There are a lot of people who love Disneyland and get excited about going often.

I am not one of those people.

I don’t remember what finally got me to change my mind about going, but I think it was a blog post I read where someone described their trip and it got my rethinking the experience we could have.

And so a couple of weeks ago we, along with my parents, took the kids to Disneyland for the first time. My parents came with us. Up until the night before we weren’t even sure we were going to make the trip, since Sabrina had been sick. We ended up deciding that she was well enough to go, and that if we waited for everyone to be sniffle-free, we’d never go.

We had a wonderful time. I wasn’t sure how Sabrina would do with all of the sensory stimulation, but she did great. I know she wasn’t feeling 100%, but was just a trooper, anyways!

Here is a sweet moment between the girls while waiting to visit the fairies.

I loved the characters at California Adventure, like Doc McStuffins and Sofia the First. Something about the fact that they’re in our living room so much – they’re probably Alexa’s 2 favorite shows right now, and we allow her to watch TV in the morning after she gets up and before getting ready.

Alexa and I stood in line to meet Elsa and Anna, and when it got to be our turn, Sabrina walked up to them. She was very hesitant, but Anna was really sweet, gave her a huge smile, and reached out to her.

Snow White was sweet and sensitive to Sabrina, too, although I didn’t get a picture of that.

Sabrina loved the street dancers and the music in the streets.

My plan was to enjoy the moments and not feel pressured to do and see everything. And we did just that. We went with the flow and put no pressure on ourselves to see or do anything in particular. It worked well for us.

There has been a lot of controversy about the new DAS pass. The new system is that you go to a kiosk to let them know what you want to ride and they give you a time to come back to that ride so that you can go through the Fast Pass/alternate entrance and not wait that time in line. It totally worked for us. I can see that if you go often and have a routine down with the old system, that the new system is a change, and that can be difficult for people. But honestly, we found it to accommodate our needs perfectly.

We definitely stuck to the younger rides, more due to Alexa than Sabrina. At one point we went on the Roger Rabbit’s Car Toon Spin. You can choose to spin the wheel in order to spin the car. I was in the same car as Alexa, and Sabrina was with Ken. We were right next to each other, so we could yell over to each other. Alexa was a bit scared and wanted me to keep the wheel steady. I looked at Ken and Sabrina and he was spinning the wheel like crazy. “Do you remember who you have in your car?!”, I yelled to him. “Sabrina loves it!”, he responded. Yes, she loves movement. But had he forgotten that she also gets motion sick?! 🙂

We went swimming on our last morning there.

The indoor heated pool was nice, but Sabrina LOVES HEAT. So after swimming in the pool for about 20 minutes, Sabrina suddenly ran out and jumped into the hot tub. The huge smile on her face was priceless. Of course, we all had to follow.

Great trip, great memories. We may even go back soon. I’d love the excuse to do this again.