Disneyland 2015 - Day One

We were off to the Happiest Place on Earth bright and thankfully not so early Tuesday morning!!!

My parents dropped us off at the airport amongst kisses and hugs, and my little Mickey Mouse and I were off to sunny California!!!

We met the pilots and made sure they knew exactly where they were going...

Some coloring commenced...

Then after a lovely, uneventful flight we landed at LAX!  We found our luggage, then traipsed from Terminal 7 to Terminal 1 having been told by the Disney transport people that Terminal 7 was the last stop on the pick-up line, so there was a chance the bus would be full by the time it got to us.  So we made our way to Terminal 1 and found our cousins!!!!!  Woo Hoo!!  Now the vacation could begin!!! Even better the bus had a HUGE Lightning McQueen on the side of it!  My little Cars/Lightning McQueen fanatic was over the moon (Have I mentioned how very much Tate LOVES Lightning McQueen?  He is absolutely obsessed!!!)

Terrible picture, but you can see how very excited the
kids were to see one another!  They couldn't stop jumping
up and down!! 

Look at all that love!!!

We loaded up on the bus for the hour long drive to Anaheim!!  

Tate and I arrived at our hotel...Disney's Paradise Pier Hotel.  It was a great hotel...especially given that I don't need much more from a hotel than clean rooms and a safe environment.  :)  We got checked in, settled a bit and then I requested that Tate take a nap.  I was worried that he wouldn't be able to from all the excitement, but I really needed him to.  We had dinner reservations at The River Belle Terrace for that evening at 6:20pm which would seem 8:20pm to us.  Included in our dinner reservation were fast passes to Fantasmic! which didn't start until 9pm (11pm to us!).  I did my best to explain this to him, and lo and behold he fell asleep around 3:00 and I had to wake him up just after 5pm!  He slept great!  I had time to get us completely unpacked and rest a bit myself.  Then we were off to ride the Monorail from Downtown Disney to Tomorrowland at Disneyland!!!  On the way we even found someone to trade a pin with!

Here we are on the monorail!!!

We met Gail, Marcus, Korey and Kayla at the restaurant and had a lovely meal al fresco!  The weather in California is absolutely amazing!!!  The food was super yummy too!!!

As always, dinner took a while, well we had a 25 minute wait for our reservation, but it was still fabulous.  So by then it was time to make our way over to the Fantasmic reserved viewing area!!!  We got comfy and waited for the show to start!

 Tate wanted different views of Lightning McQueen in several different photos with us :)

So happy to see our cousins!

Look at that joy!  These boys LOVE each other!!!

Fantasmic was amazing!!  We loved it!  Just a few snippets..

And of course there was the requisite 'Frozen' spectacle complete with snow falling on our heads!!  It really was quite spectacular!

After Fantasmic! we just had to stay for the Fireworks Display!  

After the fireworks were over I loaded Tate up into the stroller, having had him change into his pajamas between Fantasmic! and the fireworks :).  I lowered him down to go to sleep.  He didn't quite fall asleep, but at least he rested on the 10 minute walk back to our hotel.  He climbed right into bed when we got there and went straight to sleep!  It was past midnight to my sweet little guy (and me too!)

It was an absolutely lovely, magical evening.  A fabulous way to start our little vacation at the Happiest Place on Earth!