Day 2: Los Angeles - Anaheim 

We woke up quite early and got ready for the first day of our three-week tour. We planned to visit Disneyland today. After visiting the Disney theme parks in Orlando and Paris we really wanted to enjoy this park as well.

It was a 30-mile drive to Anaheim. We wanted to take highway 105 but we didn't know which direction and ended up going the wrong way. After a few minutes we were able to turn around and drive directly to highway 5. This highway took us directly to Disneyland.
Disneyworld and Disneyland Paris are well known because of the "magic". Everything inside and outside the parks looks great and has that "Disney-touch". We really missed that here. The environment outside of the park didn't give us that "magic" feeling at all. Partly because they were expanding the park and partly because of the rainy weather. Well, it is hard to explain this feeling.

Once we got in the park the "magic" feeling showed itself. The entrance looked great and after buying the tickets we took a photograph of the railway station. We got ourselves a park map and decided to go to the first ride: Matterhorn Bobsleds. This is a kind of roller coaster that rides around a snow covered mountain. Luckily the lines weren't very long that day so we only waited for 10 minutes or so.

We really enjoyed all the rides, some new ones and some we had also enjoyed in the other theme parks. Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Forbidden Eye was an extremely good ride. There was so much to see while standing in line for this ride that it almost was a pleasure.

Around 3 p.m. we watched the Hercules parade. After that we walked back to the parking because we wanted to find our hotel before darkness. But we decided to take lunch at Denny's (across Disneyland) first. It really tasted good and wasn't very expensive. We decided to go back to a Denny's some other time in our holiday.

Our Holiday Inn hotel was located in Buena Park near Knotts Berry Farm and was about 15 minutes from Disneyland. The hotel looked quite nice and the room was surprisingly good for the little money we paid for it.
At about 5 p.m. we were back in Disneyland again. We did some shopping in Main Street and took some pictures of the beautiful but small castle at the end of Main Street. Linda wanted to get a denim-blouse with Disney characters on the back. She bought one last year at Disneyworld and she wanted to buy one again. But despite of all the friendly help of the cast members we couldn't find one that she liked.

Today the park was open until 10 p.m. and at 8.45 p.m. There was a big show called "Fantasmic" scheduled. This is a show with fireworks and appearances of almost all the Disney characters. We were almost too tired to wait for the show but we were glad we did. The show was in one word FANTASMIC!!!
After the show most people walked back to the exit of the park. We also decided to go back because we were very tired. For day 3 we planned a 320-mile drive so we had to get up early again.

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