Chapter 166
A Grand Old Time

After our Matt Damon sighting and Christmas castle photoshoot, we tried to ride the Matterhorn using our return time, but it was down (doesn’t it always seem to be?). We waited for several minutes on a nearby bench in case the ride would come back up, but in the end we just gave up and went to Tomorrowland instead.

We enjoyed a round-trip ride in the front of the Monorail—really, it’s the only way to travel—and when we got back into Disneyland, the Matterhorn was still down, so we got a new time for Peter Pan’s Flight instead. We rode Buzz Lightyear next and Tracy was able to find the target on one of the Zurgs, so she broke 200,000 for the first time.

Heading into Fantasyland, it wasn’t quite our DAS time yet, so we rode Snow White’s Scary Adventures before heading to Peter Pan.

We’d worked up quite an appetite by now, so we walked over to Rancho del Zocalo next and got our usual Carne Asada and Enchiladas meal to split (delicious as always!).

After dinner, we went back to Fantasyland to check out the new Frozen meet-and-greet area that had just opened up—remember, at the beginning of November 2013, no one knew much about Frozen yet, so this whole area was sort of a mystery.

We rode Pinocchio and Mr. Toad next. While we were getting ready to board Toad, one of our favorite attractions cast members, Greg—who you might remember let us onto the Matterhorn for a bit of random magic after a pin trade one time—told us where to look out for a Hidden Mickey. It’s on one of the spears near the exit queue, and it’s really easy to miss.

Tracy did the single rider line for the Matterhorn next (my neck wasn’t up for it today) while I went into Tomorrowland to buy her a Christmas present. When we met up, we walked over to use our return time for Star Tours and got a Kashyyyk/Coruscant combination before deciding to head home.

We watched Monsters, Inc. on Blu-ray this night—which neither of us had seen for about a decade. It was just as fun as both of us remembered, and we looked forward to the next time we’d hit the attraction in DCA.

On Sunday, we went back to the resort after a little get-together to paint wine glasses at our friend Anna’s house. Here’s how ours turned out.

We weren’t really planning to go into the parks at all, so we parked at Downtown Disney. They diverted us to the Simba lot because Lilo and the regular Downtown Disney lot must have both been full, but they had reorganized the exit from the Simba lot since the last time we’d parked there. Rather than being able to exit and walk along Disneyland Drive past the Paradise Pier Hotel, now we had to go around the back of the hotel. Since we’d parked in a spot that would have been convenient for the former route, the latter route felt like it took an eternity.

As we made it into Downtown Disney, we admired this large Christmas tree that had just arrived.

We went into Build-a-Bear next to buy Duffy some underwear. Not because we’re creepy, but because the pants of his Canada outfit are poorly dyed and they bleed color onto his fur if we put them on him without anything underneath. The cashier at the store still thought we were extremely sketchy, however, when we were only buying teddy bear underwear and nothing else. We also told him we didn’t need a bag, and he looked even more horrified as I stuffed the briefs into my fanny pack.

The candy in the window of Marceline’s drew us in.

They had just decorated this store for the holidays as well.

We thought the new Christmas Pretzel Rods looked festive, but when we asked the cast member for one of the Christmas colored ones, she didn’t seem to understand that meant red and green… In the end, we had to point out the one we wanted.

We ate our snack as we walked toward the Grand Californian and sat next to the fire for a bit.

I was looking at Instagram while we sat, and I saw that someone posted they had seen Francisco by Grizzly River Run earlier that day. It had been months since we’d found our favorite Disneyland Cat, and we had been worried about him, so we decided to go into DCA to check if he was still there.

Walking into the park, we realized quickly that it was the unofficial Harry Potter day because we saw plenty of guests dressed in robes. Alas, Francisco was nowhere to be found, so we gave up and walked back to DCA. We stopped into Acorn’s Gifts and Goods to pick up a 2013 photo album. They always switch out the year-specific merchandise so early that we wanted to make sure we wouldn’t miss our opportunity to buy one.

The pianist had just started up in the Grand lobby, so we found some seats to stop and listen.

I really liked this Tiffany lamp.

Tracy was hard at work on social media while she enjoyed the music.

Heading home, we hung out with “our” cat for a while because we were about to be heading to Colorado and would be leaving him for several days. He’s always so dainty.