Finally made it to Disneyland

I don't have much to say about Disneyland itself.  The weather was a little cool and rainy, but all that meant was that the park wasn't very crowded.  It was awesome, as always.  I will offer a little travel advice.  On our first day, we used our "Give a Day, Get a Disney Day" passes.  I'll take a minute to explain how that works.  When you finish the program, you print off your vouchers.  Bring I.D. to Disneyland for each person with a voucher.  For kids, that means birth certificates.  An adult can use a driver's license.  If you are going for one day, just take all of that to the ticket booths outside Disneyland, and they will get you your passes.  If you're like us and want three-day passes, then you do everything the same way, but you turn around and trade those tickets in for three-day Park Hopper passes.  You get the gate price of your one day ticket ($62 for kids, $72 for adults) credited toward the gate cost of three day passes ($174, $204).  It's a pretty good discount.  But of course, that only works for people who already did their "Give a Day, Get a Disney Day" project because they aren't letting people sign up anymore.

We spent the first day at Disneyland with just our immediate family.  Then Wayne's parents, brother (and wife and kids), sisters, and brother-in-law met up with us.  It's more fun to go to Disneyland with lots of relatives.  I always recommend taking along grandparents if you are going to Disneyland, especially with little kids.  You can trade off watching kids and riding the more exciting rides.  Of course, my kids can and do ride everything.  But when Daniel was worn out on the third day (and I think he got a touch of food poisoning or something) and needed to rest in our hotel room for a few hours, it was great to have Wayne's sister Wendy trade off staying with him so that I could go back to the park for a while.  (Another reason to stay right across the street from Disneyland.)  And soon he felt better and came back for more roller coaster fun.