The Happiest Place on Earth

Last month Keao and I celebrated our second full year of marriage (yay!). To celebrate we decided to take a short trip to LA (yay again!). Now, when it comes to planning trips, I like to squeeze in as much as I can because I only have a limited time so after flying all night (we landed at LAX at 6:30am) we got our rental car and drove straight down to Anaheim, home of the Disneyland Resort. Now if you do the math that meant that we only had around 4 hours of sleep on the airplane (by which I mean I slept and Keao read a book next to me) before we started our really long day.

Ready for a fun-filled day at Uncle Walt's place

We first met up with Nich and Tricia for breakfast as we would be spending the day with them. Tricia, our roommate, spent the summer in California and Colorado going to various conferences and doing some vacationing so we hadn't seen her since May. Nich, her boyfriend, lives in California so we hadn't seen him since before even that. So after scarfing down some food from Mimi's Cafe, we headed over to Disneyland for our day full of fun.

We decided to go to California Adventure first and after taking a few pictures we headed to the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror.

Look! We're on a really long street!



Right before the ride while we're still smiling

The story behind this ride has something to do with the Hollywood Tower Hotel being struck by lightning and you going to the Twilight Zone. This is one of my absolute favorite rides and I've ridden it in Florida as well as Tokyo. Every time I ride I just keep thinking what a great job Disney did with it. It should be noted though, that the American version is a much tamer version compared to the Japanese version (well at least the story is, the actual ride part is quite similar).

Notice the difference in architecture in the Japanese version?

Since it was such a hot day we also decided to hit the rapids ride as well. You gotta love rides that have the disclaimer "you will get wet, you might get soaked". I for one, didn't really want to get wet. I was perfectly content to stay dry and warm. Unfortunately it was not meant to be. We almost made it the entire way when my lovely wife started complaining about how she didn't get wet. Literally five seconds after she says that a huge geyser shoots up behind us and soaks us to the skin.

She how happy she is?

It should also be noted that I was wearing a Spam shirt that day. I don't know what it is about Spam, but over the course of the day I got 7 compliments or references to my shirt. From the time we got on the rental car shuttle, to the Disney employee who told me he loved Spam, to the girl that simply screamed Spam as she was passing by. People really seemed to notice the shirt.

People also noticed the big turkey leg I ate while I walked by them too. One of the best things about Disney theme parks is the turkey legs. I'm sure you have seen pictures of me eating them before, but just in case you haven't, here's one more.

Me and Nich acting all manly with our huge turkey legs

After having our fill of turkey legs we did some exploring. We managed to find a real Hawaiian girl in Lilo during the parade and even found the entrance to Club 33, a super exclusive club that's the only place within Disneyland proper that serves alcohol.

This parade almost made us late for our Fast Pass to Soarin' over California

I wonder what it would take to get me in there...

It's no secret I love Disney. Last year I was fortunate enough to visit the Animal Kingdom in Orlando and Disney Sea in Tokyo and then to top it all off I now was able to spend a nice day at Disneyland with my wife and a few close friends. Does it get any better than this?

I'm not going to lie, it was a long day. We didn't leave the theme park until almost midnight and if you compound that with our lack of sleep we were pretty beat. We did manage to sleep in a little the next day though. I'll tell you about that adventure real soon.

To view the rest of the Disneyland pictures click here.