Thanksgiving part II

Day two of our Disneyland adventure dawned overcast and a little cooler, which was fine by us because "a little cooler" for us meant that is was about 50-55 degrees that morning, or jacket weather. No problem. All the workers at the park were in their heavy coats and gloves, and one worker urged me to cover Michael up with my extra sweater so "the poor boy won't freeze!" Californian's are so funny. It was also nice to feel fully rested and ready to start the day, even if I couldn't face the hotel breakfast again. Not that it was bad, it was actually very good. Pancakes, eggs, sausage, bacon, potatoes fruit, mini-muffins and some pastries. But we had it for breakfast the morning before, then had Denny's the night before for dinner, where we got breakfast, so by then I was pancake, egg, and potato-ed out. So we packed up and went to downtown Disney and got steel cut oatmeal and smoothies at Jamba Juice. Yummo. :) Then it was into the park. We started out on the Disneyland side again, but only did one ride (the Buzz Lightyear laser shooting ride, which was one of my favorites. Doug got the highest score of 121,000, but I had Michael on my lap, so that's my excuse for doing poorly) and then headed over to California Adventure. This side was much less crowded in general, and we stopped off at Grizzly Bear rapids to get out World of Color tickets, and while we were there we noticed that the ride was running, but only a few people were in each boat. Meaning.... NO LINE! :) Turns out my favorite rides are ones that have no lines. We broke out our rain ponchos and loaded up the boats and rode 3 or 4 times. It was awesome. Our next stop was actually Santa Claus. We were walking towards California Screaming and saw him in a gazebo with only two families in line to see him, so we jumped in. It was so sweet. The Santa did an amazing job, and the girls, although shy, loved him. Michael on the other hand.... Well, I wasn't going to subject him to sitting on Santa's lap, especially since he had just woken up from his morning nap, but Santa was willing and so we decided to try for a few pictures. Michael sat on his lap for a few seconds, and then realized that I was standing over THERE and he was over HERE, so he looked up, and made then biggest boo face and started to cry. Instead of freaking out or saying "Oh here Mom!" to me, the Santa took that opportunity to create a photo memory. There was one picture of Michael crying, then Santa leaning over him "crying" with him. It's a priceless photo, and even though it's going to cost me $14.95 to buy it from Disneyland, I'm going to get it.

Correction, I got it. :)

The girls asked for princess stuff and a new "fighting game" (aka, Smash Brothers. Our disk is broken.) and then got candy canes and were off on their merry way. After that the girls did the merry-go-round and Doug and I did the Screaming, then we did Woody's Shooting gallery, and then.... well we did a lot of rides. I can't remember them all. I DO remember going on the Ferris wheel and almost dying of fright. We went on the moving cars that swing backwards and forwards as you go around, and that was just a little too intense for me to handle without a seat belt. I had Michael on my lap, and he was squeezed in pretty dang tight to me with one arm and the other hand was clenching Doug's pants rather fiercely. Although I didn't like that ride, Eloise thought it was the greatest thing ever. She was with Grandma Sue and Papa, and apparently she was laughing so hard every time it moved. To her it must have felt like the biggest swing ever. We also saw the Aladdin show, the Incredible's show, and we saw Sully. Eloise did not want to get near Sully. He was a bit too big for her in real life.

After several more rides, we left the park to get dinner. Since it was Thanksgiving day proper, we wanted to do something a bit nicer, and so we decided on an Indian restaurant that was in the Ramada Inn. It was a pretty sparse crowd when we got there, and everyone in there was Indian, which I guess would make sense on Thanksgiving night. Anyway, we were all so hungry by that time that we didn't really care how good the food was, but to our delight the food was AMAZING. I'm not kidding. I've eaten at a few Indian places over the years, and here in Utah I really like the Bombay House in Provo. This blew them out of the water. Their chicken korma was to die for. I want to go back to Anaheim just to eat there again. Once again, so so so good. Oh man, now I'm craving it.

After dinner we rushed back to the park to watch World of Color. We got front row seats because we were willing to sit in the "splash zone" because we had our handy dandy rain ponchos. That was a really cool show. Everything in Disneyland was more elaborate than I was expecting. There is no half*$$-ing it in Disneyland. :) About 1/2 way through this, Michael fell asleep with me holding him, and Evelynn was on her last leg. Eloise had retreated to the stroller with her umbrella to block out the spray and hide from the fire (that stuff got HOT in the front row!) and so grandma and papa took the kids back to the hotel to sleep while us older ones went out to ride some more rides. Apparently Disneyland is open until 12 am everyday. And people stay until 12 am everyday. I thought the park would start to thin out, but it never really did. We did Indiana Jones in the single rider line, and then did splash mountain like five times in a row. They just let us stay on again and again. It was lots of fun, but those singing geese and chickens get pretty freaky looking and annoying after a while. In the end we ended up riding the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, which was a mistake. Firstly, the ride kept breaking down while we were in line, so we were in line for a while. Then because the ride was backed up, it was sooooo slow through the ride, so by the time we got off we had been sitting for quite a while and we all realized how flipping tired we were. :) So we went back the hotel. Got there about 12:30, crashed, and braced ourselves for day three at the park.