Los Angeles! Disneyland

If you go to Los Angeles, and you have kids (or even if not), you must go to Disneyland... We went for a total of two days, nicely spaced apart by a couple days to allow us some recovery time. Everyone had a great time, especially Cecilia. And probably Karen. Again, here is the link to the full set of pictures for our LA trip, including Disneyland.

Some of the most memorable parts of Disneyland included the main street parade, where a lot of the well-known characters go by on floats. Now Cecilia is at the age where she knows and recognizes a lot of these characters, including all the Mickey characters (Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Donald, Pluto, etc), Simba from the Lion King, Cinderella, Snow White, the Little Mermaid, and Beauty and the Beast. We watched this parade twice, once on each day. The song is actually very very catchy and I find myself humming it every once in a while (embarrassingly).



Another thing she really liked was the light and water show at the end of the night. This was usually around 9 or 9:30pm, and she would be exhausted, but would perk right up for the show and be really excited. We watched this twice as well.Watch out, this video happens to be pretty long as it includes parts of the show:



We also went to Toontown, where she got to hug Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse.
  

She really liked this funny piano that made weird noises in Minnie's house, and spent a long time in this playground in Toontown, climbing on this slide over and over and over:



And of course, she very much enjoyed the rides. We went on countless rides, but she still remembers Snow White (she was really really into that particular book at the time). Here are a few videos/pictures of the rides we went on.

Dumbo ride, always a favorite:



It's a Small World, which was probably Daddy's favorite. We sing this song all the time now:



Autopia, where she got to drive a car all by herself! I think Daddy had to press on the gas peddle. Daddy actually sounds a little scared during the ride... perhaps a preview of the teenager years...



The carousel:



And finally, there was this really cool canoe ride, where we all got oars and life jackets, including Cecilia! And we had to paddle all the way around this circular river. We were so proud of Cecilia - she helped paddle and didn't lose her oar!



At the end of the trip, Daddy was 100% converted from not really liking anything Disney, to think it's the most magical place on earth. At least for his little girl. :)