Disneyland In Pictures - Day 1 Part 1

I will be forgoing Bucket List Fridays this week (and possibly next week) so I that I can post a few of my Disneyland pictures and give a bit of a general review about the trip. Maybe, at some point, I'll have the time to give full reviews of the rides and restaurants, but for now, this will have to do. Oh, and warning, this is going to be a big picture-heavy post. You can click on any picture and it should take you to my Flickr web album...just be prepared because it is huge with all those pictures in it.

Since I've rarely been westward, anything desert fascinates me, so I literally took hundreds of pictures from the plane window including a crater coming into view:
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the full crater view didn't turn out too well:
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The desiccated memory of a building (or maybe even a town):
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And a town literally in the middle of nowhere:
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Once we got to the mountains though, I was mesmerized because we don't have rocky mountains here (despite an abundance of mountains, especially in west Arkansas):
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And seeing them above the cloud line was pretty cool too:
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It was literally like I had never seen a mountain before! I was kind of the same way once we got to L.A. because, although I've been to big cities before, I've never seen one from the air quite so big and spread out:
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Once the car service picked us up, I managed quite a few pictures on the way to Disneyland, even managing an unimpeded view (if rather blurry), of the LAX sign through horrendous traffic:
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I scheduled a grocery stop on the way to get Cokes and such and was a bit dismayed when the driver stopped literally two blocks away from the airport. I assumed (yes, should have known better) that we'd be stopping closer to the parks:
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The store was nice, both inside and out, so I wasn't too miffed. But I was more than a little shocked at the quantity of liter on the side of the roads all the way from LAX to Disneyland. Obviously, it was a bit difficult to get a clear photo from a super-fast moving vehicle, but I did give it a shot:
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I've never seen roadways so bad. Usually, at least around here, that's how prisoners work off community service, but I imagine with the steep incline would make it impossible for such. They could always close off a section of road at a time (I've seen that in Tennessee before), but the way people were driving, it would probably still be very dangerous. I was expecting a two-hour drive, but we arrived at The Grand Californian in a little bit more than an hour:
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I didn't take a ton of pictures in the lobby, just a dozen or so:
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I saved that for another day. We were both hungry and our room wasn't ready yet, and since I had a particular craving, off to Downtown Disney we went:
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Me snapping photos the entire time without stopping:
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All the way over to look at the Disneyland Hotel both outside:
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And inside:
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But hunger was finally getting the better of us, so off to my favorite eating establishment in Florida:
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Where Florida always has a line out the door, no matter the time of day, I was shocked to see this Earl completely empty on the inside! Once we ordered though, I kind of understood why...it wasn't the most friendly of staff. By the time I had my usual, The Original, I didn't care that the employees were a bit less caring than I'm used to in Florida because the food was just as good, if not better!
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I took a few more pictures on the walk back through Downtown:
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Because it was time to finally step foot in Disneyland for my first time ever!
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Let's save that for tomorrow though since this post is already huge.

Comments

Tiffstitch said…
Great photos! I get mesmerized by what we can see out the windows during flights as well.
Bea said…
Thanks for taking us along on your trip - love all the photos! Last time I was in Disneyland was more decades ago than I want to admit to, so I'm really looking forward to seeing the differences.
Linda said…
Thanks for the pictures Keiley. They bring back happy memories.

Linda
Heather said…
I'm going there tomorrow lol great pics! We go to Ralph's all of the time they are a little more artisan than the supermarkets I'm used to.