California Adventures

Greetings from California!!!

Well here I was telling everyone that I was going to update this blog on a daily basis and then I didn't. That is just too bad because I have so much to tell everyone.

We had an amazing time at Disney!!! It truly is "the happiest place on earth." Tom and Cindy are natives so they have been to Disneyland numerous times and know all the ins and outs of navigating around the park. On day 2 we were able to take advantage of the one early entry that we had on our 3 day park hopper pass. So we got up early and got to the park and rented the carts and rode some rides (Teacups and Peter Pan, of course) and then had breakfast at Riverbelle Terrace. From there we hit one of my favorite places...Frontierland. We took the Mark Twain riverboat cruise and soaked up the atmosphere of the old west. Tom and Cindy rode on Thunder Mountain and Dianne and I did a little shopping. We just kind of bummed around on day two until about 2pm and then headed back to the room to rest up and get ready to eat at Medieval Times.

We had a 5pm reservation at the restaurant and we were able to walk right in and enjoy a drink at the bar. When we were seated for dinner we were in the blue knight's section which was directly across from the knight's entrance into the arena. For those of you that have not been to Medieval Times,it is a dinner theatre with horses and knights, jousting and sword fighting. The only food you are served is food you don't need utensils for as you don't get any knives or forks. We had garlic bread, 1/2 a roasted chicken, a beef rib, and half a roasted potato. We were also served tomato bisque soup but I passed on that as I just don't like tomato soup. But back to the show. The blue and yellow knights really knew how to play to the crowd. These guys have to be really athletic as they are falling off their horses and sword fighting and those swords are heavy. The horses were gorgeous and there was even a little horse show where they showed some battle moves that they used to teach the horses. Kind of like a mini Lipizzaner Stallion show. We all agreed that the show was excellent but the food sucked. If you go, don't plan on getting a great meal but the show is definitely worth it. (Oh yeah, I forgot to mention this...one of Tom's friends hooked us up with 2 for 1 tickets to the show. That made it even better!!!)

After dinner we headed back over to Disney. We thought that they were going to have a parade and fireworks and one of the cast members lied to me and told me that the Christmas lights were supposed to be turned on at 5pm. The lights were not on and there was not a parade scheduled and because of the winds and wildfires in the area, the fireworks show was cancelled too. The fireworks were not cancelled until right at 9:30 so we had waited around for a while waiting for them. The closer the time got, the more crowded Mainstreet became. Dianne and Cindy were sitting in their carts and I was sitting on the fence behind them. There was a couple with a little girl right next to us. I wasn't paying particular attention to them, until the mom used the phrase that sends me into orbit whenever I hear it. I'll try to set up the scene for you as best I can. So where we were seated, we could kind of see a little bit of the fireworks that were going off from the Fantasmic show on the Rivers of America where the Mark Twain is docked. These fireworks do not go up very high, but you can catch a glimpses of them in other parts of the park because there is not any wasted space at Disneyland. So anyway, the little girl got super excited because she saw a couple of fireworks through the tree limbs and thought they were standing in the wrong place for the show. Her mom bends down and says to her "Honey, we are not waiting for THOSE ONES, we are going to see THESE ONES." Then she kind of made a motion towards the castle. I was like in shock because I often don't get a double whammy on poor grammar in one sentence. Dianne looked up at me immediately because she knew I was going to have some kind of a reaction. She was not disappointed. We laughed our asses off and I made some comment about the mom making sure her daughter grew up with bad grammar. For those of you that know me, you know that this was like a nails on the chalkboard moment for me.

After the fireworks were cancelled, we decided to make our way back to the entrance of the park and head back to the room. We did take our time and Tom and I kind of strolled back while Dianne and Cindy went ahead on their motorized transportation. When we got up to the town square, Dianne was very excited. She said "Look Bev, it's Mickey." Mickey had come out to mingle with the crowd but was posing with kids to have take pictures. I had to have my picture taken with Mickey!!! But while we were waiting out comes Minnie. OMG!!! She is gorgeous!!! Dianne saw her first and said she stuck her shoe out of the door and kind of waved before she came out. She said it was hella cute. So anyway, Dianne and I got to have our picture taken with Mickey and Minnie. And now we have become huge Minnie fans too. She is so nice!!! Both of them blew little kisses to us. It was great being 12 again for a few minutes. After the highlight of my night, we dragged our asses back to the room and got ready for bed so we could do it all again on Monday.

So anyway, I know this is a lot of reading so I will sign off for now. Dianne, Cindy and I have to get ready for our spa treatment this morning. (We got into Napa last night and we are staying at the most amazing place. But I will tell you about that later.) Bye for now.