Rian's first visit to Disneyland

This post is long overdue. I wanted to pen down the memories here before they disappeared. Just before my bday this year, we took a trip to Disneyland, Rian's first trip. He was super excited before the trip, and we got a lot of things "done" from him with the lure of the trip :D Ya, we're evil sometimes :D

We researched a bit about 3 yr olds going to Disneyland, and talked a lot with each other - is this the right time, the right age, blah blah. Finally we had a plan and touch wood, everything, almost everything, worked out perfectly as we planned.

We planned to spend a weekday (Fri) and a weekend day (Sat) in Disneyland. This is a 7 hr drive from our house, and we decided to take a whole day to drive down. The plan was to take a break after 6 hrs at our friends in Simi Valley (the Vashas), and spend some playtime and dinner time at their house.

On Thursday August 25 though, we got late in leaving from home. Instead of getting on the road by 10am, we were out the door at 11:30am. Our plan of reaching by 3:30pm was definitely out the door. We were traveling at a good speed, and after our lunch break, we ran into a very bad traffic situation. A major accident on I-5 south made it a parking lot. We traveled 3 miles in 3 hrs. Even though traffic was bad and it was 100F outside, we stayed very cool as a family, and a big thanks goes to Rian. He engaged with Daddy on many games, some on the iPhone, some with his fingers. We were surprised to find out a paper plane can fly very well inside our compact BMW 325i :-)

Unfortunately Rian ended up skipping his nap. As we got closer to our friends' place though, the exhaustion caught up with him and he fell asleep at 8pm, without dinner, without his night milk. We carried him into the house, asleep, deposited him in Samyak's bed, had a wonderful yummy dinner ourselves, and left with him asleep. He had some bites on his hands and forehead, possibly mosquitoes in our house the night before. We picked up some Benadryl cream. Zankhna packed some yummy theplas for Rian and some chocolate pudding.

We did a smart thing: we booked a room in a hotel right across the street from Disneyland's pedestrian entrance. We also made sure they had breakfast in the hotel. It is very important for all 4 of us to have breakfast in the morning without hassles, and "right away" when we get ready. These decisions helped us a lot in our stay. We stayed for 3 nights and on all 3 mornings we had a good breakfast and full tummies to fight the possible crankies :-)

Right at 11pm Rian woke up and I was so stressed: when will he sleep now? Thankfully after we finished checking in, and Rian had some thepla, he asked for his milk and went to sleep by 12:30am. We were all in bed at 1am. The next day Rian woke up without efforts despite the short sleep time. He was so excited! Pictures can tell the story of how our Day 1 was spent. Things that we did right on both days:

• Start with a good breakfast
• Carry the stroller - lots of walking inside, and helpful to carry our bag as well
• 2 hr break in the afternoon - we all went back to hotel and lazed around in AC
• Carried good snacks - there is no end to unhealthy temptations in a theme park, although I have to say Disneyland offered many healthy choices. We carried apples, oranges, Clif bars and lots of water

Rian did not sleep in the afternoon, and got bit tired, but he was not cranky. He kept observing and commenting and noticing and looking. Everything was new and he was soaking it in. He didn't complain about food or water or heat. When the fireworks started at 9:30 though, he was plain uninterested. I put him in my Ergo carrier and he was stuck to me. On the walk back, we put him in the stroller and for the first time in the life of the stroller, Rian fell asleep in the stroller, completely wiped out. We mainly stayed in Tomorrowland area, and covered Fantasyland too.

On Day 2 we started off nice and fresh in ToonTown meeting Mickey and Minnie. The heat started to get to us pretty quickly and we cooled off sitting in a nice theatre watching the Disney Princesses sign autographs. In this trip, we forgot to carry any of Rian's cars - surprising isn't it? We always have 2-4 stuffed away for emergencies. That's how Rian ended up with one more car from the gift store - Raoul, from Cars 2. This made him super happy. We took the opportunity and finished shopping for gifts in the downtime.

At lunch time we decided to let Aaji take care of Rian in the afternoon while we caught a few rides, just Amit n me together. I went back to the hotel room and dropped them off. Plan was for Amit to pick them up in 2 hrs. What ended up happening is after 1 hr 45 mins, Rian fell asleep :-) Mom called us to let us know and we got an extended time to go for rides. We went twice into Splash Mountain, and Amit was completely drenched on the second round as he was the front passenger. We went into the Indiana Jones ride which had some awesome decor. After some silly rail road ride, we ended up at Space Mountain, and that was our super fav ride, all in darkness! FastPass was the way to go, in all these rides. We zipped past lines and lines of people and felt so sad for them :-)

We had dinner in New Orleans part of Disneyland. Without planning, we caught a very nice show called Fantasmic. It is definitely not to be missed. Our dinner was amazing good, and we finally indulged in dessert. The triple layer chocolate cake was every bit as decadent as it looked! We saw the fireworks from here too, the best place to see them from anyways - lakefront. It was gorgeous. Rian bid a happy good bye to the place.

Breakfast was not very great, although good enough for us. I picked up a butter and honey (small 1 Tbsp packet) from one of the restaurants in Disneyland, hoping to make a difference in Rian's day 3 breakfast. Rian started off with: I don't want to eat! But for some reason he loves butter :-) I showed him how I dipped the croissant first in butter and then in honey (which was collected by the bees, buzz buzz) and he was instantly ready to try the first bite. That is the only battle I have to fight. After that the food does it's job. Rian had a full croissant and I was super duper happy!!

We set off to see the Vashas after that. We again had a delicious lunch at their place. We felt a bit bad for imposing on them twice during Paryushan, but the kids had a blast, and we got good time to catch up with them too.

All in all, an amazing trip to the world's happiest place on earth!