Days in the Park is Now Contributing to Growing Up Disney!

We've noted many, many times in the past that one of the things we enjoy most about blogging are all of the fantastic Disney fanatics we get to meet in the process.  There's nothing quite so amazing as to have a reader come up to you somewhere out of the blue, unexpected, and let you know that they're reading you and enjoying what you're doing.  It leaves us amazed each and every time!

Funny thing is, as much as we love having readers here, we read tons of Disney blogs ourselves, and conversely there's nothing quite so awesome for us as meeting some of the writers behind some of our favorite sites and blogs around the web.  We're huge fans of many ourselves!

One such blog (and writer) we met practically the day we began blogging was Amy over at "Growing Up Disney".  Amy, her brother and dad all write the blog, which is highlighted as "Three Generations Taking on the World!".  We've always enjoyed reading them because there's such a "family" feel to everything that they do; it's right up there at the top of our favorites.

So we couldn't be happier to announce that as of today, Chad is officially a monthly contributor at "Growing Up Disney"!

Amy approached him a few weeks ago with the idea of writing about "The Land" on their "World" blog, and he practically jumped through the screen at the opportunity.  So once a month, he'll be contributing his own articles there and hopefully sharing with some of the Walt Disney WORLD fans out there about just what makes DisneyLAND so special to those of us out here on the West Coast who live and play in Walt's original vision.  It's truly an honor to be asked to contribute to someone else's work, and just validates what we're doing here all the more.  We couldn't be happier about it!

So why don't you head on over there for the premiere of 'On the DL With Chad' today?!  It's just an introduction for those in the "Growing Up Disney" family who might know Chad very well, but a wise man once said that the best place to start something was at the beginning, and you might just pick up a tidbit or two you never knew about him before!  And while you're there, take a look around at their blog!  We feel confident that you'll love what you see; and let them know that Days in the Park sent you!

Days in the Park Turns the Big 0-1!

Days in the Park outside Club 33 - February 20, 2011

It's so hard to believe that a year ago today we made our first post at Days in the Park.  What started out as just a regular Blogger blog with a Blogspot name, "ourlivesasdisneyfreaks.blogspot.com", quickly went through a domain purchase and became the site most people now know as Days in the Park.  The last year has been such an amazing experience for all of us!  When Mark and I first started, I'm not sure we ever expected to last this long; it was just a way for us to start writing and share our stories with a few people here and there.  But it's long since become basically a daily thing and we're still going strong!  And we hadn't been at it very long at all before we met Amy through Twitter and asked her to join up with us, she seemed like such a perfect fit, and she has been!

It's been awesome writing about Disneyland on a daily basis; it's not always the easiest thing to do, and we may not have grown quite as much as we would have liked over the year's time, but we've been thankful to each and every one of the readers we've had and always will be!  We said all along if we had just five readers a day who cared what we had to say, we'd keep it up, and we have, and we will!  We've had the opportunity to do so many things that were just dreams of ours thanks to so many of our readers; it's just been incredible!  The Disney community has proven to us time and time again just how generous its members are, and we're forever grateful to those who have made our dreams and so many of our "wishes upon a star" come true.  And we've made so many friends over the course of the past year that I think for me, that's where the true joy has been.  We've all enjoyed meeting our readers inside Disneyland, getting to hang out with them there, and we now have true friends because of it that we'll have for years to come.

Overall, it's just been an amazing experience that we wouldn't trade for the world.  So as we mark our first year officially in the books now, we look forward to our next year and what it might bring for us.  It hasn't always been the easiest row to hoe, and things haven't always gone as planned, and some things have conspired to make us wonder if we're doing the right thing or not, but here we are, and here we'll be.  We hope that you'll continue to be here with us as we move forward into another year here at "Days".  Thanks so much to everyone who shared in our first year.  Onward and upward!
~Chad

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Wow!  Has it really been a whole year?!  Time sure flies when you're having fun!  If there is one word I could use to describe the last year, it would have to be "incredible."  So many incredible things have happened since we began our blog this time last year.  Some of my own personal highlights were:

• Starting the site, of course!
• Finally fulfilling the dream of eating at Club 33
• Finishing my very first Vinylmation set - Muppets Series #1
• And Heaven forbid I forget my very first Dole Whip!

