Screamin'

Are you jealous yet?

Check out that sun. The mere thought of snow is laughable here...

When I was 11 years old, I went to Disneyland for one day at the end of a two-week business trip that I took with my dad. When Chris was 11 years old, he spent one day in Disneyland with his family. Perhaps we were there on the same day...

Fourteen years later, we came back. For three days.

We needed this trip. We've spent a lot of time apart in the last couple of months. It was really, really nice to have my husband all to myself for so long!

Our Assessment

My dad likes to joke that when he took me to Disneyland, he was surprised to find out that I would go on any ride that will make you bleed or break a bone. For Chris and I, the criteria was any ride with this sign posted:

Expectant mothers should not ride.

Obviously, that means it's a good ride. And that means I'm not pregnant, for those of you who kept asking around April Fool's Day.

Working the System

Fastpass is a wonderful thing. For those of you who may not know, Fastpass allows you to scan your ticket and basically save your place in line virtually. A card tells you a window of time in which to return to ride the ride, passing up most of the line. A trick we learned: You do not have to come back exactly in that window. You cannot come early by any means (we saw someone turned away because she came at 8:43 instead of 8:45), but you can come late. We collected several passes early in the morning when the lines were still short, then used them all late in the afternoon when the lines were super long.

Trick #2 was single rider. You get a single rider ticket and again skip the entire line...this is generally even faster than the Fastpass. We end up separated most of the time--hence why most people won't do it. But we still stand in the line together, however short a time, then meet up again at the end. Really, how much contact can you have during a roller coaster anyway?

Our Favorite Rides

5. Big Thunder Mountain

4. Space Mountain

3. Indiana Jones

2. Hollywood Tower of Terror

And, absolutely, hands down, #1 best ride:
California Screamin'

roller coaster

We probably rode this one a dozen times. It's fast, long, and easy to get to the front of the line quickly with single rider.


I decided that the very back was the best. The last car was already going full speed by the time you hit the drops. Awesome.

Of course, not every attraction was a ride.

just for jane

the end

We didn't actually last the full three days...We opted to quit before dinner last night. Our last ride, using the first Fastpass we got in the morning, was Space Mountain. By luck, we ended up sitting in the very front row.


Perfect way to end the adventure. After that, we quite literally limped out of the park to wait for the shuttle back to our hotel. We had a while, so we took our shoes off and compared blisters. I won, by the way. Chris has only one small blister on the bottom of his right foot. I have one small one and two big ones, and I'm working on a fourth. Good thing we're spending all of today sitting in the car (the Geo Metro, no less) driving back to Utah.

And a few more pictures just for pictures' sake