Focht Family Blog

I would love to say that Disneyland was wonderful but it was not. It makes me realize how wonderful Disneyworld is. Disneyland was full of rude employees who did not seem to want to be there and on top of that they did not have any double strollers. It was bad enough that I actually wrote a letter to them and I do not usually do things like that. Disneyland was missing the Disney magic.

One of the things I realized is that it is near impossible to take pictures of people on rides when you are also on the ride. The first ride we went on was the Buzz Lightyear ride. I actually think that the Disneyland version is better than the one in Florida because your guns are on cords so you can remove them and aim better, although I still got a pretty low score. :) After the first ride we went to the Blue Bayou restaurant and waited for one of their walk-in tables. Mom wanted to go there because she remembered it and had fond memories. You sit where you can see the boats from the Pirates ride and they make it look like you are sitting out by a dock on the Bayou with lightning bugs all around.

One of the rides that I miss from Disneyworld is the submarine ride. It used to be called 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Now the Disneyland version is called Nemo’s Submarine Voyage. I took a picture of everyone but Josh and I sitting in the submarine waiting for the ride to begin.

Next we went on Autopia. Again I feel like this ride was better than the one in Florida. It has a little off-road section and there is a part where you are driving through a car park. I took a picture of the fountain in the middle of the park and also one that showed a good view of the Matterhorn.

Next we went on the Matterhorn which Josh did not like and Timmy found a little scary. There is a Yeti monster that comes out at you in a couple of places. Next we went on It’s A Small World. It was still decorated for Christmas so that was an extra bonus for us. The rest of my pictures are from this ride. The first picture is of the front of the ride. Every 15 minutes the clock face opens up and a parade of dolls from around the world occurs. I took a picture of the parade while we were standing in line.

The rest of the pictures are from inside the ride. I chose my favorites from the Christmas decorations.

After the few rides I got a wonderfully special meeting with my best friend from when I was Samantha’s age. I reconnected with Amy last year and I wanted to be able to meet with her when we were in town. She has an annual pass to Disney so she met us after she got out of work. I was very honored that she came to meet us since she is 7 weeks pregnant and was very tired. I know when I was at that stage with Samantha, after I worked a full day at work the last thing I would have done is gone out to an amusement park to meet someone. We sat at a restaurant and visited while the kids ate and then went back on the It’s A Small World ride. Unfortunately after that it was getting late and everyone but the kids were getting tired so we decided to call it a day. Maybe we can get back to Disneyland some other time when it isn’t so crowded so we can go on more of the rides.

Thursday we took the kids to Knott’s Berry Farm. They were having a deal this month that if you brought in a can of food you got an adult’s admission for the price of a child’s. This made the day cheaper than the zoo. We spent most of the day at Camp Snoopy. It is a small section that is just for kids, so all of the rides are their size. Here are the kids going into Camp Snoopy.

One of the first rides the kids went on was a envelope that goes up and down. Samantha enjoyed it, Timmy went on it later and enjoyed it but Joshua did NOT like it.

The next picture is of a fun, spinning ride. My mom wanted to go on it but it actually had a height restriction the other way, so Samantha couldn’t go on it either. Here is Timmy and Josh riding it.

After lunch and a few roller-coasters for Samantha and me (nobody else likes them), we went to a show with the Peanuts characters. Samantha and Timmy were both chosen to go up and be part of the band. Here is Samantha playing the washboard and Timmy playing pots and pans.

One of the rides that Joshua liked was the balloon races. We were in little hot air balloons that lift up and spin in a circle. Joshua was with me so I took a picture of my mom with Samantha and Timmy.

One of the last rides the boys went on was one that Samantha wanted to but was too tall for. It was actually work instead of a ride. They were little hand carts that they had to push and pull to make it go around the track. It took Joshua a little bit of time to figure out how to work it but he finally got it. Here is Timmy and Josh pushing and pulling their way around the track.

Friday we went to Disneyland…. that will be next post.

The last three days been very full and very tiring. We left San Diego and drove to Newport Beach. From here we rented a car on the advice of mom’s friend Tom who lives there. After we picked up the rental, we drove to meet one of our old family friends, Dave and Claudia Amyrauld. We met them at Olive Garden and had a wonderful meal with them. Dave and Claudia were always my favorite place to go when we had to be babysat when we were growing up. They have two daughters, one who is the same age as my older brother and one that is a little older.

The traffic in California is horrendous. It took us forever to get to the restaurant crawling at 5 miles an hour. I will be glad to be out of California. At the moment we are stopped in Northern California, broken down…. again! More on that after I catch up on what we did in Southern California.

It is hard to believe that Joshua is already 3!! My mom and I took the kids to Chick-Fil-A for lunch and we also took them to see the new Veggie Tale movie. We had a lot of fun and the kids enjoyed it. After we got back to the campground I baked Josh a cake and decorated it with a Diego cake topper I bought from a grocery store bakery.

Next came the presents. Josh loves Diego so it was the theme of the night. His first gift was a talking Click Camera.

He also received an Animal Discovery Laptop. It has pictures of all of the animals he has learned about watching Diego with information on them.

As you can see, he enjoyed playing with his new toys.

We will be leaving San Diego tomorrow. We did manage to get California on the map as well as putting on the map of Canada that we finally found. Nathan says that now it looks like we haven’t been to many places.

We made it to California. We stayed our last night in Arizona in a Cracker Barrel parking lot. That was a new one for us. We checked into our spots at Campland on the Bay on Thursday. It is basically a big parking lot. Friday morning mom’s friend Tom met us at Campland and rode to the San Diego Zoo with us. The first exhibit we wanted to make sure we saw was the baby Panda bear. The baby is only out from 9-11 so that was the first stop. Here is a picture of the baby Panda up in the tree and one of her mom eating.

After lunch we went to the children’s zoo. Here is a picture of the kids on an iguana bench. Samantha made the mistake of trying to sit on the head first and she hurt the back of her leg with the horn. :)

In the children’s zoo there were a lot of those pictures that you can put your heads into. We found one with three holes so here are my little sunflowers.

In the children’s zoo there was an education section and they had some meercats that were in a small exhibit where they had glass sections you could watch them through. The kids had a lot of fun at this exhibit because the one meercat kept running around in front of them like he was trying to find a way out. Here they are watching the meercats.

After the children’s zoo we explored a few areas we had missed in the morning. Here is a picture of an animal that scaled rocks like it was walking down the road.

Then we went to cat canyon and looked at all of the big cats. It was a bit disconcerting that the Puma kept following our kids wherever they were in front of his cage, especially in light of the events at the San Francisco Zoo. Thankfully they had ceilings on all of the cages. Here is a picture of a Jaguar. We thought it was a Panther that had been put in the wrong cage but when we read the information on the sign it said it is not unheard of for a Jaguar to be dark brown to black.

The last picture I took was too cute to pass up. It is an anteater with a baby anteater on her back.

All in all it was a great day. We went to the grocery store after the zoo which was a large task to find a parking lot we could fit in. Then we went out to eat at Olive Garden with Tom before he left to go back home. Today is just going to be spent doing school, laundry and haircuts. Nothing exciting! :)