But none of that can top the fact that I got to meet and hang out with some of the funnest people.  You all know who you are, but enough about them (LOL!).  I want to thank our readers for making it all possible.  Without you guys there to read our stuff, we probably wouldn't be doing what we love doing.  Finally, I want to thank Chad.  If it wasn't for this guy I wouldn't have met most of you guys.  I have to thank him for all of the gas he's used to get us to Disneyland, all the times he's put up with my bad jokes, and all times he's let me whoop him on Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters.  Just wanted to say "thanks" dude, and a huge "thanks" and to all our readers out there.  Here's to the next year!
~Mark

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I am truly honored and absolutely love that I get to be a part of Days in the Park's first anniversary! Seriously folks, Chad & Stephanie and their boys, and Mark, are about as awesomesauce as they get, and I love that I get to be a part of the fun here on our blog.  I am so thankful that I was introduced to Chad and Mark through the wonderful randomness that is Twitter.  I first connected with Chad on October 18th, 2010 (yes, I even went back and checked my email to double check the date).  We "followed" each other on twitter for about a month, and then on Sunday, November 14th, while visiting Disneyland with another friend, I learned that another new friend I had recently met on Twitter was in The Park with her daughter.  So, I made arrangements to meet up with her in Frontierland, and lo and behold, she had met up with Chad, and "ta da!", that was the first time I got to meet Chad in person!  It was like meeting a long lost brother or something.  Not long after I met Mark, and it's pretty safe to say that from that point on these guys are my life-long "Disney bros".  Even though it hasn't even been a full year yet, it feels like we've known each other forever.

I was honored when they asked if I would be interested in helping contribute content for their blog, and while I haven't been able to post as often as I wish these days, it's been such a joy to have the opportunity to share my love for Disneyland and the memories I have with other people who also share that love.  You guys really are the best readers around and your comments are always so kind.  Know that you are greatly appreciated and that you are an integral part of what makes Days in the Park what it is!  So thanks for joining us in this celebration!  I say we all meet up at Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room for a celebratory Dole Whip (ha)!  I appreciate the time that each of you share with us here, and look forward to another year of sharing our adventures in Disneyland!
~Amy

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From the bottom of ALL of our hearts, we say "Thank You"!

It's A New Day (And Look) At Days In The Park!

The day is here!  We've been hard at work over the past few weeks seeking a new look for our blog.  When we originally started blogging we went with something that was simplistic and easy to look at.  It had to be clean and not too overwhelming so what you've been seeing over the past several months has been what we came up with.

But the longer we've gone, the more followers and and readers we've gathered, and the more we've thought about it we really started to feel like we wanted something that we could call "our own".  People talk all the time about taking something and making it your own, and our blog just didn't quite have that feel anymore.  So we sat down, talked over a few ideas, and what you see now is the result of all those talks, weeks of tinkering with graphic design and ideas, and spamming our friends for opinions and trying to integrate all of the suggestions they gave us.  We're pretty happy with the result!

One of our favorite places to hang out in The Park is Frontierland, so we decided we'd like to have a rustic feeling to the blog, and quite possibly something that might invoke thoughts of the very Land we were thinking of.  After the fifth person told us it reminded them of Frontierland, we figured we were on to something.  Then it was just down to tinkering with fonts, creating the header and backgrounds, and all that you see here.

We hope that people will really enjoy what we've come up with, and of course we're still open to suggestions!  It's definitely more us now, and we hope we've created something that's new and different, and most importantly memorable.  We may still tinker a bit here and there, but for the most part this is what it shall be.

We couldn't have done this without a lot of hard work from Stephanie.  She doesn't really blog much for us (she's busy with more important things like the education of future generations and helping to raise our own three boys) but she put a lot of hours into this, and put up with a lot of my requests for changes to boot!  We couldn't have done it without her and we think she's done a fantastic job!

So there you go.  New look, and hopefully a new and re-energized blog to boot!  Let us know what you think!

A HUGE Thank You From Chad!

First, let me dissuade you from the notion that this post is taking the place of our "Almost Wordless Wednesday" segment, because it's not.  I know you'd much rather look at our pictures than listen to me ramble so I promise you they're coming.

But I did want to say a very big "Thank You" to everyone who stopped by yesterday to wish me a happy birthday.  I'm definitely the guy who tries to pretend that my birthday doesn't exist (always have been), so to see all the comments left here, on Facebook, and on Twitter for me was just amazing.  I've never been told happy birthday so many times in one day in my entire life.  It really made yesterday special for me.

