Road Trip

Rebecca and I are going to be celebrating our 20th wedding anniversary this year and we decided that to celebrate we should go on a cruise.  Since our actual anniversary is in December we took an early victory lap to avoid the cold of winter.  We had taken our honeymoon in San Diego and the misery of the soggy and cold clothes we got when sitting in the splash zone at Sea World still resonated after all these years.

We booked our cruise with Royal Caribbean.  Not that we have much of anything to compare them to, but we think they are great!  Service was exceptional.

I find it mind blowing that they are able to have so much stuff on a ship and not have it drop to the bottom of the ocean.  We learned that the ship we were on is one of the smaller ones.  I read that a new ship that will be launching next year weights 250,800 tons.  What a monster!  We may have to go on another cruise just to witness that size of ship.

Our original itinerary was to go to Cabo, Mazatlan, then Puerto Vallarta, but as we were leaving LA the captain announced that they were looking at a low pressure system near Puerto Vallarta that had the possibility of becoming a hurricane.  It did…  Here’s the captain explaining the hurricane.

The new plan would be to go to Cabo, a short day at Mazatlan, then book it out of there back heading north ahead of the hurricane.

In Cabo, you have to tender to shore; there is nowhere to actually dock. When we got to Cabo the crew was able to get one group off the ship onto the tender without incident, but because of the swells they were having issues being able to get others onto the boat for shore, so they cancelled all the rest of the trips ashore.  As a result this is all that we got to see of Cabo.

Looks quite nice right?  We we a bit disappointed, but the crew organized additional entertainment and activities for us to enjoy.

We later learned at dinner from our table-mates who made it ashore with the first group that Cabo wasn’t very much fun at all. They had a miserable time on shore.  The beaches we all closed and there was feces all over the streets.  They weren’t able to get back onto the boat until the end of the day when the tender boat made only one trip hoping to be able to get the people back on the cruise ship.  We watched them come back and it looked a bit precarious.

Our next stop at Mazatlan went a lot better because the cruise ship was able to tie up to the dock.

After a taxi ride straight from Grand Theft Auto, we arrived at the tourism area of Mazatlan.

Our first stop was to a Catholic church.  This picture best shows just how hot it was there.  When Rebecca checked the weather prior to our trip, she didn’t understand how it could be 80° but feel like 115°.  We now understand!  It was boiling hot.

We stopped by a flea market to pick up some trinkets for the kids.  It was interesting to see.  The restroom situation is entire story in itself.

The meat in the market was… questionable.  There was no way those open air refrigerators were keeping the meat cool enough in the stifling heat of that building.  It even smelt like food poison.

No visit to Mazatlan would be complete without a pilgrimage to Abbey Road to pay homage to Mazatlan’s native boys: Los Beatles.

We spent much of our afternoon walking along the coastline.  The beaches were closed due to the high waves caused by the hurricane.

Sure OSHA is an American thing, but this company needs to have their business license revoked.  Tree limbs instead of 2X4’s?  Really?

The heat ultimately did us in and we returned to the ship early.  There is a blue line in the ground and if you didn’t follow the blue line that leads from the port to the downtown, you were likely to be murdered.  We chose to risk death by murder over auto accident, so we walked.

Our next stop was Ensenada.

People were hitting us up at every step trying to convince us to buy their souveniers.

Enjoying the Cabo sunset

Most mornings I was up much earlier than Rebecca, so I’d slip out and wander the ship with my camera.

We ate ice cream.. Lots of it.

One of our favorite things was to watch the ocean.

Formal night at dinner.

The piano player liked riding up and down the elevator.

We enjoyed all of the performances in the theater.

Our new friends and dinner mates.  I’m kind of sad we didn’t get their contact info.

Our cruise director was a lot of fun.

I had the opportunity to try escargot since the kids are expecting us to eat it when we go to France. Now that I’ve tried it, I don’t need to eat it again. Ever.

The crew sang happy anniversary to us and we enjoyed a slice of desert.

Adele has some new fans after we saw the Adele tribute concert.

These icons are all over the ship.  It took me almost all week to figure out that is a the symbol of a firehose.

All in all it was a great trip despite the hurricane and missed ports. I sure do love my wife of 20 years!

Our third vacation day found us at Disneyland once again. As we waited for the rope drop, the three big kids went to some gift shops. That left Madison free to pose for pictures with Mom and Dad:

We knew we wanted to ride Rise of the Resistance one more time, so we decided to book it over there right at the rope drop to hopefully have less of a line. The rope dropped. We walked. And walked. And walked. Rise of the Resistance is a good walk from the rope drop. Crowds thinned around us as they went to other rides. We knew we had made a good choice. We were going to have such a short wait!

