Missouri to DLR - Take 2 - Oct 2013 - Updated: Trip Report Complete

Thanks for the feedback! We've been to the WDW Halloween party twice. The first time was in the rain, so it wasn't as fun as it could have been. The second time had great weather and it was a blast. From my perspective, the WDW/Disneyland parties were comparable, but there were some pros/cons at each place. The parade at WDW was REALLY good (and I'm not much of a parade person.) I thought that the Disneyland parade was lame in comparison. Disneyland was significantly more crowded than WDW. I think we ended up with about the same amount of candy each time. I think the Disneyland party had a better vibe to it. More people (especially adults) were dressed up and there seemed to be more energy all around. All in all, they were both lots of fun and I'd do either of them again if the opportunity was there!!!!

I'm pleased that you enjoyed both.

It's the crowds at Disneyland that have me the most worried. We rode BIg Thunder Mountain 3 times in a row at MNSSHP and every time was a walk-on. As was Splash Mountain. Plus, as well a quite a few rides, we managed to fit in all the Halloween things and, like you, loved the parade. I particularly loved the graveyard workers with their sparking shovels.

In saying this, I need to stop worrying and go with an open-mind.

Thanks again for your TR - it's delightful. You had about the same amount of days at DLR that we will, over a similar time of year. So it's lovely to get an idea of what can be achieved in that amount of time.

One more question if you don't mind, did you find the Sunday to be noticeably busier than the other days you visited?
 
Actually, I'd say yes, Sunday was the most crowded day of the week. We still managed to have a great time though. Crowds or not, they don't call it the Happiest Place on Earth for nothing!!! :)
 
Just wanted to say thanks again for this TR! We revealed the trip to the kids on Christmas morning and told them it was theirs to plan. Thanks to your TR, I was able to give them plenty of suggestions to start them off - especially the beach, Little Tokyo and other sites to visit outside DLR - DS8 loves the photos and description of the Griffith Observatory - I think we'll be there a while!
 
Just wanted to say thanks again for this TR! We revealed the trip to the kids on Christmas morning and told them it was theirs to plan. Thanks to your TR, I was able to give them plenty of suggestions to start them off - especially the beach, Little Tokyo and other sites to visit outside DLR - DS8 loves the photos and description of the Griffith Observatory - I think we'll be there a while!

That's awesome mumto2! I'm glad that you found the TR helpful. I'm sure you'll have as much fu as we did!!

This reminds me, I need to come back and write the final installment. Our last morning at Disneyland Hotel, our trip back home, and some final thoughts. Stay tuned :)
 


Last Day

So, I never got around to wrapping up the trip report with our final day. It’s a stormy, lazy morning here in St. Louis, so I figured now would be as good of a time as any to come back and finish…

We left off with our final evening in Carsland, coming back to our room with a pizza, and everyone crashing hard from an amazing last day in the parks!

The next morning, it was time to get our bags packed and ready for the flight home. Our flight was scheduled to leave LAX around 2:30 and the shuttle was going to pick us up around noon, so we had a bit of a leisurely morning ahead of us. We all slept in until about 9am or so.

I had one last piece of business left to take care of in DTD. I wanted to bring back a candy apple for my mom from Marceline’s and get some salt water taffy for my dad. They opened up at 10am, so Buddy and I cruised over while the girls stayed in the room and packed.



We arrived a few minutes early, so we had no choice but to stare and drool through the windows until they opened the front door.



We picked up a Sorcery Mickey one for my mom and I decided to grab an extra for us to enjoy too.

Once most of our packing was finished, we headed down to Tangorao Terrace. The kids wanted to take advantage of their last chance to enjoy some Disney bacon….





We headed back up to our room to grab our luggage before heading out to drop off the scooter and wait for our return shuttle.

At that point, we still had about 30 minutes, so we went around and took some last pictures at DLH. We had to get a photo of Stephanie with her It’s a Small World bag in front of the gift shop sign.



They had these cool banners along the driveway where we waited for our shuttle.



And one last shot before heading to the airport :)



We had an uneventful, easy ride back to the airport. Very nice!



Goodbye California… “See ya real soon!”



We had a layover in Denver, which was actually really nice. It broke the long flight up, and made each leg of the journey “fly” by. We arrived in Denver right at sunset, and enjoyed the view but rushed to grab a bite for dinner. Worst McDonald’s we’ve ever been to is probably the one at the Denver airport. However, we eventually got our food and were good to go. Quick flight from Denver to STL.

We got home Saturday night and crashed. This was new for us because we usually come home from a trip on Sunday. It was really nice to have an extra day to unpack and do laundry. Also, we got together with family to celebrate my nephew’s birthday. It was fun to bring back gifts from DL and Ninja got to give the Oswald ears to her cousin/best friend.



A few days later it was time to cut open the apple. Our last bit of Disneyland magic!





