We left for the hotel in Portland after Ben came home from school. Ben and Jeremy went swimming for a bit while I watched TV and waited for our pizza to arrive. They had great timing, and arrived back at the room right after the pizza had been delivered. We tried to go to bed early, since we had to catch a 5:30am shuttle to the airport the next morning. Ben finally was asleep at 9:30pm, and midnight was the last time I looked at the clock while tossing and turning.
Tuesday (3/1)
At 3am, Ben woke up and was too excited to go back to sleep. I made him try to sleep for an hour before giving up and getting up for the day. We got ready, ate breakfast, and went to the lobby with our stuff to wait for the shuttle.
We made it to the airport quickly, and went straight to our gate (I just love web check-in!). There we waited, until it was time to board the plane.
Once on the plane, I made the mistake of trying to warn Ben about the possibility of his ears popping when we took off and landed. Bad choice of words....he had a mini freak out, wondering how painful it would be for his ears to pop. Once he got over that, he enjoyed himself. He liked take off and landing the best, the rest was pretty boring. He played with play doh and started writing book (entitled "The Missing Kid!"). Got to "Chapter 1: The Missing Kid" and "One day there -" before finding something else to do.
When we landed, we found the Disneyland Express bus and were on our way to our hotel. Turned out our hotel was the last on the route, so we got quite a tour of the blocks surrounding Disneyland. Finally we checked in to the hotel. Our room was way on the far end, so we hiked back there with all our stuff. When I booked the room, I booked what I thought was a room with one queen, and another queen in a connecting room. Turns out it was just the choice you picked if you wanted to get connecting rooms (2 queens, connecting). We called to the front and asked if they had any two room suites and they said no. I went online to see the description of our room again, to see if Jeremy understood the description, but they didn't have any left. It did show they had a two room suite available. Sooo, I called the front desk and asked why the web was saying there was a suite available, and was told sometimes that happens and that if I tried to put the reservation through, it would just say to call the hotel directly. So...I put the reservation through just to make sure...only it actually went through. So now we had two reservations...and had to give 48 hours notice before canceling in order to not get charged for the first day, which of course was impossible at this point.
We hiked back up to the front desk to let them know we had a problem. He was surprised it let the reservation go through, but that meant that they did in fact have the room coming available (it was being cleaned). We asked about the 48 hour cancellation notice, and he said we'd likely be charged that first day. When we didn't like that answer (after all, we were told it wouldn't go through!), he called and talked to the manager, and they refunded our other room in full. Whew! So, more money than expected...but we got the room we wanted. We then had to go back to the room and gather our stuff, and bring it to the front desk to have them hold on to until our room was ready. They said they'd put our stuff in the room once it had been cleaned, and all we needed to do was get the key from the front desk. We asked them if they could sign for our food delivery from Vons (local grocery store) and they did that, and put it in the room too (cold stuff even was put in the fridge).
With that done, we headed to Disneyland to see if we could upgrade our three day tickets to four day tickets and get into the park that afternoon. We weren't sure if they were going to let us pay the difference between the online rate or the regular ticket booth rate. The difference between the online rates was $37 for the three of us. The difference if we had to pay the difference between the online rate and the ticket booth rate would have been $80 something. Luckily they let us have the cheaper rate, so we got an extra half day to explore!
Ben is apparently vehemently opposed to anything obviously having to do with Mickey Mouse. After taking the above picture, he ran over to me and growled at me to "delete that picture - NOW!". See the awful look on his face at being forced to pose with such a babyish sign...this is a close up of that picture:
There went my little daydream of getting pictures of Ben in his own embroidered Mickey ears. In fact, I was only able to get pictures of him with a few characters the whole time we were there...
We stayed in the park until dinner time, then went to Tony Romas which was only a few doors down from our hotel. (By the way, we picked a great hotel for location...right at the crosswalk at the DL entrance...a closer walk than if we stayed at Disneyland Hotel or Paradise Pier.) Before dinner even came, Ben was fell asleep sitting up...and it took awhile to rouse him enough to eat dinner. He ate half his burger with his eyes closed.
