September Trip Day 3.1

happy birthday to me,
happy birthday to me,
happy birthday to me-e,
happy birthday to me!
Another morning, another breakfast at Disneyland! But who am I kidding, there's no such thing as "another morning" when your birthday is involved. September 10, 2009 meant happy 23rd birthday to me! And as it turns out, my 23rd birthday was easily on of the best birthdays ever and it all started with an amazing birthday-breakfast at Goofy's Kitchen! "What is Goofy's Kitchen?", you ask? Oh, nothing much, just another of the five character meal choices at the Disneyland Resort, hosted by none other than Chef Goofy. We had a 7 o'clock breakfast (the earliest we could get in) so we would have time to make it to the gates before the park officially opened with plenty of time to spare while we diddy-dawdled at the restaurant. The only downside to breakfast that early (other than a rather long walk from our hotel to the restaurant) is that it's pretty cold outside! I never actually thought about how long of a walk it would be from the HoJo to the Disneyland Hotel and it wasn't until we were on our way, marching along, that we realized we didn't know exactly where we were going. Sure we knew it was located at the Disneyland Hotel and we've both seen it before but we couldn't actually visualize where we needed to be headed. Luckily for us we ran into someone we had met the day before who was on her way to the Anaheim Convention Center for the Expo who was able to point us in the right direction as she was staying at the Disneyland Hotel and had eaten at Goofy's the morning before. We arrived at Goofy's Kitchen with plenty of time to spare so I took to exploring the wonder that is the Disneyland Hotel (to be more specific the DLH Convention Center). It's like walking into a world sprinkled with pixie dust. To top it all off we were the first party there to check in when they opened.




Unlike our breakfast at Ariel's Grotto the day before Goofy's Kitchen is a buffet with so many options for food it can make your head spin - they even have a PB&J pizza, whoddathunkit?! We were barely settled into ourseats when we got our first visitor ... Baloo, from the Jungle Book!! Later on during our meal Baloo succeeded in scaring me half to death when I didn't realize he was right behind me. I am not joking when I say I let out a little (or maybe loud) scream with a jump out of my chair to match. The character meals stand out a little more for me when you get to see characters that you wont have the chance to see in the parks. I think they should always have at least one exclusive character at each meal. Then I'd be sure never to miss one - ever (although that could prove to be a potential bad, bad, and expensive thing)!

Before settling down to eat for a few moments we were also visited by Chef Goofy himself! There was a lot more fun with Goofy shortly thereafter as he gave an impromptu cooking demonstration full of laughter and a little dance session with the kids in the restaurant. I may not be a little kid anymore, but I still got a kick out of it. Especially when he dropped the cake the first time trying to unveil his masterpiece. That is totally something I would do (and have done) in the kitchen!

Next up was a visit from Cinderella. She was the start of the name/face recognition that turned up everywhere on Thursday. She remembered us from Ariel's Grotto the morning before. That put an even bigger smile on my face - I'm beginning to wonder how I can even feel my face anymore! So we went ahead and did a different Princess pose this time.
But what was the highlight of the meal? Or my highlight of the meal, at least. I kind of made the mistake of leaving my sweater back at the hotel, stupid, right? Knowing how cold I get when I eat. Maybe I was thinking that I didn't want to be carrying it around if we were going into the park right afterward when it was just going to get hot again, who knows? But as I said, I get cold when I eat - very, very, very, very cold! So there I was, feeling like I was freezing with nothing to keep me warm. My solution was to keep getting up and getting more food since it was warmer there than at our table and upon returning Dale came by with a little present: a tablecloth! And of course where there is Dale, there is also Chip!

And last but not least was Jasmine! Both of the Princesses remembered at least one of us from the day before, only this time Andrea had seen Jasmine in Disneyland at the Aladdin meet & greet at Aladdin's Oasis in Adventureland.
Goofy's Kitchen was very filling and a very fun way to kick off my birthday!

