Way Out West - Day 10 – Disneyland and the journey home

Normally we would be up early on our last day to drop our bags at Downtown Disney check-in but as there is no equivalent here we were not up until 8:45. We packed our toiletries and overnight stuff and at 9:30 went down to check-out and leave our bags with Bell Services for the day.

We then made our way over to Disneyland where the first stop was the Storybookland Canal Boats, which we had missed when we here before as the queue had been too long and still. This is a gentle boat ride through different model houses, like Agrabah, Snow White’s house and Alice’s house amongst others.

From one boat to another – the next stop was the Mark Twain riverboat, which is much the same as the one at WDW.

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The boat in front here is the Columbia, which is a sailing boat that you can also go on.

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From the Mark Twain we went round for a final ride on Pirates of the Caribbean where we ended up in a boat behind a young girl, probably around 1 or 2, who obviously wasn’t ready for dark rides as she howled all the way round after the first drop.

After Pirates we stopped off in the Mint Julep bar for a Mint Julep and Cinnamon Crisp each and then made our way round to Haunted Mansion.

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From the Mansion we went round to the Enchanted Tiki Room and then down to Main Street where we finished our visit to the parks with a round trip on the Railroad.

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These pictures were taken in the Grand Canyon and Primeval World scenes that you pass through on the train.

Once we got back to Main Street we made our way out of the park and into World of Disney where I bought a photo album and we then went back to the Hearthstone Lounge where we had a beer each and sat waiting for our car to arrive.

At 2:45 we collected our bags from Bell Services and at 3:00 we met up with our driver from Luken Limos who had us at the airport by 3:35. I had kind of over-estimated on timings here as the flight was not leaving until 8:55 so I could have had us picked up a lot later.

We had soon dropped our bags but there was a massive queue for security so we were not through until 4:20 and once through we sat down and had a wander around one at a time while the other waited with the bags.

At 5:20 we went into the L.A. Roadhouse Diner where I had a Cheddar Bacon Melt burger, Dad had a turkey Panini and we had another beer each.

We were on board the plane at 8:05 where we again enjoyed our Premium Economy welcome of sparkling wine while we waited for pushback which was around 10 minutes early.

We were in the air by 9:05 and soon after the drinks run began and then food was served which was a choice of braised chicken thigh with rice, seared beef tenderloin or cheese tortellini. We both had the chicken and Dad had a glass of red wine, while I had white followed by a glass of Baileys after dinner.

During dinner I watched Kung Fu Panda (great) and then settled down to sleep for a while.

We were woken up around 1:10 p.m. and breakfast consisted of a ham, egg and cheese muffin (gross) and granola bar with a cup of coffee and whilst eating I watched Cloverfield (had difficulty seeing what was going on as it seemed to be filmed in complete darkness, plus the movie system was shut off before the end).

We landed around half an hour early at 2:50 and once again, thanks to being able to use the IRIS line, we were through passport control in under a minute. We had around 5 minutes to wait for our bags to come up and then everything came to a halt as we couldn’t find the cab driver that was supposed to be picking us up. It turned out that he had been caught out by us landing early and was stuck on the other side of the airport but we finally caught up with him at 4:00.

The usual seemingly never-ending journey home then followed – I watched the ETA on the driver’s Tom-Tom creep up from 5:18 to 5:35 as we made our way through London - and we finally arrived home at 5:35.

And so that was our trip. All in all a great time was had and although Disneyland was great it is somewhere we will go back to in time we won’t be rushing back – maybe in a few years when California Adventure has had it’s revamp and there is some new stuff to do. I loved the compactness of Disneyland and found that it is no better than WDW and it is no worse although it is and always will be ‘the original’.

So planning now starts for next year, this will be to use our DVC developer points at Saratoga Springs hopefully from 31st March to 8th April so I can run into the Easter break from work when we get back. I can’t book that until 31st August though so I’m hoping it isn’t fully booked with home resort owners.

Thanks to everyone for reading and a special thanks to all of those who have left comments.

A lovely west coast trip. I have thoroughly enjoyed the trip report and appreciate all the pictures that you have shared. :D