10 Years

Jacob and I celebrated our 10-year anniversary in August of 2015. We had many discussions leading up to August about what (if anything) we should do to commemorate. In the end, he left it up to me and I decided I wanted to go to Disneyland by ourselves. I have really fallen in love with Disneyland on our previous trips and I was curious to see how I liked it with just adults.

I planned the whole trip, including where we stayed. I really wanted to try staying within walking distance, which is more expensive, but saves you the cost and time of dealing with the parking garage.

Our actual anniversary was on Tuesday, so we left Monday after I finished work and drove out in a rental car. The only two highlights from the drive were the crazy dust/wind storm that we drove through (kinda scary) and the suspect white truck that we decided to tail for a while (also kinda scary).

   We arrived just as the fireworks show was starting in the park so I got to watch that from the hotel parking lot while we unloaded the car and got checked in. I was super unimpressed with the hotel I had selected. It's amazing what one can do with pictures. ;) I remember being quite upset that I hadn't gotten us a nicer room and even considered checking out early and trying to find a different place. I think it's safe to say that I've learned my lesson about pre-paying for hotel rooms.

First thing Tuesday morning, we headed out to California Adventure. I was a little sad that they were out of Anniversary buttons at the gate but that's what I get for not being there the second the park opened. I was worried I'd lose my nerve to ride California Screamin', which is basically the biggest roller coaster in the park, so we headed there first. And then Jacob made us wait to be sure we were in the front. I was not amused. Jacob was disappointed when they told him he could just leave his backpack in the car at his feet for the ride - apparently that makes it not a "REAL" roller coaster even though it goes pretty fast (for me) and even goes upside-down at one point.

After that, we just started hitting every ride that looked remotely interesting. We got FastPasses for the Cars ride pretty early because the line for that is always crazy. I think we ended up riding almost every ride at least once, some multiple times. I know we skipped Grizzly River Rapids because I didn't feel like getting wet. It was hot but it wasn't Phoenix hot. It was a lot of fun to be together just the two of us, but we spent lots of time talking about which of our kids would like this ride, and what route we should take with the kids the next time we came back with them.

I did get a little grumpy at one point (that's mandatory for theme park trips, right?) and we took a break out of the park. I almost spent a disgusting amount of money on a massage at the Grand Californian hotel (50 minutes that would have cost more than the cost of our tickets for two days) but I backed out at the last minute. We also did some shopping in Downtown Disney and I picked out my first fancy watch from Fossil.

At the end of the night, we headed over to World of Color. I recall Jacob being grumpy then because we didn't start lining up early enough though he may recall that differently. We did end up having not the best spot but we did our best to see around people. #shortpeopleproblems Once we realized that the nice, open area where no one had to line up was for the dining packages, we knew what we were doing on our next trip.

On Wednesday, we got up a bit earlier since we knew that we'd have more things to hit in Disneyland. I don't remember anymore the exact order we hit the rides, but again, we got to ride pretty much everything we wanted to ride. I know we purposely missed Splash Mountain (still not hot enough for me), the Tiki Room (Jacob's request), It's a Small World, and a couple of the other kid-type rides in Fantasyland. We definitely hit Star Tours, Space Mountain, Winnie the Pooh (my personal fav) and Thunder Mountain Railroad.

TIGGER!!!

Dole Whip...mmm...

I hadn't planned to see the nighttime show that Disneyland had at the time, Fantasmic, though I (thought) I'd heard great things about it from our friend, Jacob Webb, who is quite the Disney connoisseur. When I told him about our trip later, he told me that he had never seen Fantasmic so now I don't know who recommended it!

Anyway, we were randomly walking past the FastPass station for Fantasmic and I mentioned that I had kind of wanted to see it but I was more interested in getting a really good spot for the fireworks. We ended up talking to one of the workers there and she recommended that we Definitely make time for Fantasmic and even hinted that it might be going on hiatus soon. Then she told us that they had been working on making the fireworks more watchable from other places in the park to help with congestion, including the prime spot for Fantasmic. So we ended up with FastPasses to the earlier show and plans to watch the fireworks from there.

The rest of that day is a bit of a blur - we just kept finding different rides and having a great time. We also hit up one of my favorite stage shows at Disneyland, Mickey and the Magic Paintbrush. We still spent a lot of discussion on what we wanted to show the kids on our next trip to Disneyland.

I do remember feeling really dumb when I kept asking the one worker where the FastPass kiosk was for the Peter Pan ride. I must have been tired because it took me several minutes to understand that even with a two hour line, there was no FastPass option for the ride.

One other fun thing was that we had gotten FastPasses for the Indiana Jones ride at one point. When we came back to redeem them, the ride appeared to be closed. But just as we were about to walk away, it reopened. Jacob told me to put the FastPasses back in my bag and get in the regular line. Of course, there was no wait. So we basically walked onto the ride, enjoyed, and then went back in with our FastPasses and rode it again about 10 minutes later. Ah, the little miracles of Disneyland. :)

Fantasmic was AMAZING. Disney always does a great job with their shows but we were both completely blown away. I'm pretty sad that the show is now on hiatus until they finish the Star Wars expansion but I can't wait to see it again!

We stayed in the same place for the fireworks and the worker was right, it was a pretty great view. I have to admit, I got chills when it started snowing in August during "Let It Go". I was a little concerned that there was stuff going on in front of the castle but I YouTubed the view from the front of the castle when we got home, and we saw all the same things someone up there did.

  

Our trip fell during Disneyland's Diamond celebration for their 60th anniversary, so the castle was all kinds of glittery.

We finished up the night by standing in line for almost 90 minutes to ride Peter Pan. I remembered loving that ride at DisneyWorld when we went there years ago and I had heard if you're in line with the park closes that they don't kick you out until you get on the ride (that proved accurate). The ride was a little different than I remembered but still pretty fun. Probably not worth the wait (in my opinion - no haters), at least not with kids.

We had a leisurely ride home the next day and were happy to see our kids again. It was a great anniversary trip with lots of good memories. It had been a really long time since we'd had time away without the kids so that was good for us. It definitely just increased my appetite to take the kids back to Disneyland and spoiler alert: we did.