Disneyland Half Weekend—Part 1
January 9, 2024
My grandma and I got all our stuff packed up on Tuesday night, after I got back from picking my uncle up from the airport so he could stay with my grandpa while we were gone. I decided to only bring 2 pair of running shoes (and 2 pair of park shoes, which are retired running shoes and can be used for a race if needed) so my bags were much easier to pack, and didn’t get as heavy as usual.
January 10, 2024
We managed to get up and out of the house on time and made it through security with no problem, and then it took forever to leave, I think we ended up being an hour late out of MSP. Luckily, the plane that we were supposed to take from STL got delayed and they ended up needing our MSP plane to fly us to LGB, so there was no way we could miss our connection
We made it to Long Beach, got our bags, and got a cab. One frighteningly fast cab ride later, and we arrived at Castle Inn and Suites. Our rooms were ready, and we were quite happy with them. Slightly less so when it was time to sleep, because the outside wall was not very soundproof (but the walls between the rooms were VERY soundproof—my grandma keeps the tv loud and I couldn’t hear it all) and I could hear all the traffic noise from Harbor and Katella.
After we got settled in, we headed over to Disneyland Park. Like an idiot, I thought 60-something degrees would feel warmer, and I had been melting in the airport and hotel room in my spirit jersey, so I chose to wear a t-shirt. This resulted in getting a new sweatshirt before we left the park
We got a picture at the DL entrance, but it never showed up in my photopass account, and I’m too lazy to contact them to find it; we just got a new picture there on a different day. Once we tapped in, I booked our first LL (Buzz) and we grabbed hot dogs for dinner. After Buzz, we did Star Tours, and then wandered back towards Galaxy’s Edge because I grabbed a LL for Smuggler’s Run. We got to be pilots, and my grandma was really bad at it
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@DopeyBadger , I found it weird to navigate at DL, because it’s similar, but also different from Magic Kingdom. We got our next LL for Haunted Mansion, which was fun, but irritating because it kept stopping, and we also got stopped in boring spots, like facing the wall right before the dining room. Eventually, we stopped for a long time just before the hitchhiking ghosts, and then the lights came on and we had to wait forever to be evacuated the extra 20 steps from the exit. We used our free LL for Runaway Railway…which broke down just before we were going to board
We were pretty well done in for the day, and I still hadn’t found a sweatshirt, so I was shivering. We used our new free LL on Buzz because we were going past it and I hate to waste a free LL (or a chance to play Buzz). We stopped over at Walgreens before we went back to our rooms to get some snacks and sodas for breakfast.
January 11, 2024
I was registered for yoga, and had several layers and my thermal leggings to try to stay warm, but I got almost no sleep Wednesday night because I woke up every hour because I was uncomfortable. I should know bette than to try to sleep normally (on my side) in hotel beds—they’re never soft enough. Needless to say, when my alarm went off for yoga, I chose to try for more sleep instead. I hate wasting the money, but with the race mornings coming up, I was going to need whatever sleep I could get. When I found out later that it rained a bit during yoga, I was even happier that I had skipped out.
Once we were awake and ready to go, we headed over to tap into DCA so I could start making LLs while we did the whole expo thing.
Look at us, all awake and stuff
I dropped my grandma at the coffee shop at the hotel while I went looking for the CrD platinum entrance. Several confused employees later, I found the right spot and got in line. I eventually got into the merch area, got all the things I was looking for, which was harder than it should’ve been since they didn’t have the medal pins for the Half placed yet(?) and the medal pins for the C2C were in a bin that I had to stand on tiptoe to see into. Signage would’ve been helpful, rD! Then I had to try to find the platinum bin/shirt pickup spot, and the CM I chose to ask was slightly clueless. I kept changing my search term until we hit on one that rang a bell for her, and then I had to kind of lean in and read her map upside down and I finally got pointed in the right direction. I got my stuff, and some free treats, and met up with my grandma to hang out until the non-rD expo opened.
I feel like they could’ve opened that a tiny bit early like they do at WDW, just to ease the congestion. The poor CM blocking the door was about to get trampled. Finally, at 10 on the dot, they let us in. I got some new Goodrs (the addiction is real—is this what I’ve been missing all these years of not being able to buy normal sunglasses??), some new Pandora charms, including the Stitch-on-the-Tower-of-Terror charm my grandparents wanted to get me for Christmas, but couldn’t because it’s a park-exclusive.
We headed back to DCA, shoved all my loot into a big locker (my grandma is a genius for thinking of this, I was going to go all the way back to the hotel), and got on with our park day. Our first LL was for Mission: Breakout—my grandma’s first time on any kind of sudden drop ride
You can ignore the way she’s crushing my hand and the look of terror on her face, she loved it
We wandered through the shops in Avengers Campus, and headed to Cars Land for lunch at Flo’s. We saw Lightning McQueen on our way back to AC for our Web Slingers LL.
We also ran into Ms Marvel and got our pictures with her.
I kicked my grandma’s butt at WebSlingers, which is only fair, since I’ve done it before (she was Blue, I was Red) but we both got beat by Purple
After WebSlingers, we headed over for a LL on Incredicoaster. My grandma wasn’t the biggest fan of this one, but she enjoyed meeting Mr Incredible and Elastigirl.
On our way to Pixar Pier, we hit the PhotoPass stop and got this nice shot
We wandered along Pixar Pier, while I tried (and failed) to find another Lightning Lane for us. We grabbed some pictures with the statues outside Emotional Whirlwind.
And ran into Pluto near Soarin’
We hopped over to Disneyland Park to get ice cream at Gibson Girl, and I was extremely disappointed! They failed to clean their ice cream scoop before they did my cone, so there was a ton of strawberry ice cream all mixed into my cookie dough ice cream. Good thing I just think strawberry is disgusting, not that I’m allergic to it. Even though this was only 4pm or so, we decided to call it a day because the multiple early mornings were catching up with us, and I needed to get up super early for the 5K.
