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Several months ago Joan and I decided it was time to have a big family vacation. We arranged to bring my daughter Rachel,her husband and three boys ages 3, 5, and 7 from Rhode Island and Joan's sister and nephew age 9 from Denver, to California for a Disneyland vacation.
The packages we purchased included three day tickets to both Disneyland and the new California Adventures, lodging at the Grand Californian Hotel for two nights and all meals.
Everyone arrived in good shape anxious to do Disneyland. We spent a couple of days in Lake Elsinore while everyone got settled in and acquainted with each other. My daughter and her family stayed in my fathers RV, which we parked next to us, while Joan's sister and nephew stayed with us. It worked out better than expected, we where able to stay close yet everyone had enough space.
After a few days we moved over to Disneyland, we set up the Anaheim Resort RV Park a couple of miles away while everyone else checked into the Grand Californian. This hotel is a five star hotel that is located adjacent to the parks. You exit the hotel onto the Downtown Disney Mall, very close to the entrances to both parks. We highly recommend anyone visiting these parks stay at this hotel.
We had three days to visit both parks so we tried to pace ourselves. Unfortunately the weather did not cooperate. It rained pretty much all the first day. While it kept the crowds down and the lines very short by the end of the day it was getting old. The kids loved it though, what kid would not enjoy playing in the rain and Disneyland all at once. The only disappointing part of the entire day was when we came out of "It's a Small World" some slime ball had stolen the umbrella we had left draped over our stroller so the seat would not fill up with water. I can only hope the five dollar umbrella snapped shut around his head.
Our second and third days were glorious, the weather was perfect and the crowds where small. Everyone had a blast. Joan had purchased autograph books for the two oldest boys so they could collect all the characters autographs. Well, my grandson Brandon set his down somewhere during the first day and walked off without it. My daughter had only written the boys first names inside the cover so we felt it was gone. We purchased a new book and continued collecting autographs. Well, when they where leaving the park that night my daughter checked into the lost and found and someone had turned the lost book in. Thankfully, the good out number the bad several thousand to one.
After three days at Disneyland Joan and I where pretty burned out. We had planned to go down the coast to San Diego to visit Joan's brother so we left the park early and went over to my parents house to pick up their RV. We then drove the two RV's down to Fiddlers Cove FAMCAMP just south of Corona on the silver strand. This is another of the military FAMCAMP's and sits right on the San Diego Harbor. We had two spots, side by side about 20 feet from the waters edge. Everyone else stayed at Disneyland until it closed and drove down later that night.
We spent two nights at Fiddlers Cove while we visited family and did some site seeing. The most photographed site we went to was Pacific Beach just north Point Loma. The kids had a blast running in the surf, chasing the waves. Keep in mind these guys had traveled from Rhode Island and Denver, CO and got to play on the beach in February.
Overall the visit was a resounding success. Between three digital cameras and two video cameras we shot over 1400 stills and hours of video. I've put up some of the better shots in our albums.