I also owe a huge thank you to my wife Stephanie for swooping in with a surprise post here and asking you guys to participate and interact with us.  Her idea was awesome and leave it to her to come up with something like that.  Lord knows I never could, and wouldn't for that matter.  I want you to know that I read each and every one of the comments (there were some great gift ideas in there!), and even though I don't have time right now to go back and answer each and every one individually, I read them all and appreciated them so much!

Maintaining a blog isn't always easy.  It's hard work to write and take all the pictures we do, but I still maintain I started it to try and share the joy we feel in The Parks with others the best way that we know how.  There have been a lot of discouragements in the past few weeks that at times left us wanting to pack it all in, and shrink back into the anonymity of just being regular Annual Passholders again, but yesterday just reaffirmed for me and re-encouraged me about doing this.  I've met some amazing people and made some amazing friends because we started writing here, and I wouldn't want that to change for the world.  

Here's to another year of making new friends and meeting more amazing people.  Cheers!

~Chad

Keeping Up With The Parkers

We don't take a lot of time to do this (we're more of a "let people find us by their own means and in their own time" kind of blog), but we've been spreading ourselves around more lately and since, at least for right now, it's a slow week we thought we'd point them out to everyone in case they might have been missed. Consider this our shameless self-promotion (on our own blog, no less!) to cover the next six months or so.

In an effort to become more diverse and get people to engage with us in more ways than just reading us, we've branched out and do many things now providing many different ways you can interact with us!

• The biggest thing we've done recently is begin our own monthly podcast, called the 'Days In The Parkcast'. We've tried to make it basically just an extension of how we try to do things here; recount our own adventures, tips and tricks, etc. (our Days pretty much) in an expanded form. We're really excited about doing it and we're having a great time recording them! You can subscribe to our podcast's RSS feed at feeds.feedburner.com/DaysInTheParkcast, or you can subscribe to us and listen to us in the iTunes store. We'd love to have you listen in on us!
• We recently started our own YouTube channel for videos we make as well! We don't have a lot of videos there (yet!) but what we do have we think is pretty entertaining. They're us just being us, and we think that's exactly what they need to be. A couple of friends on Twitter gave us some good advice recently: "Be yourself" and "That's what Disneyland is all about. Acting like a kid and just being goofy". That's exactly what we're trying to do with our videos. They're really pretty goofy, but we're just having a good time and being ourselves. You can subscribe to our videos on our channel and be updated whenever we upload new ones. Stop on by and check us out!
• We also have our own page on Facebook! If you haven't already checked it out, and you have a FB account, hop on over there and give us a "Like" so that all of our updates appear in your little news stream there. We update the page every day with links to the articles we post here, and we also do a lot of interactive things with tweets from The Park, questions for our readers, and we also upload pictures from our Days for you to comment on there. We're approaching 200 people following us there now, and we'd love to see all of you there!
• We do a lot on Twitter. It's easily the best way to keep up with us, what we're doing on our blog, and all the shenanigans we try to get into at The Parks. You can follow us at: Chad (@DaysInThePark), Mark (@MTreiger), and Amy (@amyululani).
• Subscribe to our blog's RSS feed and read us in your favorite blog reader. We read ourselves in Google Reader and it's one of the best ones out there (in our opinion), but really, reading us anywhere is the goal. Choose one that's good for you and read up!

And we think that about covers it. Truth be told, we'd love to see all of you who read us follow us in all the different ways that you can. There's something 'Days In The Park'-oriented going on just about every way we can think of, and we'd love for you to be a part of it!

Thanks to everyone who takes the time to interact with us, however you do it. We appreciate all of you guys!

Almost Back!

Howdy everyone!

Our self-imposed exile is almost at an end.  It's been both a blessing and a curse.  A blessing because we've been able to do a lot of thinking and reflecting about what does and does not work around here, and because it's given us a ton of time to make some cosmetic changes to the look and feel of our blog.  If you're reading this in a reader where you won't see said changes, you're invited to come on by for real and let us know what you think.

It's been a curse, though, because we miss writing and interacting with all of you guys.  We've been very appreciate of all of the comments we've had from people both here and on Twitter and Facebook who supported our little "vacation" but who also said they missed us and would be waiting for us when we got back.  You guys are why we do this and you are definitely appreciated.  We love all of ya!

All that said and out of the way, we're going to be back tomorrow!  We figured it was high time, and even though we might not be writing every day any more (we haven't quite figured out what new schedule we want to keep yet), rest assured we are going to continue on a regular basis so there should always be something new coming down the pike.

