Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Anaheim 2013 Day 5

I woke up at 3am and got ready then went to Dad and Peggy's room and we quickly finished packing and were checked out by 3:50 or so.  We got on the road and the drive was very traffic free all the way to LAX. I was not fond of the fact that there were not a lot of signs pointing you to the rental car return locations and it if wasn't for a couple lucky educated guesses I would probably have taken a very long time to find the Avis location.  We were probably in and through check-in and security by 5am.  Then we had to wait a while for the plane. I would rather do that than to get stuck in traffic and almost miss a flight. Peggy and I got a quick breakfast from the Burger King in the terminal.

The flight was a little bit bumpy but nothing terrible. It probably took about 5 hours and 15 minutes or so to complete. They had to pass Logan and come back in from over the water due to the strong winds.  I read for most of the flight and slept for a little bit. Unfortunately I didn't notice until too late that they were showing Wreck It Ralph or I probably would have watched that.

We had to wait over 20 minutes for our checked baggage (I think the handlers had a shift change right in the middle of our wait). But that meant basically no wait for our Flightline van which was pulling up to the terminal just as we were ready.  The ride was basically uneventful and the driver was the quietest I've ever seen from Flightline.

Overall it wasn't a bad trip but even from that little exposure I could tell I wouldn't want to live in California.  There are just too many people in that region and I think their normal is not my sort of normal.

Monday, February 18, 2013

Anaheim 2013 Day 4

After getting together for breakfast at the hotel lobby we headed to Anaheim for Disneyland.  Obviously for Sara this was going to be a big thing.  She was very excited about going. We split up into 2 cars for Dad, Peggy and myself in one and Gary, Sue and Sara in the other I followed them with their GPS to get there.  It was supposed to be less than 8 miles. I think it took us about 20 minutes to get there.  Overall it wasn't a bad drive. The parking costs $15 and they have shuttles that get you from the lot to the parks. We were in Woody in the Toy Story lot.  Fortunately Gary paid attention to that because I sure didn't.  The shuttle ride probably took a bit over 5 minutes. We bought our tickets in before the shuttle.  It was $87 for me and $170 for 2 senior discount tickets.  You have to go through a bag check then get into a line to get into the park. The lines were already long at 10am. We managed to find a fairly quick line to get in though.

We initially walked through main street but they had closed off Sleeping Beauty's castle to allow a marching band to come through and we had to go around it. Then in Fantasyland we rode Snow White's Scary Ride. They took Sara on Pinocchio's ride right after that but Peggy and I went to find rest rooms instead.  After they finished that Sara wanted to ride the Dumbo ride which Gary went with her for. It took them well over a half an hour to get through the line for that.  We managed to find a table with an umbrella over it to hide in the shade while we waited.  While they were in line, Dave and Beth and William and Annie came in.  They got William and Annie special just married mouse ears.  When the Dumbo ride was over we tried to go to the Small World ride but it was closed. We met the rest of the group at the teacup ride right after that.  When Gary, Sue and Sara were done with the teacups we found our way to have lunch which was basically burgers just outside the Dumbo ride and then headed into Frontierland and Sara petted a few of the animals there.  We marched our way through Frontierland and found our way into the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. It was always my favorite from Disneyworld when  I was younger and I still enjoyed it here. There were a few modifications in reference to the movies but it was still a fun ride. Sara was scared of it a bit. She was also scared of the Snow White ride earlier on.

After the pirates we headed over to Mickey's Toon Town and Gary, Sue, Sara and I waited to meet Minnie Mouse.  That took us over a half an hour at least. Minnie was the only costumed character that I didn't see Sara be afraid of. They wanted to visit Mickey too but unfortunately that line seemed a bit too long because there was a movie to watch but they didn't want to do that so gave up. We headed over to Tomorrowland to try the Finding Nemo submarine ride and the line for that was gigantic. I am not sure totally how long it took them to get through it all but Beth, Peggy and I opted to not wait and go on it.  Instead we did some shopping in the Star Wars gift shop near Star Tours. When they were finally done with that we headed down to Main Street to get a little bit more shopping done then it was finally out of the park.  We were in for over 8 hours and it was a long and tiring day. Sara was completely exhausted.  The shuttle ride line wasn't terribly long and the ride back was fairly easy. There wasn't much traffic.  When we got back to the hotel we decided to have dinner in the hotel restaurant and then we split up to call it a night. For Dad, Peggy and I it would be a very early awakening to get on a 7am flight back to Boston.

