We may take the 1 hour flight to Disneyland again some day but as for now, Mrs. DisneylandTraveler and I drive the 434 miles from our home outside of Sacramento to the Disneyland front gates. While the plane flight is short and convenient, driving has spoiled us. Sound backwards? Maybe, but the one thing we have found out through the years is driving allows us to bring "stuff" all kinds of "stuff" we could never take on a plane.
Of course there are the essentials when packing for a Disneyland trip...you know....layers of clothes, comfortable shoes, a camera, toothpaste, deodorant, the usual suspects. Here are some of the more items we take that are a bit out of ordinary.
Those little 4 cup coffee makers they put in hotel rooms are pretty much a joke. 4 cups? Maybe in the world of the seven dwarfs you could get 4 cups out of one of those things - 2 cups max. Forget that, we bring a coffee pot - good ol' 12 cup Mr. Coffee. Of course we now have to pack sugar, splenda, and creamer. "Wait a minute" you interject "Don't you need to keep creamer refrigerated?" Unless its the powdered kind - yes you do. So into the back of the Disneyland Traveler Disney-mobile (a Ford Explorer currently) goes the ice chest - 48 quarts worth. "That's a little large for creamer" - well, add soda, water, beer, and anything else that needs to be kept cold and a large cooler comes in handy.
We live in a digital age, an age of cell phones, laptops, iPods, digital cameras,and video recorders. Everything has a battery that needs to be charged (kind of like people, that's what the beer is for). Well, most hotel rooms have like 2 visible outlets that aren't being used by something. Nothing that a large multi-outlet power strip couldn't fix and which we now always pack.
Speaking of plugging in.... most Disneyland area hotel rooms have working air conditioning that sufficiently keep rooms cool. But no, that's not quite good enough. Mrs. DLT needs a fan, an oscillating fan to blow a breeze on her when she sleeps. It also helps drown out noises from outside the room. Of course, every hotel room has a slightly different layout so just in case, we also pack an extension cord for the fan - about 20 ft. should do it.
Now this is the one that drives me crazy. Mrs. DLT can't seem to pack for a 5 day to Disneyland even though she appears to have enough clothes that will get her through any natural disaster. She has to make one trip to the hotel laundry room to wash clothes. She makes me go with her. So here we are at the Happiest Place On Earth separating lights from darks. Of course whatever detergent the hotel sells out of a vending machine isn't going to work so now we''re packing containers of liquid laundry detergent and fabric softener. Don't forget to pack some extra quarters for the machine.
Speaking of liquids. I'm pretty much good with hotel soap, shampoo, and conditioner. It works for me. Not for Mrs. DLT on the other hand as she brings bottles and bottles of stuff - not just shampoo and conditioner but assorted lotions and cremes. There isn't a square inch of flat space in that bathroom that doesn't have a bottle of something on it (and I'm not talking small bottles).
Some people are napkin people, Mrs. DLT and I tend to be more paper towel people. We go through a lot of paper towels. Better pack a roll or two along with plastic knives, forks, and spoons just in case. Then throw in some plastic garbage bags for dirty clothes and such.
I mentioned a laptop computer earlier. Now, traveling with a laptop is commonplace these days. Maybe a trip to Disneyland is the one place you should be able to get away from computers for awhile. For us, a laptop is pretty much mandatory as I use it download huge amounts of pictures and videos on a daily basis so everyday we start with a clean memory card. The laptop also becomes essential to watch Disney suck the life out of our bank account on a daily basis. It's quite entertaining really in a perverted kind of way.
So that's pretty much our out of the ordinary packing items. I'm sure there are more. Pictures in this blog entry are of the Candy Cane Inn, our favorite place to stay outside of the Disneyland Hotel or Grand Californian. It's very nice and a third of the price of a Disney hotel which leaves us more money to spend inside the park where we take a look each night and review how Disney has just sucked the life again out of our bank account.
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