It’s a miracle!  I’m up, dressed, fed, and on a bus at 7 am.  It’s our first full day of the tour and we’re off to Disney Studios - the world headquarters of the Disney Company. 

Sunday was spent in Disneyland with Leigh and Wes until they needed to head for the airport for their flight to Europe. Then we had time for a short nap before meeting the rest of the tour for introductions.  We are staying in the Grand Californian Hotel which is designed in the craftsman style and gorgeous.  It will be our home until Wednesday when we head for San Francisco. 

The tour group is diverse. There are a number of retired people as well as some families.  The youngest person is probably about 14.   The first time this tour was offered was last year (2023) and several people (including us) had tired to take it last year but missed the cut. 

Mickey was there to greet us and pose for pictures. It was interesting to see that the cast members were also getting in line to get their pictures taken with Mickey. 

     

We moved to the California Adventure park for dinner at the Animation attraction. While it’s not a restaurant, it has

a large open area where they set up elegant tables for the catered meal.  It was beautiful and delicious. 

In the past Disney was not known for great food but these days the food is usually very good. They also take good care of people with food allergies which is helpful with my 7 food allergies. 

After dinner we headed over to Disneyland for the fireworks. (I have no idea why dinner was in California Adventure and then we changed parks.).  There’s something called Pixar Fest going on so the fireworks were Pixar themed.  The Disneyland castle is much smaller than the WDW castle and we couldn’t really see the projections from our viewing spot but the fireworks were great.

In getting ready for this trip we watched a number of things.  Based on a blog of last year’s trip we watched several Marvel movies and shows that we will see things that are related to them. (I drew the line at Antman and the Wasp.). But what we enjoyed most were the Disney series on Imagineering and Behind the Attractions.

I think that what I will enjoy the most is how things are different from park to park.  For example, there are Indiana Jones attractions in several parks, each completely different.  The only attractions that are in every park are dumbo and the carrousel.  And in California, both Disneyland and California Adventure both have carrousels and they are different.

Disneyland’s is a regular merry go round, but one of the horses is Jingle, Mary Poppins’ horse.  We were lucky enough to catch Mary herself taking a ride.  

The carrousel in California Adventure featured Pixar characters. 

We spent all day Monday at the Disney Studios, but that’s for another post. It’s time for bed and we have to be up early again tomorrow. 

Deb

Saturday, July 27, 2024

We made it to California on Thursday, but it was a long day.  Luckily our friends Leigh and Wes had already arrived and had made plans for dinner.  They came down from San Jose to spend a few days with us before we started our tour. They have plans of their own - they are headed to Switzerland.

On Friday Anna joined us. Both Leigh and Anna lived with us while working on their PhDs at Purdue. We spent the day at Disneyland and had a blast.

I’m still figuring out the transfer of photos from the Disneyland app to my phone. It is of course different than how it works at Disney World.  So the only picture I have is of the treats Disney had ready for us when we checked in.

Having a great time,

Deb & Steve

It’s been 5 years since I posted.  Like most for people, it’s been a strange time for us. We muddled through the pandemic with some health issues, moving (which meant emptying our home of 30 years), selling the house and trying to figure out our new normal.

We’ve done some traveling, mostly to visit family and friends.  But tomorrow we start a brand new adventure - a trip around the world!

It’s an Adventures by Disney trip that will hit all of the Disney parks around the world. I’ll be trying to post along the way but there will be a number of challenges.  WiFi is not guaranteed.  We’ll have iPhones and iPads but no computers.  Blogging by iPad is new for me and jet lag will be serious. But I’ll try.

Hope you enjoy following our journey.

Deb & Steve