So, last Friday was my birthday and ever since I heard Disneyland was giving away free passes on your birthday, I was set on going.  J, busy training in BUD/s and on top of that a non-stop busy weekend preparing to phase up with his class, couldn’t spend my birthday with me, even though he wanted to.  Luckily I have some amazing friends and one of them had decided to go with me, Casey. 

We left around 10 am Friday morning to head to Anaheim from North Hollywood, about an hour and fifteen minute drive with traffic, not too bad. Once we got there, we had to stand in line for our tickets (you have to print out your free birthday pass online, and then stand in line to re-deem it, you can’t do it all online, nor can you buy a one day, one park pass) – another 20ish minutes, waiting.  Finally it was our turn for tickets.  Casey bought her one day/one park ticket, and then I hand them my “golden” birthday ticket.  Shocked, they handed me a button with my name on it (it said Happy Birthday “real name here”).  I put that button on and wore it proudly!

As we walked into the park, Casey hadn’t been to Disneyland since she was three, so everything was new and exciting for her (for me too seeing it through her eyes).  Also, because it’s the year of the birthday at Disneyland, the whole park was decorated with a birthday theme – FUN!  We took tons of pictures everywhere (if you know anything about me, you know I scrapbook and love my pictures).  We went on all the rides that all of our friends said we HAD to go on, which is great, because they are rides I normally wouldn’t go on – Mr. Toads Wild Ride and Peter Pan. 

While walking throughout the whole park, everywhere I went the “cast members” wished me a happy birthday.  I must have been wished ‘happy birthday’ at least 70 times.  It actually made my day better, as odd as that sounds. 

We stopped to take pictures with Aladdin and Jasmine, Chip and Dale and MICKEY!  He wrote me the most amazing love letter – actually not really, it just took him a million years to write Mickey Mouse with those huge white gloves on his hands, it was quite cute! 

I’m not sure if the wait for the rides was less long because they were purposely moving people through (opening up extra side entrances, etc.) or if it happened to be less crowded that day (on a Friday – I doubt it), but either way, the longest wait we had was 65 minutes (the rest were between 20-30) and that was for Space Mountain – which, by the way, was immediately stopped right before we were supposed to” launch”.  Apparently the ride operator saw a little boy who she thought was too small to ride the ride and stopped our “rocket” from “launching”, which then backed up the whole ride.  The “cast members” had to push all the rockets out of the way behind us, with the people still in them, while the lights were turned on, and security came to check out the little boy.  He was just right, feet touched the ground, lap belt came down in the right spot… they let us go – lights still on.  We ended up riding the whole ride with the lights on, it was interesting to see where we were going, but it also wasn’t as fun and cool without the lights off.  Luckily, they let us ride it again, this time with the lights off, yay.

We stopped to get cupcakes after Splash Mountain, which was delicious.  Casey bought me a cute little birthday cupcake, we both ate one – BEST BIRTHDAY CUPCAKE EVER!

We stayed long enough to watch the fireworks, which I missed on the Fourth of July, thanks to J.  Beautiful.  Soon after, we headed out of Disneyland, stopped at the gift shop, Casey got a souvenir and we took the tram back to my car… what a wonderful birthday!

Thank you friends for all your sweet wishes, cards and gifts, you are all too thoughtful and sweet!