Kiwi Family Adventures

First, apologies it has taken a few days to find the time to sit down and write these posts.

What a day!! We woke at 2am in order to catch our 6am flight. There was a lot of queue waiting for things to open but once we were checked in and cleared we headed straight to the Koru lounge for breakfast. After a quick flight to Sydney and a few hours layover (Sophia wanted to know why we couldn’t use the Koru lounge! (the trouble with not flying Air NZ on our Australia-USA leg … first world problems and all that)) we were on our way.

It was a very long flight and not helped by a certain Miss Sophia insisting on telling me every half hour or so how much longer we had to go … not particularly conducive to getting a lot of sleep … Thankfully Master TJ and Miss Greer managed a bit more sleep. It was the first time we’d flown Virgin and the service was pretty good – no complaints (not so great to Oz).

We arrived into LAX around 6am and completed immigration and customs in record time. We even managed to get our rental car pretty quickly so before long we were on the road to Anaheim. After a quick shower and breakfast (about our third for the day!) we headed to Disney’s California Adventure Park. It was a stinking hot day at 37°s and reasonably high humidity.

We did loads of rides and used our fastpass tickets to the max. We did California Screamin’ twice but couldn’t quite convince TJ it was worth it (easily my favourite ride and also Sophia’s). Soarin’ around the world was also enjoyed by all.

We stopped for a bite to eat at one of the cafes. I thought I was ordering something relatively healthy with the salad but it came in a huge sourdough bun loaded with dressing (starting to sound like you Mum!).

The kids were desperate to go on the Grizzly River Run to cool off (a raft style ride) but I was a bit apprehensive given it had been closed … however we managed to get on just after it reopened and fortunately it was all ok. We did get pretty wet which kept the kids happy for all of 2 minutes until they realised they had to stay in those wet clothes … it didn’t take too long to dry out in the heat though.

We then raced to the Frozen show where both girls managed to fall asleep before it even started. Greer did stay awake and was captivated by the entire show but Sophia slept through all of it and Mark and I both had the odd bit of shut-eye. TJ watched the entire thing but apparently didn’t enjoy it (he did really!!!).

Once we’d finished the rides we headed to The Disneyland Hotel and Goofy’s Kitchen for dinner. The food was decidedly average but we were there to see the characters and we managed to see Mickey, Goofy, Pluto, Chip n Dale and Minnie.

After dinner we headed back into Downtown Disney for a spot of shopping … amazing how much crap you can buy there! And yes we got it all.

We finally walked back to the hotel around 10pm local time. I think we were all asleep before our heads even hit the pillow.