A jenerek family

Disneyland Report

Well, the first thing that all you Disneyland goers with small children should know; don't take your two year old on Mr. Toad's Wild Ride first thing. In fact, you probably would be better off not taking him on it at all. It made Ryan pretty sceptical about the whole Disneyland experience - right from the beginning.

Let's zoom in on those "happiest place on earth" sort of expressions!

Let's see, maybe flying Dumbo will fix things and restore his faith in Disneyland. Yeah, he liked that pretty well. Katie was indifferent about EVERYTHING. It looks like I'm having tons of fun on Dumbo though.

Carousel was a success. (We could have taken him to Arrowhead Mall and spent a few bucks on that one.)

We tried Toon town and that went over well. Minnie Mouse has a plate of holographic "diet" cookies on her kitchen table and he tried for a long time to get one of those. I kept badgering Derek to take pictures of Ryan on the cars and a fire engine and trolley and such, but for some reason, there are none of those on my camera.

He liked the Disneyland railroad - even the dinosaur part. He is definitely in a train stage right now. (I realise the picture is not convincing.)

Autopia was also a big hit. Derek helped him get started but Ryan steered the rest of the time. It was a wild ride. Anyone else want to guess what color car they drove? I promise they only went once.

We went over to California Adventure to catch the Aladdin show that Devin went to last year. He had really enjoyed it so we thought we'd give it a shot. Ryan loved it even though there was a scary *Jafar turns into a big fat red snake* part. In fact, we asked him afterwards which part was his favorite and he said, "the BIG snake." It was quite entertaining. The genie was cracking jokes about Jafar when he rubbed the lamp and said, "Slytherin house for sure." I got a laugh out of that one.

Ryan liked that he could fold himself in half in the chairs. *Jimmy, don't read this next part* I was nursing Katie (VERY discreetly I might add) and we were in our own row on the end when this group of people came and sat next to us. After a minute or two they actually LEFT because I was nursing. That's never happened to me before and I swear that I wasn't being all flashy about it!

Ryan DID get to see Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, Max (Goofy's son who waved to him), and Santa Claus. He wasn't interested in touching or talking to any of them, but he did wave every time. We never saw Sulley walking around, but we DID go on the Monster's Inc. ride the very last thing. It was a slow-moving ride and not too loud so it was just perfect for a kid who knows the characters and all. He would wave every time we saw Sulley and Mike and Boo and Celia Welia (as we always call her). At the end of the ride was Roz and she said, "In case you didn't realize, I'm standing under the mistletoe." Ryan scooted over to the edge of the seat as far from her as possible. :)

When it was over I asked him if he liked that one and he said, "Yeah, and I wasn't even nervous!" Whew!

"What was your favorite part about Disneyland Ryan?"
"That one," he said, pointing to Monster's Inc.

Yes, it's still such a love/hate relationship.

We got in the car and took the kids over to a babysitter's house and made it back late for our dinner. The park had already closed but luckily we found a reasonable guy who knew about our group and escorted us back in so we wouldn't miss out on our meal. We sat across from a HILARIOUS couple who entertained us the whole meal. Now how's that for lucky?