Stories of the BACT pack: Disneyland trip report... it's smokin'!

Well, that was a Disneyland trip like no other! Let’s start at the beginning.

We were supposed to go with my parents to Disneyland on Saturday. The day before, my mom called and offered to pay for a hotel room if we’d like to go down that evening instead of waking up at dark-thirty on Saturday morning. After reserving two rooms at the Anabella (with the micechat rate- woohoo!), we were on our way.

We did hit some heavy traffic on the 57, so it ended up taking about 3 hours to get there, but it would have been worse if we had taken the 5. We checked in and headed over to the new Anaheim Gardenwalk and got right in at California Pizza Kitchen. After dinner, we did a bit of shopping and then headed back to the room to get some sleep.

Apparently, some among us didn’t think sleep was all that important, since Tyler didn’t calm down and close his eyes until about 10:30pm.

Bright and early Saturday morning, we were up and at ‘em and ready to go. After breakfast, we commented at how lucky we were that the wind seemed to be blowing the smoke from all the wildfires away from us. During the course of the day, we heard that the 5 freeway and a bunch of others were closed, so we were thankful that we had decided to come down the previous night!

Our first stop was the Peter Pan ride. While we headed to that line, we sent Brian over to get Space Mountain fast passes. He made it back to the Peter Pan line, which was fabulously short, just in time to join us before we boarded our pirate ship. Neither of the kids particularly liked it, even though I think it’s the best ride in Fantasyland.

After our trip to Neverland, we made a beeline for Indiana Jones, which only had a 10 minute wait for stand-by. Here we had our first experience with child swap, where Brian and I rode first while my parents stayed with the kids, and then we switched. It worked great, though by the time we had our turn at riding, the stand-by line still wasn’t that long. Nice feature, though! Colby was apprehensive about the ride, even though he’s been on it once before, but by the time we got off, he was a regular ol’ adventurer.

About that time, CA Adventure was about to open, so we headed over there, hoping to avoid a long line for Toy Story Midway Mania. They opened the turnstiles a little before 10:00am, so that gave us a few minutes to stop in and rent a couple of strollers, which turned out to be the best purchases of the day. :)

We got onto the Toy Story ride within about 15 minutes, and everybody really enjoyed the ride. I even beat my video-game pro husband’s score! Up until this point, we hadn’t had too much trouble with the smoke, but after we got off Toy Story, the wind must have changed. The sky was brown and our breathing was definitely being affected. I even got flakes of ash in my teeth a couple times! We wanted to get a few more rides in CA out of the way before lunch, so we trudged on.

We did Soarin’ and tried to ride Tower of Terror, but just as we got there, they were sending everyone out of line and saying they didn’t know when the ride would be back up. The kids had gone with Grandma and Papa to the Bug’s Life 4-D show, so we took the opportunity to check out the new preview center. Personally, I really can’t wait for the Little Mermaid ride and Cars Land, though I’m of the camp that they should have named it Radiator Springs.

Once we met up with the gang, Monsters Inc. was the next ride on the agenda. The kids *love* this ride! Luckily for the adults, since we always end up riding it 2-3 times in a row, the line is always short and there’s no lack of new details to see each time.

After Monsters, we were all getting hungry, but instead of finding a place to eat our PB&J’s, my dad suggested we find somewhere indoors to dine. After a run-in with an unnecessarily rude security person as we left the baggage check area (we didn’t realize we had to take our name label out of the strollers, and she was none too patient with us about it), we made our way to ESPN Zone for some cheese fries and fresh air.

The break did a world of good; when we came out of the restaurant, we could actually take a deep breath! We were thinking we might have had to leave mid-day, but a lot of the smoke had lifted by the time we finished lunch, so we forged on. Throughout the rest of the day, the heavy smoke came in spurts, but for the most part it was bearable.

After lunch, we headed back to Disneyland, only to find that somewhere along the way, we had lost one of our not-yet-validated annual pass tickets! After a frantic search and several of us almost having heart attacks, Brian glanced over and noticed the pass on the ground about 10 feet away! He ran over and grabbed it, and we all breathed a huge sigh of relief!

Passes firmly in hand, we came to one of the most exciting parts of the day- validating our official annual passes for the first time ever! Ugly pictures aside, they’re really cool and we can’t wait to make good use of them. Thanks mom and dad!!!

With the freeways mostly closed, and everyone else staying inside away from the smoke, we almost had the place to ourselves most of the day. We did lots of shopping (tons of cute Christmas stuff!) and of course more rides: Space Mountain, Buzz, Pooh, and we even got to unexpectedly ride Nemo since the line was only 30 minutes long! One of the best things about this ride is that you can bring your strollers through the line with you, which is invaluable in a relatively long line with tired kids. This was the second time I had ridden Nemo, and I have to say it was better the second time around.

During one of our many shopping stops (did I mention the Christmas merchandise??), I pulled out my wallet and reached for my credit card… only to realize it was gone! After another frantic search and a few more heart attacks, I realized I hadn’t gotten it back from the cashier at the store in Tomorrowland about 4 hours earlier. A cashier in Frontierland made a few quick phone calls and verified that yes, they had been holding my credit card in the store where I left it. Phew!!! We also clutched the kids a little closer, lest we lose them too!

By about 8:30pm they were announcing the cancellation of the fireworks show, and we had made several phone calls to family and friends outside the park and determined that to try and drive home on the congested freeways would be sheer torture. We called back to the Anabella where we had checked out that morning and asked for the micechat rate again. They wouldn’t give it to us, but instead gave us an “evacuee” rate of $70/night for 2 queen beds, and they waived the parking fee. Good enough!

So after a long, smoky, incredibly fun day, we made our way back to the hotel and hit the sack. This time, both kids were out almost before their heads hit the pillows. And the good news is that this morning, the 5 and 14 freeways were completely open, so we zoomed home in about 90 minutes. We already have a trip planned for next month to see all the Christmas finery and hopefully ride the updated It’s A Small World. Can’t wait to see snow on Main Street!

Downtown Disney at night