[WishUponAStar]

Sappy stuff aside .....

Day 1: Saturday, January 24th

Continental is a jerk. They officially cut the first flight out of Newark to Los Angeles, which YES was early at 6:15 am, but of the many times I've taken that flight it was ALWAYS fairly full. With the 3 hour time gain it used to get us into LAX by 9:15am & we'd be riding the Matterhorn no later than 10:30 in the morning. With this cut we were forced to take a later flight, and even though that trimmed a little time off of our precious short trip we still arrived without a hitch & entered DCA around 1pm.

SuperShuttle, who's never dissapointed me, picked us up from LAX and whisked us to Anaheim with SuperSpeed; along with a shuttle FULL of southern ladies attending the big "Crafters Convention" in Anaheim. My Dad was literally the only male, besides the driver, on board and within 5 minutes I was rolling my mind's eye in the front seat while I heard my Dad laughing it up with the ladies in the big blue van. I instantly turned 14 again; "I DO NOT know this man!" Suddenly this 25 minute drive felt more like... FOREVER!

While my Dad stood agape in the Grand Californian lobby, completely awe-struck by it's grandeur yet total sense of coziness I was checking in at the desk with room keys already in hand. Room 5161 was our assignment, with a Downtown Disney view. When Daniel and I stayed at the GC we had a "Standard View" room that overlooked the lobby & was literally 10 paces from the resort elevator.

Once we seemed to wind down wood-ladden hallways for miles we finally found our room & opened the door! Oh my gosh, the Downtown Disney view was AWESOME! I instantly threw my stuff on the bed & opened the door to our 5th floor balcony. Our room was located directly above Sephora (divine intervention or just coincidence, you decide) and I ABSOLUTELY loved watching the people below. Now I fear that everytime I go to Disneyland I am going to crave this observationist's dream room. I could stare down at people for hours wondering what their doing & where they're going. Actually one of the first things I did every morning when I woke up around 7am was look out on the balcony to see "who's already out there?"

After a little freshening up we were in DCA riding ToT in no time. My Dad was COMPLETELY impressed with the resort's private entrance into the park & he ABSOLUTELY loved Toy Story Mania. We took some drops on ToT, a couple spins on California Screamin', wore some 3-D bug eyes, Soared over California, and even met a couple interesting characters.

We enjoyed the park until well after 6pm but wanted some time to freshen up before our 7:30 dinner date with Goofy at his kitchen.

Goofy's was AWESOME as usual; great high quality food, more character interaction than expected, good service, a 10% DVC discount, and just lots of fun! So much fun, in fact, we ended up eating there again later in the trip.

We walked out of Goofy's Kitchen around 8:45pm and even though DL Park was open until 11pm that night we were just too exhausted to persue that adventure. I'd rather get a good night's sleep & hit the "early entry" morning the next day. We browsed around DtD for a bit & before we knew it we're fast asleep in our awesome Grand Californian room.