Disneyland Day 3

Day three at Disneyland was the first day that I was able to be with the family from start to finish.  My conference was over, so it was party time for mom!

Unfortunately, we stayed up until the wee hours of the morning (3 a.m. ish) and I wanted to take advantage of every second at the parks that I could.  That meant I was up at 6ish.  That meant that I crashed BIG time in the afternoon!

We started at California Adventure and got a fast pass first thing at Soaring.  The kids couldn't understand why I was getting a fast pass when the line was only 10 minutes.  It was hard to explain that the fast pass would allow us to hit something else with a short line and still get on Soaring in a timely manner. 

With fast passes in hand, we ran over to Cars and got in the Single Rider line.  The regular line was already 40 minutes long.  I learned the single rider trick from Father Robert last year during the 8th grade Disney trip.  Sure enough, we were on the ride in less than five minutes!  Hudson and I rode with a family of four and Eric and Evan made it into a car together with another four-some.  Perfect!

Eric and Evan's picture.  This ride is a lot of fun. The race at the end is the best!

After Cars, we walked over to Tower of Terror and waited about 40 minutes to ride.  I love/hate this ride.  It is literally the only ride that scares the pants off me.  And I still love it.  Such a thrill when the elevator car drops and leaves your stomach four floors up.  So stinking scary!  And we were in the front row!  Ahhhhh!

See the terrified look on my face?  And the rest of my family is giggling like loons!

After Tower it was time to go back to Soaring.  I love that ride.  We had time to do a bunch of rides in the boardwalk area.  We rode Screaming two times in a row.  We rode a bunch of carnival type rides: swings, rockets, and mouse trap.  Then it was time for lunch at Disneyland. I had made a reservation for us at Cafe Orleans because I was determined to try a Monte Carlo sandwich.

And it was delicious.  Ham and cheese deep fried and covered in powdered sugar.  It was as good as it sounds.  I could only eat one of the four sections.  For shame!

Evan was worn out at this point, but Hudson was so content to just sit and color.  It was very strange!

Hudson had done something earlier to really make Evan mad, so he was not the best lunch companion.  That's okay.  I still enjoyed my lunch.

And this was the last photo I took of Sunday.  

We went back to the hotel room to rest and relax.  I slept for a few hours.  I was so tired from my convention, early mornings, late nights, and constant walking.  The boys went to the pool for a bit while I was dead to the world.

After sleeping, we went to Joe's Crab Shack for dinner before heading back to Disneyland for more partying.  We were going to go see the Color Wonder show, but ended up just hanging out in Disneyland and having fun.  

At one point we were walking by Pinocchio's ride when a Disney cast member stepped up to us and asked us if we had ridden the ride.  We said no.  He asked us if we wanted to jump on as special guest riders.  Um, sure.  He literally opened the back gate and we got on the ride in front of a bunch of other people that were waiting in line.  It was so weird and so cool!  It was a cute ride.

We also rode Pirates and Indiana Jones that night.  Then we headed to the hotel to crash for the night.