Chapter 175
Our Modern Family

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November 18-22, 2013

Though we’d had a really fun weekend up in L.A., it was difficult going that long without hitting the parks—especially knowing they were still all dolled up for Christmas. Even so, our first trip back to the Disneyland Resort on Monday night didn’t actually involve any theme parks. I think park hours were pretty short this week because we made the drive over but parked at Downtown Disney instead.

We still had my birthday coupon for a free Earl of Sandwich, so dinner was an easy decision. We got two sandwiches to split between the two of us: a holiday sandwich and an Italian.

Of course our food was delicious as always, and we watched some of the action on the Downtown Disney skating rink while we ate.

We decided to go to Marceline’s Confectionery for dessert and tried one of these fun snowman cake pops (the fact that it wasn’t shaped like Olaf is a clear indicator that this was before Frozen mania took over the universe).

We brought our snack to the Grand Californian lobby—always a favorite during the holidays—and settled into some armchairs.

We were excited when the pianist came out to play us a few ditties.

After enjoying our snack, we headed home.

Tracy was lucky enough to get to go to Disneyland with work the next day as part of a team building excursion, but I had to go yet another day without any parks action—which means I was chomping at the bit by Wednesday evening.

After taking the tram in from Mickey and Friends, I took some photos of the poinsettias adorning Disneyland’s main entrance.

We continued into Town Square.

Pluto was doing a meet and greet by the Opera House, so we waited to pose.

It really wasn’t crowded tonight, so when we got a DAS time for Space Mountain, it was valid just five minutes later. It was our first time riding since they’d removed the Ghost Galaxy overlay, and we were glad to have the classic version of the attraction back.

The time we got for the Jingle Cruise next was also almost practically immediate. As we started to make our way out of Tomorrowland, we saw that the castle was nicely lit up.

We also paused outside the fountains by Pixie Hollow to watch the little water show they do there occasionally. I’ve heard it described as “mini-World of Color,” which I think is pretty accurate.

Heading to Adventureland, we rode the Jingle Cruise (and had a much more normal experience than we had the first time around). We really enjoyed our skipper, and I specifically noted that my favorite joke was him saying something about a “load of crock” in reference to his slow-cooker.

As we exited, we noticed a group of guests with a plaid getting ready to board. Tracy thought it was a little suspicious that they were such a young group, and she figured it must be a celebrity. Though they got onto the attraction a little too quickly for me to notice, Tracy realized that it was Modern Family‘s Sarah Hyland and her friends—including her ex-boyfriend, Matt Prokop (we’ve since found out that their relationship wasn’t exactly great, but at the time, we were excited to see him too because he’d played the oafish Rocket Man in High School Musical 3).

We actually waited until their cruise came back around so that I could see for myself that it was, indeed, them. We thought this was a fun star-sighting overall.

It started to rain lightly, but it wasn’t too bad. Tracy and I went over to New Orleans Square, where we went on Pirates with no wait. After the ride, I took a few pictures of the lights in this land because they were really pretty with the rain.

We booked it over to the train station to board the railroad as the rain picked up a little.

While the attraction was en route, the Disneyland Cats tweeted about the celebrity sighting, and both of them favorited it—which I thought was fun.

As the train went around the park, I got some fun pictures in the rain.

After riding around to Main Street Station, we decided to exit the park. In the esplanade, we actually saw the group again and got a couple terrible-quality pictures.