Happy Place Hodgepodge - Downtown Disney, July 2014

It's been a long, hard summer! For one person who up to a few months ago almost always a Premium Annual Passholder (that's me!), it's been much harder than I thought it would be.

When I made the decision to lower my payments and save a little money every year by going to a Pass with July and half of August blacked out, I told myself that it would be easy because of "the heat", "the crowds", "*insert any excuse you want here*", but I learned very quickly... I missed being able to go in July and that first half of August!

But, glory be(!), my time of languishing without a way into my happy place is almost over! This coming Monday the blackout dates end (for the most part), and I'm already planning my first trip back with a full day at it this coming Tuesday. I can hardly wait!

But, with all of that said, I did manage to make it out to The Resort a few times this summer just to wander about and take pictures of things I don't normally take the time to since I'm usually partying it up inside The Park. A few weekends ago I spent a wonderful evening just strolling around Downtown Disney and its various haunts taking pictures, which make up the gist of this week's "hodgepodge".

I can't wait to get back next week with a ton of pictures from my first day back but in the meantime I hope these pictures will help tide you over the way they've helped tide me over. I always say there's magic to be found everywhere you look at The Park, and I think these do a great job of proving it. Even though I may not have been riding Space Mountain or Pirates of the Caribbean, I still had a wonderful time and I'm so thankful I got to go!

Enjoy!

Sometimes you need help remembering where you parked!

The gazebos around the Disneyland Hotel really do lend themselves to some amazing fairy-tale weddings

When Tinkerbell and Mickey's Sorcerer's Apprentice Hat greet you, you know that you're home

Buzz and Woody. LEGO form. Touche!

One of my favorite Hidden Mickeys from around The Resort. Can you spot it?

Late nights at the Disneyland Hotel with Starbucks; people-watching. Doesn't get much better!

Sold!

Even the carpets are magical!

If you see THIS coming at you...

Magical Carpet #2!

Who needs Autopia when you can sit in this actual car from the attraction for hours at the time?! Just beware of little kids telling you to "get out of the way, mister!"

If Mary Poppins flies out of the Disneyland Hotel, is this what she leaves behind?

Three different Goofy's in one picture; can you spot them all?

One day... I may actually go swimming here! In the meantime, this remains one of the coolest signs in all of The Resort!

And lastly, there may not be anything better than ending the night with a friend and a cocktail at Trader Sam's. Just about the perfect evening in every way!

Goofy's Kitchen Button Giveaway Winners!

Last week at Days we sponsored a quick, easy giveaway for our readers which included three winners walking away with buttons from Goofy's Kitchen at the Disneyland Hotel. Everyone seems to love Disney buttons of any kind (I have quite the collection myself), and we did indeed have several people enter for their chance to win one.

So without further ado our three winners were:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The winners of the Goofy's Kitchen Buttons were Becky Rosales, Mark Dunsmore, and Cindy Myers. If you are one of the winners, please send an email to me at chad@daysinthepark.com and we'll work out all the details to get your button to you, either via mail or hand delivery at The Park if you live close enough.

Thank you to everyone who entered and stay tuned - we have more fun giveaways in the coming weeks and an even bigger one next week!

Thanks again for reading and entering!

Welcome Back Wednesday: Button Giveaway!

Well, today's "Almost Wordless Wednesday" is a very special one. With our self-imposed break in recent months, it went completely unnoticed by yours truly that Days in the Park recently celebrated its third birthday! Fanfare, balloons, and confetti everywhere!! It seemed, since it's such a monumental occasion (hey, someone has to keep buying the domain), and we've recently begun the process of blogging again more regularly, that we should do something to celebrate and give something back to all of our readers, and yes, we still have some! I can't tell you the number of times just since Monday alone that someone has told me they're glad to see me back, and you know what? Doggone, it's good to be back! So, in the spirit of the Season, and the blog being back, and all that rot, for the remainder of December I'm going to be hosting what I'm calling (look at the top) "Welcome Back Wednesday"s, and I will be, you guessed it, doing a button giveaway each and every week from now through the end of the month. Why buttons, you may ask? Because they're cheap, cool, and they make awesome souvenirs!

The Disneyland Hotel - That's Where We Were!

