Disneyland is NOT for Whimps!!

Can I just start by saying that Disneyland during the Holidays is absolutely INSANE!!?? It's a whole lotta crazy at Christmas!

MomSelect and Disneyland gave me and my family the opportunity to meet up at Disneyland with 50 other MomBloggers and experience the park during the holiday season! (Shout out to Michele Himmelberg- Disneyland Resort Public Relations! She did so much to ensure we had a great experience! Thanks so much!) Since it was my family's first time there, I was a bit unprepared for the MASSES of people we would encounter, but in the end we really enjoyed ourselves.

Wanna hear all the boring details? Okay! First of all, we flew. We left Friday morning. They didn't know where we were going, we kept it a surprise! My boys had a blast on the plane, they have never flown before. Big Brother wants to be a military man of some sort and is really into military planes and jets right now, so he totally soaked up the experience, including the safety procedures the flight attendant reviewed with us (he's very, very safety conscious). He knew exactly how to save our lives when she was done. (Little Man was not asleep, I don't know what he was doing in that pic!)

We caught the Disneyland Express bus from Orange County Airport to the Disneyland Hotel. Jeff was our bus driver. He was...interesting. I'll leave it at that. The hotel is beautiful. We checked in without a hitch, got our 1st Time buttons and they even had an "It's my Birthday" button waiting for Little Man since his B-day was just on the 1st! Little Man, while happy, was extremely perplexed about how they knew! I explained how Mickey is a psychic mouse who uses his powers for good to suprise little kids and sometimes evil grumpy husbands. Kidding! We all know Mickey isn't psychic, just happy! Everybody was extremely pleasant to deal with. Disneyland kind of pleasant. I kept waiting for birds to start singing while circling around their heads! No, seriously, it was nice to have good customer service for a change. It made up for Jeff the Bus Driver...did I mention he was really...interesting? He kind of freaked me out. Something is definitely flying around his head and singing. Nice guy, just umm...interesting. I didn't take his pic, I didn't want to encourage him.

Here is a quick pic of our room and our view, which was chosen so we could see the fireworks from the balcony, which was awesome and useful on the second night, when we could not walk one more step and the kids were able to sit and dirnk hot chocolate and watch the fireworks while my feet died a slow death. I do not have pics of the fireworks. I will explain this later in the post.

We explored Downtown Disney the first afternoon and ran around the park just a bit before attending a presentation for all the MomBloggers Friday night. The presentation and awesome buffet were both held at the Disneyland Grand Californian Hotel in the Sequoia Ballroom. The minute we entered we were greeted by Minnie, who promptly embarrassed Big Brother by giving him a hug. (He's 9...still not into girls, especially one's with big heads and ears.) Little Man ran over and gave her a big hug. I could have gotten pics of this if I hadn't dropped my camera and wrecked it, so now you will have to wait for the family/Minnie pic until I get it downloaded from DisneyPhotoPass.com, which I learned about at the festivities Friday night! I will blog about this more tomorrow!

Big Man and the Boys met some dads and ate shrimp cocktails, prime rib, turkey and pasta, along with yummy cookies and rice krispy treats while us MomBloggers learned about all the yummy treats the park makes during the holiday season! Did you know Disneyland makes more gingerbread than any other bakery or restaurant west of the Rockies? Who knew?! More on that tomorrow too!

Anyway, we finished the night at the park, with a special preview of the fireworks show, set to holiday music and SNOW! Disney can make anything happen, right? It was this cool snow looking stuff that fell softly over Main Street as we walked toward the exit. It was awesome and fun and the perfect way to end the night! We headed back to the hotel and had a wonderful night's sleep on those comfy beds, dreaming about the next day's adventures. I had no idea how many miles I would be walking the next day, so I slumbered with no worries. Tune in tomorrow for Part 2!