Disneyland Star Wars Light Side Jan 2017: Day 1

Thursday January 12th:
The alarm went off at 3:30am and we were out the door by 5! We made it to the airport by 6am with a quick trek through security. We grabbed breakfast burritos and Starbucks for some go go juice! We had an on time departure at 7:20am. We had a layover in Las Vegas and arrived there 10 minutes early. It was pretty neat on our flight because we could see Hoover Dam from our side of the plane! Our flight randomly showed delayed, but no one could tell us why. We ended up changing gates and planes. We kept noticing a horrible odor and thought it was the bathroom (which didn’t smell too fresh). But we kept smelling it by the gate. We noticed a man in his 40’s kept changing seats and the odor would follow him. He was wearing skinny jeans and his seat of his pants were wet. Turns out, he was boarding our plane. And even more special was that he sat immediately behind us. Let me just say, he didn’t wet his pants. He had a serious accident in his pants. Well, the flight was too turbulent for the flight attendants to even get up. So we got to smell this stomach turning smell for our one hour flight. My hubby and I had food poisoning just two weeks before this, so it brought back way too fresh of horrible memories for us. I was so nauseated by the time we landed in Orange County. I did discretely let the flight attendant know that they were going to need to disinfect that seat immediately. We couldn’t figure out why he didn’t just change his pants and chuck his bottoms in Vegas?! He had a full duffel bag with him! We landed 45 minutes late due to the gate/plane change issue. We picked up our checked luggage quickly and went out to the Super Shuttle pick up spot. I was able to check in on my phone once we had our luggage. We got to the pick up area and our van was just pulling up. We were the 4th and final stop at Best Western Stovall’s. I had booked this room over the phone and requested early check-in and a top floor room. We arrived at the hotel at 11:45am and they were able to accommodate both of those requests! We unpacked everything and ran into Deedee on our way to the Expo so we talked for a bit.

We then went to Earl of Sandwich for lunch, we were hungry! They had just changed security at Disneyland and Downtown Disney is now a secure area. So we had to go through security with metal detectors and bag checks before we could get to Earl. Lunch was great as always. We left Downtown Disney and went to the Expo at the Disneyland Hotel. We did bib pick-up with no wait. Did a quick size exchange on my shirt. The RunDisney merchandise section was the busiest! We had a 35 minute wait just to enter the merchandise area. We picked up our goods (shirts, mug, pin, ornament, drinking glass, car magnets) and used our AP 10% discount! There weren’t nearly as many vendors at this expo as there had been in November, a bit disappointing. So we didn’t stay long. We did stop for a quick bib photo opp. We took our purchases back to our room. We then walked to the liquor store just a few hotels down to pick up gallons of water and Chocodiles (chocolate covered twinkies essentially). We filled up our Camelbak pack with water and essentials. We left our room at 4pm to get to the parks.

We were snacky, so we stopped in the Jolly Holiday Cafe for a chocolate mint whoopie pie and a Matterhorn Macaroon. Both were very yummy! We went over to Space Mountain and were still able to get Fast Passes at 4:40 for a return time of 6:30-7:30pm! We then went to Buzz and were on in 5 minutes. I got 44K and Ryan got 122K. Next up was Star Tours with a posted 20 minute wait. We walked through the Star Traders shop for a bit. Then off to Indiana Jones ride with a posted 30 minute wait, but was really only 15 minutes! At 6:08pm we walked right onto Pirate’s!!!! No wait!! We then walked through the Frontierland shop on our way to use our Space FP. We only had about a 5 minute wait. We were hungry for dinner, so we had dinner at the Plaza and split the Fried Chicken, mashed potatoes, and dinner roll. It was so yummy!!!!!! It had started raining while we were in eating dinner. When we got out, it was raining really good. Most of Main Street was cleared out. It was the type of rain that was creating major puddles and flooding all over. We opted to start working our way back to our hotel to get some rest, since it had been a long day. We grabbed a gourmet Rice Krispie Treat and a Peanut Butter Sandwich. We walked through World of Disney. Cut through the Grand Californian and walked through their gift shop. We were back to our room by 8:20pm (which is 9:20 our time). Our feet were wet and we were tired. We relaxed, stretched out and had lights out by 10pm.
Miles Logged 9.6