Our Disneyland Thanksgiving, Part 2

Now, at long last, I renew our chronicle of the family's Disneyland vacation. Too bad our first day at the park was a mixed bag, with a few unpleasant surprises...more on that later.

As you can see by the picture above, everybody was really excited to get to the park. We are in the hotel parking lot; it only took 5-10 minutes to walk to the park entrance from our hotel room! That proved to be a great advantage. We were all still a little chilly, but all the walking helped keep us toasty. Off we went!

(NOT shown above was the small throwing-up incident that had occurred a scant half-hour BEFORE the picture was taken. It was sudden & alarming, but Lorelai seemed much better immediately after being sick. She insisted she was fine, and ready to go to the park. And after all, we'd driven so far the day before, we reasoned that it was probably the stress from traveling that had caused her to be sick. Maybe we should have been more cautious...maybe then we wouldn't have...uh, oh, I've foreshadowed too much!!)

Anyway, after a quick breakfast and a short walk, we were there at the winter-decorated front gate...

...where our first unpleasant surprise of the day awaited us. We arrived at the ticket booth to claim our park passes, complete with all forms of ID, our service vouchers from earlier in the year, etc. The ticket booth lady handed Nathan & I our Park Hopper passes...so far so good. Then we waited for Lorelai's 3-Day Park Hopper...and waited...and waited. It seems our lovely travel agency forgot to send Lorelai's information, and the resort had no record of it either. Oops. Apparently, there had been a computer glitch somewhere along the line.

Thirty-five minutes later (amidst many bored whinings from our daughters), an arrangement was finally reached. Thankfully, Disneyland (being the customer-service whizzes they are) managed to not only get Lorelai set up with all the necessary admission passes, but also sweetened the deal by giving our family one free attraction pass for each day of our stay--sort of an extra FASTPASS for each day. Nice! Thanks, Disneyland Resort (and no thanks, travel-agency-that-will-for-now-remain-nameless).

Okay, the hurdles were cleared! It was time for a long day of FUN! After all, nothing else could go wrong...right? RIGHT???

Well (for a little while at least), everything went fine! Main Street, USA, was decorated for the holidays, and it was beautiful. We all loved it (we Arizonans have a hard time getting into the Christmas spirit, so this was a big help). The kids were thrilled to see all the sights, including...

Sleeping Beauty's castle...

...and Rapunzel's tower (the movie "Tangled" actually opened in theaters while we were at the park; we didn't see it until weeks later. We didn't wait in line to visit Rapunzel anyway--that would have taken all morning!!).

We also went on a few rides. First we took a spin on the "Finding Nemo" submarines:

Daddy had to "swing" Celeste down the steep stairs; don't worry folks, she landed fine. Lorelai seemed super excited at first...

...but then, once the lights dimmed and we started moving, she started freaking out a bit. Claustrophobia, maybe? Oh well, once Nemo, Dory, and the gang appeared out the portholes, all was well again. After the submarine ride, we took a quick spin on the merry-go-round:

Next was the Buzz Lightyear Astro Blaster attraction. My kids were mesmerized by the life-size, animatronic Buzz who greeted us at the entrance.

Of course, I couldn't get pictures of the ride's interior, but suffice it to say that much astro-blasting occurred. For those who haven't been there, this ride is interactive; you get a little optical raygun, then use it to shoot glowing targets throughout the space-ranger-themed ride. I have no idea how my score measured up to others, but it was still pretty fun (especially for a "Toy Story" geek such as myself).

Now here's where our story gets a little sad...much of the rest of the day looked like this:

If you're thinking, "Hey, that looks like you hung out in the hotel room!" you're correct. Long story short, Lorelai's throwing up that morning was not an isolated incident; the stomach bug that had terrorized our Sahuarita friends the week before had the temerity to follow us on vacation! She continued to complain about her stomach hurting at various times throughout the morning. Finally, when we were in line for Pirates of the Caribbean, she threw up again, right in front of everyone. Poor girl! With that, Daddy scooped up his eldest daughter and carried her all the way back to the hotel in his arms. A short while later, I brought the other girls back so we could spend the afternoon with Lorelai resting & napping. We decided that it would be best for her to sleep off the stomach bug, so that hopefully she'd be completely recovered for the rest of the trip.

Insert frowny face here.

It's very sad & frustrating to have a sick child on vacation (or children--Aurora had a touch of the stomach bug as well, but it limited itself to really stinky diapers). However, Nate & I made do; one of us would stay with the kids, while the other walked back to the park and went on a few rides. Luckily, after several hours in bed, Lorelai was doing much better. She was even ready to meet up with her cousins Abby & Elaine (my sister Jocelyn & her family were in SoCal for the holidays, so we met for dinner at the IHOP for the second straight night!)

We exchanged goods (Jocelyn brought us some hand-me-down clothes; we returned the books we'd borrowed from her over the summer), wished each other a Happy Thanksgiving (tomorrow!), then put the kids to bed. Nate & I both got a chance to visit the park again late that night; I snapped a few pictures of the beautiful holiday lights.

I'm a sucker for Christmas lights...and, as it turns out, I'm a sucker for Christmas lights on fanciful castle-shaped buildings as well! The soft carols piped through the air around Main Street USA really contributed to my merry mood, despite the late hour.
Tomorrow: Thanksgiving Day, and California Adventure!!