J&M got Maui'd!

We, well I, got up early to get ready and pack any remaining stuff before heading out. We said our last goodbyes to the Kims before they left for work/school and made our way to the airport. It was fairly uneventful and this time we gave ourselves ample time to get through to the gate. After filling up on gas and dropping off the car, we were able to make it too the airport in under three hours, which was still an hour longer than I had expected. Getting through security was a chore, but because we had a toddler with us, we were able to join the priority line and get past the main group of travelers. We even had time to grab a bite before boarding the plane. Oh, and this time we were able to board first because we had a child under five. We definitely were able to take advantage of our advantages this time. The flight back was late, but fairly uneventful, until the last hour when Elsy started to get a bit stir crazy and did not want to stay in her car seat. She started kicking the

The Disneyland Magic Morning only takes place on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. As we had the option of one Magic Morning with our ticket and this was the only day we would be at Disney in the morning for one of those days, we decided to take advantage of it today. (We were watching Fantasmic! last Thursday so thought that a Magic Morning that day would be too much for Elsy - and us for that matter.) Also, forcing ourselves to get up early in the morning was good training to get us accustomed to Eastern Time again. Elsy on King Arthur Carrousel. In any case, it was harder getting Elsy up on time and after picking up breakfast for Maggie, we actually arrived after the Magic Morning was already finished. We were, however, still able to catch all of the rides we missed out in the past two visits to Disneyland: Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage, Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, Peter Pan's Flight, and after lunch at the River Belle Terrace, a cruise on the Mark Twain Riverboat. Els

For our third day at Disneyland we decided to check out Disney California Adventure. This side was newer than the Disneyland side and had some of the newer Disney products like most of the Pixar and all of the Marvel stuff. As we were planning on watching the Disney Paint the Night parade that night, we decided to head to the park after lunch and went to visit Maggie's aunt one more time in the morning. We ended up staying there for lunch, with her aunt cooking us a nice vegetarian meal. We arrived at the park at a good time as they were loading cars into the remaining covered stalls on the parking garage. We explored parts of Disney California Adventure side where Elsy could enjoy the rides, including all of the rides in "a bug's land". I wanted to check out the Guardians of the Galaxy dance off but a technical glitch cut the show short. I thought seeing the actors run off was part of the show until we were told that they would come back at five for another showi

We did not have any predefined plan on what we were going to do while we were in San Diego. Since there was a triathlon scheduled to use the road in front of the hotel in the morning (until 0930), we decided to sleep in. We still slept in a little later than that. Our check out time was 1100 and we got pretty close. Having brunch at Solunto Restaurant & Bakery. We drove down to Little Italy to find something to eat for brunch. After walking around a bit, we stopped at Solunto Restaurant & Bakery where we had some of their yummy breakfast fare and pastries. We then walked down to the Waterfront Park where the kids ran wild on the playground. The sun was out so it had warmed up quite a bit since the morning (and previous day) so I tried to hide in the shade as much as possible. The playground was not too busy, but there was some sort of yoga event taking place on the other side of the pond so we wandered through marveling at the number of people and their yoga mats that wer

We got up early to leave by 0700 to reach Legoland and beat the crowds. Amazingly enough, we actually left the house ten minutes before the hour, which is quite impressive when you have three young children to get ready and load into the car. We watched most of Despicable Me 3 on the way to Legoland so I did not really pay much attention to the scenery unfortunately. The kids were awake and ready for a trip! The day turned out to be overcast a lot colder than anticipated and I was actually cold in my shorts and T-shirt. As such, the park itself was not very busy and the water park was less than half fill. Apparently this never happens on a weekend so it was the opportune time to take advantage of all of the water rides, but it was definitely too cold for me to take advantage of (I also didn't bring my swimming trunks due to a miscommunication). The Setos at Legoland California. Elsy really enjoyed the playground but was a little small for most of the rides. We had lunch

Today was another "off" day where we were able to sleep in a little bit. These sleep ins are useful as each day has been packed with so much adventure that we barely have time to rest! The plan was to take part in a Hollywood Behind-the-Scenes Tour by Red Line Tours at noon. However, we had a rude awakening when we found out that our rental car had a flat tire. (The front tire on the driver's side.) Fortunately Bonnie had noticed this as they were leaving and gave us the heads up as well as a tire pump we could use to fill the tire. I was able to get out early, find a tire repair shop nearby, and got the tire fixed for a very reasonable price of $10. I was also able to get the tank filled but had no luck finding any post cards. As such, I did not really get to sleep in, and we were worried that we would be late for the tour so Maggie rescheduled it. In the end, with the help of the GPS and HOV lanes, we were actually able to make our original scheduled tour time of no

Maggie had already reserved a dinner and show for Fantasmic! a week ago at the Hungry Bear so we decided to try to sleep in a little this morning and head to Disneyland after lunch. We went out to pick up some healthy food but there was some sort of event and the whole street was shut down for pedestrian traffic. We ended up picking up food from Jack In The Box instead. The food was pretty good, and we ended up eating it in the Disneyland parking lot before heading into the park. After our experience the first time we were at Disneyland on Monday, we decided to check out a few of the rides we didn't go on, like the Casey Jr. Circus Train, or the Storybook Land Canal Boats. Our timing at the boat ride was serendipitous as we were able to watch the Pixar Parade while we were waiting in line for the ride. Something to consider for the next visit at Disneyland. We also were able to catch a show of Jedi Training: Trials of the Temple, although I realized later that the show was mo

