After 4 weeks away (2 for daddy) it is Time to head home. We are presently sat in Terminal 7 of LAX in Los Angeles awaiting the plane to arrive in readiness for our flight back to London in a little under two hours time.

We had a LOT of fun inside the California Adventure Park managing a whole 10.5 hours in the park – having started shortly after 8am. We then had dinner in downtown Disney and went up to watch the water show from the special hotel balcony (one of the many advantages of staying in the exorbitantly priced Disney hotel).

The Cars Racers ride is truly awesome and well worth the visit alone in many respects. We actually did VERY well and got onto all of our needed rides in the time we were there with very little queuing 🙂

The last night was a bit of a flop as we trusted the Chilis website to lead us to dinner – nope big mistake. Then tried Outback statehouse to find we selected badly as there were hundreds of people also in search of dinner – so we ended up with In n Out picnic in the car 🙂

A nice big breakfast in the room this morning followed by a packing up session and here we are…. A very kind chap saw us making our way through the car park at Hertz and offered to drop us off in a personal trip to the United checkin desks – ie without our needing to use the bus transportation – For. The. Win 🙂

Now just a short 12 hours on board the 747 takin us back to Heathrow 🙂

So we have just arrived at Disneyland in Anaheim, CA following two days “relaxing” by the beach in La Jolla. So, given we have Olly with us, not a great deal of relaxing took place 🙂

We have spent a combined 5.5 hours on the beach over the last two days – it was raining on Tuesday morning so not ideal for beach access 🙁 So,cows went shopping 🙂 Olly decided that because he could not find Benny’s Spaceship at LEGOLAND or any local Target store that he would relent and buy a police car and sports bike from the LEGO Movie instead. This would not leave him with enough dollars to buy the spaceship but he was fine with it as he will ask Father a Christmas about the spaceship. Last night all LEGO sets were built and promptly played with in the hotel room before being packed this morning ready for their trip back to the UK.

Typically the damned spaceship IS available here in the LEGO store in Downtown Disney….. 🙁

The beach at Torrey Pines State Park today was perfect – nice solid sand and a nice relaxed wave formation that was not brutal like the shores at La Jolla from yesterday – they were dangerous in La Jolla really as the backdraft pulled the boys into the ocean as well as knocked them over on the way in 🙁 The boys through ugh enjoyed it however….

Torrey Pines was mor like Filey beach for the the of sand and the waves initially. The waves did get stronger although barely enough to be too worried about – the only thing we had to worry about was our little ginger grenade sloping off down the beach in the ocean – he liked to be beyond waist deep with waves that almost went over his head – strangely Mummy and a Daddy were less keen on this….

Now we are in the Grand Californian Hotel for two nights and have a super early start tomorrow as the park is open at 8am for hotel guests which gives us a one hour advantage over ordinary punters :-). The last thing we would like to experience is the world of colour show in the evening but that is not until 9pm hence we have a loooonnnnngggg day tomorrow :-). Thankfully there is a special place in the hotel that we can go to in order to get premium views of the show 🙂 YAY. Better still it is just three floors above where we are staying in the same building – double YAY.

Sadly, the seller of daddy’s favourite popcorn has left the Downtown Disney area so no popcorn for daddy this time around 🙁 all it will take is for the ice-creams that daddy loves to also be no longer available and we will have wasted $2k of cash in coming here…. Only joking the kids are super excited to be here although daddy is a little worried that Olly is more concerned with the damned LEGO spaceship than the Disney experience…. 🙁

The second day started much as the first (albeit with bag packing an placement into the car BEFORE setting out) with a nice buffet breakfast that today required ice-cream in Elliot world

That is what we managed inside the LEGOLAND theme park today 🙂

We had planned on taking a few hours out at around 1pm but it seems that we did not need the break. We did have a whinging Elliot for the first couple of hours as it was clear that his requirements were simply to investigate the stores in the park and not to visit the actual attractions.

We ended up in the waterpark from around 2pm to 5:30pm and although freckle face (Charlotte’s affectionate name for Olly) wittered on about NOT wanting to go on the lazy river, he spent about an hour on the river with us all. Elliot was highly amusing as he was unprepared to allow any of us to be ahead of him 🙂

We have two day passes so will go back tomorrow morning at 9am to do the last few rides that we did not do today before heading back into the waterpark to enjoy the rest of the day in there 🙂

We head further south tomorrow night to LaJolla so we have two beach / shopping days before heading up to Anaheim and DisneyLand 🙂

The hotel is really quite cool – example: when you get in the lifts as the door closes, it turns into a disco with a music change and disco ball and lighting – it seems that YouTube had prepared Elliot and Oliver for this bit not mummy and daddy who both seems to break into ‘uncle nobhead’ dancing almost immediately :-). Then there is the rooms themselves that are really well thought out with cool bunk beds for the kids and their own TV etc.

Great place even if a tad expensive – the included park tickets seem a winner 🙂