That’s Right – Disneyland Resort California – 2024
Approximately April 31st. We got back late Friday night. Wow was that drive an adventure. We made pretty awesome time from the hotel, which was in Anaheim, right on South Harbor Boulevard, adjacent to Disneyland California Resort. We did pretty well, until I would say probably about the Riverside to Vegas interchange area. So somewhere out there in either the San Gabriel Mountains or San Fernando Mountains. And it was just kind of a light drizzle for most of it. Not too bad but enough that with traffic had to kind of slow down just a little bit. And then it got interesting from there out until Primm, Nevada!
Primm is in Nevada. It’s a little bit before Vegas and I think it’s about 50 miles or so outside of Vegas. Maybe more, maybe less. The longer we went the more water I could see out on the desert floor and the highway. I think I could feel a few times I broke loose for a moment. You could feel the tires break loose a little bit. Not a full break loose but just some slipping here and there.
A Storytime Memory
Years ago, just before Juniper was born, we were coming away from the Ironman at St. George. I think that was my first one. And we were coming down the hill. There’s one last big hill before you come into Beaver, Utah. And we could see this kind of cloud structure brewing from afar and then it just kind of overwhelmed the highway. And it went from being completely dry to these monster raindrops.
And about 30 seconds, what I recall is about 30 seconds to a minute in. I was kind of looking around and all of a sudden I was like there’s like no traffic or cars around me which is kind of nice. And then that’s when the wheels broke loose. We were in a Dodge Journey which was an all-wheel drive at the time. And all of a sudden I start to feel the front end and the rear start to lose it. And thank heavens there was no one around us because we went back and forth between all two highway lanes. It was a good three or four times across, in probably 15 to 20 seconds, although it felt like an hour and 15 minutes coming through it. And then we rolled into Beaver, Utah. And I stress for me, Liz lost it!
This event in our past occurred just a month or two before delivering Lil J. Looking back we were very grateful and because of that experience it was just difficult on Friday to maintain speed limits because it just wasn’t safe to do so even though there were some people flying through.
We did I saw three spin outs as we were going into print there was one that had met one of the guardrails and then I’d seen two others kind of lose it and see what came of those events other than hopefully those that were involved are okay. And then you’ve got people like this that they just shoot in.
Unfortunately, you’re supposed to come with caution and yielding and we have a lot of people that you know that it’s time to stop on the accelerator and the rotaries around abouts whatever you’d like to call them. But yeah it was just kind of a long trip unfortunately we had a lot more bathroom stops.
Travel – Best yet mostly
On a good high note on Sunday the morning we woke up our kids for the grand surprise for going to Disneyland. That was our fastest and most efficient trip ever as a family. We got out of here I believe by 6am at the latest because I had to load things on top of the car did that quickly while we had woken up the kids and they were getting their last little things ready. My wife did a wonderful job getting the kiddos packed in front of time. We did forget their pajamas but other than that things were quite great. We were able to go from Cache Valley to Payson with pretty much no traffic. We didn’t really see traffic until Vegas and then until we got from Vegas into Anaheim.
It was pretty general traffic, but you know we were able to get to the hotel down there by I believe 6pm Pacific time just a little bit after and it gave us enough time to get in and to settle into the hotel and then go play for 3 days at the Disneyland parks.
Final day Huntington Beach
The last day on Thursday we went out to Huntington Beach in California and had some good experiences out there. Two notable ones my 18-year-old definitely you could see that he was rounding in a lot of ways. He was able to enjoy both the water and he was seeking the shells and muscles and other things that come up in the tides on the seashore. He was really enamored by that. He was enamored by some of the kelp and seaweed swinging some of that around. And then there’s my now 4-year-old since he had his birthday this past Sunday. There was a flock of pelicans you know about 12 of them. He sees them just before that he had been playing with a rock I believe that he was throwing into the receding water after it receded and then he would run and grab it and run away before the water would come and jump in over the waterline. And then all of a sudden these pelicans came he saw them, and he was off to the races, and he was about 100 yards in front of me. He was kind of near our 18-year-old, but he had gotten out away from him too. And then all of a sudden the pelicans started going over the water and this little wonderful type that is afraid of water that is above his ankles look like fearlessly totally was just going to go jet right out into the water. I stopped what I was doing, and I saw him start to take off and I got out to him and there was nothing, but we had lots of time. He was pretty safe but there was a moment I was like oh great here we go. We are going to be wet and cold and miserable, and this is going to be a life lesson for our little 4-year-old. Luckily there was no life lesson like that. It was merely he was excited, and he got distracted pretty quickly thereafter so that was pretty decent and good.
Disneyland Day Monday and Wednesday
We did Disneyland first. Then again the third day. We did Disneyland California the second day and Disneyland again the third day.
My girls who are 8 and 6 now absolutely loved being on the ocean and they were playing together grabbed a couple very cool pictures with them both in the moment and portrait style of them together. Hopefully it’s a memory that will last for a long time for them. And then the long trip home. So, it was great. The Disneyland experience on Monday was really nice. We were able to accomplish a lot.
We were able to play a lot and it wasn’t really crowded one way or the other this week and the few weeks I guess up to May 4th maybe into June. They are having a Star Wars experience late night in the Disney plan park. So, on Tuesdays and Thursdays at least they close the park a little bit early to allow for that event to occur for paying customers. It cost almost as much as a ticket regular paying all day ticket and so we made sure to do that on Monday and Wednesday to avoid that.
California Adventure on Tuesday
We got to California Adventure the day prior a little bit later than we wanted to, but we did get there. We went on Tuesday, and it was pretty clear that many others were doing that too. About noonish it was just busy from there until close to closing. But you know same thing we were able to get a lot in and accomplished most of the things we wanted. We got our first family picture and we did that with Lightning McQueen. The final day of that day my wife was able to run into one of her local friends from here. So that was nice. They both enjoyed that. That family. T is my wife’s friend, and her family were down there for some dance things. My daughter’s and my wife’s friend’s daughter’s daughter were just so happy to see each other and that was really awesome.
Wednesday was another day Disneyland day and it was just full most of the day from beginning to end. We were able to get there pretty early on day three. And then Disneyland was just busy and again my wife and her friend were able to go on Indiana Jones together. We got a pretty good story out of my eight-year-old about her not loving Indiana Jones even though she said she did because my wife’s friend’s daughter likes the ride. So anyways that was funny and then towards the end unfortunately Toontown closed early. I don’t know if that’s a normal thing.
And so, we were trying to get over there for my six-year-old which that didn’t work out and then you know a little bit of disappointment because we didn’t understand or know the scheduling.But all in all, it was a wonderful trip and lots of memories hopefully your main and yeah.
