s YOUR fault because you jolted their kid. Ugh.
We also spent the rest of the week eating dinner at the gas station next to our motel. Theme park food is really expensive, so eating it once a day for lunch is enough. And there’s nothing but other inns and motels around our motel, except for that gas station. The closest McDonald’s is far enough that you’d have to cab there.
Anyway, Disneyland was loads and loads of fun. I’m really glad we all got along, the five of us. With girls, things can get catty sometimes, especially when you are with one another 24/7. We only had a problem with one person, but thank goodness we didn’t need to have any confrontations or anything. See, two of my friends are the kind of friends who, while they certainly like one another, cannot spend more than a certain amount of time in the same room without eventually pissing one another off with something petty. Basically, Friend A was bitching and whining and complaining about EVERYTHING — long line-ups, the sun, strollers, theme park food, prices, the motel, anything you can think of. She also was more interested in shopping than actually enjoying the theme park. Friend A is also easily irked by Friend B. The thing is, Friend B is more reasonable and down to earth, so Friend B did nothing to annoy the rest of us, so in reality, it was only Friend A who was being the stick in the mud. It ended up with all of us talking about Friend A behind her back at several points during the trip. Friend A would talk about Friend B behind her back but she was the only one doing so. It’s all very confusing I know. Anyway, it turns out Friend A never really wanted to come to Disneyland with us in the first place because she wanted to go with her boyfriend and not us, but her mother persuaded her it’d be more fun with the girls. Yeah, right, not if she was complaining about it the entire time … I mean, we love her but we’d probably never invite her to vacation with us again. Her vacation style just doesn’t mesh with ours (plus, while she has problems with Friend B, we definitely don’t).
I didn’t buy that much for myself, but still ended up spending a lot of money on gifts because things were pretty expensive. I got myself this book, Fairest Of All, (which is a novel about the Wicked Queen in Snow White), a Jasmine picture frame (she’s my favourite princess — I really wanted the Tiana one too, but my suitcase is tiny and I couldn’t fit too much stuff in it), another picture frame with A Whole New World lyrics on it and a World of Color blanket (which sold out SUPER fast, I’m so glad I got one, it felt nice to have it wrapped around me when I was watching the premiere of the show). I got my first sister a Belle picture frame and a Belle music box (guess who her favourite princess is) and my second sister got Winnie the Pooh earrings, Mickey Mouse earrings and a Finding Nemo picture frame 
For Clayton, I bought him a Mickey and Pluto picture clip (you know, those kinds of picture holders where you clip the photo on), Mickey Mouse brand coffee flavoring sprinkles and a box of chocolates from Universal Studios called “Oral Pleasure” hahaha, I thought that was interesting.
Anyway I’ve been home for several days now, and I’ve been rewatching a bunch of Disney and Pixar movies because I’m still in such a Disney mood, haha. I watched like ten movies in 3 days, crazy!
Apologies for my moment of sappiness.