The pictures from today can be found here.

Sunday, February 17, 2013

Anaheim 2013 Day 3

We started off the day with the hotel breakfast buffet. Typically I am not a fan of them but at least it was only $9 here. I wonder if the Denny's right out front affects their prices.  I had bacon, toast, yogurt and fruit along with a fair amount of coffee.  After breakfast we sort of split up for a while and I chose to spend around 45 minutes walking up and down Placentia Avenue to at least get some exercise in for the day. It was fairly hot out but not terrible and the sun was shining the whole time. When I got back to the hotel I ran into Beth's father and we talked for a few minutes.   After that I found Gary, Sue and Sara who were going to go do some laundry at the laundry mat next door and I went with them for a few minutes.  After a short while I went back to the room and Daniela and I were able to get a nice amount of time together on Skype. It is not the same as getting to have her here or course  but it was still a very good part of the day for me.  When we were done it was time to get cleaned up and dressed for the wedding. They wanted us to be ready to have some pictures taken.

Over at Dave and Beth's room the various Marines that were going to be in the wedding were showing up and getting dressed and we waited around and took a few pictures ourselves.  They had us move outside and we took a bunch of pictures outside the hotel too. When that was done we headed to the restaurant which was named Angelo and Vinci's.  I believe it is relatively famous.  If I understood things correctly it might have been owned by an actor from the 50s and 60s.  Not really sure but there was a lot of pictures of this one guy named Steven Peck.  Of course we were there a bit early and they were still setting up but we managed to fumble around and eventually they got people seated and the ceremony started.  The wedding itself was simple and to the point.  Annie looked great in her dress and William was all decked up in his dress blues of course. The reverend was funny too, putting in a few jokes, which was nice. Sara was the flower girl and to everyone's surprise she got through the entire ceremony doing everything she was supposed to do and didn't run away and hide. We were all very proud of her.  Of course she was very tired after it was over and Sue took her back to the hotel before the food started.  The food was buffet style and had 2 types of pasta and eggplant parmesan.  It was good. The night was fun but we stayed until 11pm when Dad and Peggy were really tired and wanted to go back and I was tired enough too.  All in all it was a pretty long day but the wedding was why we were here and it went off great.

The pictures from today are all about the wedding and are located here.

Saturday, February 16, 2013

Anaheim 2013 Day 2

I woke up almost exactly at 7am got showered and found the family.  We decided to get together to have breakfast in Denny's. I had a build your own slam and a good amount of coffee.

After breakfast Gary and Sue said they were going to go to the beach and asked who wanted to go along. David and Beth had other things to do so it turned out to be Dad, Peggy, Gary, Sue, Sara and myself.  We all piled into the Dodge Journey I had rented and made the trip out to Huntington Beach for the morning to early afternoon.  The car was a bit squishy for so many people but it did have the third row of seats so we could put Sara in her car seat in the very back row. It is less than 20 miles to Huntington Beach from Fullerton but with traffic and a lot of stop lights it took us probably about 40 minutes to get there. The GPS was pretty helpful on this trip.

We found a public parking garage and piled out and walked straight out to the beach. The sky was empty of clouds and it was a bit windy. Sara played in the sand and a little in the water though no one brought swimsuits.  The water was very cold.  After getting a couple sea shells and wandering around the beach for a  little while we walked up and along the pier to the end and back stopping in a couple of the shops along the way.  When we were done with the pier Sara (who didn't eat her breakfast) wanted something to eat so we stopped and got her lunch at a small snack shack.  After she was done eating we headed back to the car stopping at a couple more shops along the way. We piled back into the car and drove back to the hotel. There was a bit more traffic this time especially getting back onto 57.  After that it did smooth out quite a bit and we got back to the hotel.

