We're Going to Disneyland!

For the 4th time in the last 6 months, we're going to Disneyland... No we're not disney-maniacs or crazy, and we don't even live in Southern California- it's just been a weird year! Here's the how and why-

Last December My friend, L, told me that she was going to take her 5 kids to DLand by herself. I've always wanted to see DLand decorated for Christmas, so since my kids were out of school as well- I decided to tag along. We booked hotel rooms and made the 6 hour drive to LA. We spent two days in DLand and then drove back home. For some reason, my husband, J, declined the invitation to join us... I guess that spending 4 days with two (crazy?) moms and eight kids just didn't sound very relaxing!

In February '07 we went to DLand as a family. This vacation had been planned since the previous fall (before I decided to join L in December). We drove to LA on President's Day, planning to stop at our local AAA office on our way out of town to buy our park tickets (they were running a special). We discovered, however that AAA was closed for the holiday. Figuring, we could still buy the tickets at the special price when we got there, we just drove down and checked into our hotel. The next morning when we arrived at the park, we discovered that the special price was not being offered there- so we had to buy full price 3 day hopper passes for our family of five. By the end of the third day, we decided to upgrade to season passes; figuring that we would only have to visit one more time in the upcoming year to make them pay off... One of our favorite rides, the submarines (which have been gone for 10 years) is coming back this summer, so we already knew that we wanted to return!

In March, J and I celebrated our 16th wedding anniversary. Since we had missed celebrating our 15th due to J's mom's illness (she passed away not long after) we decided to make this year's celebration a big one... After much debate over where to go (I didn't want to fly anywhere and J didn't want to go anyplace cold) we bought tickets to see Wicked in LA and planned a road trip. On the Wednesday before our anniversary, we drove to the Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo stayed in the Kona Rock Room... On Thursday we drove to Hollywood with a quick stop in Solvang, and checked into the Renaissance Hotel. Thursday night we saw the show. Friday morning we walked around the Kodak Theater and saw the hand and foot prints and Grauman's Theater. Later that afternoon we moved to a hotel in Anaheim that I wanted to scope out for future family vacations. Since we were in LA we had made dinner reservations at the Blue Bayou for our actual anniversary dinner (the restaurant inside the Pirates of the Caribbean ride) where I had always wanted to eat. We spent the rest of the night in the park, staying for the fireworks and returned for a few hours on Saturday...

That all brings us to the present... Several weeks ago, we received a postcard in the mail notifying us of a drawing for season pass holders. The winner would receive passes for everyone in his/her household to ride the submarine ride before it opens to the general public on June 11th. I entered the contest and last weekend we were notified that we had won! So after shuffling some appointments and clearing our calendar, we're going back! We'll leave for LA on Wednesday at noon, after Teenage Son finishes his last final. We have rooms booked at the DLand Hotel (something we don't usually splurge on) and we'll spend Thursday in the park with an 8:00 am appointment to ride the submarines (before the park and main street are even open). We'll drive home on Friday so that Teenage Daughter can be back for her end-of-the-year class sleepover on Friday night and Young Son can play in his last soccer game of the season on Saturday...

Well, maybe we are a little bit crazy after all...