Saturday, September 19, 2015

Results- Disneyland 2015 Trip Bucket List

As you know, Eliot and I are back from our Disneyland trip!  I had a great time being dazzled by the Diamond Anniversary magic.  (More on that in a few days...)  Spending a week and a half at Disneyland was awesome and we did pretty good with my trip bucket list!  We didn't get to do everything, but I checked off a good portion of my goals.  We also experienced a few things we weren't planning to!  Here are the results:

Melissa's Disneyland 2015 Trip Bucket List:



°o° Watch Eliot run the 10K and Half Marathon
Eliot was able to complete the Dumbo Double Dare.  I on the other hand, was not able to get out of bed to watch the 10K.  Eliot and I decided that he'd be done early enough in the day that it wasn't worth me going to watch.  My body clock was all off.  However, I did go watch him and his Dad, Rick, cross the finish line at the half marathon.


°o° Eat a Tigger Tail, Dole Whip, Mickey Bar, etc.
I was able to get quite a few snacks this trip.  In fact, I've never bought more Disney snacks than I did this trip.  I had a Tigger tail, a marshmallow pumpkin stick, a few cookie ice cream sandwiches, a dole whip, a "Mickey Pants" sundae, and I brought a cake pop and two candy apples home with me.  Don't judge- I walked a lot!  (Hehe.)

°o° Have a Date Night with Eliot
Eliot and I had a few date nights alone at Disneyland.  It was fun to hang out and spend some quality time together at the Happiest Place on Earth!


°o° Watch Fantasmic, the Aladdin Musical and Pixar Play Parade again
I got to see all of these shows!  In fact, I saw Fantasmic twice, Aladdin three times and the Pixar Play Parade twice as well!  During our visit, Disney announced that Aladdin is going to be retired in January 2016 to make room for a Frozen musical.  Ironically, Eliot and I actually saw the show that day.  It's too bad, because it's a great show.  I'm really thankful I was able to see it a few more times before it's gone for good.

°o° See Soundsational Parade for the first time 
Eliot and I watched this one afternoon and I'm glad we did.  It's definitely not the Festival of Fantasy, but I did enjoy it.  The costumes were really cute and the floats were pretty cool.  The music is definitely catchy, which is the point of the parade!


°o° See Mickey and the Magical Map for the first time
I was lucky enough to see this show three times during our trip!  As you can gather, I really enjoyed it!  The music was so catchy and the storyline was really cute.  I loved the set design as well.

°o° Meet Tinker Bell and the Fairies in Pixie Hollow
We were planning to get over to meet Tink, but by the end of the trip, we simply ran out of time and had higher priorities.  And truthfully, the main thing I wanted to see in Pixie Hollow was the beautiful rainbow waterfall all lit up at night.  We did pass at night and it wasn't running.  So I wouldn't have see it anyways.

°o° Ride in the front of the Monorail
Eliot and I tried to do this, but the weather was so hot during our trip that Disneyland wasn't even running the monorail most of the time we were there.  We got to ride in the monorail the last night of our trip, but they wouldn't let us in the front because there's no air-conditioning.  We'll try to do this next time!

°o° Eat at Rainforest Cafe in Downtown Disney
Eliot and I had dinner with Eliot's Mom one night while we were at Disneyland.  This Rainforest Cafe is two levels and the outside landscaping is awesome.  There's a huge waterfall on the back side of the building.  The food was great and we did get glowy drinks there.  They also gave us free cupcakes for our wedding anniversary!


°o° Visit Mickey and Minnie's Houses in Toontown
We were able to visit Mickey's House without waiting in line to meet Mickey, but you had to stand in line to get into Minnie's House.  We decided it wasn't worth it to wait in line when I just wanted to see her house.  I miss the houses in WDW's Toontown.  At least I was able to see Mickey's House!  I even found a hidden Mickey there!


°o° Go to the Animation Academy
Eliot and I did two character drawings at the Animation Academy on our last day at the parks.  They were doing Steamboat Minnie and Steamboat Mickey back to back, so it seemed appropriate to do both!  I'm glad we got to do it together.  His drawings turned out a lot better than he thought they would.  It was a lot of fun.

°o° See Cars Land and go on Radiator Springs Racers
I was able to see Cars Land, but I wasn't able to get onto Radiator Springs Racers this particular trip.  We had FastPasses for our last day, but we were trying to finish up a few things over at Disneyland and ended up deciding to pass.  I'm looking forward to doing it next time!  However, I was able to see Cars Land lit up at night and that was my main goal.  It's stunning at nighttime.  It's like you're walking through the movie!


°o° Meet Olaf and Oswald
Eliot and I were able to meet both Olaf and Oswald!  We met Olaf one morning when we both wore our Olaf outfits.  Oswald wasn't there a few of the days we tried to look for him.  Thankfully, Oswald was there our last day and Eliot and I met him!  We had a great interaction with both characters.  Olaf loved my ears, shirt and button.  Oswald saw our Mickey and Minnie Diamond Celebration hats and he kept pointing at them.

°o° Explore the Disneyland Resorts
I'm going to count this even though we didn't get to explore as much as I hoped.  We were in the Disneyland Hotel for the RunDisney Race Expo.  Then, our last day we went to the Grand Californian Hotel to get a few of the pressed coins.  I saw a lot of the hotels, but didn't really get to explore too much.  I'll try to more next time!


