In late April 2002, we made the trip to Disneyland!  Of course, it was the kids' first time to Disneyland, and in fact, it was my first time too.  Amy had been to Disney World in the past as a kid.

To save money, we decided to drive from Portland, OR to Anaheim, CA.  If someone wanted to, they could easily make the drive in one day (it's about 17 hours), but with kids, that was impossible.  We left on Sunday, April 21st, slightly later than scheduled.  By the end of the day, about 11pm, we were in Lathrop, CA.  We stayed at a Days Inn.  We left early next morning and arrived at Disneyland at about 4pm, Monday, April 22nd.  (We hit a little LA traffic, but it wasn't too disruptive.)  Distance traveled: 1005.9 miles.

We then checked into the new Grand Californian Hotel.  It is absolutely beautiful... and expensive.  But for our first time in the park, it was definitely worth the cost.  It is extremely well located, with entrances to Downtown Disney and Disney's California Adventure (the new park).  Our room was wonderful... fairly standard setup, but higher quality.  Our balcony was overlooking one of the courtyards of the hotel... and it just so happened to have the monorail running right through it.  We put an X on our balcony so we could identify it when we would ride the monorail later.  (By the way, you could *barely* hear the monorail... it wasn't annoying at all.)

Since it was late and we were burnt out from the long drive, we decided just to unwind in Downtown Disney, rather than entering the parks.  We visited the World of Disney store, then ate at the nice, but overpriced Naples Ristorante e Pizzeria.  For dessert, we got Häagen Dazs ice cream cones.  Finally, we checked out the Lego Imagination Center.  It's just a store, but it had really cool, huge Lego structures of Darth Vader, R2-D2, a giraffe and lots of the Lego people.  The kids liked it.

On Tuesday, we walked through Downtown Disney and entered Disneyland for the first time.  We rode a bunch of rides and ate lunch and dinner in the park.  We made a trip back to the hotel in the middle of the day for a rest.  That would become common practice each of the days we were there.

We used Wednesday to finish off Disneyland.  The first part of the day was rainy, but for us Northwest folk, it was no problem.  We had lunch at the Storyteller's cafe which is part of our hotel.  This place had the most incredible food I have ever eaten... amplified by the fact that the prices were fairly reasonable.  Dinner was at the Rainforest Cafe, which was interesting - they had thunderstorms every half hour or so in the restaurant.

Thursday was saved mostly for Disney's California Adventure (DCA).  We took the monorail into Disneyland, had breakfast there and rode their favorite ride (Autopia).  Then it was off to DCA for the rest of the day.  DCA was a bit of a disappointment.  It's not laid out as well as Disneyland, had major food service outages and generally wasn't as good for our young kids.  It's not that bad, but it just didn't compare well to Disneyland.  After having such a great lunch at Storyteller's Cafe the day before, we went there again for dinner.  The $25 all-you-can eat buffet was to die for.  Prime rib, leg of lamb, roasted chicken, 10 kinds of fresh fruit, grilled asparagus and cheesecake.  I can't stop thinking about it!

Friday, April 26th was our last day there.  We spent most of the morning gathering our stuff together and re-packing the car.  And off we went, back to Portland.  We crashed at a Motel 6 somewhere along the way home.  We arrived in Portland at 3pm, Saturday, April 27th right on schedule, 1000.5 miles later.

All said and done, it was a FANTASTIC vacation.  I really enjoyed it and I know the kids did too.

Note: I forgot my digital camera, so these are scans of film prints, hence the poor quality.  Also, this is why it took me a month instead of a week to get this page up... well, that and laziness.  :-)

This is the first ride we rode the whole time we were there.  It's the Astro Orbiter in the Tomorrowland section of Disneyland.	A scene from Toontown.	Disneyland's Toontown was pretty cool.  It felt like being in a cartoon at times with all the weird buildings.
This is in the New Orleans Square part of Disneyland.  We didn't do too much in this area, but we did circle the island in the background on a ferry boat.	There were signs from Kodak telling me to consume film here.  I complied.	I found a possible long lost cousin while at the Rainforest Cafe.
Inside DCA is a water flume type ride.  The waterworks is in the background.	There's a fairly large man-made pond in the middle of DCA, which you can see from our spaceship vantage point.	Mommy took this shot herself.
The merry-go-round was Little Mermaid themed.	If they had a big squid, I would've ridden it.	Nice lips, nice legs.
Inside DCA was a pretty elaborate play structure for kids.  Here we have Patrick perched ready to slide down one of the slides.	Jarod was quick to follow suit... you can still see Patrick's head at the bottom.	They didn't have the guts to go right up, but here you can see Patrick and Jarod "with" Mike and Sully from Monsters, Inc.
Another shot taken by Mommy... not bad aim.	But even more impressive is that this was taken by Jarod.	Here are the boys in the Ferris wheel.  Amy will want me to note that I have a hard time with this ride.
	The final shot... the boys in the Hollywood back-lot of DCA.  Aren't they cute?