Exciting news! Louis and I spent last Sunday at Disneyland! We took the big financial plunge and invested in annual passes, so we can enjoy the parks all summer long. We felt SUPER official and very “legit Disney fans” having our official passes with our  names on them and everything! Definitely worth the chunk of change to us. Plus, we only have to spend 6 days in the parks for them to “pay for themselves.” Also, we get 15% off food, and 20% merchandise in the parks! Another big plus is it covers parking, which is $16 a day (ouch!). All of the positives added with our love of all things Disney meant the passes were the perfect purchase for us!

Back to our first trip. We are staying in La Jolla, which is about an hour and a half from Anaheim where Disneyland is located. We woke up around 4:45 AM to leave at our planned time of 5:30 AM! EARLY. Thankfully, we’re still on “Texas time,” so it felt 2 hours later to us! After a quick stop at Ralph’s to grab some breakfast, we hit the road! Thanks to Louis’s lead-foot, Disney Way popped up on our map after only about 45 minutes of driving! Apparently, the speed limit wasn’t 85 MPH…oops?

So, we rolled into the Mickey ‘n Friends parking garage at about 7 AM…only 30 minutes earlier than planned 🙂 We parked on Daisy Duck’s level and sprinted strolled down to the tram. We couldn’t contain our smiles as we rode towards the park!

We hopped off the tram and power-walked to the gate. We arrived 45 minutes before the park even opened! Haha! Typical over-zealous Disney lovers! We stood waiting and chatting with fellow passholders about the best rides to go on first and extra park tips. Since it was our first time at Disneyland, we were soaking up any information we could!

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, we were let into the park! We rushed to adventure land, as we planned to go on Indiana Jones Adventure first. As soon as the rope dropped we ran over and were one of the first people on the ride! The theming was incredible, and it was SO much fun!

After Indiana Jones Adventure, we walked toward New Orleans Square to take on some rides. It felt like we had the park to ourselves! We were able to ride Pirates of the Caribbean with an entire boat to ourselves! It was so fun to experience the Disneyland version of the ride with just the two of us. And I must say, the Disneyland version was much more fun than the Disney World one!

We hopped off our boat and walked right on to another one of our favorites…Haunted Mansion!

It was fun to see all of the differences between this version and Disney World’s, but I think DW’s version takes the cake this time! We stepped out of our Doom Buggies (with a hitchhiking ghost!!!), and walked right on to Splash Mountain…with our ponchos on of course! We stayed relatively dry, and loved following Briar Rabbit through his adventures. We then stepped onto The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh to dry off a bit from Splash Mountain. And this was all before 10:00 AM!

It was time to dry another Disneyland classic, so we walked over to Matterhorn Bobsleds. It was quite obvious to our bodies that this ride was built quite a while ago…I think my tailbone is still bruised!

After that, we strolled over to another Disney classic and were met with our first line! It was well worth the wait though! Disneyland’s Space Mountain was AWESOME. I think it was my favorite ride of the day!!! I can’t wait to go on it again.

After Space Mountain, Louis grabbed his favorite Disney snack (a churro), and we decided to head over to Disneyland’s 2nd park, Disney California Adventure. Several parts of it really reminded us of Disney World’s Hollywood Studios because it had an “old Hollywood” feel. We journeyed over to the newest portion of DCA, which holds Cars Land!

This area is themed SO cute! Louis and I aren’t huge Cars fans, but this area was so fun to walk around. The one big downside is new at Disney=CROWDED. They wait for the main ride, Radiator Springs Racers, was OVER 2 and a half hours ALL day! We explored the rest of the park and rode Tower of Terror, California Screamin’ (twice!), Toy Story Mania (Louis’s favorite in DW), Little Mermaid (I know my mom will love this one!), and strolled back to Cars Land to tackle the wait for Radiator Springs Racers. We waited TWO AND A HALF HOURS. Ugh. We were dying to get out of line, but the ride was fun! Granted, it wasn’t worth that long of a wait. However, at least we can say we experienced it! We’ll only ride it again this summer if we can snag some fastpasses though!

That long line did us in, and we walked out of the park to head home surprisingly early! We decided to eat McDonald’s for dinner instead of paying 5 times as much for the same amount of food in the park! Hey, our annual passes don’t give us THAT big of a discount! Disney is expensive! Even though or feet were killing us, on the way home we were already planning our strategy for our next trip! We’ve actually already returned since I’ve written this…but that’s for another post! 🙂

Can’t wait to share our remaining Disney adventures we have planned for the summer!