Which led us to (drumroll):
Christmas at Disneyland! For those wondering, Christmas at Disneyland is totally packed. Neither of us had ever been to the California parks (although I'd been to Disneyworld, which it turns out Magic Kingdom and Disneyland are just about the same), so it was a fun adventure. There were a lot of people with t-shirts that said things like "DISNEYLAND CHRISTMAS 2012" and stuff like that. It was actually not SO crazy busy at the very beginning of the day, but by the evening it was impossible to do anything without at least a 45-minute wait. That was frustrating given how beat up my feet were (we got there around 8am and went back to the hotel around 11:30pm).
We read the Christmas story in Luke and opened a few presents on Christmas Eve so we could do a Google Hangout with my family. (I wanted to see them open my gifts for them and we opened a couple from my parents). Then we did stockings and the rest of our gifts first thing in the morning. Some of our coolest gifts were a 1-terabyte external hard drive loaded with family pictures from Jon's side, and a Food Saver vacuum packer from my parents. (As soon as we got home, Jon pulled out the plastic containers that came with it and started vacuum-packing marshmallows and water and stuff like that to see what would happen. FYI I married an engineer. Later he marinated some chicken and vacuum-packed it to freeze, though.) Also Jon got me a pillow I've been wanting for years (I wrote down all the information on the tag for a pillow I liked at a hotel once, and looked it up online, but hadn't bought it yet), and I got him an Oaklandish t-shirt (which he had been talking about wanting). We missed being with our families, but it was good to still talk to them and see them at least via webcam.
After all that, we had breakfast in the hotel restaurant and then headed off to the park! Here are some pictures of our day. Highlight: we like the space rides. We rode Space Mountain and Space Tours two times each and used Fast Passes for them. We really spent most of our time in Tomorrowland. We also had fun with the monorail and Downtown Disney and the Indiana Jones ride. The Finding Nemo ride was kinda fun, too.
It was all very Christmasy. Please enjoy that last picture from the Indiana Jones ride. We also loved the fireworks show and the fake snow. It was magical. Here are a couple of videos we took, too. They post tiny but there is that full-screen feature if you want to be able to see them bigger.
The beginning of the day (our first two rides of the day were Star Tours and Space Mountain):
The middle of the day (when we were super tired and took the monorail to Downtown Disney for a little break):
The end of the day (just after the fireworks show when the street lamps started spouting fake snow and it was magical):
Merry Christmas!
Hahahaha, I was laughing about the skulls-on-sticks picture right when I got to your comment about enjoying "that last picture from the Indiana Jones ride" :D
ReplyDeleteYesssss. The abruptness of it is just so great.
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