So a few things made our day easier and more fun (and cheaper!) that I thought I'd share here.....
We took our own food in the park for snacks and lunch. We planned, ahead of time, on buying dinner in the park. When we got hungry for lunch we took the ferry over to Pirate Island (formally Tom Sawyer's Island) and found the picnic tables to eat at. It worked out PERFECTLY. The kids sat and ate (and even watched the ducks eat a dead fish floating in the water right next to us, ew!) and then we let them run around for a bit. This happened about three hours after we got to the park so they were getting tired of standing in line and this helped them burn off some energy.
We packed snacks, and though my kids rarely get sweets at home, I packed cookies and peanut butter M&M's to treat them with. Two reasons for this: one, this helped us avoid spending $87 on churros or ice cream or cotton candy that I knew they would ask for. And two, bribery. Plain and simple. "Eat all your sandwich and you can have a cookie!!". Worked like a charm.
We planned on buying dinner mostly because bringing snacks, drinks and lunch into the park took up a backpack and the bottom of our stroller. So we ate at Pizza Port in Tomorrowland. Andrew and I each got a plate of pasta ($10 each), Chloe got a kid's meal ($7) that came with sliced apples and baby carrots and Silas and Ava shared an order of breadsticks ($5). I knew they would be too distracted/excited to really finish their own meal so they ate the breadsticks, shared Chloe's fruit and carrots and ate a few bites of pasta from our plates (as did Shepherd). No food was wasted! We drank water that we'd brought and the total with tax was around $37 (about the same as it costs to feed our family Chik-fil-A). Success!
The kids could all ride almost everything except the big stuff, which the girls were tall enough for and Silas wasn't, but it worked out well anyway as the little boys napped and I got to take the girls on some big stuff. Chloe was finally tall enough and brave enough for Space Mountain, which is my favorite ride. Here was the downfall of that....since it's mostly a "big person" ride the conversations around us for the 35 minute wait in line were "big person" conversations. Including the two girls behind me vividly describing their recent drinking binges to each other. Yuck. I had to be super chatty and distracting to Chloe and pray the Lord's covering over her ears!
The day was so perfect, until a minor incident over at California Adventure. We went over for about an hour before the park closed to check out Car's Land. We went to take the kids on a ride (no clue what it was called) and the guy working the line gave me MAJOR attitude, which was such a bummer. He was very short with me when I went to park our stroller (apparently in the wrong place, though there were no signs and it wasn't in the way of anything, there were kinda strollers all over the place) then when I wanted to stand in line with Andrew and the kids for the ride, I was wearing Shepherd who was not big enough for the ride, he informed me I couldn't even stand in line with them because Shepherd wasn't big enough. In a very not nice tone. And there might have been an eye roll. I've done this with other rides several times, just walking out the exit once the kids got on the ride and it's never been an issue. He was super cranky I guess...
All in all, great day. The kids had a blast and Andrew and I did too! Shepherd loved flirting with people in line and made strangers smile at him all day. My feet are killing me today, and my kids have a major Disney hangover, but it was great to enjoy Disneyland as a family of six!
So fun!
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