°o° Ride Haunted Mansion- see Hatbox Ghost and NBC Overlay
I'm so glad I did this!  Eliot and I were able to get FassPasses twice after the Haunted Mansion re-opened toward the end of our trip.  The line was so long to get in!  I loved seeing the Nightmare Before Christmas decorations, even though I'm not a huge fan of the movie.  There was so much to look at!  The music was also completely different.  I even found a hidden Mickey the second time we rode it!  I was so overwhelmed by everything to look at that I almost missed "Hatty".  Thankfully, Eliot reminded me and I got a good look at the Hatbox Ghost.  It was so cool!

°o° Go to the Mad T Party
We didn't have time to go to the Mad T Party with all of the nighttime shows we were trying to get to.  We were there one night really early for it, but it's not the same when it's still light outside.  This is definitely on my bucket list for next trip!

°o° Get drinks at the Cove Bar
Eliot and I made a valiant effort to go to the Cove Bar.  We even got in line one night but we ended up leaving after realizing it might jeopardize our World of Color viewing location.  This is on the bucket list for next trip too.  I want my glowy drink!


°o° Take pictures of the Halloween Decorations
It was so much fun to see Disneyland decorated for Halloween.  The blue Diamond Celebration banners magically disappeared overnight one night and Halloween was everywhere the next morning.  I've seen the Halloween and Christmas decorations at Walt Disney World, so it was a treat to finally see some at Disneyland!

°o° Go to Trader Sam's Enchanted Tiki Bar
Eliot and I didn't even get to think about going here.  Next time hopefully!


°o° Get dining reservations for a nice meal with Eliot
Eliot and I are big fans of breakfast, so I made us reservations at the Plaza Inn in Disneyland.  (It's basically the equivalent of Crystal Palace in Magic Kingdom.)  The best part, was the wide variety of characters.  The meal is advertised as breakfast with "Minnie and Friends" and the characters change daily.  In fact, we had such a good time, we convinced Elissa and Rick to go again with us over the weekend.

We also had a few experiences I wasn't expecting:

°o° Meet Other Characters
As I mentioned above, the Plaza Inn had many characters at breakfast.  I assumed we'd be able to meet the usual- Minnie, Chip, Dale, Pooh, Tigger, Eeyore... but what I wasn't expecting was the others!  We also met Fairy Godmother, Captain Hook, Pearla and Suzy (Cinderella's mice friends), Max (Goofy's son) and Pinocchio!!!  I didn't even realize that most of those were meetable characters!  It was really great!


°o° Go to Disney's Soda Fountain and Hollywood
Eliot actually had a work expo conference on Friday while we were in California.  I drove him up and the soda fountain was in between Pasadena and Disneyland on the way home.  Eliot and I decided to swing by.  We both ordered a Pin Lovers Delight and got limited edition Disney pins with our ice cream!  It was really cool to see it and the El Capitan Theater that Disney uses for a lot of it's movie premieres!


°o° See Hollywood Sign and Stars on the Walk of Fame
While Eliot and I were on our soda fountain excursion, we weren't expecting to see the Hollywood sign off in the distance.  We also weren't expecting to see any of the stars on the Walk of Fame- but we did both!  Eliot grew up in California, however, he'd never seen them, so that was cool.  We also got to take pictures of a few of the stars!

°o° Meet Jeff Galloway
Eliot and I were able to meet Jeff Galloway at the RunDisney Expo.  We were one booth over when I spotted him.  We only got a chance to say hi and take a quick picture, but he was really friendly and he told us to have a great race weekend.

°o° Meet Dave Avanzino
I've been telling Eliot for months how much I love Dave Avanzino's Disney art.  He's one of the my favorite Disney artists and I absolutely love his shadowboxes.  He was scheduled to be at Disneyland the last two days of our trip.  It honestly slipped my mind in the last minute rush, but Eliot reminded me when he called and told me to come to the Disneyana art store right before we left for the airport.  Dave was there and he signed the Christmas Sleeping Beauty Castle print that I fell in love with earlier in the week.  It was so nice to say hello and to tell him how much I enjoy his artwork!


°o° Ride "Jingles"
We were in Fantasyland one afternoon and the line for King Arthur's Carrousel wasn't very long so we decided to hop on.  I told Elissa, Sara and Eliot that I wanted to ride the "Jingles" horse I'd heard about.  We spotted Jingles while watching the group before us ride.  When the music stopped and we were able to board, I went straight to Jingles and got to ride her!  She was dedicated to Julie Andrews in 2008 and has Mary Poppins designs painted on her saddle.  Jingles is also the "lead horse" and was Walt's favorite.  Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious started playing while I was riding Jingles and it was like I was a little kid all over again.  It was pure Disney magic.

As you can see, while we didn't accomplish everything on my trip bucket list, we were able to do quite a bit of it!  I feel like I did the things I really wanted to do.  It was also cool to get pictures with characters I didn't know you could still meet, and to meet Jeff and Dave!  We also had a blast during our soda fountain excursion and we'd like to see more of Hollywood in the future.  I'd say this trip was a success!  °o°

4 comments:

  1. Thanks for all the detail-you really experienced a lot of Disney Magic on your trip-so happy for you!

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    1. Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed reading about it! We definitely had an amazing trip full of magic! :-)

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