Planning the dream:

After years of nagging, I finally gave in and planned a long desired trip to Disneyland, Anaheim. It was my daughters twelfth birthday so I thought this was a perfect occasion to take her and her 8-year-old brother there. I had always worried that if they were any younger they wouldn’t remember the experience properly and I wanted this to be a big part of their childhood. So where to begin?

There is a lot of information about Disney on the internet and then a whole load of options for when you get there. I decided to take a flight into Orlando International because it was a bit of a hassle trying to get to Kissimmee airport. The kids were really excited, they had never been on a plane before and the Virgin Atlantic staff were so helpful. We watched films the whole way there and they chatted away to each other, discussing who their favourite character was. It seems Cinderella is a firm favourite for them both and one they both really wanted to meet.

We arrived at the airport and luckily only had to wait about ten minutes for the Disneyland Resort Express bus to arrive. They go hourly from between 7.30am and 10.30 am and then half hourly between 10.30am and 4.30pm. You just go to the centre island and stand under a big sign, its pretty clear to work out where to go etc. By this time the kids were buzzing with excitement despite being really tired. We finally arrived at the Disneyland hotel where we were greeted with an amazing Disney welcome, just as we had hoped. I got the children of to bed, pretty excited myself about the day ahead!

Let the magic begin:

We woke up in a bedroom for four, this is definitely one of the best things about the hotel, the fact that we can all wake up together. We headed down to Goofy’s Kitchen to get some breakfast at the buffet there. The selection was amazing and we all left feeling pretty full. To be honest, I would have been happy to spend the morning looking round the hotel, that alone has so much to offer and is really big, but the children were desperate to head to the park.

First impressions of the park? Wow! You enter at Main Street and are taken aback by just how Disney everything feels! And when you get to the end, you see the legendary Sleeping Beauty Castle, it really is everything I imagined it to be, massive and truly enchanting. Next we had to choose which land we wanted to visit first.

We decided on Fantasyland first because we knew this one was very children orientated. It takes stories that the kids are familiar with and turns it into rides for them so as you can imagine, the children really loved it. A few of their favourite rides were ‘It’s a small world’, ‘Dumbo the Flying Elephant’ and ‘Mad Tea Party’. The day passed really quickly and the children didn’t really mind queuing on some of the rides because there was just so much to look at. When we returned back to the hotel that night, the kids went straight to bed, exhausted by the day’s magical events.

Taking our time:

The thing about Disneyland is that you often feel like you have to rush to do everything because there is so much to see and do. We thought that we’d actually just spend some time relaxing in the hotel in the morning before we hit the park again in the afternoon. But of course once the children saw the amazing Never Land Pool complex, they were running around like lunatics all morning. The pool really is something else with a pirate ship, water slip and a even a hungry crocodile!

In the afternoon we went to Mickey’s Toontown, the home of the most familiar Disney characters, the children thought it was amazing and they especially loved seeing Mickey and Minnie’s house! We stayed in the park until it got dark so we could watch the world famous parade. All the floats were lit up and it really did look magical. What a great way to end a brilliant day.

A fond farewell:

On the last day of our stay, we woke up early to see as much as we could. We made a quick stop at all the other lands we had not yet visited and found ourselves at the end of the day in what seemed like a matter of seconds. As it was the weekend we were lucky enough to see the incredible fireworks display. The show has loads of different parts to it all telling different stories, you will never see fireworks like it, I promise you.

After, we headed back to the hotel, where we caught a the shuttle back to the airport. The kids fell asleep within seconds of the plane taking off. I can only guess they were dreaming about their time at Disney. For me, it did feel like a dream, a really magical one and one that I will never forget. Next time, though I will definitely be staying for longer and will try to fit even more into the trip!