Disneyland--Day 1

As soon as we walked into the park, we walked right into some lines to see some characters. What a great start!! Goofy's line was the shortest, so we hopped in his line and got really excited to talk to him, everyone except for Addy!
He signed the books for the kids and we took a picture. The only problem was, Addy wanted nothing to do with him! So I had to be in the picture with Addy as far from him as possible, and leaning away to get even farther!
Minnie was right next to Goofy, so we went to see her next. It only took Goofy for the kids to figure it out. They had their books ready and waiting for Minnie to sign.
Apparently Minnie is much less scary than Goofy because Addy not only took her own book up to her, but also let Minnie give her a hug!
And, she stood in the picture all by herself, with Cole and Emily.
Since we had met some characters, we decided it was time to find some rides. After consulting the map, the kids decided they wanted to head over to the pirate area. So, we walked over that direction and hopped in the first short line we could find...The Jungle Cruise. This is a ride where you get on a tour boat and slowly cruise through a canal. The tour guide cracks silly puns and jokes and there are lots of fake animals that make noises around you.
After about 2 minutes on this ride, it became very apparent that it was not a good choice for our first ride. I don't know if the animals were too real looking or if it was the darkness that had fallen or something else, but the kids were in tears and begging to get off because they were scared.
We should have gone back a different day when it was daytime to see if the animals were really that scary, but we could never talk the kids back on it.
After that failure, we decided that maybe we should head more over to the kids area! On the way, we passed Tarzan's treehouse, so we stopped to explore it. That went marginally better, especially with the stuff at the end to play with and explore!
We finally made it over to the kids' area and found much more success!
They loved the Dumbo ride.
(Although not my best look!)
The carousel was very popular!
And even though it was late, they had fun while waiting in line to ride the train.
Casey Jr.'s Train caught some crazy Wild Animals!
Since we had a busy week ahead, we decided to finish our night by watching the fireworks and then heading back to our hotel.
The fireworks were awesome, complete with Tinkerbell flying through the air, a Star Wars battle, and all kinds of different themes and songs to go with the lights exploding in the air, all of course right above Sleeping Beauty's Castle. It turned into a very happy and magical night!
Time for bed so we can be happy for all of the adventures the next day!