We recorded the latest episode of our new podcast (Parkcast) over the weekend and it's all edited and ready to go, so we'll be presenting that tomorrow.  If you haven't been listening to us already, what are you waiting for?!  All kidding aside, though, if you do want to listen to us before the new episode comes out, you can find our previous two at the top of our website under "Podcasts".  Easy enough, right?

We can't wait to get back into the swing of things.  Hope you guys will be here to come along for the ride.

~DitP

A Slight Pause...

We've decided to take a bit of an extended break!  We've been going strong (almost daily) since we started doing Days In The Park, and with six months under our belt we want to take some time to evaluate who we are, what we've done that's worked (and not worked) and where we want to go from here.

We think self-reflection is a good thing, so by George (whoever he is) that's what we're going to do.  We hope you all will bear with us as we sort some things and figure some things out, and we'll be back as soon as we can, hopefully doing and writing about the things that you guys enjoy the most.  We're not leaving, just taking a vacation.  Everyone needs one of those, right?

We'll see ya real soon.  Thanks!

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We're Going To The Park!

Okay, so given the content of our blog that really shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone, but this one is a bit different.

We're taking a vacation and going to The Parks for an overnight jaunt; well, Chad and the missus are anyways.  It's something we hardly ever take the time to do (the whole overnight thing), but as a result for the next couple of days we're going to shut down and just enjoy some much earned time off.  We could still post things while we're gone, of course, and if something tickles our fancy while we're there we can certainly squeeze in a quick picture post or something.  But, we really do enjoy interacting with the people that read us, and since it will be much harder to do that while we're there, we've decided for the next couple of days just to let all of that go and just enjoy our time at The Resort.

We'll be back on Wednesday with our Wordless post and looking forward to finishing the week off strong.  It's time to disconnect for a couple of days, and it's something we've really been looking forward to.

See ya on Wednesday!

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The ParkCast Is Now Available On iTunes!

In light of the fact that our first podcast went out this week, it probably seems as though we've been talking about it too much.  Well, maybe not, but we're trying not to plug it to the point of being annoying about it.

But we did promise we would let everyone know when it was available on iTunes, and it went up in their search as of yesterday afternoon.  If you'd like to check it out, you can open up your iTunes and do a search in the store for Days In The ParkCast, and there we'll be!

So as of now there are several ways to listen to us should you so desire.  

• If you have subscribed to the Days In The ParkCast feed through Google Reader (or whatever reader you desire for that matter) you can listen to or download our show there.
• You can listen to us straight from our Days In The ParkCast website where we are housing all of our podcasts.
• And of course now you can listen to us through iTunes - you can search for us there, or, we've provided a handy link in our sidebar (at the top) for you to subscribe with that will take you directly to our iTunes page.  You can then view it in iTunes if you'd like and subscribe from there.

We haven't had a lot of feedback, but what we've had has been generally positive (once we got it all up and running properly) so if you'd like to listen, we'd love for you to.  And if you do happen to listen to us in iTunes, we'd love to have you leave a review for us (every little bit helps).  Unless you didn't really like it very much, in which case we eschew you of an responsibility in that matter.

Thanks!

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We're Taking A Break For A Couple Of Days...

Wow!  It's been quite a streak for us!  Looking back we've posted something each and every day since January 28.  In fact, there were a few days here and there since then that we posted multiple articles in one day.

But, we're pretty much fried a bit at this point and need to take a couple of days to reboot the system.  Spend a little more time doing family things and a little less time writing.  Spend a little more time cleaning and a little less time making the website function the way we want it to; that kind of stuff.  And now that the first episode of the Days In The ParkCast is up, if you haven't listened to it yet, that should tide you over hopefully.

So bear with us as we take a couple of days off to work on some more "home-y" type things and re-assess a few things maybe about the website.  We promise to be back bright and early Thursday morning with KILT and then it'll be business as usual.

And a special "Thank You" to all of our readers, and to everyone who read us last week.  It was the best week we ever had.  We're thankful for each and every one of you.

See ya Thursday!

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Hard At Work On Our ParkCast

Ah, the wonders of voice...

We just wanted to throw out a quick update and let everyone know (at least the curious ones, and amazingly enough, there are some curious people out there) what the haps is with our podcast.

We posted a quick article about it over on our sister site (DaysInTheParkCast.com) today that will let you know where we are and where we stand on that. If you're one of the curious ones, be sure and check it out!