We arrived at the ride with tired legs and hopeful spirits. Sure enough, we got there and there was no line at all! There was, however, a cast member there to tell us that the ride was temporarily closed. NOOOOOOO! We were so bummed that we had walked so far and wasted time for no reason. We decided to go on Indiana Jones again and make our way across the park to Space Mountain.

We did Space Mountain three times because the line was so short, and we loved that roller coaster. Just as we were about to go on the Buzz ride, we saw that Rise of the Resistance had opened and only had a ten-minute wait. We decided to book it back over there. Unfortunately, everyone else in the park apparently decided to do the same thing and by the time we got there, the line was already super long. We knew we wanted to ride it again and we knew the wait time would always be long, so we chose to just wait it out while we had some snacks and took some photos. The line moved fast and actually wasn’t too bad.

The ride was just as fun as before and we were glad we had been able to do it again and check it off our list.

We settled in to ride some more mellow rides such as Winnie the Pooh:

Dallas took the three little kids to Tom Sawyer Island while I spent time with Brooke looking in gift shops.

We all met up again to ride more rides into the afternoon:

We rode Pirates of the Caribbean and saw Jon Heder (Napoleon Dynamite) in line. That was exciting.

As our day drew to a close I told the kids that this was their last chance to do things in Disneyland, so what did they want to prioritize? I wasn’t expecting them to unanimously declare that we HAD to stop by the Tiki Room before leaving:

Spencer fell in love with Groot when he saw it in the gift shops:

And Madison had to cuddle every Stitch she saw:

I had to document the island in our hotel room. We brought tons of snacks to keep us happy during our trip!

On day two of our trip we went to California Adventure. We again got up bright and early so we could get there before it opened.

This gave us plenty of time to take pictures with Walt and Mickey:

Our first ride of the day was Guardians of the Galaxy (the old Tower of Terror). We loved it!

We ran into Spiderman and had to take a picture. Brooke embraced her role as photographer which is why she’s missing in a lot of the shots:

Then we went to Pixar Pier to do the always-fun Toy Story ride:

Dallas was proud of his “Best In Vehicle” award:

The Ferris Wheel was our next priority. You can choose whether you want stationary gondolas or swinging ones. Swinging all the way for us!

When we got to the front of the line and saw just how much the gondolas swung we began second guessing our choice.

We started third-guessing our choice when someone in one of the swinging gondolas cried out to the ride attendant begging him to stop the ride and let them out.

I asked the attendant if that happens often. He said yes and that there were barf bags in the ride if needed.

We couldn’t pass up an opportunity to stage some barfing pictures once we heard about that:

Unfortunately, approximately three seconds after the above picture was taken, Dallas turned a ghostly shade of white-green and announced he was feeling like barfing. We then had to be the dorky riders hollering at the ride attendant to stop the ride.

Dallas and Spencer ran off the ride as soon as the doors opened, but the girls stayed on and we finished like champs:

We found the Inside Out characters and had to pose beside them:

Finally, finally, finally, we made it to the Little Mermaid ride. That was our favorite from years ago and Madison was absolutely DYING to ride it again. We rode it several times in a row just because we love it so much:

After that we ran over to the Animation Academy so we could learn how to draw a Disney character. We had some time and space while we were in line, and we also had carpet under us and tired legs, so some of us decided to really get comfortable as we waited for the drawing session to start:

We learned how to draw Minnie Mouse. I love how their step-by-step instructions make it so everyone does such a good job with their drawing:

Well, MOST of us drew Minnie:

Brooke has a friend who loves Oswald, so Brooke was always on the lookout for him and she found him in the flesh…er…felt!

Spencer was really excited to do the Cars ride. Last time we came he was able to ride it once, but the second time he tried he was deemed too short, which he has never forgotten nor gotten over, so we headed over to Cars Land.

The line for the Radiator Springs Racers was so long. And slow. We felt like we were waiting forever.

We got many games of paper, rock, scissors in:

We also played countless rounds of Disney Heads Up:

Finally we made it to the front of the line!

The ride was as fun as ever and we all loved it. Next up was Mater’s Junkyard Jamboree:

Since we were here and it was dinnertime, we stopped at Flo’s V8 Cafe for dinner.

The sun was setting and we were freezing after sitting and eating, so we went to the playground area and ran all around trying to keep warm:

Since we were there during a less-busy time, there weren’t many parades or extra shows happening. When we heard about Mulan’s Lunar New Year Parade, we knew we didn’t want to miss it. We staked out our spot on the ground.

The procession lasted…five minutes. It was very underwhelming.

Madison fell in love with Stitch and always had to hug any she found in the gift shop:

We ended the day at Soarin’. That was another really long line, but all was forgotten when we got on the ride. Madison leaned over to me during the ride and said, “This is my favorite ride!”

The woods may provide rest for some, but we were in need of our nice hotel room, so we called it a day and collapsed into bed…after another quick swim for the kids, of course.