Disneyland Day #1!

We went to Disneyland last week and it was so much fun! Per my usual, I took a ton of pictures so I am going to break our trip down into days. You'll still get sick of looking at pictures, but I'll spread it out a bit for you. :)

We like to vacation there in November. The crowds are usually low, and the weather is usually good. Normally it is in the low 70's during the day - perfect! However, this year it was unseasonably warm  hot. Not my kind of weather! Luckily, the heat only lasted for a few days. Sunday it was in the high 80's and Monday the mid 80's. After that it was great. It was also a bit humid, another thing that I am not fond of. You'll see from the pictures why I affectionately named this vacation "the big hair trip".  Thank you heat and humidity!

We flew out on Saturday afternoon and arrived at our hotel at around 5:00 p.m. Each year we try a different hotel and this year I think we finally found "the one". We stayed at the Marriott Fairfield Inn and we really liked it. It is about a 3 minute walk to the entrance of Disneyland. We never rent a car so we love to be within walking distance of the park.

We knew the park would be crowded on a Saturday, and since we arrived in the evening, we decided to spend time in Downtown Disney. It was the first time we've really spent time there when we were not rushed. It was great to check out the overpriced stores and the fun restaurants. We just wandered around looking & eating until we all got tired & headed back to our hotel.

This is the view from our room. Can't beat waking up to a view of the Matterhorn! I have very vivid childhood memories of staying at a motel (yes "motel") south of Disneyland. At that time, the only part of the park you could see from outside was the Matterhorn sticking up. I remember waking up every morning, looking out the window and seeing it. You can't tell from this picture but we could also see Space Mountain, the top half of The Castle, and the Monorail would go by on that track by the road.

 

Each night there were fireworks over the park. The first night there we just watched them from our room. We had a front row seat! We could see them, hear the music and no crowds!