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KILT Is Being Pushed Back A Bit

For those of you who may have wandered over looking for today's KILT post, we've had to push it back a day to Friday.  

Yes, yes, we know, it's 'Karacters I Love Thursday', but we're going to be participating in something with another blog later today and that's going to have to supersede our regularly scheduled post.

We hope you'll come back later today to find out just what that is, and that you'll come back to tomorrow for our 'KILT' (Karacters I Love Thursday):  Friday Edition.  

Thanks!

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A Slight Detour...

Ever been out in the middle of nowhere, not knowing where you were going, and seen one of these bad boys?  Kind of petrifying, isn't it?

Fortunately for you, this isn't one of those moments.

So click the little Detour sign, turn right, and let's see where this little detour takes us...

photo by Ian Britton - FotoFree.com

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Website Updates

Just a quick note to the masses:  We're currently doing some consolidating of accounts (our Google accounts that Blogger utilizes) and some other things around the site.

At the same time, we're also going back and altering some of our posts for formatting errors, watermarks on our pictures, and a whole slew of other cosmetic things we're doing to try and gain some uniformity; things you might not even notice.

But we wanted to make sure that if you do go into some older posts (mostly anything pre-December 5, 2010) and see things missing or looking slightly ajar, that's the reason.  There are just quite a few posts to go through (we've written something almost every day since we've started) and it takes a bit of time.  We're getting through about 8 articles a day right now, which might not seem like much, but it's been pretty time-consuming.  Not fun at all, but we let it pile up and now it's caught up to us.

Nothing recent has been affected, but should someone be reading us for the first time, we want you to know we're working on it.

Thanks! 

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Introducing the Banzai(!) Run

Okay, so what does the seminal 80s flick The Karate Kid have to do with anything?!  Sure, The Karate Kid is a great movie and everyone loves them a little Daniel and Mr. Miyagi action, but what do it have to do with The Park?  Well, we're glad you asked, because there is in fact a reason.  The whole idea came to fruition a couple of weekends ago after Chad had watched the movie with his kids on Saturday night (must have been 20 years since he'd last seen it all the way through).  For some reason the mental image of Pat Morita yelling out the word "Banzai!" at every five minute mark during the movie stuck with us.  Stumbling around the house looking for something to do on Sunday, with Stephanie yelling at him to "Find something to do. Why don't you just go to Disneyland?", Chad picked up the phone, called Mark, and the words that will henceforth live in infamy poured forth:  "You wanna make a banzai run into The Park?"  Consider history made.

Part of the beauty of having Annual Passes, and living so close to The Park (we're about 40 minutes away), is that when there is nothing else going on, and evening gets a distinctive dull to it, we do have the capability of dropping everything (all nothing of it) and heading out to The Park.  We should probably say we don't often do it, but there are a few times in our past when we have.  Most of the time, we try to do things just like everyone else.  We try to make an entire day of it.  We'll go out earlier in the morning (we're not "rope-droppers"), we'll take our time about things and ride whatever we want when we get a desire to, we'll see a lot of indoor shows, have some meals and snacks, sit and chill quite a bit; just enjoy things a little bit on the slower side so we're not wiped out at the end of the day. 

"Banzai Runs" are nothing like that.  When you're making a "Run" the way we do, the entire object is to blow in, do as much as you can in a 2-3 hour period of time, and blow out of there like a cyclone on a Kansas farmhouse.  We're not saying we knock people over and run around like complete nuts, but from the moment we hit the gates we never stop.  We're constantly in motion from one thing to another and it doesn't stop until we hit the bus on our way back to The Parking Lot.  You might not think it, but it's pretty tiring when you get right down to it. 

Our last "Run" went a little something like this (we got to The Park around 7pm):

• Train to New Orleans Square
• The Haunted Mansion
• Splash Mountain
• Fireworks in New Orleans Square
• "Fantasmic!" in New Orleans Square
• Pirates of the Carribean

Well, you get the idea.  We lined 'em up and knocked 'em down.  We may well have met up with FindingMickey.com at some point in the evening for some Buzz Lightyear's Astro Blasters as well, but we're not quite sure.  Much of the evening is a blur.

Since we've pretty much adopted the term for ourselves and plan on using it a lot, we thought it best to introduce you to the concept of "Banzai Runs" with a post.  They really can be a lot of fun and very productive.  Just make sure you make the proper preparations and stretch beforehand and keep yourself properly hydrated (may we recommend the Dole Whip Floats at The Enchanted Tiki Room?). 

