The Happiest Place on Earth

For some people, Disneyland really is only the "happiest place on Earth" when you are a kid, but, for my family, this place still holds its magic.

At the beginning of February, Google took a "work trip" down to Disneyland. Yes, that's right. They paid for their employees to fly down to Anaheim, stay in the nearby hotels, and then have one full day at Disneyland. But, here's the best part- the park closed at 8 pm EXCEPT for Googlers. The park then stayed open until 1 am and Googlers had free reign of the place, including free food, and they even had their own special fireworks display. Super cool right? The saddest part though is NO SPOUSES :-( I was mega bummed out. So, when I went down to see Cynthia's performances in LA, I told her that we were taking our own trip to D-land. And Cynthia even has a season pass that gets us free parking :-)

Since the park was only open from 10 until 8, we wanted to maximize our time there, but, just like LA, there was a MAJOR accident on the freeway- a bus fire- that shut down the road both ways. So we didn't get to experience the "land rush", but since the crowds were pretty light, we were able to get in all the rides we wanted to, and Space Mountain twice. Cynthia's friend, Ben, joined us and was great entertainment throughout the day. I was sad though not to have William because I was mostly the 3rd wheel and so I rode by myself most of the time.

We started off at California Adventure. I thought that Ben should have jumped up and put his face in the R for the photo but he didn't want to get us kicked out of Disneyland before we even started.

We rode all of the top rides at CA- Tower of Terror, Soarin Over California, and California Screamin. We didn't do the Rapids Ride so that we wouldn't be freezing the rest of the day. It was high 70s but didn't want to be wet.

I thought that the name of this store was so cute- especially considering my "engineer" husband.

And inside, they had a make you own Mr. Potato Head where you could fill the box full of little Disney items like Mickey ears

Next, it was over to the Magic Kingdom. We rode all the faves- Indiana Jones, Splash Mountain (Ben had the funniest face on the photo- too bad each one is so expensive), Haunted Mansion, Pirates of the Caribbean, Big Thunder, Matterhorn, Space Mountain- and our longest line was only 20 minutes long. We went on the "Winnie the Pooh" ride since none of us had been on it before and it was cute, but definitely better when you are a kid. Ben beat the pants off both Cynth and I at Buzz Lightyear. Here are some photos from our day.

The view from the line at Space Mountain. Space is THE BEST when you are on the very back row- its super fast and way fun. Even being the 2nd row to the back isn't as good.

Cynthia and I were enjoying ourselves WAY too much in the line for the Matterhorn (p.s. I can repeat what they say to you on the ride "Remain seated Please- Permanecer Sentados, Por Favor") Cynth climbing up the side, her helping me up, and me trying to hold up the whole operation.

We were luckily able to do a photo swap with another group for this adorable teacup photo

And no trip to Disneyland would be complete without a DOLE WHIP. MMM- so good.

We even watched the 50th anniversary film with Steve Martin who worked at the Disneyland Magic Shop before he was famous.

And I made sure that I had my Disneyland FUDGE and DIVINITY- they are the BEST that I have ever had so I make sure to get some every time I go. I even made William bring some back for me on his Google trip.

We also walked through Downtown Disney since the park closed so early- my favorite was the Lego store. How can you not love the giant Lego creations like Darth Vadar and the giant giraffe- I included the hand so that you could get some perspective on just how giant this thing is.

I've been coming to Disneyland nearly every year since I was 1 years old and I still find it to be the happiest place on Earth.