So, we had a great first day trip and went to the hotel room assigned by our tour guide and just fell off to sleep. I wanted to go for a swim, but the hotel staff said it had already closed around 6 pm. So we just watched a movie n slept. We were super excited about the next day - we had an option to go either to Disneyland or for a San Diego city tour... Like all other people on the bus (sans a few), we decided to go to Disneyland because we felt that the city tour would be super boring with all the war memorials and some other museum stuff they were gonna show us. If they were taking us to the national park instead, maybe we would have changed our mind. Anyways, we were really excited about going to Disneyland and taking pictures with all the Disney characters like Mickey, Winnie the Pooh and what not !! But we had something else waiting for us there... little did we know !! LOL !!
So, we left early morning for the theme park and since it was not more than a 20-min drive from the hotel, it felt like we reached it before we could blink our eyes. We got out at the parking lot until where our trip bus was allowed, and were supposed to take a train to the actual entrance of the park. We all got into the train all the while taking photos and embarked on our journey to all kids' favorite dream of all times. At the entrance, the guide informed us that for the first half of the day, he would take us around to popular attractions and for the rest of the afternoon, we were allowed to go ahead and explore on our own. We decided to stay with him at-least for a couple of hrs to see if we liked the places he would show us. We were then asked to go through a security check at the entrance and then get into the theme park. The entrance sports a large signboard "Let The Memories Begin". We were super excited by looking at all the awesome advertisements, thinking to ourselves "Its indeed gonna be a memorable day".
The first thing you see when you enter Disneyland is the Main Street... I will not describe here everything that we saw - because, you know, I dont want to spoil your fun or give away all the details. You just have to be there to experience it and everyone's experiences are different :) Anyways, since Christmas was already nearing, we saw a huge and I mean HUGE christmas tree in the center of the main street and so many street cars - the old style :) - they were beautiful... we meant to ride them sometime during the day, but we never got the chance and we did not even know they were free or paid. Then there were many shops which we did not even turn to look. We just wanted to go straight to the rides and to find our favorite characters. Anyways, one reason is we were running behind the guide, who was going pretty fast to take us to our first ride of the day - Indiana Jones Adventure. It was fun. We were expecting something very different, but we really liked it nevertheless. There was such a huge line for the adventure that we were waiting in line for nearly an hr or more I guess. And when we came out, what do we expect to see - our guide - but we did not see him there at all. Neither did we see any of the tour people who came with us.
We waited for quite some time and then dejected, decided to set out on our own. We both took out our maps of Disneyland and started to decide where we wanted to go next. The rides were all very very long and by lunch time we had not even covered 1/4 of the place even though we had skipped so many rides and attractions !! We were seriously disappointed about the fact that we were not going to be able to see the whole place. Moreover after lunch and after a couple more rides, we were so exhausted walking around and standing in line, that we started to feel more and more disappointed about the whole trip :( I guess the crowd and long lines were due to the fact that we had been there on a long weekend. Then we got so tired that we just decided to go to some shows at the California Adventure, because we heard someone saying that the same ticket would work for both the theme parks. However, the tickets that the guide had got us, was valid for just one theme park and we were disappointed even about that fact.
We finally decided we would come back and watch the Christmas parade at 5 pm. That part was sure fun. We watched as we saw many disney characters coming alive. And believe me, we had seen only Winnie the Pooh until that time in the whole time we were there !!! And we could not take a picture with Winnie, because we were standing in line for some ride at the time and after we got back from the ride, Winnie had disappeared !! Can you believe it... going to a disney theme park and not getting a picture with any of the disney characters :( We were getting more n more dejected by the minute with all these sad things happening to us. Not sure if it was just us, or all of them were facing the same problem. We got some good pics of the parade though and then there was supposed to be a fireworks show at 8.45 pm. So we had to kill 3+ hours and we had no intention of going on any other rides. We were super tired by this time and just wanted to relax. We decided to go out to Disney downtown street and shop around for a while. That is where we saw the "funnel cake" stall. YAY !! I was jumping with joy just looking at it. I had had funnel cake once before when I went to Six Flags with my friends - oh that was a fun day too :)
I explained to my friend what a funnel cake was and after the aebleskiver experience the previous day, she was eager to try it. But we still decided to buy just one and had it - and it was super super yummy !! Again it was time for the fireworks show by then - because of all the window shopping and we regretted not buying one more. We promised ourselves that we would buy one more before we leave for the day and went in to wait for the fireworks show. We wanted to get good seats to watch the fireworks and at the same time, we wanted to be near the entrance too - because our guide was going to meet us at 9 - right after the show ended outside the entrance to take us back to the trip bus.
Finally we got a good place to view the fireworks right in front of the castle where they were going to burst the crackers. We waited for at-least 45 mins for the show to start - yes, we had to get there early to get good spots. We got so bored that we started counting down minutes and seconds for the show to start. Finally it was time !! The show started. It was superb - simply awesome !!!! We thought all the wait and pain and tiredness was worth it - we took a video of the same. It was absolutely amazing... IT WAS WORTH IT ALL !! Believe me... I have seen many fireworks shows, but this was something different altogether. Anyways, then suddenly it was time to go. We ran for the gate - there was not enough time. We thought we would miss the guide and end up going back alone. So we dashed for it. Somebody showed us a shortcut to the entrance. We took it and reached there in no time. We found the guide. All was well again. We however could not keep up our promise of getting another funnel cake. We had so less time and we waited for the train to take us back to the parking lot.
By the time the train arrived, we were so exhausted that, all we wanted was to get into the bus, get to the hotel and throw our shoes somewhere and just crash !! Anyways, all in all - I guess it was a fun day - even though we were disappointed. Oh - did I mention that when we running around to find spots for the fireworks show, we saw Goofy and took a photo with him... Did I tell that the photo did not come out that great :( What a tragedy for us !! Finally we decided that we were sooo tired that we wanted to skip the Universal Studios adventure the next day, because we just could not walk anymore. We informed the tour guide of our decision and he tried to persuade us, but we stuck with our decision. We told him that we were just not interested anymore and we told him we will decide the next day whether we wanted to go or not and went to bed.
Wait for the 3rd and final day story....
- So
