The Tale of the Beach Babe Goes Punk Princess and the Sleeping Prince

Part 5

The question must be addressed of why we chose Disney Land over Walt Disney World. After all, WDW in Florida has EPCOT (my favorite park) which features pavilions from several different countries that Savannah is very interested in. So which is better? Disney Land or Walt Disney World? It depends on what you are looking for. Here is why we chose DL over WDW this trip.

1. DL in is southern California and WDW in central Florida. Did you see the pics in my previous posts of the OC? Enough said.

2. Once we found out we were pregnant and would have an 11 week old on this trip we knew DL would be the destination for us. Staying on property at DL you can walk to both California Adventure and Disney Land park making it easy to go back and forth from your hotel room to the parks. This comes in handy for adults too who cannot stay in the parks from 7AM opening until they close at midnight. But if you are staying on property at WDW you may have an hour bus ride to various parks because it is 30 square MILES (not acres). Nothings is close together at WDW.

3. Fantasyland at DL is far superior to WDW and that's what most kiddos ages 7 and under go for. DL's Fantasyland's increased number of rides over WDW makes up for DL's vertically challenged castle (but usually only the adults notice how small the DL castle is in comparison to WDW anyway.)

4. And lastly it's the original. This is the park Walt personally created. But this fact only has cool factor if you are a Disney fan.

Goofy checked into the Disneyland hotel with Mark. He was just hanging out in the lobby.

Balloons delivered to Savannah's room for her birthday. The hotel also had a birthday button with her name on it and an autographed 8x10 of Tink waiting for her. Nice touch.

The view of Never Land pool from our room.

We were lucky enough to get a newly remodeled room.

The rooms were very nice, modern, with an understated and tasteful Disney theme.

Notice the Mickey hands holding the lights?

The headboard may look beautiful as is during the day. But at night music plays and fireworks light up and then it really shines as the focal point of the room

After checking in Wednesday afternoon we spent the evening in DL park.

Savannah's first DL ride and Archer's first ride ever were the Jungle Cruise.

Here is Arch on the ride.

Our "tour guide" was pretty good. It's always funnier when they know their jokes are corny and they play up that aspect.

Next up, the Tiki Room which Archer found it hard to sleep through.

I've seen this attraction a million times at both parks and let's face it, it's pretty cheesy.

But you would never know it by watching Savannah watch the show.

She was amazed by the animatronic birds and singing.
To her it was wonderful.

Next stop Fantasyland where we rode the infamous Tea Cups. I know some people hate these but I LOVE them. The more spinning the better. Savannah liked to spin the wheel in the center as fast as she could to make them spin more ( just like me!). We rode this ride several times through out our trip but one time when it was just the 2 of us she looked at me as we giggled and said, "We are just like sisters!"

How sweet.

I imagine she and I will be close like sisters when she is an adult some day.

I look forward to it.

Some may call me abusive but I like It's a Small World as well!

As you can see from the pic, Mark painfully endures it.

Archer slept well on this ride.

It's a Small World has added several Disney movie characters into the ride in the Mary Blair style. Although they did it well and put characters in the appropriate sections (for example stitch and lilo are in the Polynesian section), I don't think the ride needed it.

But Savannah did want us to take picture of some of them.


That's the end of our first day at DL.

The park opened at 7AM the next morning and I am a rope drop kind of gal when traveling.

Too bad my travel mates were not!