Disney Marathon

Every year Disney has a marathon where people run around the park for fun. I don't understand this. Don't people run around the park for fun every day?

Anyway, while I am not crazy enough to try to run a marathon, I felt like I ran a Disney marathon last week. Yes, I just got back from my 4th Disney trip this year, and it will go down as the hardest one yet. Let me just touch on a few highlights for you.

1.) Heather is in the middle of a high-risk pregnancy, but rather than miss out on Dland, she opted to use a wheelchair. We rented one before we left on the trip, both to save money and so we could take it between the hotel and the park, which we did. Repeatedly. Every day. Several times every day. I think I made 4-8 trips per day between those locations, and that doesn't count the distance within the park.

2.) I have realized another benefit of graduating. I have achieved an all-time low in my personal fitness. This was impossible while I was trucking 20 pounds of books around campus every day, and taking at least one PE class per semester, but now that I have a diploma it is my right to let myself go to pot. And I have. And I paid for it. While I realistically topped 6 miles per day, it felt like I walked 20+ miles per day, and after day 2 I was completely sore and it seems like I was sweating and breathing hard the entire trip. Now I have motivation for my next trip . . .

3.) One of my favorite things about DLand is that it is true family time. On our first visit we were worried about our kids standing in line and getting bored and whining, but it didn't happen. It was great.
Well, I don't know if Trenton is tired of vacations, or if it was the fact that he didn't get pushed around in a stroller the whole time, but he was horrendous. There was whining, crying, fits in every store and even a few bursts of anger. He had a tough time.

Now that I have glamorized all of the hard parts about this trip, let me just tell you that that trip was great. We still, after 14 days at Disneyland in the last year, haven't done everything there. I came with a more detailed plan than ever (because I know every attraction by now) and I planned in a few things we have never done, and we enjoyed all of them. My list of to-do's is already growing for our next trip in a couple of months (Heather will be staying home for this one) and I am looking forward to the whole thing. Some of the new experiences we had this time around were:

1.) Eating at the Plaza Inn. Actually we ended up doing this 3 times. I am a huge salad fan, and nothing beats a tough day of walking around than a cool, crisp garden salad, and they have them at the Plaza Inn for $3!!! And you can get bread sticks for a $1!! That is amazingly cheap for on-site food. The only other things you can buy for $3 are cotton candy or a churro. Even a deep-fried, sitting-in-a-warming-bin-all-day chimichanga is like $6. It was great to have a nice sit-down meal each day.

2.) Billy Hill and the Hillbillies. So maybe I like this fiddlin' hick show because in my heart of hearts I long to wear overalls to work everyday, but the show was only part of this successful event for us. We went during the heat of the day and got to enjoy a great meal of finger foods and root beer floats while being entertained by redneck comedy. You can't say that this isn't a super situation. And it was funny and the performers were way talented and they made fun of the birthday girl in the front row for half the show. Fantastic.

3.) Golden Dreams. OK, so this is pretty much a waste of space, but I wanted to do all the stuff I hadn't done before. They did have a cool special effect to open and close the show, so I give them points for that, but hopefully they come up with a better use for that cool theater soon.


So that is all I have to report on that. Enjoy the pics. I am working on another post which I actually hope will be useful. I am critiquing the many Disney web sites out there and making recommendations. Let me know if you have any favorites I should consider.