Spontaneous Disneyland Trip

We did it. We made plans and bought tickets to Disneyland all within 6 days notice! Drew and I had been itching to go for quite a while. We have wanted to go to Disneyland together since we got married (almost 4 years ago) and we've never made it happen until now! Since Lila is now a year old and its the beginning of a new year, we figured CARPE DIEM! I did my research and tried to find the cheapest hotel and park tickets as possible. For under $700 we got a 3 night stay, plus 2 park hopper tickets each! I feel like that was a steal!

The day after the Piano Guys concert, we left for California! Of course we contacted our parents right away as we made our plans to make sure they could come down and watch Lila for us. Luckily everything worked out! Bill and Linda came down on Saturday and took care of sweet little Lila until Sunday evening when my mom and Kinsley arrived to take over! They took care of her from then until Tuesday afternoon-- when we got back!

I will be honest, it was HARD to leave Lila. I was so torn! I cried as we left, but felt good knowing we had left in her in good hands. She loves her grandparents and I feel so lucky and blessed to be able to call on them whenever to watch her! It also helps that she is easy and fun too, so it's great for both parties hah ;)

Well we arrived in California Saturday afternoon (it is only a 5.5 hour drive from where we live!) and checked into our hotel. Turns out our hotel was super...... "underclass," to say it nicely. The door of the room was hard to open and shut, but yet it had gaps all around the edges to outside! We had the outside edge room right next to the busy street (Katella), and could hear all the traffic. The room smelled funny, the pillows and bedding were questionable, and the continental breakfast turned out to only be coffee and cheap pastries. I guess that's what people mean when they say "you get what you pay for," ha ha!!

It wasn't as bad as it could have been, but we definitely won't be staying there again. We ended up rolling toilet paper into little balls and sticking them in our ears at night (like earplugs) so we wouldn't hear the roaring traffic outside or the obnoxious people next door to us.

Besides that though, it was only a 15 minute walk to the park entrance which was actually quite nice! So after we got checked in, we ran over to the park to redeem our tickets we purchased online. We waited for quite some time in a rather short line to do so, but was happy we went when we did because the tickets closed soon after that! The sun was getting closer to setting and I REALLY wanted to be on the beach when the sun set, so after we got our tickets we ran back to our hotel, jumped in the car, and set out to Huntington Beach. Although it was only a few miles away from where we were, it took us a good 45 minutes to get there probably so we missed the sunset but was still happy to even get to see the ocean! I've only seen it two other times in my life and that was when I was younger so it was really cool for me to see! Plus the beach was gorgeous!!

It was freezing, but we still hiked down to the water and I put my feet in. The tide was high and the waves were huge!!! Drew says they weren't big waves, but I feel like the swells were pretty big! And they kept coming in fast. Faster than I had ever seen (or imagined) so I was surprised! But I loved it and had tons of fun while we were there!

It was dark by now and so we set back to our hotel. We had noticed a place to eat that our friends Lindsey and Parker had recommended to us in Downtown Disney. (Downtown Disney is like a shopping/eating district just outside of the parks. It sells almost all the same treats and goodies and similar food items that you could find inside the parks! Except it's open to the public so anyone can go anytime. Pretty brilliant if you ask me.) I really wanted to try beignets (ben-yay). They are like a mix of a donut/scone but 1000x better and covered in powdered sugar. Drew wasn't too hip on the idea, but we walked over to that cafe anyways to get some food. Drew got the gumbo and I got a pulled pork sandwich and together we shared some beignets and it was life changing. I'm not even kidding. Those things are soooo good!!! Drew and I both loved them! You receive them in a baggy with powdered sugar at the bottom, so you roll the top of the bag over and give it a good shake to make sure each beignet is coated. Then you devour!! They were so good we couldn't stop thinking about them for the rest of our entire trip. We ended up getting more on our last night at the parks! HA! Worth it though!

Well the next morning was Super Bowl Sunday. We thought we would beat the crowds because it was Super Bowl. We didn't really think very many people would come out, but we were wrong. The parks ended up being pretty busy this day, however, we booked it to each of our destinations and got to ride all the rides we hoped for that day. However, 13.8 miles and 30,948+ steps later, we were POOPED. My feet were soar and my legs were tired. We pushed ourselves so hard, the second we got back to our room that night we hit the bed and both of us were out.

 

 

Overall the day was really good though! It was overcast all day, slightly chilly but mostly comfortable. We had the best luck and just happened to be in the perfect place at the perfect times for a lot of occasions allowing us to almost walk on to a lot of our desired rides! For example, the light parade was about to begin and we jumped right on the teacups with no wait at all! It was awesome.

