Husband had an idea that since we were in a completely different state, he could find a copy of Locus magazine in a local bookstore. We drove to the first Borders we could find, nothing. We drove to the second, Borders, still nothing and now we were hungry and forced to eat Johnny Rocket's mall food as we were in an Orange County mall and had to find a place with a grilled cheese sandwich to satisfy Fletcher. I think I waited too long to eat with low blood sugar and thus my patty melt struck me as absolutely nauseating. I survived by eating a few fries and figuring a snack could come later.
We found a Trader Joe's in the same area, bought snacks, went back to our mediocre hotel room and realized we were jet lagged, exhausted, and actually fell asleep at 10.
We were up early on Sunday morning because we could get into Disneyland at 8 a.m. and we were determined to do just that. We walked to the McDonald's next door to the hotel (seriously, this is probably a waking dream for my child), ate our usual McD's fare, then walked the two blocks to the Disney entrance. You feel like it's right there, but once you get through the carefully snipped bushes, you realized you must still walk at least a block of bus lanes and benches to get to where they search your bags. Then you still have half a block or so until the plaza where California Adventures on the left, Downtown Disney in the center and Disneyland on the right have their entrances.
We showed our printed tickets to the man at the Disneyland entrance, he turned them into cute little Disney ticket cards and off we went. We boarded the old-fashioned train to go round the park to Toontown, the place Fletcher (at least originally) wanted to see. As we rolled past Frontierland and New Orleans, we saw the backsides of several rides and then got off at Toontown station.
It looked just like Fletcher imagined a real version of the online Toontown game he plays. We stood in front of various buildings for pictures, we rode the Roger Rabbit ride, we bought water. Course this was all after Toontown opened. We got there a bit before 9 so we had to kill time on the It's a Small World ride. Fletcher liked the old-fashioned singing puppets and little boat. That was a win.
After exhausting what Toontown had to offer Fletcher and I rode the teacups (Joe isn't good for the spinning), then continued on through Frontierland. Didn't see too much to excite there but we found some lunch (if I recall) got a Fastpass for Indiana Jones, went on to New Orleans to see about a Fastpass for the Haunted Mansion and took the big steamboat for the 10 minute ride. By then it was time to take Haunted Mansion Holiday ride which has turned from whatever it was into something semi-scary completely featuring the cast of characters from Nightmare Before Christmas. I liked the look, husband wished he could have seen what it was upgraded from. I guess whatever went into that horrible Eddie Murphy movie.
After the Mansion we took the raft out to the Pirate's Lair and watched Fletcher climb on things. We rode the Jungle Cruise with its usual patter-y tour guide, ate some strange African BBQ on a stick (Joe and I did, not Mr. Grilled Cheese), and spent more time in a one of the stores.And then our time to ride Indiana Jones happened. It was great. Exciting, whiplash inducing, Fletcher's favorite ride up to that point. Thank goodness it had places to put your stuff (little net bags built in) cause everything we owned would have been lost in there.
By the time we finished we were exhausted, but decided to take the monorail to Downtown Disney (we didn't know at this point how close the Downtown entrance was, we are stupid) so we could pick up Fletcher's personalized Lego brick, maybe eat dinner, then take monorail back in time for fireworks. We made it to the Lego store, I wandered off to take advantage of a free consultation at Sephora and the boys, apparently, spent time waiting for them to redo Fletcher's brick as his name was spelled Fietcher on the first one.
By the time we found each other again, Fletcher was too tired for the fireworks, the monorail wasn't running because of the fireworks, so we took a cab back to the hotel. Even if we'd known about the other exit, Fletcher was in no mood to walk. We ordered pizza for us, got a Happy Meal for Fletch and the evening was done.
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