Disneyland
My History with Disneyland
As far as I can remember, my first trip to Disneyland was in 1979 when I was 6 years old. My family made a yearly trip for a few years after that. Because we lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, these trips were a major event and once which I always looked forward to anxiously.
Then we started missing years, and I think my last trip was in 1986 or 1987. There was one trip to Walt Disney World around 1990, but that took us to three parks in three days so I remember very little of it.
Then I started dating Jennifer. We celebrated her graduation from U.C. Berkeley in 1995 with a trip to Disneyland, and we just keep going back. So after about 8 years away from Disneyland, I made 6 trips in the next 18 months.
- Memorial Day weekend, 1995: Jennifer and I fought the crowds for our first trip and had a great three-day-weekend
- New Year's, 1995/1996: Jennifer thought I was just being nice when I took her down for another three-day trip, but I had ulterior motives. I shocked her in Sleeping Beauty's Castle by asking her to marry me. She said yes, making this our best trip to "The Happiest Place on Earth."
- June, 1996: This time we just went down for a weekend, taking Jennifer's brother. It was a bit sad, because this was my last time to see the Main Street Electrical Parade. Or so I thought at the time.
- August, 1996: Late one Sunday night Jennifer decided she wanted to go to Disneyland. I eventually gave in, and called in Disneyland to work (instead of calling in sick. I like having an understanding boss). We picked up her brother again (their parents are also amazingly understanding) and drove down in the middle of the night.
Jennifer eventually got annoyed with her brother and I falling asleep on Main Street waiting for the Electrical Parade, so we left before I got an extra chance to see the parade (even though Chris and I were perfectly willing to stay). The main lessons of this trip were that only Jennifer can manage to stay awake for this kind of foolishness, and that regardless of gas mileage, next time we're taking the car with air conditioning.
- October 12-13, 1996: After over a year of my suggesting it, my parents finally decided to go to Disneyland, with Jennifer and I tagging along. By the time they decided this, the only available flights/rooms were for the final weekend of the Electrical Parade. The parade got extended for another month shortly before we went down, which meant the crowds were only huge instead of obscene. Both parents were very impressed by Fantasmic! (even though the dragon wasn't working and we didn't get very good seats) and my dad loved the Indiana Jones Adventure (My mom doesn't go on the turbulent rides.). We somehow got great seats for the Electrical Parade at the corner of the crossing near Alice in Wonderland, and my mom was bouncing along to the music.
- November 24, 1996 Another one-day trip to see the Electrical Parade and take pictures. [ I'm still working on the writeup of this one. Right now there are some fairly large pictures on the main page. ]
- My web site was out of service for a while, so I don't have any trip reports for a while, but rest assured that we visited the park several times, with the last unrecorded one being Valentine's day weekend 1998 with Jennifer's brother in the pouring down rain (A good time was had by all.).
- 5/31/1998 through 6/9/1998. Our honeymoon. Seven wonderderful days followed by a descent into hell.
- November, 1998. With my folks, again.
- December, 1998. We planned to take Jennifer's brother to Reno or Las Vegas to celebrate his 21st birthday, but he preferred Disneyland. We didn't argue. Jennifer's friend Cynthia came along too (she'd also come on one of the earlier trips I didn't write about).
- January, 1999. Taking friends and family is a lot of fun, but Jennifer and I hadn't been to Disneyland on our own since the Honeymoon, and wanted the chance to do it right.
- May, 1999. Made the trip for two reasons: our first anniversary, and we knew we wouldn't have the chance for a while because we were on the road to parenthood.
Disneyland Links
These are now horribly out of date, I fear.
Past
Present
I suppose the logical starting point is Disney's official Disneyland home page. They've got nice things like park hours, attraction closure schedules, and general overviews of the lands.
If you want to get a better feel for what's going on in the park (bad as well as good), or need tips on making the most of your time, you can't beat the Disneyland Information Guide by Al Lutz.
Before Disney put their own home page up, the best site I found for general park information was Disneyland Park - Anaheim, California by Doug Krause.
I just came back from taking Laird's Virtual Disneyland Tour. Sometimes I got a little lost (especially trying to wander through Tomorrowland), but on the whole it's a great site.
Future
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