LA Day 5 | Disneyland

This is part 5 of my LA series. It has been a while since I have posted about this series as it has been a long while since I have managed to edit an LA vlog. However, I have finally uploaded both of my Disneyland vlogs and the rest of the LA vlogs and blog posts will be up in the next couple of weeks. Day 5 sees me at Disneyland for a day full of fun. Before reading this post, I would recommend reading my Disneyland Bucket list here and you can check out the rest of my LA series here.

Tuesday 6th March 2018

This was the day. The day that I was going to the ORIGINAL Disneyland. I was beyond excited!

Like every day in LA, ew would start the day off visiting different film locations. We saw the houses from Ferris Bueller, Donnie Darko, Weird Science and Anchor Man.

We finally got to Disneyland! YAY! I was beyond excited. I was even excited about the carpark! It was the Toy Story car park for goodness sake! Let me have my moment! What was really nice was my film teacher Mike knew how excited I was about Disney and he knows my massive love of Disney so let me pick my Disneyland ticket. There were quite a few designs that I really liked, however, I went with the classic Mickey, Minnie and Goofy on my ticket. Alice went with a StormTrooper ticket.

My first stop was the Disneyland Park. This is kind of a tradition for me to do. I have to head to the Disneyland park first, as for me that is the main park and what Disney is truly about. My first stop in the Disneyland Park was the fire station. A little well known fact in the Disney community is that above the fire station was Walt Disney’s apartment. In the upstairs middle window, there is a light that remains on the entire time. This is in remembrance of Walt Disney, and I just needed to head over their and pay my respects and say thank you. It’s cheesy as heck, but it was just something that I had to do. Disney has brought so much happiness into my life. I just had to say thank you for everything and I wouldn’t be as happy as I am today.

The first real attraction that I wanted to do was meet Mickey. This is also something I have to do on every Disney trip. I have very strong opinions on this, and I think if you go to Disney and not meet the big mouse himself, then you may as well have gone to Thorpe Park. A lot of my friends thought that meeting Mickey was babyish and childlike, and weren’t bothered by it. However, I was still going in no matter what. Emma came with me and met Mickey.

In Disneyland you meet Mickey in his house. This was like a childhood dream of mine to go into Mickey’s house (even though as a child I didn’t think I would or that this house existed). I wish, had walked round the house a lot slower than I did, as I didn’t feel like I took it all in. Emma and I dashed through as I didn’t want to keep the others waiting. The house was awesome though. There was so much to see and the Imagineers behind this house really put in all the effort.

After walking through the house, you go through Mickey’s movie barn. This is where you meet Mickey! Whilst you wait, they play classic cartoons of the number one mouse, so its nice to have some entertainment whilst you wait. We finally got into see Mickey and I was just in shock! It was honestly the best meet and greet that I have ever had and the cast members in there were lovely! I also really love the pictures that were taken in here and it was just amazing. What really made my day was that Mickey signs my autograph book and wrote ‘Happy First Visit’. I have never had any character write anything other than their name, and this just made my day! This will be something that I honestly treasure forever, and I am so grateful to Mickey and Mickey’s friend for making this extra special.

After meeting Mickey, I decided to split from the group. I made this decision as I knew that I would end up doing the things that I didn’t want to do. It was a really tough decision as I wanted to spend the day with friends, however, I also wanted to have a good time. I know, that I would have been gutted if I didn’t do half the things that I set my heart on doing when I was there just because I wanted to spend the day with friends. It was more about me remembering the trip in a good way and doing things that I wanted to do. So, I said my goodbyes and hoped to meet up with them all later in the day.

The first thing I did after leaving my friends was going into Minnie’s house. Again, I feel like you have to meet Minnie on a Disney trip as you can’t have Mickey without Minnie right?! Her house was also amazing. This was one of the many times I wished I had a friend with me, because I really wanted to explore the house, however the queue for meeting Minnie was thought the house, and I did not want to lose my place in the queue just because I wanted to explore. At the end of the house, you meet Minnie in her garden and again this was another great meet. The photo pass photographer was incredible and snapped every magical moment for me. I honestly think that these photos of me and Minnie are some of the nicest photos I have had of me all holiday, so thank you!

I finally left Mickey’s ToonTown and headed off to my first ride of the day, It’s a Small World. This is another one of those rides that you just have to do when you are at a Disney park. Some people love this ride, some people hate it, I love it! I am one of those few people who does not get annoyed at the ‘Small World’ song. I could sing it all day and be as happy as larry! This It’s a Small World was different to Disneyland Paris’ in the sense that there are actually Disney characters in the ride that you can spot. I managed to spot Aladdin and Jasmine, Woody and Jessie, Alice and the White Rabbit, Cinderella, Ariel, Donald and a few more. This was so much fun going round and sporting all of the characters! Such a fun little addition to an already amazing ride.

