Hwy 1 Road Trip – Part 2 (DISNEYLAND!!!!!)

Finally continuing my last post, here’s part two of our big road trip down Highway 1…we spent 2 days in Disneyland!!

But first, we had to get there from Cayucos, the tiny little beach town where we stayed. We didn’t make too many stops along the way, but had time for a picnic by the beach and a little bit of a photo op by the ocean…

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We didn’t really stop again the rest of the way down, but drove through several beautiful beach towns like Santa Barbara and Malibu as we made our way to our hotel near Disneyland. The map isn’t retaining my custom route for some reason, but we drove all along the coast – not inland as this shows.

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After an overnight rest (during which we could see the Disneyland nightly fireworks show from our hotel room!), it was off to the park first thing the next morning!!

 

Disneyland far exceeded my expectations. I thought I would have fun, of course, but it was a truly magical place, full of nostalgia, good cheer, kids running around having the time of their lives, and it was SO CLEAN!! Just about the only complaint I have is the food – it was basically overpriced cafeteria fare,  but hey – it didn’t put a damper on things at all.

The Disneyland park in L.A. actually has two “parks” – the original Disneyland, as well as the California Adventure side, which has a whole section called “Cars Land”…and this is where we went to dinner on the first night – Flo’s Cafe!

We ended the night with one last stroll through the park, chatting and planning our second day of fun.

On day 2, we opted to spend most of our time over on the California Adventure side, where there’s Paradise Pier, Carsland, the Hollywood Tower of Terror, and more importantly….they serve fun and frosty adult beverages over on that side (Disneyland is dry).

We also saw a fantastic live show – a live stage version of Aladdin, which was completely magical and had such amazing production values – I definitely teared up during the rendition of “A Whole New World”, where the actors are actually flying overhead in a starry sky, on a magic carpet! The show was free with our tickets, which was so wonderful – I highly recommend seeing Aladdin if you’re ever in Disneyland, this video (which I didn’t take) doesn’t do it justice at all.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAcY79rc5_I#t=4m53s]

That night, we had a lovely dinner on the California Adventure side at the California Wine Bistro. With our dinner we received free front row tickets to the World of Colour show at the end of the night, which was awesome. I’m only sorry we didn’t get to see the Fantasia show on the Disneyland side, which is also supposed to be fantastic.

Since California Adventure closes a little earlier than Disneyland, we headed back over to the Disneyland side to get in a few more rides before we had to go. Namely, we hit the Star Tours ride (based on Star Wars!), and two more runs on the Toy Story 3d ride, which is basically a giant, real-life arcade game and SUPER fun – I beat Nick the third time, which was very exciting to me.

And with that, we were off to San Diego the next day – soon to come (I promise!) in part 3.