Emerson Jude

Judelbop Takes Disneyland!

I miss Disneyland because I was there last morning.  I like them because I like them.

I like Splash Mountain and I like Pirates.  They go, “Yo ho!  Yo ho!  A pirates life for me,” like that!  And they have a Splash Mountain (waterfall) on that and that is a scary.  I go by Daddy.  I go on choo choo (Thunder Mountain Railroad).  Woooo!  Woooo!  It go fast!

I like Tiki Room, I like it is fun.  The birds live there and they sing, “Tiki room!  Tiki Room!”  It is magic in there.  And then it rains outside, it is magic rain!  They sing, “Tiki room!  Tiki room!”  We have snacks there like candy bar or candy bar (granola bar) or juice or ice cream (pineapple whip).  I like Tiki room.

I like the Jungle Cruise.  I don’t like the tigers because they are (eating) peanuts – (aka zebra, the zebra is being eaten by a tiger on the ride).  The hippos bite the boat!  The driver fights them with a gun!  Bam!  I cover mine ears.

I want go back Disneeyann!

Posted on 07.27.11 to Emerson Jude. Grab the feed. No comments yet. Comment or trackback from your own site.

Tamara

B&T in the Big D

Bradley and I have a long standing tradition of self portraits.  We did it back in the day with film, and found that many of the pictures were some of our best, so we have kept the tradition.  Besides that, if we didn’t take advantage of my husband’s long arms, we’d never have pictures with both of us in them.  Every once in a while we try to squeeze the rest of the family in, but usually it is just us.  Disneyland was no different.  Through the park, we stopped and took pictures of ourselves at moments we wanted to remember.

Our arrival at Disneyland is always momentous.  It’s like returning home, every time.  We plan this moment as we gear up for our annual visit: which ride will we hit first, which way will we walk under the train bridge, and which route will we take to the first ride?  Upon entering the pavilion or the park, we have this (often teary) moment of just soaking it in, mixed with madly taking pictures of things we have seen before but that welcome us back and make us feel a part of things again.  My favorite moment, every time I enter Disneyland, is passing under the sign which reads: ‘Here you leave today and enter the world of yesterday, tomorrow, and fantasy.’  Because it is so true.  People behave differently in Disneyland.  There is a freedom there that is lacking in most of the rest of the world.  Seriously, where else will you find grown people walking around with silly hats all day and children dressed as princesses or spacemen on a day that is not Halloween?  Pretty rare.

When we visited Disneyland on our honeymoon (btw, I had to force Bradley to come, believe it or not), we rode the It’s a Small World just once, exactly, and vowed never to sit on one of those boats again.  As we traveled through the lands, I was annoyed by everything about the ride: the song, the inane dolls, and the cheapness of the ride – I was able to fine MANY imperfections, from paint chips to seeing the floor below the ride.  Then we had Gigi and brought her to Disneyland at the age of 16 months.  She changed that ride for us COMPLETELY.  We rode Small World (and this is not an exaggeration) 19 times in five days, during that trip. Sometimes we never got off, just went right on through a few times in a row.   She sang, she danced, she marveled and as she did that, we saw the ride through her eyes and fell in love with it and got ever more interested in the designer, Mary Blair.  The same thing happened with Jude, he fell in love with the ride too.  Now it is one of our very favorites, and one of the first pit stops every time we visit the park.

Tarzan’s Treehouse is one of the few attractions that Jude remembered from last year, so we HAD to go on it.  I am not a fan of heights, and that tree rocks in the wind, and people are crazy up there…  Did I mention how high that stinking tree is?!  Anyhow, I go once, every time.  My family usually goes a few more, but for the rest of the walks up that tree I stay on terra firma, thank you very much!  This picture was taken to show my joy at being returned safely to the ground.  (And just look at how very very happy I am.)

After several days of Disney dust, Disney grime, Disney sun, Disney sweat, and the thick, oily odor of the Disney smoked turkey leg it was time to leave.  This is our goodbye picture, taken from the bridge above Pirates of the Caribbean pointed at the Rivers of America.  Our smiles are authentic, our sleepiness as well.  While saddened at the thought of having to fly a few hours or drive many hours to return to the park, we were glad to take out leave of the big D this year.  Jude is not the three year old Gigi was and the days were long for him, hard for him, and thus long and hard for the rest of us.  I often felt like I was herding cats through a crowded mall trying to get our kids from one place to the next, cajoling, convincing, and manipulating a cranky three year old- it was so tiring!  When we go back next time, we know to go for a shorter time.  While we already make pretty short days of it, we realized that one post-nap trip to the park in the later afternoon through evening was about all Jude could handle before exhaustion set in for him.  For example, he did something that will live in infamy for a bit, involving his teeth and Bradley’s scrotum while in line for Small World.  I’m not gonna candy coat it, there was pain… and blood.  All is healed up and healthy now, but those are the kinds of things he would do when Disneyland got to be a little too much for him.  Bradley’s crotch took a few more hits from the boyo as well before the week was over.  At the end of it, we have wonderful new memories (scrotum biting aside), lessons were learned and we had a fantastic time.  We will return again!

Posted on 07.26.11 to Tamara. Grab the feed. No comments yet. Comment or trackback from your own site.

Guinevere

The Disney Adventure of Princess Guinevere

We went to Disneyland a few days ago.  My favorite ride was the Ariel ride.  It is a new ride at Disney California.  I liked it because of the Under the Sea song.  When you got to the Under the Sea song part of the ride Sebastian starts singing, star fishes are swinging around and there were fish dancing around doing the conga line!  Mommy and I fell in love with this ride and went on it over and over!

