We had plans to meet friends for breakfast in the park, so we arrived at the parking structure at about 8:45am. The electronic signs on the street and at the parking structure were indicating that Disneyland would be very busy, which was probably due to a combination of the steadily increasing crowds as Christmas drew nearer as well as Sunday being the second day of the annual Candlelight Processional held at Disneyland. However, even though all indications even from Disney itself were that it was going to be very crowded, there were inexplicably only a few lanes open to get into the parking structure, so there was quite a bit of waiting. If they know it's going to be busy, enough to let everyone know who's around the resort, why don't they have enough people staffing the parking structure?
We eventually made our way into the park, did a little bit of shopping, and then met up with our friends. To read the review of our breakfast at Cafe Orleans, please click here.
After breakfast, we wandered around doing a little more shopping, and then one of our friends had to leave. The rest of us wandered over to Toontown, and then as we were exiting Toontown, just as we were under the bridge for the train overpass, a CM who had been coming the other way stopped right in front of us and announced that we were all winners and started handing out the Mickey ears in conjunction with the Year of a Million Dreams promotion to everyone nearby. We were very happy to get the special ears, and while none of us are normally Mickey-ears wearers, we all decided we had to wear the ears for the rest of the day.
The front of the special ears.
The back of the special ears.
We then decided to make our way to Woody's Reindeer Roundup, which seemed pretty much the same as last year, complete with the generic logo on the signs at the entrances and on the stage, even though they have a new line of merchandise using the Woody's Reindeer Roundup name and a cute logo with Mickey and Pluto, and the merchandise was even being sold at the Roundup. Why not use the cute new logo in the actual location?
They still have the petting zoo, reindeer that you can see (but not pet), the two recently-pardoned turkeys, a photo opportunity with Santa, a show on the stage, and cookie decorating. I had rather enjoyed the Mr. Potato Head cakes that had been available during the Halloween season, and I had been hoping that perhaps they might keep that for Christmas, except with red and green frosting and sprinkles and some Christmas-themed attachments. Maybe next year?
As we were about to head out of the Roundup, we noticed that Chip and Dale, dressed in their holiday wear, were sitting a table decorating a cookie, and a helper was with them.
Chip (on the right) carefully puts frosting on a cookie
as Dale (on the left) helps hold the cookie still.
As they continued to decorate the cookie, Jesse joined them.
Chip adds more frosting
as Dale searches through the sprinkles and mini M&Ms.
Chip and Dale couldn't agree on how to decorate the cookie though, with one wanting M&Ms and one not. Jesse was looking on when Chip decided to be very mischievous by throwing a mini M&M at Jesse. Jesse then went over to Chip and started to tickle him until he fell onto the ground. Chip then later continued his misbehaviour by putting frosting on Jesse and Dale.
Jesse tickling Chip on the ground for his naughtiness.
The helper has to wipe errant frosting off Chip's nose and hands.
Mrs. Claus happened by after a while and managed to calm the chipmunks down, who then posed for pictures with the growing line of people and cameras. As we were on our way out of the Roundup, we did notice one addition from last year - each of Santa's reindeer (minus Rudolph) has a bucketful of food with his name on it.
Buckets of reindeer food.
I wanna be Prancer.
After wandering around the park a bit more, we decided to head across the esplanade into DCA and away from the crowds currently gathering for the Christmas parade and the crowds that would later be gathering for Candlelight. We decided that with our special ears on, we needed to ride Tower of Terror with them on to see what our picture looked like. We thought it was funny to have the ears on in the picture, but we didn't end up buying the picture.
As we made our way to the back of the park, we stopped at the cart right next to P.T. Flea's. They have had themed sourdough bread for the last few holidays, so we wanted to see if there was one for Christmas. Sure enough, there was.
Snowman sourdough bread.
We made our way to the Paradise Pier section, and the other two members of our group went on California Screamin' while I relaxed on the pier. We then headed over to look around at the Disneyland Hotel and browse around Downtown Disney. We met back up with our friend from breakfast and then headed into the Marceline confection store. They had some seasonally themed products as well.
Not so much candied as snowman apples.
After a bit more browsing through Downtown Disney, we decided to head out of the resort for dinner.
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