We could not wait till today would start at 7:00 Danielle woke up from the alarm-clock, jumped out of bed, sprinted towards the bathroom, rushed into the shower and as soon as she turned of the shower I jumped out of bed, checked my mail, Facebook, whatsapp and took a shower. After getting dressed and packing the camera bag we went to the hotel restaurant for the free breakfast.

At 8:22 sharp we jumped in the car and about 23 minutes we walked towards the entrance from the Happiest Place on Earth, Disneyland Park.

Today is the first time we visit the first Disney theme-park ever build and the only one which Walt Disney himself had opened back in 1955.

After checking out the park map we found ourself a bit lost, the park has a little different layout as the Disneyland Parc in Paris and the Magic Kingdom in Orlando. But there are still a lot of rides and things we recognize. But where to start? We decide to go round against the clock but first we need to take some pictures of the tiny Sleeping Beauty castle in the center of the park.

The first rode of the day is the Enchanted Tikiroom, followed by the Jungle Cruise and Pirates of the Caribbean. All three rides almost without having to wait. A nice thing in the Pirates of the Caribbean ride is that they’ve upgraded it with personages from the movies, yes there are a couple Johnny Depp’s inside.

After the pirates we went to the Haunted Mansion, the haunted mansion is a ride which is placed in the New Orleans Square themed area of the park and had the special holiday overlay. At first we thought this was not a good thing but if overlays are done in the way this one is done I would say overlays every ride during the holiday season. The overlay was based on the nightmare before Christmas and there was themed music throughout the ride and theming everywhere.

The Splash Mountain was closed due to technical issues so we moved on to the Winnie the Pooh-ride which was very funny.

From there we went on to the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad where we had the first real wait of the day, 35 minutes.   But than I had the idea to try-out FaceTime and we called Yves & Joke so they could join us. We had them on the phone throughout the ride to but then the connection broke down a couple times when we moved into tunnels. Following print screen I made on my iPhone during the call.

After BTM we moved on to It’s a Small World where I used FaceTime to call my sister and show here Fantasyland. She wants to go to Disneyland to but her fresh husband doesn’t want to go, 🙁 Okay, I’m not writing about Apple and the iPhone today but I have to say FaceTime is really easy to use. It’s a Small World was a real surprise with the Disney characters integrated in it.

From It’s a Small World we went to the Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage. This is also a new ride for us, you bore a moving submarine and explorer the underwater world and due to the newest technology we were able to understand where the fish are talking about. We got back on land hungry so we decided to get something to eat at the Tomorrowland Terrace. Full with energy again we helped Buzz Lightyear save the planet.

We were really close to the entrance of Star Tours: The Adventure Continues and the waiting line was only 25 minutes so we waited to see this (for us) new ride where you fly around somewhere in outer-space. The simulator is really smooth and the 3D effects are really great. From there we went on to Space Mountain: Ghost Galaxy. This is a special Halloween version. To relax a bit from the last 3 rides we walked through Innoventions and rode Autopia (5 minutes waiting time).

Than it was time for oldie, the Matterhorn. It opened in 1959 as the first tubular steel continuous track roller coaster in the world. And you can feel it’s old because it felt painful so much I was happy the ride was over at the end.

From there we walked into Fantasyland where we did the dark rides Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride,  Snow White Scary Adventures and Pinocchio’s Daring Journey. We also did the walkthrough attraction in the Sleeping Beauty Castle. And before we went to look for a good spot for the Mickey’s Soundsational Parade we ate pizza at the Village House Restaurant in Fantasyland. On our way to Town Square we visited some shops and we finally found a nice spot for the parade too. The parade was a lot of fun with loud music.

As soon as the last float of the parade passed us we went back into the park to ride Alice in Wonderland which is a nicely done darkride in Fantasyland. From there we went straight to Toontown. Toontown is a real toony place with all the houses of the fabulous 5 and some other Disney Characters. Since it was already late the area was empty and we did  the Roger Rabbit’s Car Toon Spin and Gadget Go Coaster. The Roger Rabbit ride was awesome. We also visited Mickey Mouse house and we were lucky since he was at home so we took a picture together with him.

After this picture we went to Downtown Disney were Danielle bought a sweater because it cools down fast at night. Than it was time to go back to the hotel. We waited a bit for the tram to the parking garage. When we arrived home we went for something to small to eat at the nearby Starbucks.

Today we would ride the last part of our roundtrip which ends in Los Angeles, better to say Buena park where our hotel for the last 9 nights is located. But first we need to get there. So we rushed out of ed since we needed to leave the hotel before 10 o’clock and as soon as we were in the bathroom we were both surprised by the number of ants in the sink. Since that was not the only problem we encountered during this stay (cockroach, most of the pools closed, 20 minutes till we had warm water) I wanted to file a complaint.

So I did and we got back the parking fee ($30). The room price was already low with $90 instead of the regular $299 so nothing to get back there. But it wasn’t too bad in the end the room was nice we just had bad luck with the closed pools and the ants in the room.

So time to leave and the first stop on the road were the Dessert Hills Premium outlets because I ran out of clean shirts again… We shopped at 7 for all Mankind and at Tommy Hilfiger and left the outlets with saving way more than $200. It’s always nice to make money while shopping, 😉

Still an hour to drive till our hotel and we already saw the increase in traffic. By the time we arrived in the Los Angeles area there were more vehicles on every single lane of the 7 lanes wide roads as we had seen on the whole highway since we left San Francisco. So I needed to pay more attention while driving again.

We arrived at the hotel at 2 o’clock but we needed to wait till 3 o’clock till our room was ready. Because we had so much patience and we had the gold status we got 4 free drinks (cocktails, beer) and 2 instead of one bottle of water for the room.

So at 15:00 we were in our room which is in the building a bit away from the highway and which is freshly refurbished. The room looks over the pool area and has a king bed. This is one of the better hotels during the trip, I would first want to sleep one night but I would say the only hotel which was better/nicer would have been The Venetian but that was also more as 2 times as expensive.

So what to do this afternoon and evening? It’s to short for a visit to the Disney Parks but we could already check-out Downtown Disney and get something to eat. We did some shopping again but now at the World of Disney store. For dinner we went to Naples an Italian restaurant where we d one pizza together (5 slices for me, 3 for Danielle).

Afterwards we went back to the hotel to dive into the hot tub where we spoke with 2 Germans, 3 Americans and 6 Dutch. And at about 22:30 we went back to our room to make a plan for the rest of the vacation because there are so many things we want to do here.