In Honor Of A Park Blog Hop...

This article was originally printed near the end of last year.  It has been brought back to life (and re-edited slightly) in honor of Babes In Disneyland's Blog Hop today.  Enjoy!

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Hi there!  My name's Chad and I make up one half of Days In The Park, a friend and friend combo who enjoy spending many of our days in, you guessed it, The Park.  Or, if you want to get all technical about it, Disneyland Resort.

I currently reside in Rancho Cucamonga, California with my wife and three little boys roughly a half hour or so from Disneyland, though I am originally from lower Alabama, which is, of course, much closer to that other Disney Resort; somewhere in Orlando, if I remember right.

When I look back trying to figure just when and where my love of all things Disney first took root, I think I probably really have my parents to thank, and I didn't even set foot in one of The Parks until I was 17 years old.  My earliest memories of Disney are of myself sitting in my living room watching Pooh's Corner on The Disney Channel.  I grew up watching anything and everything Disney that I could, and not just the animated classics.  Movies like The Gnome Mobile, The North Avenue Irregulars and The Apple Dumpling Gang were among my favorites.  If the Disney name was attached to it, I watched it.  And it really was a genuine decision on my parent's part to make sure that I watched decent things on television, and Disney sure seemed to fit that bill.

Then when I was 17 my parents, who had saved for years for the vacation, took our family to Walt Disney World for the first (and so far only) time.  I'd like to say I fell in love with the place right then and there, but the years have made much of it blurry.  However, the feeling I remember having those five days has so far been unparalleled in any other vacation I have ever taken.  It made that much of an impression.

I had then wandered in the wilderness for about 14 years, getting married and beginning to have children in the interim, when on a whim my wife and I decided to take our first trip to Disneyland together, and also on a whim decided to become Annual Passholders.  The rest, as they say, is history.

I'm still relatively new to The Park, and still relatively new to the blogging world, but I would gladly put my passion and heart for it (though not necessarily my knowledge) up against anyone else's.  I love The Park, and I love spending as much time there as I can.  And I hope that comes through on our blog.  We'll never match up with many of the other sites out there in terms of information, or "breaking news", but we do aim to be genuine.  And we hope the genuine fun and hilarity we have on our trips to The Park show up in all that we write.  We believe that it does, and we hope that you'll see it, too.

We hope that you'll take the time to poke around some, and that if you like what you see you'll keep coming back!  We'd love to have you continue to visit The Park with us!

Me, my parents, and my first 2 little boys outside Sleeping Beauty Castle -- 3 gens of Disney fans passing the magic on

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