It was yummy and we wished we had another one :)

So it's been about 6 months since our vacation. I spent a while this morning looking back through the photos on this trip report and enjoying the great memories. This truly was an amazing vacation and we hope someday we'll make it back out to Disneyland. In the meantime, we are less than two months away from our family reunion trip to the Grand Floridian in Walt Disney World. We've got some amazing things planned and I can't wait!!! (I hope to get a pre-trip report started for that trip soon, I'll post the link here when we get started.)
 
Awesome trip report and I must add that Mickey apple was phenomenal. :smickey: Thank you for thinking of me. After reading your trip report again, sure makes me want to go back to Disneyland. I am so glad we are going to DisneyWorld in June all together. Thanks for doing our trip report.
xoxoxox Mimi
 
Nice to see that you finished up your DL trip report. It is always sad on the last day of the trip and I'm glad that you and your family had an amazing time in SoCal.

Very nice trip report.
 


Bob - Nice to see you back posting an update. Your vacay with the family looks amazing and I hope that you have many planned! Thanks for sharing it with us.

Hope your ankle is all healed up now and that life is back to normal.

Look forward to your next PTR/TR.
 
Thanks for wrapping up a great TR! I was just snacking on my peanut butter sandwich from Marceline's while reading your update.

Sunset in Denver is the best time of day! I avoid that McDonald's as well. :)

Jill in CO
 
Great trip report! If it weren't for your report I wouldn't have known about the evening photo op in Carsland at RSR! We have actually been to DLR twice now and hoped to go back before our APs expire on Dec 1. It doesn't look like that will happen but at least we got two great trips out of it. I know you'll have a great time at WDW!
 
Sounds like fun (the trip to WDW) please keep us posted with a link!
 
Thanks for the support and feedback everyone. It was a lot of fun sharing this trip with all of you. :thumbsup2

The foot is mostly healed up now... and I'm back on board with the kids. So far so good! :banana:




I started the intro for our June trip tonight. I should have it ready tomorrow. I'll post the link here when it's ready :thumbsup2 Oh, and we went to the Treasures of the Walt Disney Archives exhibit in Chicago last month. It was amazing. I'll be posting some photos and stuff in that thread soon.

 
What a fun surprise to get an email and another TR installment. It was really fun to travel along with your family. Thank you for sharing. Off to sub in for your WDW adventure too.

TK
 
Hi everyone! Just wanted to say that I've started a pre-trip report for our trip to Disneyland this coming June. This should maybe be called "Missouri to DLR - Take 3", since we are going to try again for the original road trip. However, let's start fresh with a different name. Here's the link, if you are interested in following alog:

(PTR) Getting There Is Half the Fun - An Epic Road Trip with 2 Minivans, 11 States, and 5K Miles!

map-car1-2-Optimized.gif
 
I really enjoyed your TR. Love the pictures. I've been dreaming about the E-M5 but we decided to go to Disneyland this summer so no new camera for me.
 
I really enjoyed your TR. Love the pictures. I've been dreaming about the E-M5 but we decided to go to Disneyland this summer so no new camera for me.

Thanks! I would love to have one of the newer Olympus OM-D cameras too!!! It's hard to believe my E-P3 is almost 4 years old. But... It still does the job well enough for now.

I can relate to your situation... It seems like I always want new camera equipment before I go on vacation, in order to take better pictures of that vacation. But the vacation budget itself often gets in the way. Ultimately, I'd rather make more memories than have better photos from fewer trips ;)
 
This question will sound like I'm crazy, but do you have any connections to Crestwood Il?
I ask because somebody is using your wife's image on FB. Thought you should know.

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100009460413264



Our first trip to Disneyland as a family - October 2013

Our trip is now complete and I'm about to start the trip report. If you are interested in following along, here's a summary of the vacation:

Saturday, Oct 12 - Travel, Disneyland Hotel, and Downtown Disney
Sunday, Oct 13 - Disneyland and Trader Sam's
Monday, Oct 14 - California Adventure
Tuesday, Oct 15 - Shopping in Downtown Disney, Swimming, Trader Sam's, and Halloween Party
Wednesday, Oct 16 - Little Tokyo in LA, Griffith Observatory, Seal Beach, and Vans Skatepark
Thursday, Oct 17 - Disneyland and California Adventure
Friday, Oct 18 - California Adventure, Disneyland, and Back to California Adventure
Saturday, Oct 19 - Packing, Downtown Disney, and Travel Back Home

Click here for this first post in the Trip Report, or continue reading the Pre-Trip Report below.

Also, see the next post for the table of contents.

Original Pre-Trip Report:

How our original July trip got delayed to October:

:sick:

I've been laying in this same exact spot for 4.5 days straight.

(Not counting bio breaks, of course.) What makes it even worse, is that I've been planning to take these same days off from work for at least six months now. According to the original plans, we'd be hanging out in San Francisco right now. Heading to Yosemite this Thursday, spending most of next week at DIsneyland, with a final stop at Grand Canyon before driving back to St. Louis.

