The time arrived, and very early Sunday morning (4:30 to be exact) we were on the road to the airport to begin our Disneyland vacation! The kids were all happy enough to get out of bed, it seemed as though the excitement of the trip was a good enough reason to wake them up:-/. The trip there went pretty well, no one slept much on the plane (Nathan for a few minutes) but there weren't any issues. We did have some reservations about our rental vehicle after looking into the company a little. We were going to have to take a shuttle to get to a different shuttle to get to the rental place! Thankfully that worked out okay, but by the time we got to what was essentially a warehouse as a rental car office (and after reading some reviews), we were pretty nervous about what our experience with this rental vehicle was going to be. It was cheap for a reason! They heavily pressured Brian to buy extra insurance, even going so far as to tell him it was required by state law, but he stood strong (that's my man!) and off we went! It was definitely not in great condition mechanically (some of the squeaks and noises made me a little nervous) but thankfully it didn't break down or kill us on our trip:-).
We made a stop at Target to get some breakfast groceries and made our way to the hotel, got there shortly after 11. Our experience at the hotel was stellar - they got us into a room that was ready and let us check in 3.5 hours before official check in time. What a life saver this was! By this time, Adam was very anxious to go swimming, and while they would have let us use the pool whether a room was ready or not, having a room was obviously much more convenient for us! The kids enjoyed some pool time, and so did Brian and I - a nice little unwind time from the morning of travel. The kids were tired but we decided we should at the very least dip our toe into the theme park experience by going for a bit that first day.
We went to Disneyland and first thing stopped at the City Hall to get our Disability Access Pass. How this worked was you had to find one of the info booths that were set up around the park and get them to scan your passes for the ride you wanted to go on, and they would give you a return time to that ride. This was usually about 20ish minutes from the time they scanned it, but sometimes longer for more popular rides with longer wait times. This time did not expire until the end of the day, but you couldn't get another wait time until you went on the first ride (so you had one at a time essentially). This pass was an absolute life saver for us on this trip. However, on that first day, we decided to try an unproven strategy. We had an access pass time to go do the Dumbo ride, but passed the Astro Orbiter (with a posted 20 minute wait time) and decided to do that one first. We thought if we waited for a bit to do a ride, Adam would maybe get a bit anxious but would see how fun the ride was, and then immediately get to ride another one! Sound strategy, right? Maybe if he hadn't been up since 4am:-/. He couldn't handle waiting for that first ride, and it was unfortunately more like 30-35 minutes long, too. By the time he got to the front of the line, he was completely done. He did like the ride we think, but once he passes a certain point, recovery is near impossible. He wanted to go back to the room. And so we did.
We were all pretty exhausted, so we just ate in the Surfside Lounge in the lobby of the hotel. Their nicer restaurant was full, and the food in this lounge wasn't great. The only good thing is that it was about half the price that the nice restaurant would have been, so at least we saved some money?? I went back to the room and tried to get the boys to bed, and Brian took Lynsey back to the parks, this time to Disney California Adventure. And here is where a thrill seeker was born! Lynsey tried California Screamin' (a big, scary roller coaster) for the first time, and she loved it! They were also able to do a few other rides and stumbled upon the World of Color show on the way out, so thankfully the first day was not a total write off for everyone:-).
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