Tuesday, May 29, 2012

California Traveling (part 1)

Lots more travel these last two weeks!  I went to San Diego for work and realized it was the first time I've been to this meeting without Nate.  First in New Orleans and then in Chicago.  But he didn't totally break his streak- Aaron and Bug flew out to Long Beach after my meeting was over.

We met up in Long Beach (almost the smallest airport I've ever been to, second only to the Nantucket airport) and drove to Anaheim for a very brief Davis Family Vacation to Disneyland.  This was majorly exciting for me.  I've been anxiously awaiting the time we could take Nate to Disney since before he was born.  After consulting with a couple of friends, we determined that he is a little too young to justify spending the money for a big Disney trip.  But an already planned trip to Southern California provided the perfect opportunity to do Disney on a smaller scale.

And the trip was a big hit with all of our family!  Aaron's never been shy about his dislike of Disney or his lack of desire to visit Disney parks.  But after seeing pictures from our friends' recent trip to Orlando, Aaron was looking forward to seeing Nate's excitement.  And the little guy didn't let us down.  He seemed to love every minute of it.

The first thing we did was book one night in the Disneyland Hotel.  This is one of the three on-site offical Disney hotels and we were so glad we spent a little extra dough to be on property.  The hotel was nice, the pool was "awesome" (as declared by Nate) and we were able to have a character dinner in our hotel.


 A really cool feature that Nate loved was the headboard in our room.  It was carved to show Cinderella's castle with a fireworks display and it lit up and played "When You Wish Upon a Star."  There were many requests for "Mas!" showings of the fireworks.

Dinner with the characters was another great experience.  Disney really does everything so well.  Nate was very interested in the characters.  But when they came close, he suddenly wasn't to brave.  Well, he was interested in most of the characters.  At one point, a Princess came over to say hello.  Nate = not at all impressed.  First of all, Aaron and I had no idea who she was.  I think I mistakenly called her Cinderella and she quickly corrected me with "Princess Aurora."  (Sleeping Beauty?)  Regardless of her name, Nate was not interested.  He kept telling her "Donald on break."  Because indeed, Donald Duck was on break.  I don't think Princess Aurora cared for Nate's interest in a duck over her because she was a little snappy with us.  Adios Princess, make room for Pluto.  I thought maybe it was the human characters he wasn't interested in but he really liked Aladdin's visit later.  I guess he's just not into Princesses.


Thursday morning we woke up early and walked to the park.  A huge benefit of Disneyland over World - everything is a 5-7 minute walk from everything else.  No shuttles or parking lots.  It made the whole experience so much easier.

The park was another great experience.  It's not nearly as big as Magic Kingdom, which worked in our favor since we only had one day and an unpredictable, still adjusting to time zone, toddler on our hands.  Fortunately we needn't have worried.  Nate was a peach.  He didn't seem to mind the time change at all and napped in his stroller for a couple of hours, allowing us to take turns on some of the grown-up rides.  He liked most everything but his favorites seemed to be Small World, Dumbo and Autopia.

The day ended with a lollipop and a visit with Goofy.  A wonderful day filled with so many good memories.

4 comments:

  1. Small World was my favorite when I was little too! Mi Mi & Pop Pop took me on it over & over at my request! Princess Aurora...YES! That is Sleeping Beauty! She is Aunt Meghan's favorite of all the princesses! Sheesh...I guess I need to work on some princess flash cards for the Davis family :-)

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  2. When were you guys at Disneyland? We were there this past Friday! We did an impromptu "SoCal Babymoon" for the long weekend. I'm so glad Nate liked it. He looks adorable in those mouse ears!

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  3. OMG it's a good thing Audrey isn't up to read that you didn't know who Aurora is! Perhaps you know her by her other name, Briar Rose? If we see you guys in August, I'll have Audrey spend some QT with Nate playing with her princess castle. We will straighten this out.

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  4. Briar Rose, I love it! But even Flora, Fawna & Maryweather couldn't protect her from Malificent. Perhaps Nate would be more interested in Sleeping Beauty if he knew that Malificent turns into a dragon.

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