Wednesday (3/2)
The park didn't open until 10am, so we got a chance to sleep in a bit. We got ready, ate breakfast and then headed to the park. We got Fastpasses for the World of Color showing that night, and spent the morning in the California Adventure park. Ate an expensive and pretty lackluster lunch in Condor Flats, then made up for it by getting some sundaes from "B-r-r-r Bank Ice Cream". Yum!
Later, we headed back over to Disneyland park and went to the Jedi Training. We brought along a sign (a tip I picked up on some DL forums on how to get your kid picked), and he was wearing a bright yellow Star Wars shirt. It worked, he was picked on the first try...thank goodness! I did not want to have to go through more shows, nor have a very disappointed boy on our hands. They went through different moves with the kids, then all gathered to one side of the stage once Darth Vader, Darth Maul and a couple Clone Troopers showed up. Ben managed to squirm his way to the front of the line, so he was first to fight Vader.
Ben decided to do his own thing and not stick to the training he'd just received...note the look of concern on the Jedi Master's face....no, no, no! Ben was sure it was a fight to the death, so was just taking matters into his own hands. The audience got quite a kick out of his enthusiasm.
To celebrate his achievement, we took him to Star Traders where he was able to build his own lightsaber. When we were walking away from doing that, a fresh new lightsaber in his hand, he noticed a cart selling Star Wars blaster guns, and really wanted one. He decided to use his allowance to buy one, and that prize is the one he slept with that night. We arrived back at the hotel at the end of the day, exhausted and sore from walking. Sleep came easily!
Wednesday (3/2)
Ben woke in the middle of the night complaining his ear hurt, and was restless and crying on and off the rest of the night. In the morning, he just didn't feel well...and ended up vomiting. We hung out until around 10am, and he seemed to be doing lots better. Was more animated and hadn't vomited since he woke, so we decided to see if we could do some of the tame rides. We got three rides in, and after making him eat something for lunch, he felt sick to his stomach again. We returned to the hotel where the poor boy puked 5 more times over the course of the day. I got a hold of his pediatrician's office, and they called in a prescription for antibiotics. Jeremy walked the 3 miles to Target and back to pick it up (along with saltine crackers and Gatorade). We spent the day sleeping and watching TV, thankful that we'd paid for the extra day. Ben did enjoy a bath in the jacuzzi tub before bed though. Just look at those dark circles under his eyes! :(
Thursday (3/3)
Ben woke up feeling great. He had kept down some Gatorade and crackers the night before, so we tried him with breakfast. That stayed down, so we headed out to the parks. We started slow, but Ben really wanted to go on the fast rides...and once he'd successfully ridden the Indiana Jones, the Tower of Terror and California Screamin', we knew he must be all better.
Friday (3/4)
Our last day! Park hours were 8am to midnight. We got there around 10am, and rode all the rides we had yet to ride, the favorite being the whitewater rapids ride in California Adventure...unfortunately we never had a chance to go on it a second time. We ate lunch at Rainforest Cafe and browsed the Lego store in Downtown Disney. Rode the monorail back to the park for some more rides, before heading back to the hotel for a rest. We returned to the park at 7pm, where I parked myself in a good spot for watching the fireworks at 9:45pm once I saw that people were already staking out their places. The boys went off and rode some more rides, and made it back just in time to watch the fireworks. Afterwards, we went in the Haunted Mansion one more time, rode the Matterhorn one more time...and since Ben begged for just one more ride, rode Mr. Frog's Daring Adventure for the first time. We were tired, but luckily didn't have to catch our plane until 2:45pm the next day.
Saturday (3/5)
Had to check out of the hotel by 11am, which meant catching the 10:40am shuttle back to the airport. We were there way early, so Ben got to work on his homework. We ate seom McDonalds, then were on the plane and headed back to Portland. Got a shuttle back to the hotel, picked up our car and was home by 7pm. We had a pretty great trip, despite the unexpected illness. I think Ben would have liked a park with more thrill rides though...so next time, we might look in to Six Flags or something with more coasters! Seeing as he's so not a Mickey fan anymore!
Today, Ben has a low grade fever. Of course! I'm still sending him to school if he's better in the morning. He has no cough, runny nose or vomiting. I'm going to optimistically chalk it up to too much excitement. Also, going to call his pediatrician and ask for some allergy testing to see why he's getting so many ear infections out of the blue like this. Normally, kids are starting to get over all the ear infections at his age, and he's just starting up.
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