We are 2 adults on either side of 40 husband is vegan and
gf (allergies), I am vegetarian and gf intolerant, 9yo daughter with
anaphylaxis to some tree nuts, and 7yo son who is vegetarian, we are tricky to
feed!
Our trip was 8 days at Anaheim (we split to LA for one day
in the middle), 7 days in Waikiki and 4 days at Disney Aulani to finish. It was a truly amazing experience, I feel so
lucky to have had it.
We got tourist T mobile sim cards, I love taking my sim
card out and becoming uncontactable to my normal life.
I pre ordered a bunch of groceries through Vons/Pavillion,
these were delivered and brought to our room once I had notification of
delivery. In the parks I used a combination of ridemax for days we did attractions,
and the disneyland app. We loved ridemax
last time, it wasn’t as useful with the kids that don’t love rides, but I have
a yearly subscription to use the next time we go in April.
Saturday
Flight from Melbourne, Australia to LAX with United, was
fine, and came up just under 14 hours. The boys slept around 1 hour, despite
being up since 4am, I felt like this was going to go badly for our first
day. I had packed two little bags at the
top of our suitcases, one was ‘we slept and we are hitting the parks’, the
other was ‘we did not sleep and we are resting at the pool until our room is
ready’, I was certain at this point that we would be headed to the pool and
chilling by the water.
We used Karmel shuttle because I assumed that I would be
too tired to find the Lyft/Uber spot, the driver was excellent. Ultimately I don’t like shuttles, it just
takes too long. I thought when I had
this part booked through flight centre, that we were getting a car, not a
shuttle, not used to booking through agents, much easier to book myself.
We arrived at the Grand Californian Hotel around 10
o’clock, it reminded us of Aulani, it is indeed grand, the lobby is
beautiful. The cast members were lovely,
this was true for the entire stay. It was so great to be in the Disney bubble,
we really noticed it when we went to Universal for the day, the world is so
abrasive out there. We booked a DVC studio by renting points through David’s
Vacation Club rentals and it went well, would definitely do that again. While
checking in a woman asked where we were from, I had zero brain power so was
struggling to understand was what going on, she was checking out from her room
and offered us her room to have showers if we wanted. This woman was the pixie
dust people talk about! We had showers, and hit the park! We got our room 3
hours later, it was lovely, the fold out bed was super comfortable, we had a
park view which brought me endless joy! The pool was lovely, but the thing that
let the hotel down was the awful internet and weird plumbing noises. The pin trading here was lots of fun, and the
cast members were always excellent. You can get a wake up call by a Disney character,
everywhere I read that you had to contact the concierge to do this, you can do
it on your phone, it is automated.
The park, we had a 10 day park hopper which I believe is
an Australian thing, that we got through Flight Centre, we exchanged the
voucher for tickets at check in at the hotel.
We also bought dining vouchers from Getaway today and exchanged those
for tickets at the check in too.
We headed straight to Disneyland, had our photos taken and
attached to our ticket, this took a minute, no big deal, but I was in a state,
I did not ever want to see that photo! We went straight towards the castle and
saw the pineapple churros, and had to try one! Here is the kids reviewing it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNs8n5F-TcM
We also had a dole whip ( you can split one
onto two cups, after the churro my kids didn’t need a whole one each) at the
Tiki Room, it was the 55
th birthday so there was a celebration button
if you bought the tiki cup, which I did.
We saw Mary Poppins and the band in front of the castle today.
Lunch at Pizza Planet, they have an amazing vegan/GF pizza
which tasted as good as the real thing! And we snacked on the carrot cake
churro
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjUP5YQrr-0
We got our room which called for a nap, while napping the
hampers I ordered from Disney Floral and Gifts arrived so I gave them out as we
woke up. The kids were excited about the autograph books (side note, the
‘girls’ ones all have photo slips so only fit half of the autographs, we had to
buy my daughter a second book as the first one filled fast!) Then we went back
to the parks. Today we rode
The Little Mermaid
Casey Jnr Train
It’s a small world
Tuck n Roll
Heimlichs Chew Chew train
Buzz Astro Blasters
Jungle Cruise
We wanted to make sure that we spent time in a bugs land
because by the time we take the children back, it will be gone!
Dinner we tried mobile ordering, this was amazing! We had
dinner at The Lucky Fortune Cookery and Cocina Cucamonga, last time I had their
teriyaki tofu and rice and ordered it again, and again ;)
We didn’t stay too late, as we wanted to do rope drop in
the morning.
