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Old 13 Sep 16, 08:33 PM  
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Adventures in Public Transport - Day 13 - Napa Valley to Disneyland º0º

Day 13 - Napa Valley to Disneyland º0º

There was one last sight I had on my wish list for Napa and this morning I finally got to see it….balloons. The last two mornings had been foggy first thing but when I stirred this morning at 6am and checked the window it was a clear blue sky. So I quietly got dressed, wrote a quick note as to where i’d gone and headed out. I had only got a few steps out the hotel when I spotted the first one. I then made my way around the side of the hotel and out to where there is a cycle path and there they were:

I stood and watch for a bit before heading back to see if the others were awake to watch them. By this time you could see them from the balcony walkway that lead to our room so Hubby & I watched them for a bit and left DS sleeping.

Once DS woke we all got showered and ready and headed down for breakfast. After filling up on more delicious omelettes and pastries we headed back to pack up the last few bits. We had a bit of time before we were leaving for the airport so we went for a walk around the French Laundry garden which was next to our hotel. It belongs to the Michelin star restaurant of the same name but is free to the public to visit and even has little seating areas for you enjoy. We spent some time wandering around and visiting the chickens before heading back to look around the little complex on the other side of our hotel.

We headed back to our room to collect our cases at 11am and checked out ready for the taxi we had booked to collected us. This had been one of the hardest things to organise as although there is an airport bus it doesn't go very often and didn't match any of the possible flight times. We had eventually found a local guy who did airport runs for a fixed rate of $175. Not cheap but the journey is around an hour and a half plus the bargain price I had paid for our internal flights balanced it out.

He picked us up at 11.30am and we headed off to Oakland airport. He was an interesting chap and we had nice time chatting on our way. It was a fairly uneventful journey, luckily there was no traffic as I had heard at times this route can be bad. We arrived at Oakland airport just after 1pm. We were flying Southwest Airlines down to Long Beach. The flights were $45 per person which included 2 checked bags for free. I did also decide to pay $15 extra for pre boarding as they have an open seating policy and although DS had flown loads of times he wasn't sure about sitting by a stranger. I had done pre check in but needed to collect my board cards so ask a member of staff where to go. This was all very simple and there wasn't much queue for bag drop so we were through that part quickly. Security was also fairly quite so once through we had plenty of time to grab some lunch.

Our flight left at 3.30pm. We had a great crew on board and was to impressed that we even got free drinks and wifi that you could use to watch in flight entertain on your own device. You could also pay to have wifi to use for other things but the flight was so short it wasn't worth it. We landed a little ahead of schedule at 4.40pm. We had a great view of Huntington & Newport Beaches as we came into land as well as the fire forrest fire that had recently started in the San Bernardo area of LA.

Long Beach airport has to be my most favourite airport I have ever been to. There’s only about 6 gates, two beautiful glass seating areas and a lovely palm tree filled patio area in the middle. You literary just walk off the plane, along a short path and then they pass your baggage out through a hatch to you, we were out the airport, luggage in hand in 15 minutes!

The Yellow Cabs here have a flat rate charge of $45 dollars to Disneyland. The taxi rank was just across the road so we were off and on our way in no time. The journey was fairly quick. DS & I are a fan of James Cordens carpool Karaoke so we had to smile to myself as the driver pull over into the carpool lane. Those LA freeways are crazy with all those lanes but everything was moving.

As we pulled into the Disneyland driveway we were all very excited. Our hotel for the next 9 nights was the Disneyland Hotel. We had completely blown the budget on this. £329 per night via an orbitz rate we booked back at Easter time ok moving on….

Check in was all very straight forward. We were given a room in Fantasyland Tower on the 7th Floor. Its a standard room overlooking the car park but from this side of the hotel you can see the Disneyland Park to the side and as we found out later we had the most amazing view of the fireworks. We were also given I'm celebrating Buttons for my birthday and DS got a birthday button ready for his birthday in a couple of days time, plus a first visit button. They also did this lovely little touch where they say the castle has left mail for you and presented DS with a lovely photo signed by Peter Pan, Wendy & Hook.

The room was lovely with loads of disney touches including a headboard that lights up and plays wish upon a star. Sorry I only took video footage the room so I've tried to pull the photos off that.


The thing that I loved about this hotel was that the theming is all about Walt and Disneyland history. We had a beautiful print in the room of the classic shot of Walt walking through the castle. Down in the lobby theres lots of old photos.

Our first not so exciting thing we needed to do was unpack and tackle the washing we’d built up over the last 8 or so days. We grabbed what we needed and headed off to locate the laundry. Laundry located and washing on and we headed off to explore the hotel some more. We wandered around the pool and past Trader Sam’s before heading for a nose in the Frontierland Tower. They have a scale model in there of big thunder mountain which we spent some time looking at.

After heading back to switch the washing over to the dryer we called into the gift shop. I’d started a pandora bracelet last year and had been given birthday money in dollars. I was hoping they might a 60th charm still left in stock. I was pleased they did, unfortunately not the castle one but the blue one instead which match my blue 2015 disney I a got last year. Purchase made we headed back to collect the washing and head back up to the room. While I tackled some ironing DH & DS popped down to pick up some take out from Tangaroa Terrace.

At 9.30pm the fireworks started. They had told us at check in that we could play the soundtrack through the TV so we quickly started turned this on and sat watching the them.

They were amazing and we felt very lucky to be having such a magical holiday. We had seen so many amazing things and were looking forward to the fun ahead.

Edited at 08:40 PM.
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Old 15 Sep 16, 08:56 PM  
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Great day, sounds like you got lucky with your room. Pussycat
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Old 17 Sep 16, 03:49 PM  
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What a great way to get to Disneyland and at such an amazing price!
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Old 17 Sep 16, 04:20 PM  
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How lovely to have a room with a view of the fireworks.
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Old 24 Sep 16, 07:47 PM  
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Great picture of beach from plane.

Like the theming of the Disney Hotel.
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