Disneyland Archives - Page 2 of 2

Disneyland

A Christmas Fantasy Parade at Disneyland

December 25, 2013 / Disney

A Christmas Fantasy Parade is my favorite parade to watch at The Disneyland Resort. This year, Emi and I had the opportunity to be in the park on one of the days that ABC was filming for their Disney Parks Christmas Day Parade Show! It was so exciting to be able to see things that aren’t normally in the regular Christmas Fantasy Parade.

We loved seeing all of these characters from Toy Story, who normally appear in the Pixar Play Parade at DCA.

It was also fun to see a bit of Cars Land over on The Disneyland Side!

Although we weren’t able to sit in the area where all of the cameras were filming, we did secure a spot on the curb, right in front of Plaza Inn, which is where the floats and characters entered the filming area. This meant that almost all of them had time to look our way and wave prior to entering the main filming area on Main Street, U.S.A.! What a great spot to be seated!

This is one of my favorite pics. It’s just something you never see at Disneyland…Sulley next to The Matterhorn!

It was fun to see all of the little guest dancers that were invited to dance in the Monsters University part of the parade. You can tell how excited they were by their big smiles!

I always get excited for this part, which is the traditional opening of this parade. She’s my favorite dancer in the parade!

More of my fav characters…mainly Wendy! (for obvious reasons)

Look at the giant balloon! So cute! Emi loves these elves because she thinks they know her own elf on the shelf!

So many smiley faces, so many great characters!

The First Lady of the North Pole!
I adore watching this parade and notice something new each time that we do. I love the music, I love the costumes, I love the dancing and I love how much it reminds me of childhood.
What’s YOUR favorite part of a Christmas Fantasy Parade?

Christmas Eve Morning at The Disneyland Resort With Our Elf on the Shelf!

December 25, 2013 / Disney, Orange County, SoCal Fun

What do you do when it’s Christmas Eve day, you don’t have to be at dinner until 6:30 p.m. and you still haven’t had a chance to take your daughter to see Santa yet? You head straight to The Disneyland Resort, that’s what you do! What a beautiful, sunny, Southern California morning it was, too! There aren’t too many places you can be where you actually NEED to wear sunblock on December 24th!

Emily & I decided to visit Disney’s California Adventure first! There was NO LINE to see Santa over at Elias & Company! We walked right in and Santa immediately struck up a conversation with Emily. As you can tell by this photo, she was mesmerized by him.

I’m pretty sure she’s asking him for the Frozen castle here.

I love everything about the setup of this Santa location. It’s just so old fashioned and Christmas-y and if it hadn’t been so blazing hot, I would’ve put Emi in her actual Christmas dress for the photo. Regardless, I think we got some beautiful pictures to add to her memory book.

Santa also had an absolutely beautiful elf named “Tinsel” that was helping him and passing out candy canes to the guests as they exited from sitting for their photo. I couldn’t resist snapping a pic of Emi with her also.

Seriously though, how adorable is this elf?

Emi and I also had another mission on our visit….we had to bring her Elves on the Shelf with us! Yep, they had written her a note, asking if she could take them to Disneyland! They told her that Santa had given special permission for Mommy to touch the elves to move them and take them to Disneyland. We just hadn’t had much time during December to visit the parks and since the elves were returning to The North Pole that evening, this was our LAST chance. The tricky part about this was that 1)only Mommy could touch the elves, because children DON’T touch the Elf on the Shelf and 2)We needed to be careful as NOT to spoil any magic for other children at The Resort. I carried the elves in our backpack and we took them out for a few photo opportunities. There was one incident when two small children spotted them and were trying to tell their mom they had seen them, so we just sat back and pretended not to notice the elves and then as soon as the children were long gone, we grabbed the elves, stuffed them BACK into our backpack and ran! It was pretty funny to have elf shenanigans going on!

Our elves INSISTED on wearing these buttons!

There are always a lot of “good parts” about each trip to the parks but on this particular day, Emi was REALLY excited about getting to ride in the front of Monorail Blue….WITH her elves! Since there weren’t any other children up there with us (who might’ve gotten freaked out), we could have the elves out of the backpack!

Patiently awaiting the front spot on Monorail Blue!

This is Disney Magic at work!
CM Manuel even let the elves help navigate, once we started moving and had to sit down!

It was such a great Christmas Eve morning at The Disneyland Resort! We are so blessed to be able to just run over to the parks for a few hours and be able to do something like this! Happy Holidays!

The Candy Corn Wall in Downtown Disney!

October 3, 2013 / Disney

If it’s possible to have a “favorite wall”, I do! I found it last year when Emi and I were walking through Downtown Disney, on our way into The Disneyland Resort for some casual Halloween-time fun. We stopped to admire the Lego Store display outside and BOOM…there it was! The wall spoke to me, like no wall had ever spoken to me before, and demanded that I photograph it immediately! Maybe I was imagining, maybe I just had candy corn on my mind, because seriously this wall looks like a giant piece of candy corn! Although I’m fortunate enough to have a very photogenic model for my pictures, she’s not always as enthusiastic as I am about having to be camera-ready almost all the time.

Regardless of what I got out of her, which looks to be a bunch of smolders, looking back at these pictures just gets me REALLY excited for Halloween time at Disneyland and Disney’s California Adventure! It’s such a beautiful time of the year in the parks. It’s just something that everyone should get to experience at least once! I love the beautiful decorations, the pumpkin goodies and the happy Fall feeling in the air!

Have YOU had the chance to visit the parks at Halloween time? If so, what are some of YOUR favs?

Downtown Disney Meet and Greet With Ross Lynch and Maia Mitchell!

July 22, 2013 / Disney, Disney

We watch quite a bit of Disney Channel in our home. For the longest time, all we saw were commercials for the upcoming release of the Disney movie, “Teen Beach Movie”! We set up our DVR to record it, because Emi can never get enough of Disney Channel movies! She LOVES Ross Lynch (aka Austin from “Austin & Ally”) and Maia Mitchell (she appeared on “Jessie” before and is now on “The Fosters“) I’m pretty sure that just during the first week that Teen Beach Movie was officially released, she’d probably watched it AT LEAST 20 times!

Going down the Mickey & Friends escalator, all ready to meet Ross & Maia!

Running to the tram. I wonder if she’s excited?

We are fortunate enough to live near The Disneyland Resort, where they had a merchandise signing event for the movie. Ross and Maia would be making an appearance and signing Teen Beach Movie merchandise.

The part I didn’t realize was that we were supposed to camp out the night before, with all of the other teenagers or we wouldn’t get a “voucher” to meet them. I honestly thought if we got there a few hours ahead of time, that we’d be fine. Now I know for next time! (Will there be a Teen Beach Movie 2?)

HOWEVER, when we arrived in Downtown Disney, we stopped to look around and see which way to go….and there he was! Ross was walking right in front of us…OMG Ross Lynch!!!! All I could think was, “Hey, that’s the guy on that show!” and I’ll admit I was a little stumped, but Emi was the one who EXTREMELY short on words and just had this giddy expression on her face!

Ladies and Gentleman, may I present to you...the backside of Ross Lynch!

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present you with…the backside of Ross Lynch!

(it’s a Jungle Cruise joke)

So, while the people who had been waiting in the line for HOURS stood far away from, WE were right next to Ross and Maia AND got to be front row when they did some filming for a “Disney 365″segment! I don’t think Emi has ever been that close to one of her celeb crushes and although she was overwhelmed by the crowd, she had a giant smile from ear-to-ear!