We're back on our regular schedule this week!  It's a novel concept, having our usual Monday segment actually on a Monday this week, but we're going to push ahead with it anyways.  Mondays are typically seen as the little brat of the week, which means that we enjoy starting out on a fun note and challenging you, our readers, to once again guess where at the Disneyland Resort we took this week's photo.  We took this picture quite some time ago, but thought it would make a good (and informative!) spot to challenge people with, even if it might not be as challenging as some.  So we had Mark do his best Vanna White and here we are!

If you're not familiar with our "Magical Mystery Mondays" concept yet, each and every week we come across loads of spots around Disneyland Resort we think would make great picture opportunities, and each and every week we challenge you, our readers, to attempt to guess just where at The Resort we were when we took our pictures.  And it could be anywhere at the Disneyland Resort; either of the two Parks, the Downtown Disney District, or the wonderful Disney Hotels that are on property.  Some are easy, some are hard (and some are smack dab in the middle!), but we think it's a great way for us to get you involved and commenting on our blog, and people seem to enjoy doing it.  We hope that this week's stacks up and that you guys all enjoy it!

So, do you know where this little beauty is located at the Disneyland Resort?

If you think you know where it is, let us know!  There are a few really easy ways to do so:

• Leave us a comment here! (probably the best way to do it) 
• Send us a Direct Message on our Twitter account @DaysInThePark 
• Drop us an email at daysinthepark@daysinthepark.com 

We try to keep your answers hidden as best that we can so that more people get a chance to guess, so if you'll help us along by submitting your answers "on the sly" (not a general comment where anyone can see the answer) we'd much appreciate it!  We like to keep it going as long as we can and give everyone a shot.

We'll continue to pop back in throughout the day as people begin sending in their guesses to give you slight nudges in the right direction, so hopefully by the end of the day we'll have a nice little collection of correct guesses in the hopper, and then tomorrow morning we'll be back to post up all the people who guessed correctly and give you the exact spot where this was taken.

Have fun, don't take it too seriously, and guess as often as you'd like!  As we said, we'll be back a couple of times throughout the day with hints to push you along in the right direction, so what have you got to lose?  Guess often and have fun!

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Well, now that our day is done we're back to let everyone in on where our little spot we chose for this week's game was!

We came across yesterday's spot almost a year ago while we were inside the Disneyland Hotel to eat at Steakhouse 55, which by the way, is one fantastic meal!  The location is quite near the ballrooms inside the hotel, and can be located on the left wall as you are walking towards both the ballrooms, and Steakhouse 55 and Goofy's Kitchen (if you're going to eat there). 

We know that a lot of people have probably never even set foot inside the hotels if they're not staying there, but we absolutely love checking them out, and although we've never actually stayed at any of them ourselves, we've been inside them many times and there are tons of fantastic things to see, which was the point of this particular photo!  So if you've never spent any time inside the hotels yourselves, we urge you to give it a try; even if you're not staying there, you're more than welcome inside to peruse and explore (within reason), and you never now what you might come across!

We had loads of correct guesses yesterday!  In point of fact, almost everyone who took a shot at it was right!  Always fun, but it just means to have to ramp up the difficulty in the coming weeks.  Just kidding... Maybe...

As always, we like to give a shout-out to everyone who came by and guessed, so here they in order of guess and name:

• infaMOUSEproject
• MottMike
• @ChristinaShaw76
• Courtney
• @canuckduck789
• Danielle D.
• @Robinpoppins
• It's All About the Tours
• P.T.
• @805Buckaroo

And there you have it, our correct guessers for this week!  Thanks to everyone who took a shot at it.  Even if you're not right, everyone should take a guess; you've got nothing to lose!

We'll be back next week with another brand-new spot for our readers to take a crack at!  In the meantime, if you have any suggestions for a spot you'd like for us to do, or a picture of your own that you would like to submit for us to use, drop us a line at daysinthepark@daysinthepark.com.  We love having reader submissions and would love to take a look at whatever spots you might have that you'd like to see here.

Until next week, keep those peepers open and be sure and take in all of the little details all over Disneyland; you never know what little details you might see that you never have before!

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The Saturday Slow-Down: Watching Toons With A Goof

"Sometimes the BEST picture you can take is with the camera that God gave you in your own head." 