Sara really wanted to go in the pool which supposedly was heated and they had turned on the heat so they came and got me and we dipped our feet in the water while she swam a little bit. After that we went back to our rooms to relax a bit and I read for a couple of hours (my current book 1Q84 is 1200+ pages) until Sara called me and asked me to come up to their room (for those unfamiliar this is a shocker as she is a total stuck to her parents sort of child).  I went up and she and I played around for a while until it was time to get everyone together for dinner. By this time Beth's mother and father and aunt and uncle had come in.  William was going to meet us at the restaurant.  We went to Marie Calendar's, yes, like the pot pies.  I had a meat loaf dinner that was ok and a piece of apple pie for dessert that was really good. I accompanied the meal with one Sam Adams lager.  After dinner we all headed back to the hotel and sorted out a few odds and ends then called it a night.

The pictures from day 2 are located here.

Anaheim 2013 Day 1


We had to get up very early for a 7am flight. The Flightline van picked us up at 3:45am.  We weren’t the only passengers on the van which is unusual for such an early time.  Fortunately the other passengers were just down the road in North Andover and were also headed to the American terminal so we didn’t have to worry about any extra delays. They were a couple headed to Aruba.  The drive to the airport was very uneventful and we were extremely early for our flight. They basically forced us to self check-in at the desk which I wasn’t very happy about but all the same we managed it fairly quickly and were able to get through security rapidly as well by just beating a line of folks that looked like they were from a school trip.  From there we had to wait about an hour and forty minutes until boarding time. Gary, Sue and Sara showed up a bit after 6 but well ahead of the 6:40 boarding.  The plane was apparently full but it looked like our tickets were the only ones on boarding groups 3 and 4. There was still a lot of overhead space though so even though we were among the last people to get on we didn’t have to stuff our bags at our feet. The plane actually set back from the gate a few minutes early and the initial announcement after takeoff said we would also get into the airport about 20 minutes early.  The in air flight time was supposed to be just under 6 hours.
I was in a window seat on the 737 almost at the very back of the plane.  Of course they didn’t have in seat entertainment which is always disappointing. I spent maybe the first half hour of the flight nodding off but I didn’t want to miss the drink cart so I decided to wake up and wait for it.   I figured I could get to work on this while I was waiting.  After a short start at it I played around with some game apps then desperately needed to use the facilities and had to beg my way out. After the incredibly long wait I chose to take a bit of a nap to kill some of the time. I woke up a while later and played some more apps then they came around for a second drink cart run. No food on the trip unless you were willing to pay for it or you brought it yourself. I will say that looking out the window over some of the mountainous landscape was fairly incredible looking.  The flight had some small bumps here and there but it wasn’t really bad overall. Sara was very well behaved.  The kid behind me that kept punching the back of my seat however is a different story.
Deboarding did take a long time because we were so far in the back but by the time we got to baggage claim our bags were among the first to come out so that wait wasn't very long. We separated to our individual rental car companies and due to my Avis preferred status I was able to get into the car first. However since my GPS had bad info and the navigator was talking to the other car at the time it screwed up we took the scenic (read as trafficky) route to the hotel.  We could not check in right away but put the valuables in Dave and Beth's room and then we all headed to have lunch at Denny's which happened to be right out front of the building.   I had a prime rib Philly cheese steak that was good but very messy.  After lunch we got checked in and settled into the room.  We basically idled the rest of the day away doing very little except hanging out with the family. Sara went into the pool for a little while but it was cold water so she didn't stay in for long.  Eventually in the evening we got a quick dinner at the Jack in the Box also just outside the hotel.  I had chicken nuggets and fries.  Daniela and I talked on Skype for a while at night then I went to bed.  I was awakened at 1am because the people above me overflowed their Jacuzzi and it dripped into my room.  I had to call the front desk and the must have went to their room and made them drain it down some.
The pictures for day 1 can be found here.