A Christmastime Tradition

Christmas is a togethery sort of holiday that's my favorite kind 

- Winnie the Pooh

We love Disneyland at Christmastime. It is easily our favorite time of the year to visit. We realized our only opportunity to go this year would be the week of Thanksgiving. For this Disneyland trip, we decided to road trip. We left Friday after work and drove to Las Vegas. We stayed overnight at Southpoint. It was the perfect place for us to stay. We pulled up on Friday night right when we were starting to get tired. It was so nice on Saturday morning because the hotel is right off the freeway and we avoided the traffic of the Las Vegas strip.

SouthPoint is about 3.5 hours from Disneyland. We pulled into Anaheim right around noon, dropped our bags at our hotel, and walked over to the park. It was fun to be in our favorite place. Alison about died every time she saw that giant tree on Main Street. We made the most of our half-day in the park. Some of the highlights included: lunch at the Plaza Inn (always our favorite Disney meal), riding Splash Mountain (it was closed in October), a beautiful sunset, and It's a Small World Christmas.

Yule Log at the Plaza Inn 

Alison's favorite part of the day was Paint the Night. She was so sad a few months ago when Disney announced they were closing it. When she found out it would be back for a limited time during the holidays she was so excited. We found a spot on Main Street at night to watch the fireworks and then staked out a spot on the curb to watch the late parade. Paint the Night is by far the best Disneyland parade.

On Sunday we spent the day over in California adventure. We of course rode all of our favorite rides - Radiator Springs Racers, Midway Mania, Soarin', Screamin', and the Tower of Terror. The highlight of the day, however, was the Festival of Holidays. It is a new event Disney started this year. It consisted of 14 booths selling food and drinks, playing live entertainment, and celebrating a variety of holidays - Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, etc. It was amazing. For lunch, we walked from booth to booth trying everything that looked good. We had a potato smash, curry, crab cakes, and roasted lamb. It was all really good food, a little pricey, but very good. For dessert, we tried eggnog cheesecake and a gingerbread brownie. They were so both oh so good. The entertainment was also a lot of fun. We enjoyed the live music as we walked through the park. We also really enjoyed Viva Navidad, which is Disney's Latin Christmas extravaganza. It was delightful.

We love the Christmas decorations around California Adventure, especially around Cars land. We love the old-time feel. Alison loves the decorations they put on sign poles around Cars land because it reminds her of the decorations in Ephraim at Christmastime.

It was pretty rainy on Sunday evening, which ended up being great for us. We were prepared for the rain and managed to avoid the worst of it. It really cleared out the crowds. The rain passed and for the rest of the evening, there were almost no crowds. The best part of the evening was the Late Checkout at the Tower of Terror. This is the special event Disney is holding to celebrate the closing of the Tower of Terror. The entire ride is in the dark. Alison really wanted to try it in October, but the lines were super long so Sunday ended up being the perfect night. We got in line around 5:15, which is right when they switched over. Our first ride was the best. We had Travis loading up our car, and he was so funny. His jokes were cheesy and so sincere. As he was checking everyone's seat belts he asked one girl why she was holding on already because he wasn't ready to drop her yet. She replied it was because she was scared and then the girl next to her blurts out, "I don't even know what this ride does!" and we all bust up laughing. It was so funny. The ride itself was a lot of fun. They have turned off all of the lights and graphics so the ride is really dark and really quiet. At one point you are just hanging there for what seems like a really long time. Our group started to speculate the ride might be broken. Right then the ride dropped us. It was so much fun and the lines were short we rode it again. This time we were on a different elevator and we were lucky enough to have Travis loading our elevator again. He really is the best Tower of Terror employee. These rides were an excellent way to say goodbye to the Tower of Terror.

Monday and Tuesday were both incredibly packed at the park. In fact, at one point on Monday, I got a notification that the park was near capacity. It was easily the busiest we had ever seen it. We had heard the crowds the week of Thanksgiving were crazy, and it was true. It was crazy to see how busy the park can get. At one point Pirates had a line that was an hour-long and stretched back and forth across New Orleans square many times. Even though it was really crowded the crowds didn't really bother us. It helped that we expected crowds. We also showed up at the park early both days and were able to ride 5-6 rides before the park really started to get busy. We utilized our fast passes well and spent time going to shows/and watching parades. Despite the crowds, we were able to do everything we wanted. We did stand a few long lines, and while we were waiting we played Heads Up - the Disney deck, which really helped the lines pass more quickly. These were great days in the park.

One of the highlights of the trip for Alison was riding Midway Mania. She beat me not once, but twice - both matches were close, but she edged me out.

We found one new trick on Tuesday. It really resulted from a mistake we made. We wanted to see the new World of Color (World of Color Season of Light), but since it was a little rainy on Sunday we decided we would go on Tuesday night. We totally spaced getting fast passes and as a result, we missed out on getting fast passes to the earlier show. We got a couple to the later show, but we weren't thrilled about staying late that night. We stayed really late both days we were in Disneyland, plus we wanted to get up really early the next morning to get a jump on the drive home. Alison has a friend who always watches World of Color from the Cove Bar and we decided to give that a try. It was a little tricky, but we made it work. They stop seating in the Cove Bar at 8:15pm so you have to be in your seat by then or else they won't let you stay. We talked to some of the staff and found out that we would have to get in line earlier than we thought to get a waterside table. We ended up getting in line at 6:45pm, which got us into our seats at 7:15pm. We got drinks (Alison had a coconut drink and I had a gingerbread smoothie) and of course, we ate some lobster nachos. By the time we were done eating it was past 8:15pm so we could relax and wait for the show to start. This was our best time ever watching World of Color. Not only was Season of Light wonderful, as it blended classic Christmas songs and classic Disney scenes, but we weren't crowded at all and we basically had a front-row seat. The only downside was that the sound wasn't very loud where we were sitting. Still, it was our favorite way to watch World of Color. This may become a tradition.

On Wednesday morning we woke up early and drove home. We left early and pulled into town right in time for Blake's birthday dinner and a giant snowstorm. The drive was quite pleasant, but we were glad to be back. We certainly miss Disneyland and we can't hardly wait for the next time we celebrate Christmastime at the happiest place on earth.