Disneyland Day Three - Thursday

Today was our early entry, and the rest of the family would be joining. We were up and at the gates at 7:15 and as we walked up we discovered that Mom and Sheridy had beat us and they were the first ones there. Linsey and Ray were close behind us. Jenny and Justin were parking in the Mickey and Friends parking lot and were a little behind us. So we head straight for Peter Pan and get that out of the way. Megan was a happy little baby the entire morning. I don't think I have ever seen her cranky. She is such a little cutie:

After Peter Pan, we headed over to Dumbo:




Our elephant was right behind Matt's and I look at them and lo and behold, Stephen actually puts his arms in the air. I just had to get a picture:

After Dumbo, we headed over to Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. The kids were excited that they got to drive their own car.







Then we went down the rabbit hole with Alice:





Then we hit the teacups, the girls were quite happy to spin and spin and spin.


After the teacups, we went on the Matterhorn. McKenzie and Bailee had a bobsled to themselves, and Rachel wanted to go with me. I thought she would scream, but she quite enjoyed the ride. After the Matterhorn, we met up with Jenny and Justin and headed over to California Adventure. The new Toy Story ride opened last year and is still really popular. So if you don't want to wait an hour, you go right when California Adventure opens and go on it first thing. So we got there with only a 5 minute wait. It is a fun game similar to Buzz but in 3-D.


After Toy Story, we realized that we had 10 minutes until Playhouse Disney started. So we threw the kids in the strollers and took off. We missed it by a few minutes, so we headed towards Monsters. On the way we stopped for a bathroom break and we ran into Goofy!!


So after everyone played around with Goofy for a minute, we hopped on Monsters Inc.



We still had some time to kill so we headed over to the Animation Building to see Turtle Talk with Crush.


By now it was time for the next showing of Playhouse Disney. So we went in. The kids REALLY liked this show. They were jumping, dancing, trying to catch bubbles, and clapping. It was cute.

After Playhouse Disney, we decided to use our fast passes for Tower of Terror (thanks goes out to Justin for running and getting all the passes - you're the best). Bailee absolutely refused to go on it again, but Jeremy was game.

We were on the second row. This ride has a pretty creepy queue with twilight zone music and boiler room sounds. So when we got on the ride, little Stephen (stoic as ever) leans over to Matt and asks "Um, Uncle Matt . . . (with his little puppy dog eyes) are we going to get stabbed?" Matt hides his smile and assures him that there will be no stabbing and off we go. After our drop we decided to grab some lunch at Taste Pilots Grill and take a ride on Soarin'. During the trip, one group would stay with the little ones who were too short, and the other group would go on the ride and then we would switch. As we were waiting for the first group, we decided to visit Lightning McQueen and Mater.

By now, the kids were a little hot and tired, so we headed back to the hotel for a much needed nap. Tonight was the night we were going to watch the Celebrate Street Party. We met up with everyone around 6 and started saving places. It was an OK parade. I don't know if I would want to see it again.



So after the parade, the rest of the group wanted to go meet Mickey, so we made our way over to Toontown to discover it deserted yet again. Tonight Mickey was in his classic attire:



After Toontown, everyone split off and did their own things. We decided to check out the Emporium on Main Street and let the kids spend some of the money they earned and then we went back to the hotel. Coming up . . . Day Four.