Elizabeth Smith
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- May 7, 2017
Welcome! Introductions and Our First Three Days in California
Hello! This is not my first trip report, but it is my first for Disneyland! My husband and I have taken two trips to WDW in 2017 and 2019, but we've never ventured west and, honestly, we never had any interest in doing so. So what inspired us to make the trip? Well, the Southern Baptist Convention did. This year, the meeting was held at the Anaheim convention center. We've never attended the convention before, but due to a confluence of circumstances, we were interested in going. The fact that we could convert this into a vacation just made it more appealing!We were in California from June 13th - June 19th, with our three Disney days being June 16th-18th.
Let me introduce myself! My name is Elizabeth, I'm 27 years old. I'm a long time roller coaster enthusiast and theme park fanatic. I like Disney, too, of course. My favorite rides at the Disney Parks are Haunted Mansion, Space Mountain, Expedition Everest, and Splash Mountain (the WDW version). I have new favorites from this trip that I'll talk more about later! My favorite characters are Winnie the Pooh, Dumbo, and Rapunzel.
My travel buddy is my husband Jacob, age 28. He became a theme park fan after marrying me; I dragged him into it kicking and screaming but he loves it just as much as I do now. Many of his favorites overlap with mine.
(This is my husband's favorite pic of us from this trip).
The week leading up to our trip was a little chaotic, but fun. My parents traveled to visit us for several days. Once they headed back home, we had just a few days to pack and prepare, which included cleaning our whole house again, since we would be having a dog sitter for the first time. I had a lot of anxiety around this since we've never left our fur baby with anyone other than family before. But we live far away from family now, so this was really our only option. It ended up working out really well! Philo, our dog, got along very well with his babysitter, so I was able to enjoy our trip guilt-free! Yay!
We departed on Monday June 13th, flying from Lovefield in Dallas to Long Beach in Orange County.
The weather when we landed was unreal. It was a little after 2pm and a little over seventy degrees, fully sunny with a perfect ocean breeze. If you live in Texas, you'll understand what a relief that was to us.
After we got dropped at our Air BnB, which wasn't quite ready yet when we arrived, we changed our clothes and hitched an Uber to Crystal Cove. We had an early dinner at the Shake Shack (not the chain, a local place), which felt more like a normal dinner time to us, considering the time change.
I loved the burger. It was really good and actually pretty reasonably priced. For the month prior to our trip, I had not been partaking of desserts to try and curb my terrible sugar addiction, but once we hit the west coast, all bets were off. I ordered a peanut butter milkshake and it fulfilled my every desire. It, however, was a bit overpriced. The view of the beach made it worth it.
After we finished our meal, we made our way to the beach.
We walked up and down the beach for hours. While we were there, we made our first Baptist connection, and a very personal one at that. In the distance we saw the pastor who preached at our church before my husband came and took the job walking with his family. He was in town for the convention, obviously, but the odds were still incredible that of all the beaches in Orange County, he'd be at the same one as us! We stopped and chatted for a while. This was actually the first time I got to meet him and his wife in person, so it was a really nice coincidence!
I fully expected to swim, but it wasn't very hot outside and the waves kind of scared me. The Pacific ocean is very different from the Atlantic or the Gulf of Mexico! But I enjoyed getting my feet wet.
Jacob did snap a picture of me representing Texas with my Buc-ee's bathing suit, though!
We watched the sunset on the beach, then headed back to our Air BnB to rest up for the night before the convention the next morning.
The next day, we used a city bus pass that we'd purchased to ride over to the Anaheim convention center, to save some money on Ubering. The five day bus pass costs less than a single Uber trip, so if we used it at all, it saved us money.
I won't bore you with the ins and outs of the Southern Baptist Convention Annual meeting, since SBC polity is barely interesting even to those of us who actually care about it. Suffice it to say, I was mostly pleased with the outcomes of all the voting, and we got to see several friends of ours from years of being involved in SBC churches and attending a Southern Baptist University.
The first day of the convention, we grabbed a quick lunch at Roscoe's House of Chicken and Waffles, which is down the street from the convention center. There was a long wait to get a table, due to all the Baptists, so I had to wolf it down too quickly to snap any pictures. But the flavor of the waffle was really unique and the chicken was likewise very well seasoned. We went with a friend from college and he also liked it, so it got thumbs up from all of us. It lived up to the hype, for sure.
That night, we had dinner at an Alumni dinner for our University. This was really nice, since we got to see a few other friends that we haven't seen in about three years. We also got to chat with professors and see both of the presidents that were in office while we were at school there. The food at the dinner was decent and my husband won a door prize! He got adorable socks with our schools mascot on them. I got more pictures of the dinner, but they have other people in them, so I'll just share this one of my husband looking put-out.
Day two of the convention was even less exciting than the first. We had lunch from a taco truck, which was decent. We got to chat with a friend from a church we attended in Kentucky for a long while, too. It was nice to reconnect with her. At this point, I was sleepy, so during the lunch break I took a little rest outside on a bench and I snapped this picture of the bright blue sky.
When the convention ended that evening, we walked to get Boba drinks then took the bus back to the Air BnB.
We ordered Door Dash and got some Hawaiian food.
The best part was the macaroni salad, but there were some pot stickers that were decent too. I was not overly impressed, so I ordered a dozen donuts from Randy's. I didn't get any pics of the donuts, but they were really good and served us well for the rest of the week.
That covers our first three days in California! We got in bed early that night to get ready for a rope-drop morning at Disneyland the next day.
P.S. Our Air BnB was kind of junky, to be honest. There was an air conditioning unit, but it was locked and the owner of the unit didn't know how to make it work. So we slept with the windows open and a fan on each night. This was a fine solution, but not as preferable as just having functioning A/C. Luckily, California isn't as blisteringly hot as Texas. Also, we asked for an iron in our room and, though we were told we'd get one, they never got it. Oh well. At least it was cheap!
Food for thought.
), we made our way back into Fantasyland. We were emotionally cleansed by singing dolls.
And thank you!
)
She was 5 at the time. She wasn't familiar with the movie. We just thought it was the oddest thing that she kept requesting to ride it. When I asked her what she liked about it she said she liked the beginning, when it shows the puppets. Out of all the things in the park to enjoy looking at... 
