It was an exciting day for me because it was Christmas Eve and also the second time I would be in Disneyland! I woke early and woke the rest up so that we can get there on time. But with just one bathroom and 5 people, it was expected that we will be a little bit off schedule. But everyone made good time and we were out of the hostel towards Disneyland in no time.
The drive was really brainless with the GPS doing the entire job. I remember the first time I drove there. It took a bit of effort to make sure I’m on the right track. But the GPS sped things up a lot, since there wasn’t much thinking involved in driving to Disneyland. We arrived at about 830am and by the time we got pass the lines to enter, it was about 9am.
We rushed for all the rides, knowing that the crowd will only increase. So by the time it was past noon, we already completed quite a number of the more popular rides, like Indiana Jones and Splash Mountain. The happiest person must have been Yukiko, who we found out is a Disney fanatic who visits the Tokyo Disneyland 10 times in a year! It was a very busy day and there was hardly time for lunch. But some of us decided to get turkey legs to eat on the go. It’s huge! But I didn’t like the fact that it had such hard tendons that you can’t bite through them like regular chicken drumsticks. I couldn’t finish mine eventually but I did eat most of it.
The day in Disneyland ended nicely with the fireworks. I missed them the last time while waiting for the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. But this time round, I was ready and was so with a vengeance. I had a full battery and lots of memory to record down the fireworks on video, which I did. It was so beautiful! We continued going for rides after the fireworks. It was crazy because we didn’t stop at all! No wonder we did so many rides in such a short day! When the park closed, we did some shopping for souvenirs. I had done most of my Disney shopping already, so I settled down for a café mocha and strawberry cheesecake. Eventually, I got 2 boxes of chocolates anyway as spare presents to share.
It was late and it was into Christmas, so there wouldn’t be too many places selling food till too late. Luckily I called up Baccali and found out that they open till 1am. So I droved us to Baccali, where we all had something nice for dinner. There was seafood so even Abdul could have something good. I had fried beef hor fun. Missing the one back from home though…
Getting back to the hostel was a signal to start packing, because I had an early flight out of LA to Buffalo, NY. I tried to contact Armhawan the whole day but couldn’t reach him at all. I had wanted to ask if he minded me depositing my stuff with him and getting the FedEx people to pick it up on 26th, because they don’t do it on 24th December. But he did not reply, so I had to unpack these things into my luggage. I even had to dump the weighing scale because there was just no way I could carry it along and return it to Armhawan later. My suitcase was so packed that it was going to burst…