Starting Off

My brother and I with the Orange Bird in 1976. Thankfully
the Orange Bird has recently made his grand return
to Walt Disney World. 

I have never been to Disneyland. For someone who grew up thinking Walt Disney World was the greatest place on earth, it is amazing I never made it to Disneyland. As a matter of fact, I have only been in California twice. Both of those visits were for business and were very brief. The total amount of time I have spent in the state of California is about 3 days. I never really had the time to make it to Anaheim. Looking back I know should have taken a day's vacation and visit the sister park of my very favorite place. Oh well, I'm finally getting there.

One of the things about Disneyland was it was just one park and not the full resort that WDW was. My favorite part of being at WDW growing up was that it seemed cutoff from the real world. We usually stayed at the Polynesian. We would park the car and not return to it until 7 days later when it was time to leave. I loved that feeling. Anaheim did have the Disneyland Hotel, but really Disneyland did not have the escapist feeling outside of the park itself that WDW had.

After Disneyland revamped itself into a resort, I knew it was only a matter of time before I would finally get there. The only problem was that California Adventure opened to lousy reviews and from what I could tell, were totally justified. Fast forward a few years and my two sons, Jonah and Eli, were now at the fun age that I could enjoy a Disney trip with them plus Eli just LOVED Cars. He watched the movie every day for months. When Disney announced the extreme makeover of California Adventure which included Carsland, I knew we had to go.

This blog is going to follow our trip out west to visit Disneyland. I'll make sure to post a lot of pictures as we go along.