Today was our first "easy" day. Easy because we were not rushing around in an amusement park trying to maximize our hard earned dollars. That being said, we still wanted to maximize our use of the GO Los Angeles Card we had purchased earlier. To that end, we wanted to take advantage of any of the tickets that we could use while at Santa Monica. This included stuff like the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium or the Malibu Celebrity Homes Tour, but we figured that the ones that we could use were the Hop-On Hop-Off Los Angeles Bus Tour - Yellow Route and the Pacific Park on the Santa Monica Pier tickets. It was recommended that we park at Santa Monica Place near the pier rather than at the pier as the lot would be very busy and expensive. This worked out well for us as the mall lot was pretty empty, covered, and had a really nice family restroom which we were able to take advantage of a couple of times to change Elsy. If we had to go to the restroom at the pier, we'd have to wait

Maggie had told me about Universal Studios Hollywood while we were at Universal Studios Orlando and mentioned how the Hollywood studio tour was much better in LA than it was in Orlando. As such, I wanted to check out this place for a while now. We decided to make a whole day of it and went early in the morning. However, getting up early was rather difficult despite being jet lagged to wake up three hours early. Keep on sleeping. Keep on sleeping. It took us two hours to drive over from the house. Traffic was not great and we could have taken advantage of the HOV lanes if I had a better idea where they were and which ones we could use (we had three people in the car so they should be free for us). The signage for the HOV lanes was a bit of a hit and miss. I am sure if we had stayed a month I would have been much better at using them. The first thing we checked out when we arrived was Kung Fu Panda at the DreamWorks theatre. As we could not carry Elsy on one of the shaking chair

We had planned to visit Disneyland with Henry and Lily today long before we bought tickets. Costco had a great deal called the Southern California CityPASS that allowed for a three day park hopper ticket Disneyland, one day at LEGOLAND, and one day at Seaworld Adventure Park at San Diego. At $410 CAD, it was a really good deal. There was one problem. When I went to purchase the card a couple of days before our flight out, I read the fine print and noticed that it was not an electronic ticket like the Go Los Angeles Card. They had to ship the card to you, and it would take 3-7 days to arrive. What the.. All of the other pass cards offered by Costco were electronic, only this one happened to be a physical one. We were both stunned, and realized that we had to purchase Disneyland tickets some other way. That is why we ended up purchasing the four day pass the day before which was an acceptable compromise. Elsy asleep in front of Cinderella's castle. Both Henry and Lily had annua

There were no real plans for today. We wanted to spend some time planning for the rest of the trip as we had purchased a four day Go Los Angeles Card and also wanted to visit Disneyland and there were not that many open days to take advantage of. Disneyland is quite expensive. One can lower the price per day by purchasing multi-day passes so instead of paying $117 USD for one day (or $135 USD on a peak day), one can spend $320 USD for a five day pass. There was no way we could spend five days at Disneyland, we just did not have enough time. But even the three day pass was $280 USD, so there was no real savings until you hit the four day mark, so we bit the bullet and went for the four day passes. Fortunately Elsy was free otherwise my wallet would be crying even more. My reasoning for going for the four day pass instead of just getting a single day to save on money was two-fold. It was cheaper per day, and we would not have to rush around at the park. The park is open from 0900 to mi

The main purpose of the trip was to go to visit Maggie's namesake aunt, and that is what we did today. Before we headed to her house, we had brunch at the Golden Corral buffet. William wanted to take us there after they had lunch at the Dragon Legend buffet while they were visiting. They primarily served American comfort food, and was pretty good for the price. Elsy enjoyed the all you can eat chocolate. Elsy likes chocolate. After our meal, we drove down to Maggie's aunt's house. We spent quite some time there, and the kids would play on the computer, while Elsy was checking out some of the toys at the house. We checked out the lemon tree in the back yard since Maggie had mentioned it a number of times before. They had hats at In-N-Out. William asked us what kind of food we wanted to eat, and Maggie and I had agreed to try out well known restaurants in their area that were not available from home. For dinner, we decided to check out In-N-Out burger. The food

As our flight out was not until 1800, I had initially planned on dropping Elsy off at daycare, figuring out my company's year end, grabbing my paycheque, and picking up Elsy after her nap before heading to the airport on the UP express. After figuring out that that schedule would be a little too tight, we decided to keep Elsy at home, and I picked up my cheque the day before so I only had one errand to run, which took a lot longer than anticipated due to traffic. We decided to drive to the airport instead of taking the train because of all the stuff we were bringing. It was unfortunate because the train is a lot faster and cheaper than driving and parking. I am the first to admit though that even with only one luggage to check in, taking a car seat, stroller, diaper bag, and two other carry-ons is a lot to lug around on public transit, especially when there are no elevators (or down escalators) at our subway station. The extra time we gained from cutting out some of the event