Disneyland And Sea World Vacation

We went to Southern California for our 2008 family vacation this year. Of course, Disneyland and Sea World were on our itinerary. Our kids have labeled it the "Best Vacation, Ever!" In fact, several prayers have had the phrase, "thank you for our Disneyland vacation." It's going to be tough to plan our 2009 vacation. How can we top this kind of magical sentiment?

This was my first excursion to the Magic Kingdom. I was experiencing everything for the first time right along with my kids. It was great. The kids would ask me, "Is this ride going to be scary?" I'd reply, "I don't know, let's go find out."

When anyone travels to Pisa, Italy, it is requisite to return home with a photo of the family trying to hold up the leaning tower. When going to Disneyland, there is a similar tradition. Your vacation is not complete unless you return with a photo similar to the one above.

Below is a photo essay on the fun we had on our Anderson family vacation.

At nearly the 10 hour mark of quality "togetherness" in the car, this photo does a great job of summing-up everyone's traveling disposition.

Here's our holiday Christmas card this year. Merry Christmas to all.

And what an embarrassing faux pas we made. How did we all end up in red shirts on the same day? How mortifying! Yes, we all dressed in red to make it easy to find each other in a crowded theme park. On a "dorkiness" scale of 1 - 10 we probably rank precariously close to double-digits. But we comfort ourselves knowing that on a "practicality" scale we rank a full-on 10. We never even came close to losing one of the kids in a crowd. They stood out like a sore thumb. A big, red one. Let it be known that throughout this post, you'll be seeing red—a lot of red. 

And as you can see by the photo, Christian did not think that a large rodent dressed in a Santa hat was very humorous.  

The red shirts are coming! The red shirts are coming!

Splash Mountain was one of our favorite rides at Disneyland. We arrived at the park on a "Magic Morning" entry and were able to ride Splash Mountain 3 or 4 times in a row without ever having to disembark the flumes.

A personal meeting with Mickey. Christian decided that he'd pass on meeting the big, scary mouse this time.

Adam decided it was a must to ride Davy Crocket's canoe ride. It's basically just a canoe that you row around the bay. But to Adam, it was one of the best things the park had to offer.

Conner and Adam on "Autotopia."

Here we are at Disney's California Adventure park.

I love Conner's hair in this photo. 

Introducing "Adam the Conqueror." At first Adam wasn't going to ride the Tower of Terror. After riding it though, he dubbed it one of his favorite rides of the day.

We thought this photo taken of us at the peak of the Tower of Terror ride was pretty funny.

It must be noted that at this point of our vacation, we knew there were cameras on several rides so we were glamming for the camera.

These glasses were standard issue for the It's Tough To Be A Bug presentation.

Here we have Adam modeling the newest and most stylish look of the coming season. Black trash bag. It's brilliant! Actually, this is Erica's brainchild to keep us dry on the wetter rides. We were the envy of all. Stylish red shirts AND trash bags? We rule. 

Every night upon leaving the park, Adam would beg us to take his photo standing on this bench. We declined the first few times, but his persistence paid off. And looking at it now, I wonder why I didn't see the artistic ambience of this photo locale before. Well done, Adam. Well done.

The holiday parade.

Our hotel. Just 3 blocks from the front gate of Disneyland. We were on the 12th floor. Huge thanks to John and Shellie for arranging the hotel for us. 

We really liked the hotel. We had a two-bedroom suite with kitchen. Here's a photo collage of our room.

This is the view of Disneyland from the balcony.

We had Thanksgiving dinner at the hotel prepared by Erica. It was really good, of course. We ate too much, but it wouldn't be a true Thanksgiving dinner if we didn't push away from the table completely bursting at the seams. 

This is a photo of the hotel pools and hot tubs. Most of Thanksgiving day was spent swimming at the pools. We've found that nearly any family vacation can be a raging success as long as there is a pool at the hotel.

If you didn't like the holiday card I posted earlier, then you're in luck, because I have another one for you to enjoy. Merry Christmas once again!

We went to Sea World on Friday. The kids loved the shows. It was a perfect weather day.

This was our favorite show—featuring sea lions and otters.

No trip to Sea World would be complete without Shamu.

Our vacation was a lot of fun. One we'll remember for a long time. 

As a parting thought, we discovered a book that made our Disneyland vacation run smoothly. It's called the "Unofficial Guide to Disneyland 2009." I recommend it to anyone that's a newbie to Disneyland.