Also, with the suggestions of MANY people who gave us advice, tips, and tricks, we used the Fast Passes like champs. If you know how to use them to their full advantage, you can almost get on ride after ride without any wait at all! THANKS TO THOSE WHO TAUGHT US ;) 

The next morning was Monday. We woke up to lots of rain!! We wore layers of clothing, packed extra socks, and put our ponchos on and set out for our 15 minute walk to the park. My feet got SOAKED. There really wasn't any way to avoid that unless I had rain boots which I don't. So that was a bummer. However, we chose to ride the monorail into the parks on this day instead of walking for another 10-15 minutes to our desired destination-- Tomorrowland! We wanted to hit Space Mountain, Space Tours, and ride Peter Pan this morning and luckily the monorail took us straight there!!! It saved us from getting more wet and it saved our energy for the rest of our day! WIN WIN!

We got our fast passes, we rode the rides, and eventually hopped over to Fantasyland and jumped in line for Peter Pan. I turned around to look at the back side of the castle and then noticed a familiar face. It was Jacqui from Baby Boy Baker Blog. I discovered her blog quite a few years ago and have followed along ever since! She lost her first born son a couple years ago in an accident, and since then has overcome a lot of trials and to me resembles strenght and courage. She just had her second baby girl who is now 1 years old and so she and Lila are the same age and it has been even more fun to follow her along since I can connect to her in that way now! So anyways, she has like 300K+ followers on instagram and is just a great example to me of mompreneurship. I knew she came to the parks often and secretly HOPED I would run into her here and I DID!!!!! I ran right up to her while calling back to Drew to take our picture. I was shaking! She probably thought I was crazy. But I told her my daughter was the same age as hers and that I really looked up to her. It was so neat! It was like a dream come true hahaha..

It was so cool to me!!!!

Then, we got back in line for Peter Pan. I was still fan girling and still couldn't believe it. I had just met one of my favorite bloggers/instagrammers! Well, a few minutes into the line Drew mentioned to me that he thought the people ahead of us were from Australia because he thought he could hear their accent. So a bit later I finally asked them where they were from.

Sure enough, Australia!! It was a cute girl and guy about our age. Turns out she was 25 (just like me) and he was 28. They had been in the states since New Years just traveling and touring. They were headed home in a few days. What a cool trip for them! Anyways, it was so fun to chat with them for the rest of the Peter Pan wait. (FYI there are no fast passes for Peter Pan and it is quite a popular ride so the wait times are usually pretty long.) But the time passed fast because we visited with them the rest of the time! We even became Facebook friends with them and they said we could stay with them when we got to visit Australia someday! Cool! HAH! I love looking back at our experience. I'd like to think it's not just "by chance" that I happened to see Jacqui from Baby Boy Bakery, or how it wasn't just "by chance" we ended up standing next to the cute Australian couple for 40 minutes in line. It was also pretty funny as we visited with them, Drew's australian slang came out a few times ha! It was funny!! Also, it was neat to hear Drew tell them why he had lived in Australia for two years. He told them it was for a mission for his church. They were so interested and surprised that he wasn't paid for it and that he would do it for two years! Although it wasn't a typical missionary moment, I would love to think it could have planted a tiny seed somewhere in their hearts, you never know!

This is for the cars ride! ^  

 

 

The rest of the day was good, 10.6 miles and 24,436+ steps later. The rain actually stopped and it cleared up for the rest of the afternoon. I had to change my socks THREE different times and my feet were pruny for the entire day, but it was okay. I'm super glad I brought those extra socks! Also my legs were so sore and I had some blisters on my feet too.. (how do people do it?! Or how do you avoid it?!?!?!) But we made it through! We watched the World of Color show in Disney California Adventure to end our trip and then grabbed beignets on our walk home. 

We left first thing the next morning and arrived back to St. George in the early afternoon. It was so nice to see Lila! We both had missed her so much and she was happy to see us!!! Thank you SO MUCH to our families for adjusting their plans to meet our needs. I am so grateful to have such loving parents and families who support us and take care of us! We are the luckiest! We can't wait to go back to Disneyland with you all hopefully someday! So thank you again from the bottom of our hearts. 

Love,

Kate

ps. we got to ride Thunder Mt 3 times, Cars 2 times, and the roller coaster Screamin 2 times! Unfortunately Pirates was closed this trip, but overall it was an awesome experience and we hit every ride plus more that we wanted!! Also, aside from the fun rides, we enjoyed trying the park food. We tried the Bengal BBQ skewers-- a beef one and a chicken one. They were yummy but very very small. Drew tried the famous Disneyland Corndog (not really my fave, but he liked it), and we also tried some other gumbo in a bread bowl. We got to try a Dole Whip float (very yummy, but probably even better on a warm day. We tried this on the rainy wet cold day haha), and a peanut butter chocolate sandwich. We loved the bacon mac'n cheese cone from Carsland and I tried a yummy drink there too called "pear of dice." We figured we'd splurge on the food this trip because in our future trips we imagine we'll be with more of our family ;)

Oh, and here are some of the snaps I received from our families while they watched Lila... she's so funny! :)