The bright side is that we'll still be able to go to Disneyland for a week in October!!! :cool1: If you are interesting in reading about the plans for this new trip and/or sharing some occasional advice/opinions, then please follow along :hippie:



So what happened?

I have a fairly detailed summary of the original plans in my pre-trip report thread titled, Trip Report: Are we there yet? A 5,000 Mile Road Trip from Missouri to Disneyland. In a nutshell, we had decided that we needed to take the kids to visit/experience more things in the country that aren't Disney related. After exploring options, we decided to take a 16 day epic road trip from St. Louis to California with lots of stops and seeing some major sites. And that we'd still sprinkle in a little bit of Disney by visiting Disneyland for a couple days. Well, everything was going perfectly. Except for I broke my foot skateboarding in early May. No worries, they said it would heal in 4 to 6 weeks, and I still had about 10 weeks left. Wrong! My bones healed up, but there was ligament damage that wasn't originally detected in the X-Rays. We had two weeks to go, and the doc said that surgery was required and that it couldn't wait until after the trip. So, we had to cancel it. I was crushed. The kids were crushed. My wife was bummed, but kept perspective and helped us get over the disappointment. If you read the original pre-trip report, it was going to be awesome, wasn't it? This was one for the record books. We might try again the summer after next.

Fast forward another two weeks or so, and I'm lying in bed recovering from surgery. Bored out of my mind, with almost no attention span due to the pain meds making me feel so loopy. I figured, that I'm "with it" enough now that I can start a new pre-trip report. In short, we'll be flying from STL to LAX on Saturday, October 12 and return on Saturday, October 19. We'll be staying at the Disneyland Hotel the entire time. We have 4 day hopper tickets for Sun/Monday. And separate tickets for Mickey's Halloween Party on Tuesday. Taking the day off on Wed (will probably go to Little Tokyo in LA and then to a beach for the afternoon/evening). Then using the last of the park hoppers on Thurs/Fri. For the most part, we have the skeleton of the trip pretty well defined, but I'm sure that we'll have some questions or things to sort out.

About Us

DW and I have been Disney fans most of our lives. Both enjoying the classic movies and cartoons as kids, and we went on family vacations to WDW a several times. (She had gone 4 times and I had been twice.) The first movie that we saw in a theater together was 101 Dalmatians in 1996. And when we were first dating, I remember she mentioned that as a little girl, she dreamed of going to WDW on her honeymoon. So, later when get got married, the decision on where to go for our honeymoon was a no brainer! That started the tradition of including Disney in family vacations and we've been going back for more ever since. We often travel with my parents and sometimes even with my sister and her family.

Matt (me) - Don't ask how/why I came up with the MarbleBob screen name, because I don't remember. I'm not related to anyone named Bob and I don't even own any marbles. Some might argue, that I've lost a few marbles, but that's a different story. About me? I'm a web applications developer, avid skateboarder (well until recently - darn foot!), gardener, and of course, a Disney fan. I tend to go through phases where I'm super into Disney, and then I focus my interest on other things. But I always come back :) This is still going to be my first real trip report. I'm not going to count the initial 1.0 version, since it didn't happen. And I also have an experimental trip report to Marceline, MO from last year. See my signature for it. Marceline is really a cool place!!!



Stephanie (DW) - My best friend and awesome mother to our 3 kids. She's isn't really any more or less into Disney than I am, but she's certainly more consistently plugged in. I think she's listened to every DIS Unplugged podcast through the years (both WDW and DL) and she's probably listened to every one of Ricky Brigante's Inside the Magic podcasts too. Stay tuned for a future post, because I just scanned 650 photo slides from her 4 family vacations (78,81,84,& 86). This took a ridiculous amount of time, but being stuck in bed since Friday, it's not like I had anything else to do :)



Ninja Potato (DD13) - My oldest daughter. Obviously, that's not her real name, but that's the name she uses a lot online. She must have inherited the knack for random screen names from my side of the family. We'll just refer to her as Ninja going forward. As mentioned above, she's grown up going to Disney World, and loving Disney princesses. She outgrew the princess loving stage a few years ago, but her love for Disney hasn't diminished. She also loves everything Nintendo and Japan, and of course, her favorite Disney attraction is the Japan Pavilion in Epcot.



Buddy (DS10) - Also not his real name, but this is what we usually call him around the house. He's our engineer. He loves building things with his monorail sets, Legos, Rokenbok, trains, etc. And of course, his favorite past time is playing Minecraft on the computer. Visiting the various Disney World Minecraft servers makes it ever better :) His favorite Disney attractions are the trains, monorails, Expedition Everest, and California Screamin'.



Pickle (DD6) - We don't really call her this too much in person, but she owns up to her nickname, and it fits her well. Very sweet and loving, but she can be a bit ornery and spicey too! She's very much still in the princess stage, and her favorite is Cinderella.



Well, I guess that's a good start. Stay tuned for more details and updates :banana:
 

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