Our Trip to the Magic Kingdom

I was so excited about taking the kids to Disneyland. It made me nostalgic. I grew up going to Disneyland about once a year, every summer when my cousins came to visit California from Texas. I have fond memories of those trips, being with family and all the fun rides. We have waited to take our kids to Disneyland until they were old enough to appreciate it and boy was it worth the wait.

And waiting is a big part of going to a major theme park. We arrived at 9:20 am and then proceeded to wait in line to pay for parking, wait in line to park, wait in line to go down the elevator from the parking structure, wait in line for the tram, wait in line to buy tickets, wait in line to get our bags searched and wait in line to get into the park. By the time we made it inside it was almost 11 am. Ridiculous!

Unfortunately, I do not have as many pictures as one might expect from me because juggling two preschool-aged kids by myself at an amusement park was a challenge in and of itself. Although Jadyn was already grumpy by the time we entered the park, I did purchase the picture that was taken of Jake and I at the entrance since I knew it would probably be the only decent picture where I was included.

I have to say what an awesome experience it is to go to Disneyland on your birthday. Jake was treated like royalty. They gave him a button that said "Happy birthday Jake" and every Disneyland employee, not to mention several other guests would give Jake special attention and birthday wishes. At first he was super shy about strangers greeting him by name but by midday he was used to it and politely answered thank you to all the "Happy Birthdays".

Now here is the crazy part. I really wanted to make the most of our trip so I pushed through the kids cranky/tired period in the late afternoon and was rewarded with a huge second wind from both of them in the early evening. Therefore after arriving in the park at 11 am, we didn't leave until 8:30pm. Can you believe that? We managed to go on a total of 13 rides, two of which were repeats of favorites. But I will get to that in a second. It was a fun and exhausting day.

The great thing about taking younger kids to Disneyland is that you get to experience it all over again through the eyes of a child. While waiting in line for the newly revamped Little Nemo submarine, Jake kept asking how we were going to dive underwater and not get wet and they were almost speechless with all all the sea life we saw and how "deep" underwater we went. At that age, you buy into the fantasy, too young to realize you can look up and see that you are really only 2 inches below the water the entire time. They loved it.

No surprise, Jake's favorites rides were those that revolved around transportation, most notably Autopia where you get to drive a car, Roger Rabbit's Cartoon Spin and the Disneyland Railroad.

Here is Jake after receiving his license to drive the cars:

Concentrating so hard so he didn't "crash":

Loving every minute of his chance to drive:

After a driver's switch, it was Jadyn's turn:

Jadyn's favorite rides were the Mad Tea Party and It's a Small World. She loved the teacups so much that I had to listen to her whine and cry "teaaaacupssss" for 20 minutes after our ride was over. If you guessed that we went on that ride in the afternoon, you would be correct.

Here are the kids on It's A Small World:

A quick shot before the teacups starting spinning:


Getting dizzy on the teacups:

Does Jadyn look like I may have been spinning the cup a tad too much:

So what is my favorite ride? Pirates of the Caribbean. We went on in twice and I was so glad the kids were not afraid, although the first time through Jake did ask if the pirates were shooting at us. Coincidentally, although Pirates has always been a favorite ride of mine, I am not a huge fan of the movie franchise, although I thought it was pretty clever when they infused the original movie with scenes straight from the classic ride such as this:


On every ride, the three of us got to sit together. While in Toon Town, Jadyn asked to go on Gadget's Go Coaster. She was so proud of the fact that she was tall enough to ride it. Jake on the other hand had reservations so I promised to hold him tight during the ride. That was until I found out they only seat two across, so Jake and Jadyn had to sit together one row behind me. Jake had asked me in line if I planned on screaming, as he saw that was the norm from the other riders. I told him I probably would. Well I wish I could have timed the picture right but I will have to rely on memory to remember the scared look on Jake's face when I turned around to find him screaming as we went down and twisted around the track. When we got off however, his only response was that he thought the ride was cool. Jadyn, of course loved it as well.
Can you see the apprehension on Jake's face before the ride began?:


And a few other favorite rides included Dumbo:

Casey Jr's train:




King Arthur's carousel:




You might be surprised to find that I have no pictures of the kids with the characters. Well that has a twofold reason. For one, the kids would have been afraid. They may be willing to take on roller coasters but Goofy? No way. Second of all, I would have loved to get a picture of Jadyn with the Disney princesses (which I think she would have been okay with since they don't wear a costume head) but unfortunately they treat character greetings like a ride now and I wasn't willing to wait upwards of an hour just to take a picture. We were having too much fun on the rides! I did get this classically "Disney" picture of the kids in front of Cinderella's castle:


So that is my novel recap of our day at the Magic Kingdom. It was fun, it was exhausting but most importantly it was a birthday to remember.