Downtown Disney

Day 25:

While waiting for the girls to get up, the boys played with newly acquired toys from Disneyland, a lightsaber and a tron disc, in the space between our sites.

The next day, everyone slept in, except for Daniel who had fallen asleep in the stroller before we left the park.  I had tried to get him on Star Tours at the end of the day, but he just wanted to sleep.  After we finally did wake up, we ate breakfast in the picnic table next to our home, before driving to Downtown Disney, basically to see what was there.  Our biggest agenda was to make sure that Kimberly got a proper birthday meal, since we kind of skipped that while we were in the park.

Kimberly arrives at Downtown Disney.

At Downtown Disney, we get three hours of free parking, plus an additional two hours if we got our ticket stamped at a restaurant or at the AMC movie theater.  It took us a little while to acquaint ourselves with the area.  We wanted to see Disney stores and they were mostly generic name-brand stores, like Fossil and Lego.  The restaurants were all themed, but none of them specifically Disney.  The only one we recognized was the Rainforest Cafe, right at the entrance.  Then, we started seeing some places a little more Disney themed.  

Ben, at the Lego store in Downtown Disney.

There was one place called D-Street, where I was tempted to buy some StarWars art work that was kind of expensive.  They also had these creepy four-inch-tall characters with mouse ears.  The appeal to these characters was that had them in all different themes and they only sell them at Disney parks, making them collector's items.  You didn't know what character you were going to get until you opened the box.  They were essentially like trading cards.  I thought about getting one in the StarWars theme for $11.95--a  whole box was over $300, but you were guaranteed to get a rare figure--but I decided against it in the end.

The Snethens walk through Downtown Disney

 

One thing we were looking for was a recording of a bunch of old Disney music, from Snow White or Sleeping Beauty or even The Little Mermaid or Beauty and the Beast.  We were frustrated at Disney 365 because they only had one CD and it was just the pop-Disney music from today, but they suggested the World of Disney, which was just down the way.  When we got there, all they had was more of the same.  They did have a complete soundtrack to the Lion King, but that wasn't really what we were looking for, either.

However, the World of Disney store, which was the last store before the park entrances, was the largest store by far.  Divided into four sections, we could have spent our parking allotment in any of the sections of the store.  In the first section, it started with toys and post cards, magnets and things, but ended up with all kinds of knick knacks and some useful things, too.  This was the section of the store where the DVD's and CD's were located.  The second section was devoted to artwork.  On one side of the store, hung paintings and the other side had dishes with every media of Disney art imaginable in between.  In the last two sections hung mostly apparel, first for kids, then for grownups.

Kimberly, at the Rainforest Cafe.

 

Once we'd left the World of Disney store, we decided we needed to eat lunch.  But on the way back to the Rainforest Cafe, we stopped at a vendor who made the names out of Disney characters.  A sign hung on the kiosk with Kimberly's name and she loved it.  Rebekah also wanted one.  Why did we have to pick names that were so long?  In the end, we decided to get all four of them done, since we'd already gotten Ben's name in StarWars characters at Legoland.  The man told us the signs would be ready at 4pm.

Kimberly and the Volcano

Stopping at the Rainforest Cafe, we were directed past the fish to the upstairs where we were finally seated.  We all ordered too much food and fortunately had boxes brought in the end, rather than eating it all.  Then, we ordered the Volcano, which was essentially three brownies piled up with a mountain of ice cream, enough for everyone to get some and no one to feel he'd been shorted.  Getting my parking ticket stamped on the way out of the store, we decided to wait until 4pm.  (Our five hours would expire at 4:27.)

Daniel learned a lot about the bird outside the Rainforest Cafe.

Leaving the cafe, Jenny walked back to the vendor to wait for the names, stopping back into the World of Disney store to see if they had a shirt she liked.  The kids and I watched a bird demonstration before walking back toward the vendor who had sold us the names.  Another vendor stopped me along the way, seeing Kimberly's hair.  "Can I draw her, just for fun?" she said.

"No, thank-you," I replied and walked on.  We didn't get much farther down the street when I realized it was actually a good opportunity, since we weren't sure how much longer Kimberly's hair would last.  "How much does it cost?" I asked.  She quoted me a price and it seemed reasonable, so we sat Kimberly down and the artist, named Millie, drew a perfect representation of Kimberly while we waited for those names to get done.

Kimberly being drawn by Millie in Downtown Disney.

 

In the end, it was after four and the names weren't finished.  So we decided to come back and get them later in the night and we walked back to the car and find a nice beach to spend the sunset.  We drove to Huntington Beach, but on the way, clouds started to roll in.  By the time we got there, it was 100% overcast and a cold  breeze came in from the ocean.  I decided to see if we could find a place to park, just for fun.  Maybe we could see some waves.  The kids really wanted to make a sandcastle.  At the State Beach, parking was $15, which seemed a little high, but the thing that detracted us from stopping the most was the yellow gate shut across the roadway to the parking lot.  It was closed.

So we turned around and drove back to the RV park, where I dropped off Jenny, taking the kids back to Downtown Disney where we finally got the names we had ordered.  Downtown Disney was a lot different at night, with musicians along the street and crowds of people filling in every square inch, making it difficult to maneuver  the stroller among so many people.  Retrieving the names from the vendor, we left the street for good and returned home in time to go swimming in the pool and watch the fireworks from Disneyland on our last night in LA.

Returning to the RV park, our kids watched fireworks from Disneyland from the pool.