I then wandered over to the Matterhorn Bobsleds. I really wanted to do this ride as I have never been on this ride before. This ride can only be found at Disneyland, so this was one of those ones that I need to do! One of the benefits about being on my own was that I could use the single riders queue. Instead of waiting half an hour in the queue, I only had to wait around 5 minutes. This was great! I would highly recommend using these, as this ride was not worth the 30 minute wait time! It was good, but I feel like Big Thunder Mountain is better!

I was walking towards Main Street after being on the Matterhorn. However, I stopped as I saw Mary Poppins and Bert. Mary Poppins was another one of my favourite childhood films and I would watch this on repeat, so I knew I had to quickly pay them a visit. The queue for this was quite short, so it was really great! It was really nice seeing them as they had British accents, and don’t get me wrong, all the Americans were super friendly, but oh was it nice to hear someone speak in a Bristol accent. By this point, I was really starting to miss being with a group of friends and I was getting a tad lonely and I was feeling really overwhelmed by it all, so it was so nice to hear someone with a British accent!

By this point, I was getting hungry and started on the hunt to try and find some food! I looked at a few places, but nothing really took my fancy. I find that when I am on my own, I get a bit funny and can’t be very decisive. One of my favourite lines when I’m on my own is ‘ooooh maybe I could find something better’. However, by this point, it was around 2:30pm and I was starving!

I headed over to Disneyland California Adventure in the search of some food. However, before I found food, I paid a quick visit to Mickey in his DCA outfit. I was pleased I did this as the queue wasn’t too long and also, I don’t think I have met Mickey in a different outfit to his tux before.

Whilst we were over in Disneyland, food and wine festival was on, which meant that there were loads of different foods to try. I ended going to Citrus Cove. Here I had Orange Chicken, which was really nice. I’m not going to lie, I was 100% not expecting this to be good, however  this was really nice. I would definitely recommend checking out Food and Wine when it comes back next year! I really want to go back another year and try some of the wine, as California is known for its wine.

After this, I went on my one and only ride in DCA, which was Ariel’s Undersea Adventure. Essentially, this ride is like a simplified version of the The Little Mermaid storyline. This was one of my favourite rides as I have not been on a ride all about one of the Princesses. Tears were almost falling down my face at the end scene. I loved it so much! It was so cute and I loved it far too much!

After wandering around DCA I left and headed off back to the Disneyland Park. I headed straight for Fantasyland to go and do the Sleeping Beauty Castle walk-through. I wanted to see how this compared to Disneyland Paris’ as both have Sleeping Beauty Castles, yet both are so different. The walk-through was also different as I expected. You look into windows and see the story in front of you. I did really like this, and I was glad it was different to DLP!

My number one ride that I wanted to do was The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh ride, so I dashed over their to make sure I got on it! Winnie the Pooh is probably my favourite Disney character and whenever I am in an awful mood, this bear cheers me up. This ride was very similar to Ariel’s Undersea Adventure, in a sense that this ride tells stories of Winnie the Pooh. What was really nice is that the ride was based off of my childhood Winnie the Pooh film, ‘The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh’. I got a tad emotional throughout as it was like my childhood was coming to life before my eyes! The music was also very nostalgic.

By the time I had finished the ride, I saw that many people were already getting their spots for Fantasmic. I was desperate to see this show, so I decided that I would find a spot and sit for a couple of hours and wait. It was actually really nice to sit for a bit as I felt like I had been on my feet all day! Alice and Shannon joined me pretty quickly after this and it was nice to catch up with them and ask what rides they had done that day. I did feel a bit gutted that I was on my own for most of the day, however, I felt like I got so much out of the day and did everything that I wanted to, instead of following others around and doing what everyone else wanted to do.

Then, the wait was over. Fantasmic was about to start. Honestly, I can’t get over how magical this show is. Every time I watch back my footage of Fantasmic I start to cry. It is the best show I have ever seen, and I urge you to go to Disneyland or Walt Disney World to see this. It was full of magic and wonder. To me, this is what makes Disney so special. I look forward to the day that I can go back and see this show. I would love to take any future children I have to see this show, as honestly it was just so incredible and it made me so happy. This show was 100% the best bit of the day.

After Fantastmic was over, we had around 45 minutes until we had to meet up to leave the parks. I decided to split again from the group and say a quick goodbye to the castle and do a little bit of last minute shopping in the Emporium before heading on out of the park. I quickly ran to Downtown Disney to pop into the World of Disney to pick up some stuff that they didn’t have in the Emporium and unfortunately, that was it! We got back on the bus and headed back to the hostel, and I literally fell straight to sleep! I was shattered!

If you would like to see this day in vlog form, then check out my two vlogs from the day on my channel.

Disneyland was a really good day and don’t get me wrong I did have lots of fun. However, it was very overwhelming. I was not prepared to go round the parks by myself and it was very overwhelming. However, I had the best day that I possibly could on my own. I definitely would love to go back here again and spend more time at Disneyland, maybe 5 days or so, so I can get everything out of the parks.