Our day at Disneyland...

DH and I also went to Disneyland while we were staying in Huntington Beach. It was quite a short drive from there. We parked in the huge multi storey car park, then took the ‘tram’ to the park. At the ticket booth we opted just to do one of the parks and we chose the original Disneyland. Our tickets cost $76 each so we felt we had to cram as much as possible in to the day.

The tram that took us from the car park to the park entry

Disneyland’s Main St is so quaint with the horse-drawn tram, the old world shops and numerous vintage vehicles. And of course there is the station overlooking the ‘town’. Staff are dressed in uniforms of yester-year and everything is so clean.  We took the ride on the train to get our bearings and then started to explore some of the areas.

Stroller parking!

It was great seeing things that had featured on those TV shows of long ago that were shown on Sunday nights if I remember correctly...but it was a long time ago! The ‘fairytale’ castle, Frontierland, New Orleans was top on my list to wander through but we managed to see more of the park as well, especially Tomorrow Land. I really wanted to have a ride on the ‘Teacups’...don’t know why, but I just did. Unfortunately the queue was extremely long even though people sat more than 1 to a teacup. The other ride I wanted to go on, the one that goes in the Matterhorn was also extremely long. So we looked for alternatives.

The view from the ship

This was a real cat that walked out along the old damaged railway track

There was a 'spare teacup' which people were sitting in to get a photo





We took a boat ride on the old ‘sailing ship’ ‘Columbia’ as it was quicker to get a turn. It was a bit disappointing as the figures on the banks were so ‘dodgy’...sort of moth-eaten animatronics and I apologise for being so critical of such an iconic place. Dreamworld, Movieworld and Universal Studios and even Sovereign Hill have made me expect more. Now leaving from the wharf near the Columbia was a paddle steamer but it apparently went around the same stretch of water so we ‘caught the train to New Orleans’ and there we had a lovely lunch. Lunch was citrus chicken, a really yummy mashed potato dish, greens and some cornbread which appears to be a sweet cake-like food.

Now the things I really loved about Disneyland were many. Firstly the vision of Walt Disney to build this place which opened in 1955, the cleanliness, the focus on families, the beautiful gardens, the impeccably restored vintage motor vehicles and best of all for me...the live entertainment especially the bands, both jazz and marching! I did not like the queues as too much time is wasted waiting to go into or on rides and activities. You can buy special ‘queue jumper’ passes and I think you need them. We did line up for 40 minutes to drive the crazy little cars...despite my best efforts the vehicle rocked around and seemed to be not connected to the steering wheel and even though I knew it couldn’t come off the track I was glad when I got back to the start. Lol

We waited 35 minutes to get on this ride

One of the lovely restored vintage vehicles

In the gift shop DH tried on some ears!

Mary Poppins entertaining the crowd

Some of the beautiful gardens

We spent the latter part of the afternoon looking at the museum dedicated to Abraham Lincoln where as well as an animatronics’ Abe there was a pretty impressive model of the capitol building. We also spent quite a bit of time in the ‘Tomorrow Land’  exhibit.

Later in the day the ‘lowering of the flag’ ceremony was very impressive back in Main Street. The crowds seem to grow bigger as the day went on, so that when Adrienne rang and said Cindy had brought home some Chinese take-away and would we be home for dinner, we decided to forgo watching the fireworks and head back to the ‘tram’ which would take us back to the car park. DH commented that he had left his trip to Disneyland 50 years too late...