I was wearing my Mary Poppins dress and I saw Aurora walking back to her castle.  We saw each other and she said, “You look just like my friend, Mary Poppins!”  Then my Mommy took my picture with her.  I also met Mary Poppins while I was wearing my dress and I got to dance during the song ‘Step in Time’.

When we were watching the fireworks show we saw Dumbo and Tinkerbelle fly by.  It was fun!  I was surprised because I had never seen Dumbo fly before.

The very very best part of Disneyland was when I got to go to Disneyland with each of my parents by ourselves.  Mommy and I rode Space Mountain and bought hats for everybody.  Jude got a Peter Pan hat, I got princess ears and Daddy got an R2D2 mouse ear hat that says his name on the back.  When I went with Daddy we went at night and stayed late!  Until midnight!  We got pineapple whip from the Tiki room and we also went on Thunder Mountain Railroad and went to see Captain EO.  Of course, we also rode Star Tours, Daddy’s favorite!  I had a great time, just me and my daddy!

When we had to leave I cried because I didn’t want to go away from Disneyland.  I love it so much.  I can’t wait to go back soon.

Posted on 07.25.11 to Guinevere. Grab the feed. No comments yet. Comment or trackback from your own site.

Tamara

Where Do You Stay?

A question we get A LOT about Disneyland is, “Where do you stay?” We’ve stayed at a variety of hotels:

The Anaheim Howard Johnson:  A decent place within authentic walking distance from the park.  Has a GREAT kid’s pool, but the rooms are just fine with plain old non-pillow topped mattresses.

The Candy Cane Inn:Nice rooms, on the smallish side.  If you’re into the complimentary breakfast, it was decent, and they have a bus that takes you to and from the park without charge.

The Carousel:One of our worst.  Gross rooms, dirty carpet, unhelpful staff.  totally run down and ancient feeling.

The Quality Inn:This was the worst.  We call this hotel ‘Beirut’.  We stayed one night then arranged for other accommodations.  Dirty, small bed, ancient mattress, TV from 1980.  Gave us the heebie jeebies.

The Annabella:  Decent, clean and in walking distance of the park.  Comfy beds…

Castle Inn & Suites:  Pretty on the outside, absolutely NOTHING exceptional about the rooms.  NOTHING.

And the Hyatt…

We love the Hyatt.  This visit was our third time returning to the Hyatt.  It is a lovely place.

The Hyatt has my kinds of beds.  The beds that are soft, squishy,  and comfy with pillow topped mattresses and duvets.  They even supply bonus pillows to curl around and the rooms are CLEAN.

They have a saltwater pool, which, incidentally, is where Gigi learned to swim.  You can jump, play, catch jumping children or sit poolside in the comfy lounge chairs provided.  Then dip in for a sec to cool off.  Then lounge, then repeat, then…  Well, you get the idea.  The pool maxes out at four feet, so both of our kids were able to be pretty independent.  Well, as independent as a foot or two away from the toddler allows anyhow!

One of our favorite Hyatt features is the ‘Awaken Package’ which allows the room guests to eat breakfast at the hotel for pretty reasonable.  Disneyland requires a lot of energy so each morning we load the kids full of eggs, oatmeal, fruit and whatever else they wanted.  If we hit it right, we could make it to dinnerish time on granola bars and snacks.  Then we’d eat at Subway (conveniently located across the street from the Hyatt).  We ate decent food and we ate for reasonable costs.  AND we didn’t have to worry so much about being vegetarians at Disneyland, always a challenge.

One of our most very favorite things about the Hyatt is that they provide a bus that goes to and from the park every half hour FOR NO EXTRA CHARGE.  It is so nice to have this amenity.  You stay further away from Disneyland, but the Hyatt is conveniently located across from a Target, Bucca di Beppo, Red Robin and more, so you are not stuck eating Disneyland food all the time, and if you need to buy shampoo or sunscreen, you can get it for a reasonable price.

*We suggest you get on the Hyatt’s e-mail list.  They send out deals a few times a year.  We’ve stayed at this hotel for as low as 79.00 a night as a result of their e-mail sales.

**We’ve found that, regardless of which hotel you go through, their own management (phone or e-mail reservations) gives better deals, for the most part, over using Expedia or other travel sites.

***No, we are not getting any compensation for our review, but we sincerely get this question ALL OF THE TIME.  Hopefully this helps.

Posted on 07.24.11 to Tamara. Grab the feed. No comments yet. Comment or trackback from your own site.

Tamara

Disneyland

Bradley and I often say we don’t go to Disneyland for the attractions as much as we go for the ambiance.  Just being in a place that proclaims to be the ‘Happiest Place on Earth’ soothes us.  It’s all there: entertainment,thrills and enough to do to keep bust for days with very little need for big agendas.  We joke that someday we’ll be those people who sit on the benches in the evening watching the crowd, the parade and the fireworks go by.  Our kids will be running wild through the park, having the best time, while we sit and canoodle, absorbing the smells of popcorn, cotton candy, waffle cones, and listening to tired babies, happy kids, grumpy parents and the piped in Disney music.  We love it there.   This first post from our Disney vacation is dedicated to just being there.  I spent some time with my camera this time, just trying to capture the essence of the place that we love, the place we return to each and every year at least once.

*It’s interesting to note a couple of things:

1.  The Golden Gate Bridge picture was the last of it’s kind.  the following day the suspension ropes had been removed and the towers were to be removed after we left to make way for the new trolley.

2.  The last picture (the huge one, sorry) is our last glimpse of Disneyland before we left on Wednesday, hence the consoling of a crying seven-year-old.

3. I didn’t take a tripod, so all of the night pictures were done with me holding the camera as still as possible, either set on a solid surface or held really still by me.  I liked the glowy/fuzzy way they looked so took LOTS!

Posted on 07.23.11 to Tamara. Grab the feed. No comments yet. Comment or trackback from your own site.