Just remember to have fun with however you choose to go to The Park ("Banzai Run" or not) and always be respectful of everyone around you.  Have fun! 

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Days In The Park Goes Mobile... Again!

Just a quick blurb about our furthering efforts to make the website more accessible to everyone.

Last night we finally got around to implementing the "mobile" version of DaysInThePark.com.  What that means is that from here on, if you are trying to access the website from a mobile device (iPhone, DROID and the like), you will no longer see Days In The Park as it is viewed in a web browser, all squished up, gross-looking and incompatible in some instances (we were told last night it cleared up a particularly bothersome Flash issue with iPhone).  Rather, you should get something nice and crisp looking like this:

Again, it's not a huge issue and something we could have easily implemented quite some time ago (had we been looking for it), but we want to keep you updated whenever we make some change to the site that we think is for the better and that will enable more people to read us easily in whatever technological environment they find themselves in; even if it's just reading blogs on a cell phone.

Be sure and check it out and let us know what you think!

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Days In The Park Has Gone Mobile!

Well, we think we have anyway.  The true test will be whether anyone actually sees this or not.

We've wanted to find a "Live" way to blog for some time now, but the app we tried a few times was just a battery killer when it became stuck and it was very slow.  So, we thought we'd try text instead.

Hopefully this will open up all sorts of new possibilities for our posts from inside The Park.

We'd love to be able to post from restaurants, attractions and shows so here's hoping it'll do just what we want.

Cross your fingers!  Here we go!

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editor's note:  I think we're going to consider that a successful test run. Oh, the possibilites!

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Caution... Parkers At Work

**a note from Chad...

Busy, busy, busy!  No other word for it.  The problem is, not much of the busyness has to do with writing daily posts for the blog.  

Even though, in our own minds maybe, we haven't been as active as we would have liked to have been this week, I certainly haven't been resting.  I've in fact been very busy with "techy" stuff.   

Unless you're actively involved with setting up and maintaining websites, it might not make a lot of sense, but even something as simple as Blogger can take up an inordinate amount of time.  Things don't work out the way you want, don't look right, etc.  

But we have been good this week and have added some things you might not notice that we can bring to your attention and prove to you that we have in fact been good boys and have been working!

• Our Kollected Karacters page continues to grow.  We have a whopping three(!) pictures now.  BUT, we also have dozens we've been editing and preparing to get out in the weeks ahead.  Some of them are really fun, and vintage, and we can't wait to show you.
• We added the Bucket List to the top of the website so we can keep tabs on our Disneyland progress as the year goes on
• We've added email!  Something that's been on the back-burner for a while, but you can now email us from our "Who Are We?" page.  Not a big deal, but it did take a little bit of time to get set up and figure out.  
• I am working on our first podcast.  It's slow going, though.  Takes time to figure these things out, but I'm inching ahead slowly but surely.
• And tons of little cosmetic and coding things you'll probably never even notice or find, but they're there and they took plenty of time to do

So there's a few things to munch on.  

What I've been most busy with, however, is working with Jason (OHatDL.com) and Rosemary (FindingMickey.com) on our network -- consider this my official announcement I guess.  We've pooled our resources and created a one-stop shop for some of our favorite Disneyland content out there; our DLR Network (DLRN).

It's something we began talking about near the end of last year (after a few sessions in The Park together) and we've been working hard on it ever since.  We created it primarily as a way to support each other in our work, and as a way to allow us to more easily interact with everyone who reads our sites, both on the web and physically.  

In fact, this weekend we are having our first In Park activity, a tweet-up!  And, there's a ton of people going!  Well, more then we envisioned at first, I think.  So far 28 have confirmed attendance, and another 9 "maybe".  That seems pretty good to us.  We'd love to have you come out and visit with us!  You can get more information about the event and RSVP on the DLRN website, or at the top of our site here.  Come on out!  It's looking like it's going to be a great time.

I supposed I've waxed poetic enough.  But I do think it's important to let you guys know what's going on here from to time.  A lot of work is put into all of this by a lot of people who really appreciate all of you guys.  

Party on.

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Days In The Park: A Year In Review

Looking around we can't help but notice how many, almost all in fact, of the blogs that we read have done end of year reviews.  Granted, we realize that ours will be a few days later than the norm at this point, but we wanted to get in on some of that action too!  

Problem is we haven't been around a year!  We haven't even been around for four months yet!!  