If you read our post on Wednesday (well, it was mostly just pictures but you get my meaning) you'll know that we spent some time last Sunday evening in the Disneyland Hotel.  We were there primarily to eat at Steakhouse 55 but as we have spent very little time in there in the past, we spent quite a bit of time looking around at things before and after.

As we were standing around waiting for our 6:30 reservations to come to us, we wandered around a little bit in the waiting area and spent some time looking into Goofy's Kitchen, which is right next door to the steakhouse.  Amy is the only one of us who has eaten at the kitchen before, but we know enough about it to know that it's known for two things primarily:  an awesome breakfast buffet and character dining, featuring (of course) a character based on its namesake, Chef Goofy.  We stood around a little bit watching beaming parents and their kids take pictures with Chef Goofy (something to remember the special moment by, no doubt) before we were called in to eat.  

Fast forward about two and a half hours and we were leaving the steakhouse with full bellies and a desire to poke around the Hotel some more.  I had my camera out to take pictures of whatever I might come across, and was preparing to enter full-blown camera mode (picture a robot walking just taking pictures of things back and forth without much thought); I get like that sometimes.  But as I was walking out of the restaurant I glanced over to my left and saw a little room with a TV placed in its wall playing classic Disney cartoons.  I hadn't noticed the room on our way in, and was just going to continue to keep walking when I felt a little prick that told me I should go back and take a closer look.  Thank God for the little voices that tell me to slow down sometimes, because when I went back and looked in the window, I noticed Chef Goofy sitting there, by himself, watching cartoons, still as a statue.  I quickly yelled at Amy and Mark to come back and check it out, which they did, and we all just kind of stood there smiling at each other and pointing; it was so unexpected seeing him in there like that.  Funnily enough, he was sitting so still that Amy kind of yelled out all of a sudden, "Is he real?!", which drew his attention and made him move, and made Amy squeal in surprise.  He gestured at all of us to come on in, so the three of us went in, grabbed our seats next to him and proceeded to spend the next five minutes or so watching cartoons with a Goof.

It really was a surreal moment.  You hear about Disney magic all the time, and we firmly believe this was one of those moments!  Of course, most of the times when you run into a character, it's in a line where you're just moving through, person by person to have your picture taken and very little interaction takes places.  Not so in this instance however.  We talked to him and asked him questions (he would nod yes or no), laughed along with him (well, as much as we could I suppose since he didn't actually talk, but he would cover his mouth up and the meaning was well taken), and we all just sat there beaming from ear to ear.  For a few minutes in time, we just sat there and watched cartoons with Goofy.  It was awesome, there's just no other word for it.

It wasn't too long until a Cast Member arrived to let him know he had "paying customers" waiting for their photo opportunity with him and he had to go.  It was a genuine laugh, though, watching Goofy pretend to not want to leave while the Cast Member struggled to pull him out of the room, and then he waved at us and he was gone.  

I kind of glanced down at my side at that point and realized that I had set my camera down and never once picked it up while we were in the room (other than a quick picture of the TV in the wall and the carpet right when we walked in and before I sat down).  Like a weird cosmic twist, right at the moment I realized I didn't take a picture of us with Goofy, Mark yelled out, "Did you get a picture?  Why not?  That would have been awesome!"  I had gotten so caught up in the interaction that I had completely forgotten!  But that was about all that was said of the matter, and I think I know why.

As we walked out I kind of bemoaned the fact that I didn't take a picture.  After all, isn't that how we choose to remember things more often than not?  With a picture?  But the more I thought about it, the more okay with it I was (I know some people just won't get that, but it's true).  Goofy didn't have to invite us in with him (he was on a break after all, let's get real about this) and if he hadn't, we very likely might have just walked away.  But he did, and we didn't, and now we have this wonderful memory that we'll carry with us from now on.  We may not have a physical picture of the memory to carry us through, but we've already relived it so many times since that the picture of it is indelibly burned into our minds.  It's not to say that pictures are bad (Lord knows we'll continue to take them by the droves) but I think we were taught a very valuable lesson in just letting our minds form the pictures it wants us to have from time to time.  And we think that sometimes, maybe those are the best kinds of pictures; the ones where you take the time to slow down, turn around and see what's behind you that you might have missed, and let the magic come to you.

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