The Magic Kingdom

Here I sit at the end of 2 days of theme parks. I'm tired, and thrilled that tomorrow I can sleep in. We did a complete day at Disneyland yesterday, and a half-day at California Adventure Park today. The 2fer ticket persuaded us to take a second day to check out California Adventure (at no extra cost). Besides the fact that we had intermittent rain all day, I enjoyed the chance to see California Adventure, where I'd never been before, and had heard various rumors about. My opinion? I think the main Disneyland park still wins at the end of the day, but there were several attractions that we liked at CAP also.


We went with my brother, his wife (who is 7 mos. pregnant) and two boys. Our son loves his cousins, and all the boys did a great job going all day with no naps. For our first theme park experience with a child, it was a lot of fun. Yes, we traveled at a much slower pace, but that actually wasn't so bad for me. We went on several rides that I'd never been on, or had totally forgotten about. We also underestimated how scary Pirates of the Caribbean would be to the boys (oops). One highlight was when my honey and I got to leave our son with his aunt and uncle for about a half-hour so we could steal a ride on the new and improved Space Mountain--it's still the best!


Of course it was priceless to see the excitement on all the kids' faces when they saw their favorite Disney characters throughout the park. Our son was super-excited to see them from afar, not so much up close. We waited in several lines to take photos with different characters, just to have our son nervously clinging onto us, giving the characters a skeptical eye (see photos below). Not that I should be surprised, this is fairly consistent with my son's cautious nature. I actually remember feeling a little wary of the characters when I was a kid too!



Our Thumbs-Up List:
Autopia
The Carousel
Dumbo Ride
It's A Small World
Beautiful, sunny weather on Day 1
Ladybug ride at CAP
Playhouse Disney show
The bleu cheese burger I ate for lunch today
Lack of crowds
The Crush show

Our Thumbs-Down List
It's Tough to Be a Bug show (it sent my nephews into tears)
Pirates of the Caribbean
SS rustworthy play zone
The rain on Day 2
Closed & boarded up attractions at CAP
No parades!
Being stopped several times to answer survey questions

In spite of our few thumbs-down experiences, we still had a great time at the Magic Kingdom. It will be fun to come back over the years to see how our lists change!