Easter Holidays Holiday PART 2 - Disneyland!!!!

PART 1 - Skiing in Utah

PART 2 - Disneyland!!!!

After 10 days in Utah we hopped onto an internal flight from Salt Lake City to LA. It's a really short flight and it's just like getting on a bus. You don't even need your passports, which feels odd. Anyhow, after 1 hour and 30 mins in the air and flying across a time-zone so we lost an hour, we landed in Los Angeles at about 9:30 in the morning.
We collected our rental car and drove straight to Anaheim (about 45 minutes) where our hotel for the next 2 nights was located. Even though we arrived about 5 hours before we could officially check in the hotel reception guys were awesome enough to nominally check us in (even though our room wasn't available yet) and they let us park our car in their limited car park. We had a quick clothes change in the car (snow in Utah and sun in California within the space of 2 hours needs a costume change y'all!) and then we abandoned our suitcases in the car and walked to Disneyland!!!!

Not even kidding, it took us about 3 minutes to walk from the hotel to the gates of Disneyland. Even I was impressed with myself - I'd chosen GOOD! (entirely on purpose of course :) ). The hotel location was ridiculously close. It was right across the street to the main entrance!!!

We spent the rest of that day and evening in Disneyland (nipping out for 10 minutes later in the day to get the key to our hotel room and moving the suitcases in before hotfooting it back to the park again). It was a lovely sunny day and we did pretty much the whole park before we found a jammy spot on the sidewalk in the evening to settle down with a pastry (Rog bought me a crème brulee which was delicious but enormous. Naturally, I finished it all) to watch the light parade. It was so lovely. It was a special one for Disneyland's 60th anniversary which they're celebrating this year and the floats (or whatever you call them) were brilliant and really animated.
After the parade we moved out into Main Street ready to watch the fireworks. Again, they were special ones to celebrate the anniversary. They were really great and they had special effects projected onto the buildings all down Main Street all at the same time. They even made it snow at the end of the firework show (in their own very special Disney way!). It was fabulous day and we did everything we wanted to do.

They were also celebrating the release of the new Star Wars film with 'Season of the Force' so there were special displays and some of the rides had been updated with a Star Wars theme. The absolute best was that they had re-themed Space Mountain to Hyperspace Mountain and while you were whizzing around in the dark on the ride they were playing Star Wars music and you dash through a battle between Rebel X-Wing Starfighters and Imperial TIE Fighters. It made an already brilliant ride into an out-of-this-world ride! I really hope they consider keeping it that way because it truly took it to another level.
There was also an exhibit of Star Wars items, props and costumes which Rog loved (complete Star Wars geek!) and to top it all off you could meet Chewbacca if you queued for about 40 minutes. We HAD to do this. Rog has always wanted to hug Chewie since he was little so it was a must-do. I have to say that whoever was dressed up as Chewbacca was awesome. He completely got it that it was actually the dad's that were star-struck by him and not so much the little kids. Although he was great with the boys and me, it was actually Rog that he interacted most with, giving him massive hugs and keeping his arm round Rog the whole time we were with him. It was Rog that he waved goodbye to when we left. Honestly I haven't seen such a huge cheesy grin on Roger's face like he had during that experience for a long time. He really was like a little kid again. Brilliant!   

'Dabbing' for the camera seemed to be a theme for the holiday!

The next morning we were up at the crack of dawn to get into Disney's California Adventure Park at opening. The sun was shining again and made for another splendid day. The immediate priority was to snag some FastPass tickets to go on the Cars ride. FastPass tickets for this ride tend to be all out by about 10am, and without a FastPass ticket you're looking at about a 2 hour wait to get on it. I know, it's crazy right? There's no way I'll queue for 2 hours to get on  ride, even it is an amazingly brilliant and clever one! FastPasses in hand we hotfooted it over to the other side of the park to get the next most important thing - FastPasses for the evening show, World of Color. If you get one of these tickets it allows you entry into an allocated viewing area so you get to see the show from a good area without having to stake out your spot 2 hours in advance! Once those were safely tucked away in our bag we could relax and enjoy the rest of the day at a much more leisurely pace.

 

Meeting the Mouse

I love the California Adventure park. It's got a really nice feel to it and it's not overly big so you can get the whole thing done without having to bust a gut. In fact we did so well we were able to take a couple of hours out to walk to Downtown Disney, have a meal and then get back inside in time to find our spot for the show.

World of Color was fantastic. I'd seen it before 2 years ago but it was different this time because they'd changed it for the 60th anniversary celebrations. It's such a well thought out show with all the music, flashes and fountains on cue. Disney absolutely know how to do these things right.

We had two excellent days in Disney and did everything we wanted to do (sometimes twice!). It was time for a good nights sleep ready to move onto our third and final location the following day......

