All last week, I was in California with my husband. While our full honeymoon trip will be to Europe sometime next year, we still wanted to take a trip to celebrate our marriage. As we were debating where to go, we decided on California because both me and my husband have never been. I plan on writing three posts for this trip: one for Disneyland, one for Los Angeles, and one for San Francisco. I decided to write about Disneyland first.

Growing up, my family never did a Disney trip. It was expensive and when my dad passed away, my mom had to focus on raising me and my brother. As such, a Disney trip was the least of our family’s priorities. When me and my husband planned a trip to California, I made it clear that I wanted to go to Disneyland. Me and my husband stayed in downtown LA, so we planned on taking the Amtrak train from LA to Anaheim. It was so slick. The Anaheim Union Station was only ten minutes from the park. We arrived at Disneyland around 8:15 AM to wait in line.

The first thing I noticed entering the park was the Spooky decorations. I was in love with all the pumpkin Disney characters that lined the park. Any Halloween enthusiast like myself would love the park during this time. Me and my husband ended up taking various selfies of the pumpkin characters as we didn’t want to wait in line for a professional photographer to take our picture. As we entered the park, we sprinted for Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge as we wanted to do this first before it became busy.

Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge was mesmerizing. Immediately upon entering the park, I ran to Kylo Ren’s TIE Echelon ship and forced my husband to take my picture. The ship looked like it came out of the movie and was on display at the park. After staring at Kylo’s ship, we meandered to the life-size Millenium Falcon. To no one’s surprise, I ran over to this ship and again politely asked my husband to take my picture. The Millenium Falcon ride was epic. We were with a family of four who fought over who got to pilot the ship, so me and Grant took the less coveted positions of engineer. It’s clear that a lot of thought went into making a realistic Star Wars theme park, and it shows.

As I walked around Disneyland, I was debating what I wanted to purchase as a souvenir. I had way too many t-shirts, and I wanted something that I could look at to reflect on my trip. I ended up settling on pins. At the Disneyland souvenir shops, they sell lanyards with collectible pins. Pin trading is a big deal where you can trade pins with people at the park. I liked the concept of this because I could hang my lanyard on the same hook as my other convention badges. I already had a special place in my head as to where this would go, so I knew this is what I wanted to purchase. I purchased pins that represented a movie or franchise that held a special place in my heart. This included pins from Hercules, Monster’s Inc, Belle, Star Wars, and Inside Out. Since getting home from our trip, the lanyard is exactly where I wanted to place it. I can look upon it and reflect on my time at Disneyland.

Once 1:00 PM hit, we were able to park hop over to the Disneyland California Adventure park. This park features the brand new Avengers Campus. One of my husband’s biggest complaints was not being able to buy a beer. However, once entering Disneyland California Adventure, we were able to purchase cocktails at Pym Test Kitchen. My husband was happy. Avengers Campus was fun! We didn’t ride any of the rides as the Guardian’s of the Galaxy ride was one of the drop rides and I’m not a fan of heights. We did get to see a brief show of Spider-Man climbing the buildings. I think Avenger’s Campus has a lot of potential to grow into something bigger than it is right now.

While Avenger’s Campus was neat, I did like Pixar Pier. Pixar Pier as it sounds is where most of the Pixar-themed rides are. The ride I see most often on social media is Toy Story Mania! where you sit in carts and shoot things. This was one of the longer waits we had for a ride, however, it was worth it. Of course, my husband scored more points than me. I blame this on his experience playing first-person shooters. Once we hit Pixar Pier, me and my husband were exhausted and soon after we ate, and left the park.

Disneyland was everything I hoped for it to be. It was seeing my childhood coming to life along with reminiscing on various Disney or Pixar movies that meant a lot to me when I was younger. I’m fortunate that after this long pandemic, Disneyland was my first trip out of 2020 and it was worth the wait.