So in the spirit of not taking ourselves too seriously (we genuinely try not to), we thought it might be fun to take a look at where we are now and where we hope to be, and what we hope to accomplish, at the end of the first full year that we have this time in 2012, with some lessons learned this year thrown in for good measure. 

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We feel like even though we've only been around for a short time, we've already gotten to do many things we thought it would take much longer to accomplish.  We've made tons of friends, gotten to meet many of them, and participated back and forth with them in many ways.  

We truly enjoyed being able to participate with Al & Joyce and their podcast, "Tales From The Mouse House", and are definitely looking forward to doing so in the future.  

We also partnered up with Magical Mouse Radio's "Cosmic Reid's Starlight Cafe" and you can expect to hear us there from time to time as well; something we didn't even know was a possibility before we began.  

Also, something we longed to do that we got to do very early on was become personal friends with FindingMickey.com.  We've been reading their site for quite some time, and to be able to meet up with them on several occasions now, and consider them personal friends of ours, has just been amazing.  We love those guys!  It might not seem like much, but to us it was a very big deal.

It's also a time to pause, though, and think about how we can further our own work and get ourselves out there more.  We think we're fun guys, and we want you to have fun with us.  

Over the next year we really hope to begin doing some new things we're really excited about.  Some we can tell you about, and some it's not quite time yet.  We plan on adding a character's page to the site so we can document some of those hard-to-find characters that hopefully we'll catch in the coming year.  We'd also like to start doing a monthly podcast ourselves.  Our medium will continue to be the written word with photographs, but we like to dabble, so we'll see how that goes.  We'd also love to find some way to generate some video content for the website, so we're beginning to think of some fun ways to incorporate that as well.  And of course, we're always looking to form new partnerships! 

All in all, we think we have some fun things lined up.  We'd love to have each and every one of you tell someone about us!  We love our readers and want to do all that we can to keep you guys entertained. 

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Statistics!

We want to stress that the numbers really don't mean much to us.  Other than showing us that people are actually reading what we throw out there, we try not to get tied up in the numbers too much.  

That said, we thought it might be fun to post what we have so far, and see where we are this time next year!

Looking to the right there, we can see that we have 29 Google Connect Followers and 72 Facebook Fans.  We also have 392 Twitter Followers.

From a purely numerical standpoint, we started keeping stats 67 days ago (if our math is right).  We've had:

• 2596 visitors (~39 per day)
• 3559 page views (~53 per day)

Our best day so far yielded us 90 visitors and 116 page views.

Fun stuff, eh?  We love you 39 people and 53 views a day!  Should be fun to look back on this next year and see where we are.   

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Bucket List!

Website, and what we do to generate content aside, we still love just being in The Parks.  There's still so much to accomplish for ourselves!

What mountains would we like to climb in 2011?

1. Participate in (or win) a Disney Parks Blog activity or contest
2. Complete our first Vinylmation set
3. Attend Mickey's Halloween Party
4. Finally ride 'Grizzly River Run'! 
5. Participate in the "A Walk In Walt's Footsteps Tour"
6. D23 membership!
7. Attend 1 day of the D23 expo
8. Attend 2 days of the D23 expo
9. Attend ALL 3 days of the D23 expo
10. Meet a celebrity in The Park
11. Somehow, some way, be one of the first to ride Star Tours and The Little Mermaid
12. Ride the Columbia
13. Break our 'Splash Mountain' record and ride it six consecutive times without leaving our flume
14. Break our High Score on 'Buzz Lightyear's Astro Blasters' (Mark currently has the site high with ~750,000)

Food wise?

1. Dine at Napa Rose
2. Dine at Steakhouse 55
3. Dine at Goofy's Kitchen

 And the big three that rise above all else?

1. See the Candlelight Processional the entire way through
2. Ride in the Lilly Belle
3. Dine at Club 33

Should be simple, right?  It'll be fun to revisit this next year and see what we managed to knock off and how quickly. 

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The moral of our story?

It's time to wind this up, but we wanted to leave you with some very important lessons we learned around The Parks this year.  We hope that they will serve you well.