To follow...... PART 3 - Newport Beach, bumping into a celeb, and watching some whales.

Good news!

Maybe TMI but in case you were wondering.......I've had the results of my smear test back and everything's normal. Great news! I'll be sure to go back for my next test when it's due in 3 years time.

Make sure you get yours booked in if you're due for one!!!!!

Easter Holidays Holiday!!! PART 1 - Skiing in Utah

Hello friends!

I'm back after a few weeks away from the blog. We took the opportunity of the school Easter break to go away on a family holiday (which was awesome of course). Hence the lack of blog posts!
Quite honestly Rog and I both needed it. There's been a lot going on with work for the both of us over the last few months and a getaway was just what the doctor ordered!

On our way!

We love to go skiing every year so this year we went back to our favourite place just outside of Salt Lake City in Utah. We love to visit here. The snow on these mountains is quite simply amazing and the area we stay in feels like small town USA which means it feels really relaxed to us. The ski resort itself is pretty basic with no big restaurant or après-ski facilities. However, what it lacks by way of typical European resorts it more than makes up for it in skiable acres of terrain, friendliness, value for money, lack of crowds and that all important POWDER. It truly is a one of a kind winter wonderland! I feel so blessed that we're able to visit such a wonderful ski resort each year. I can hardly imagine skiing anywhere else now! We usually go skiing with some very good friends of ours but this year they couldn't come with us (as if emigrating to Australia is even an excuse!) so it was just the four of us for the first time ever. We missed them very much but we had a brilliant time just the four of us too.

We were dead excited because the mountain had been getting a lot of snow over the last few of months and for the first couple of days we were there it was still snowing quite hard. George got on his snowboard again on the first day (he spent a couple of days on a snowboard last year) and got right back into it. Joe decided to learn to snowboard this time (he's only ever skied) and he took to it like a natural. I was so impressed with the both of them for sticking it out in the early stages when you end up spending more time on your knees and bum than you do actually boarding! For Joe especially, he could easily have given up and gone back to skiing but he persevered and actually ended up picking it up really quickly and progressing to carving before we knew it!!!
Roger has always snowboarded. He loves it and would never switch out to skis. I always ski. I have tried snowboarding but I hated being on my bum or knees in the cold. It's not for me, and I really didn't pick it up well. I'm much happier on skis and I try and push myself harder and work on improving my technique each time I go.

Looking like some sort of weird Tellytubby

Anyway after the first couple of days there was a MASSIVE dump of powder. Like LEGENDARY. We decided to switch the boys back onto skis so that we could go out and enjoy it without the boys getting frustrated as beginners on the snowboards. It turned out to be a really great decision as the powder was so deep it was really challenging at times. There was one point when I was up to mid thigh trying to get down a (normally groomed) piste. That was not fun, I can tell you. There's only so far you can lean back when you're trying to ski down a hill and I kept getting stuck deep. And it was impossible to turn! I pretty much ended up hiking my way down the mountain in my skis. Oh my God! That was a workout in itself. It didn't help that the cloud was so low that I couldn't even see 10 foot in front of me. N o t   I m p r e s s e d.



Our fantastic 'fly' impressions

By the following day it had all settled down and we finished our skiing days in the most beautiful conditions. True Bluebird days without a cloud in the sky and lovely snow that was a dream to ski on. Couldn't have asked for better <3


Such an amazing view (the mountains, not us!)

 

Whilst we were there we also went to see the Utah Grizzlies play against the Alaska Aces (ice hockey). We try to do this every time because it's such a great evening out. Ice hockey is mental! There's always a punch-up and this game did not disappoint! The biggest team fight we've ever seen! Plus, the Grizzlies won which is always a bonus!!!

We also managed to eat our own body weight in ice-cream. Not even kidding. There's an amazing place called Farr's Ice Cream where we stay in Ogden and it's this little ice-cream parlour dating back from the 1920's. It makes loads of amazing flavours of ice cream and it's always a treat going in and picking which flavour to try each time. We LOVE Farr's!!! A trip to Farr's was basically our apres-ski each day!!!! Having tried nearly all of the flavours they have by now I think my favourite is Butter Brickle. Yummmm!

Whilst we were there in Utah we managed to squeeze in a trip to the cinema to see Zootopia. It's a brilliant film. Go and see it if you haven't already! There's also a Surf Rider there. It's one of those things that generates a permanent wave and you can surf or bodyboard it. Rog and George both went on for an hour. They were awesome and had great fun. Joe and I aren't fussed with getting wet. It just seems like a lot of effort to me......we were fabulous at being spectators though.

It was a sad day when we finished skiing on the last afternoon and had to hand back our rentals. But we'll be back next year (hopefully!).



We'd spent 10 nights in Utah and it was time to get our internal flight for the next exciting instalment of our holiday.....

Next time...PART 2 - Disneyland!!!