Disneyland: 2nd half of our first day

When we got back to the park, the crowds had diminished quite a bit.  Dode has an "app" on his phone that shows the current wait times.  We used that to steer us towards rides with low waits.  Our longest wait all day was 15 minutes and many of the rides were 5-10 minute waits. 

Miriam loved the Big Thunder Railroad and wanted to go again immediately

William?  Not so much!  It was difficult to capture the intense fear in his face.  And Isaac?  Well, that's the last roller coaster he'd go on all day.   William also went on Space Mountain.  When we got off he said, "Not scary enough".  But, the photos you can see of yourself at the end of the ride tell a different story, pure terror. And, he told Dode he didn't want to do that ever again.

Much more to the little one's speed was Autotopia.  At home the kids have their own jeeps that they can drive anywhere they want. The cars here follow around a track and only give you the choice of stop or go. Why do they love these so much?  It's lost on me!

We stayed for fireworks and Fanstasmic.  Fantasmic was a great show with lots of Disney magic that moved along at the speed of light!  After the show, we wanted to avoid the mass exodus so we went on some more rides.  It was so close to park closing time (midnight), we ended up staying to the end.  Dode took Jacob and Anastaya over to the Matterhorn while I took the rest back to Autopia.  The bobsled Jacob was on broke down in the middle of the ride at 11:55PM.  He was stuck somewhere deep in the bowls of the Matterhorn, and we had to catch the LAST shuttle back to the hotel, so Dode sent the kids and I to the shuttle and went back to wait for Jacob.  They couldn't give him an approximate time they'd have Jacob off the ride and Dode was worried he'd be walking back to the hotel at 2 am.  (I'm not that mean, I would have driven back and picked him up!)  But, as we were approaching the shutle area, Dode and Jacob came running up, absolutely out of breath from sprinting across the park.  Jacob reports that the inside of the Matterhorn is not very exciting, lots of cement walk ways.  I'm sure some of you are amazed that the Dicksons were running around Disneyland at midnight.  So were we!  And, you see what happens to people who stay up late?  Chaos.

Day one of Disneyland was a success.  We saw almost every attraction we wanted to.  We had a fun family time.  We never lost anyone!  I bought labels at the dollar store and I wrote Dode's cell number down in sharpie.  I stuck that to the backs of the little ones in case we lost track of them.  We survived the Disney machine with our only on site purchase a pair of Minnie Mouse ears for Elizabeth that she bought with her spending money.  There is a dollar store across the street from our hotel where we bought Disney cups and autograph books.  That seemed to satisfy the kids.