• Dole Whips are so, so, good.  We can't stress this enough.
• Please close your popcorn buckets when boarding 'The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror', or risk an Orville Redenbacher incident of epic proportions on the first drop.
• Going to ride 'The Matterhorn'?  Procure the services of a good chiropractor first.
• Being stuck on 'Space Mountain' is not as much fun as one might think that it is.
• Chad and Mark absolutely SHRED on Rock Band 2 in 'Innoventions'.  At least, we do as long as you choose Bryan Adams' "Summer of '69".
• Wanna see and BE seen while you're at The Park?  Sit on The Front Porch.  People won't be able to keep their eyes off of you.
• 'Captain EO' is not only fantastic 80's vintage cheese, but an excellent earthquake simulator as well!
• The caves on Tom Sawyer Island and rotund adults don't play well together.
• Getting stuck directly in front of Zurg on 'Buzz Lightyear's Astro Blasters' is basically god-mode for that attraction.
• Minnie Mouse wears lingerie.
• The line at 'Peter Pan'.  Seriously?!
• 'Pirates of the Caribbean' has a very distinctive... fragrance, about it.
• The Toy Story Parking Lot rules.
• Strollers are dangerous, murderous creatures.  And the people steering them aren't half-good, either.
• The 'Mission Tortilla Factory' factory was invented by the Aztecs.

And lastly, Cast Members can make or break your Day In The Park.  Let's all do our part together to ensure everyone has the most magical day they possibly can anytime we're in The Parks ourselves.

We're sure there's more we learned this year, but these stood out.  

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And with that, we've officially close the door on our 2010.  Bring on 2011!

ºoº

A Happy New Year (and a Tweet-Up Coming!)

Allow us to officially welcome you to a new year at Days In The Park, and wish you all a Happy New Year!

We know it's only been a week since we last posted, but we feel like it's been forever!  We hope that you all enjoyed your holidays, got everything you wanted from Mr. Claus, and spent some quality time with your family and friends!

We may not have been here writing last week, but we sure stayed busy nonetheless!  We both (Chad and Mark) spent the first three days of the week in Long Beach with our church, chaperoning at our State Youth Conference.  We love Long Beach!  We know it's not really Disney related, but in the interest of proving to anyone who may not believe us that we weren't simply being lazy, but attempting to make a difference in our world aside from the website, here ya go:

drum roll please...

Is she really haunted?  The Queen Mary mocks us...

Lot of time spent here over the 3 days... glad the seats were comfy

WE FOUND... ah nevermind...

Aquarium of the Pacific promo shot

Thursday was basically a day of recuperation (you try staying up with teenagers all night!); yeah, right...

(l-r) Sarah, Amy & Chad -- photo courtesy of Sarah

No rest for the weary.  Chad spent a few hours in The Park on Thursday with Amy meeting up with our friend "DC" (Disneyland Crazy) Sarah from DapsMagic.com.  We got to hang with her for a couple of hours before she was due to take her "Holiday Time at Disneyland" Tour.  We did get a picture taken, now we just need to beg it off of her.  How on earth we went without a camera is beyond me...  We spent the two hours just hanging out, taking a "grand circle tour around The Magic Kingdom" (which Chad had never done), and watching our favorite Cast Member Jason hard at work at City Hall.  It might not seem like we did much, but it was really enjoyable.  To wrap the day, Amy and Chad went over to lunch at Storytellers Cafe in the Grand Californian.  Allow us both to just say this:  "Corn Chowder".  That is all.

Okay, so we were pretty lazy on Friday.  The height of our day would have to be the "Twilight Zone" marathon we watched for most of the night on SyFy.  We didn't even stay up to ring the New Year in because we had to be up at 3:30am to drive into Pasadena and work the stands at the Rose Parade.  Again, nothing too Disney here.  There was a studios float with a mention of Disney on it, but Chad was waging war on a port-a-potty at the time, so we have no picture proof.  We did take these, though!

We could've USED a power pellet after waking up at 3:30am...

And there you have it, our lazy week in review!  We're truly happy to be back and writing and are looking forward to a fantastically fun year in The Parks.

Please stay tuned for an important announcement...

We figure when it comes to jumping in feet first into something (like the New Year), why wait?  With that in mind, Jason over at ohatdl.com, along with ourselves and FindingMickey.com, are already working on our first "Tweet-Up" of the New Year!  We had so much fun doing it with just a few of us last year, we really want to include as many of you as we can!

Right now, we're looking at the 23rd of this month (it's a Sunday; So Cal Select APs are blocked) during the afternoon.  Hopefully we can get a good little group going and spend some time hanging out, getting to know some of our readers, and maybe go on an attraction or two.  It'd be great it we could "tweet-bomb" Pirates or something.

You can find more information to follow, or, check out our "Coming Tweet-Ups!" page at the top of our site for information and to RSVP.  So come on out!  We'd love to see you!