Although we may be 30ish year olds without kids, the Husband and I LOVE Disney! The Husband fell in love with Disney World as a teenager during his first visit in the early 90s and he went back in college.  We took a Disney cruise and visited Disney World for our honeymoon and returned to Disney World for his 30th birthday.  With all of his visits, I was surprised to hear that he had never been to Disneyland! I’ve been fortunate to visit both parks multiple times so when we learned that we would be moving to Las Vegas, only a few hours drive to Anaheim, I was excited to take the Husband to Disneyland for the first time!

We originally talked about going to Disneyland for my birthday back in September, but the trip got pushed back to the new year.  We decided to take a day off last weekend as we were both home and our anniversary is in a few weeks (the Husband will be gone during our anniversary).  Additionally, Disneyland was having a 3-day Park Hopper pass special for $169 per person which we jumped on.  We booked a stay at the Marriott Residence Inn Garden Grove which was a very reasonable mile and a half walk from the park (or an easy shuttle/bus ride… but we walked).  We printed our tickets at home so when we headed to the park, we could skip the Will Call and head straight to the entrance.

First we had a bit of a walk on our hands (or feet as it were).  We got excited when we could see Space Mountain in the distance!

Both of the Anaheim parks (Disneyland and Disney’s California Adventure) are located directly next to each other so Disney has a consolidated security area where bags are checked prior to entry.  I’m not quite sure what they were looking for (perhaps weapons?) as you can take food and drink in to the parks. 

Once in the main courtyard, we saw the monorail… we have no idea where it goes, but we saw it!

Disneyland itself was first on the list for parks to explore.  As soon as we walked through the ticket taking section (where they switched our giant paper tickets for ones that would fit in our pockets), we were greeted by the Mickey’s face in the grass and the Disney Railroad.  I suggested to the Husband we hop on board and ride all the way around the park so he could see it all at once before heading to the rest of the rides.

He agreed and we caught the train that had just made it to the station (they run every 5 minutes so we wouldn’t have waited long for the next one).

In Disney’s way of not missing a single detail, the entire train ride included details small and large.

As we passed It’s A Small World we could see the Matterhorn in the distance (my mom’s favorite ride and one not available at Disney World).

After riding around the whole park, we hopped off back on Main Street.  Similar to the one in Disney World, there were many fun details to the real shops and the fake ones as we headed toward Sleeping Beauty’s castle.

I was impressed with the availability of healthy snacks at the park, including this produce cart o Main Street.

We love Walt and Mickey The Husband was pleased to see Sleeping Beauty’s castle. Based on descriptions from friends, he expected it to be tiny (since Cinderella’s castle is quite large at Disney World), but he was pleasantly surprised.

Once here, we decided to head left into Adventureland!

As we walked past the Enchanted Tiki Room, they were having final seating for the next show so we popped on in.

We then scoped out the rest of Adventureland but decided to grab a bite to eat in New Orleans Square.

After lunch, we headed back to Adventureland to the Jungle Cruise.  Cheesy and fun as always!

Back to New Orleans Square (Disneyland is so much smaller than Disney World, land-wise, so it was so easy to walk between sections quickly)… as we walked up a giant Pirate ship floated by.  We’re not particularly happy about the pirate ship – it seems too big for the body of water it’s in and I think it has caused Mark Twain’s Riverboat to be shut down. Uncool pirates!

However, we headed to the Pirates of the Caribbean.  It was amazing to us how different the draw was at Disneyland to this ride than to the one at Disney World.  At DW, we immediately walked on each time we rode.  At DL, it was about a 15-20 minute wait.  Well worth it though! I prefer this version to the DW one.

We headed next to another Disney classic – the Haunted Mansion.

And then to the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad

While at the Jungle Cruise, we grabbed Fast Passes for the Indiana Jones ride.  After the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, our hour was open so we headed to Indiana Jones.  We’d never been on this ride and it came highly recommended by a friend’s mom so we were looking forward to it.

When we got down to the ride portion, we saw that it was on cars that seat 12.

Somehow, we got seated in the front row (me as the “driver”) and only two other people were in our car! Even though the line was packed…

Indiana Jones was AWESOME! Perhaps my favorite ride – or at least in my top five!

After that, we headed out to Tarzan’s Treehouse (formerly Swiss Family Robinson’s treehouse).

Beautiful view from the top!

Next up we headed to Fantasyland!

Fantasyland has most of the kid-centric rides (Dumbo, Peter Pan, Pinocchio, It’s a Small World, etc.) so we minimized what rides we did.  The top one on my list, though, was Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride – my favorite ride as a kid!

The line didn’t seem to be moving for some reason, though, so we headed to get something to drink… blue raspberry slushy to be exact – from a cute shack.

After determining that the line to the Matterhorn was too long (45 minutes or so), we headed back to Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride and found the line to be moving.  I enjoyed the decorations as we waited in line

Not as exciting as when I was a kid, but still fun! Next we did Pinocchio because I couldn’t remember what it was like.

Up last at Disneyland, we headed to Tomorrowland.

My favorite rides as a kid were gone (Carousel of Time and the People Mover) and Space Mountain had nearly an hour wait so we headed in to the Captain EO 3D adventure.  For those who have no idea what that is (which was the boat I was in), it’s a video Michael Jackson did back in the 80s with some fancy camera Disney had.  It was cool, especially for the huge MJ fans in the crowd.

At this point, we were growing a bit tired and decided to head to California Adventure to get a park overview before heading home.  We stopped to take this beauty of a pic on the way out of DL.

As soon as we entered California Adventure, we were pretty much bombarded by TRON Legacy.  We ended up in a 3D video which we determined was more of a giant commercial than anything special.

In the courtyard outside the theatre, they had loud techno/house music playing and many cast members dressed at TRON characters.  To get away from it all, we found ourselves in a Monster Inc ride (we only just saw the movie for the first time a few weeks ago! If you haven’t seen it, we do recommend it!).  The ride was cute!

After the Monsters Inc ride, we did a quick ride around the park and had some dinner.  The park was setting up for the World of Color light show that they have nightly and Disneyland was about to have their nightly fireworks show, but we were sleepy and our feet hurt.  With two days left on our pass, we decided to call it a night and head home.  Our first day at Disneyland was joyous and we were looking forward to two more days!