After breakfast I made the decision to go ahead and head back to the hotel before up with Dre again at the gates for our regular entry. Heck, we could have gone ahead and done Magic Morning on Thursday, but we had already decided that we were saving it for Saturday when we would also do Mickey's Toontown Morning Madness. Really, I just wanted to go back to the hotel so I could drop off the photo that we had purchased from Goofy's Kitchen. I didn't want to ruin it, carrying it around the park all day. On the way I also stopped off to get what inspired the whole trip in the first place - my birthday Fun Card!
The Fun Card was a gift card worth one day's admission costs that I could use at pretty any shopping destination within the Disneyland Resort which worked out to be roughly $72 dollars for me to spend. It was all part of the year's promotion of free admission on your birthday, only since I already had 5 days (for the price of 3) worth of park hopping and the gift card was one of two other options available to me and the one I opted for rather than special fast passes. I loved getting the chance to pick up a few birthday extras.

Trip Report Part V

I can sing like the birdies sing
If there is one thing I have finally realized about this trip to Disneyland, it's that I tend to stick to one area at a time. Maybe it's a morning in this Adventureland and a night in Tomorrowland. Maybe it's one day in New Orleans Square, and another day in Fantasyland. Usually my tradition is to just bounce back and forth on a whim once I decide I want to do something and then choose to do something entirely different, not to mention that I usually stick to Disneyland for full days and give one full day to dedicate to California Adventure. But that's really how the majority of Tuesday went. We pretty much hung around the entire left-hand side of Disneyland with Adventureland, New Orleans Square, and Critter Country. How is it that we did not even set foot inside Sleeping Beauty's Castle and Fantasyland?

But it isn't all that we did on our first day. But I'm getting ahead of myself here. So let's take a couple of steps backwards.

We had just hung out with Winnie the Pooh, correct? Alright, good. After another leisurely stroll through New Orleans Square we decided to take another relaxing cruise through the jungle where, lo and behold, we were greeted by Skipper Sarah once more! What a silly little coink-e-dink, no?






Afterward, with the entrance to Indiana Jones right next door we decided why not just go ahead and use our Fast Passes that we had snatched up earlier? There was absolutely no reason not too. Sure, the stand by line was only about 35 minutes, but that was 35 minutes I didn't feel like wasting. Just to be clear though, Fast Passes don't mean that you get it right away. You just skip a huge portion of the stand by line which is quite substantial for a ride like Indiana Jones. From my photographers perspective I wish that we had gone through the stand by line at least once over the course of the week. The detail that goes into every area be it a bathroom, a stage, or a ride queue is just amazing and I have nothing to show of it. So sad, right? Our wait ended up being about 25 minutes, but that's still at least 10 minutes time we had to do something else. But it was a fast 25 minutes. We passed the time pulling on the ropes they warn you not to pull on (which still didn't make the ceiling start to drop) and what not.




Have I mentioned how much I absolutely love this ride? Especially when you're seated in the last row. For some reason you're just thrown around so much more back there that it makes it that much more exciting.

On our walk out of Adventureland, back towards Main Street, we got a little side tracked by a couple of things:

The first being The Enchanted Tiki Room. Even if you don't particularly like being serenaded by a bunch of audio-animatronic birds, you have to admit that the air conditioned attraction is a must-see during the middle of summer (or the tail end of it). It was only minutes to go until the next show so we wandered our selves into the Tiki Garden as the stories of the Hawaiian Gods came to a close. When the show finally began, wouln't you know I was right there singing along with the Glee club and all.




That second distraction (at least for me) was the appearance of Aladdin and Princess Jasmine right in front of the Oasis Theater where they used to have a little story time show that I actually enjoyed watching when I saw it back in 2007. They had a PhotoPass Photographer with them and I was all for jumping in that line for my first character photo of September 2009. This marks the first time I have ever seen Aladdin anywhere in the parks that wasn't up on stage, and Jasmine somewhere that wasn't the Princess Fantasy Faire over in Fantasyland. There was no way I could pass that opportunity up.


If by any chance you are thinking to yourself, "Where is Andrea?" right about now, I'm curious to know the answer myself. I had to go search for her, which led me to the drawbridge of Sleeping Beauty's Castle where I had no luck finding her. Maybe you can help? I searched high and low, you know you have to check in those pesky little cracks because we wouldn't want her to get lost in the compass rose, and she was nowhere to be found. Go figure.