Disneyland and Colorado Trip Report

Hello again faithful followers!  There will be no cross stitching in this post so if you're here for only for that see my previous post :). This will be a pic heavy post as well as I'm doing my whole vacation in one post.  Two weeks ago I was on vacation.  We went to see my family in Colorado for a week and then to California to see hubby's family for a week.  The pics here will be mostly Disneyland because it was their 60th anniversary and they premiered new fireworks and a new parade.

Backstory:  My hubby and I met on a Disneyland fan site and a couple of years later we met in real life at Disneyland during a scavenger hunt the site was hosting.  He lived in California and I lived in Colorado so it was long distance until we decided to move in together in Florida so he could stay working at Disney and it would be cheaper to live.  Long story but there's the gyst of it :). We're now "fighting" about where we're going to live permanently since he graduated and my graduate school is online.  So this trip was supposed to be looking at housing and jobs (turned into more fun but meh that's what the internet is for!)

First up: Colorado!

Not a lot happened there.  We met up with family and my cousin highlighted my hair.  She's in beauty school so it was cheap and she did a great job!  My mom threw us a little party and we had my older niece and nephew spend the night. They still had school so we only took them for the weekend but it was fun.

Lol that's my dad in the background.  And my mom!  We took them to mini golf and on the bumper cars.  As you can see they had a blast!  That's all my pics from Colorado which is really sad but I'm not much of a picture taker and we'll be back in 4 months for my cousin's wedding.  I had a blast though! 

Next in line:  California!

As I mentioned before, it was Disneyland's 60th anniversary which is the whole reason we went to Colorado first.  The first four days we stayed in the valley going to all his doctors appointments and such.  The last four days was nonstop chaos!  The first day we were in Disneyland they were open 24 hours straight.  6am til 6 am.  There were people camped out from the night before to get in early and around noon they stopped letting people into the park due to overcrowding.  They didn't let people in again we heard until around 1 am.

We got there at 6:30 am.  We were one of the first cars in the parking garage (the overnighters and 6:00ers got a different lot).  The lines to get in weren't bad when we got there and the lines for the rides weren't bad either if you know how to work their fastpass system.  Even so the longest lines for standby were only like an hour or so.  Most of the people there have annual passes so they were there for merchandise. The merchandise lines were triple the rides in some cases!  Our worst line was for breakfast.  I don't know who made staffing decisions that day but not all lines were open and our restaurant ran out of food early!  Luckily we still got breakfast, but we had to wait almost 2 hours for cafeteria style food.  Totally ridiculous!

Luckily we met some friends who were waiting for the parade for 6 hours and they had enough room for us to squeeze in with their group.  We still got there a few hours before it started so it wasn't like we were there right at the start of the show or anything lol.  The people are friends of my hubby who he knows through a different site than the one we met on.  Some of the people I met the first time while we were there and the owner of the site I've met a few times.  

We ended up watching 5 of the 6 parades there and 3 fireworks in 4 days and 3 nights.  That's a LOT of walking/running back and forth.  Especially since the last night we ran into the sister park for a show there in between parades.  

On to the pics:

The parade was breathtaking and the music was fun!  I really enjoyed it.  One of the cool things they've done is made ears that change color along with the shows which they implemented a few years ago.  What they added for this was you can buy a paintbrush which allows you to change the colors of people's ears and also change the colors of the lights on the floats at certain points in the parade.  We saw the parade so many times because my hubby likes to video it and edit the shots together to make one great video.  It's not up quite yet but look for it on his YouTube channel.  His name is almandot.

Between parades they had fireworks.

They updated the fireworks some in that they project images onto the mainstreet buildings, the castle and the Matterhorn mountain which were cool.  The fireworks were kind of subpar.  I liked their 50th ones better.  But they turn the mountain into a volcano during the nemo scene which is cool.  And it's a different experience no matter where you watch from so I liked that aspect as well.

My new ears :). Don't worry we got plenty of merchandise still including the paintbrush lol :D

The best part of our trip was 2 days after the 24 hour day.  A lot of people don't know it but Disneyland has a secret exclusive club that you must be a member to enter.  It's expensive and the waiting list to get in is a few years long.  It's called club 33 and it was Walt's idea so his VIPs could have some quiet time while at the park.  Well I'm excited to say we got in with one of our friends!  I won't say who since they don't want to be bombarded with requests (can't say I blame them) but I'm so grateful to them!  They have a dining room but we just had drinks at the bar.  They just finished renovating it and they added a lounge and made the whole place a lot brighter and I loved it!  We had been to the old one once right after we got married and I like the Renoed one more.

Ready for pics? ;)

The entryway

The dining room

The hallway to the dining room

The hallway to the lounge

The lounge

The girls restroom 

My hubby on the balcony :)

The lounge was really cool.  It had some subtle special effects.  The piano is a player piano but it's a special one.  There is a TV that pops out above it and if there is a concert going on and they have Bluetooth, they can make it so the that when Elton John or whoever plays their piano, the one in the lounge plays the exact same way.  So it's like he's right there with you :). It can also be played live.  We didn't see anything like that of course but my favorite effects are the ones when there's nothing special going on.  Remember the picture of the four ghosts?  Go ahead you can go back and look ;). Well as the player piano plays, whenever one of their instruments starts playing that ghost will disappear from the painting and his instrument above the bar will subtly move and the keys will play.  Sometimes they will appear in the globe over the bar too.  Or the bottles at the top of the bar will randomly bubble.  

The booths that are in the hallway to the lounge are special too.  There are 4 of them and each one has a different thme. One has the haunted mansion, one a sailing ship, the third has huck Finn and the mark twain riverboat and the fourth has a stage painting.  Well in each picture things happen.  The stage has plays that come on and the riverboat will have parties that happen on it.  The mansion will have a ghost horse appear and the moon rides across the sky.  It will also have a storm that happens inside the booth which then travels to the sailboat booth (across from it) and sinks the ship. The ship belongs to the captain who died and resides in the mansion.  Clever huh? I didn't get to see any of that but the idea is so cool.  Just the subtle little touches that make it Disney but still really classy.  I could easily just sit up there for hours having a few cocktails and listening to the  music.  I told hubby that if he makes me live in California then he's getting me a club 33 membership.  

Our last night in Cali we spent at the Stanley cup playoff game between the ducks and the Blackhawks.  

The ducks won in the first 30 seconds of overtime which was good because we had to fly early the next morning. Unfortunately they lost the playoffs.  The last game was just horrible for them.  But our game was very entertaining.  

All in all we had a great time.  At Disneyland we were pretty much there open to close every day except the last day since we went to the game (we were there for early open though at 7) and the 24 hour day.  We weren't planning on staying all 24 hours but we did stay til 2:30.  All that was left that day was rides and we already did our faves and still had 3 days left.  I wish we had done Colorado after so we had some time to rest after but it wasn't too bad.  This isn't even close to all my pictures and I still have to get hubby's too.

Hope you all enjoyed my post :). Next time I'll have pics of my new stash ;).  Thanks for sticking with me!