Disneyland in December

My God-daughter, Amanda and I missed out visiting Disneyland in November so we are going to be making it up in December and yesterday was day one. We had 4 missions for the day:

1. Check out the Christmas decorations on It's A Small World.
2. Watch the new Christmas Parade.
3. Watch the CandleLight Procession.
4. Watch the new fireworks show.

There were a few things we were worried about.

1. Many people warning us that the park will be insanely crowded because of the the time of the year, the CandleLight show, it is a Saturday, blah, blah, blah...
2. The winds were really blowing.
3. The late start (we originally planned on getting there as it opened) .......... departure time 11 am.

Ever since Amanda and I started going to Disneyland, our Disney "ju-ju" has been awesome! The park has never been packed. The worse day was... well, there hasn't been a worse day. C'mon it's Disneyland!

Very windy!

At the Main Street Tree.

Main Street all decked out!

Amanda says that the tree may be as tall if not taller than the castle, what do you think?

Number One:

Number Two:
Just as we were coming out of It's A Small World the parade was starting. Going to have to come back to get a better view.

Number Three:
We really lucked out by "staking out" a place for the CandleLight Show early. Cast-member Rob (who said if anyone asked his name was Steve) asked the people on the curb if we would like to get in on the benches behind the reserved seats section. By 3:30, we had seats and a "special button" that would get us back into the roped off area, it was 2 hours before show time.
Hector Elizondo did a great job as the narrator.

Crews putting up the chairs for reserved seating.

Sound check.

Before we knew it we were surrounded.

Then they had the flag ceremony.

Shared the bench with some great people.

Candice (cut off by the cast member who can't shoot pictures), Jose, Reggie, Miracle, Me and Amanda

They turned off all the light at the Main Street Plaza as the choir came in.


Went from this to this...


Best I can do considering how far back we were.

Hector Elizondo narrating.

The Candle Light Choir

The castle all lit up.

After the show we were still amazed at how empty (relatively speaking of course) the park was. So we went on the Buzz Light Year ride. She finally beat me, but she had to take control of the car to do it! Re-match!

Anyway, we deided to leave and come back for the fieworks another time. We asked a cast-member what the chances are of the fireworks being cancelled due to the winds blowing as hard as it was. He said that "if continues to blow like it is now it is a 75% chance that it will be cancelled, BUT it usually dies down around 8:00 - 8:45 pm." Ok so he gave himself a "disclaimer" but we didn't see the winds dying down that evening. In fact after we met up with my sister for dinner in Little Tokyo, the winds were still whipping around.

So who wants to go Friday?