Vorst Family Trip to Disneyland + Julien-K at the Viper Room

This month my nine-month-old nephew got to experience his first trip to Disneyland with the entire Vorst clan. We also had some Vorst family cousins from Oregon join us on this trip. Their family has three kids aged nine to twelve and it was also their first Disneyland trip. Lots of firsts this time around. Because Kyle and I go so frequently, it's always fun to see new people experience it for the first time.

First night's dinner was at Rainforest Cafe with the whole clan. This is the menu sign displayed on both sides, but viewed from the side, the frog becomes a weird, conjoined thing. 

A cocktail from Trader Sam's called "The Tiki Tiki Tiki Tiki Tiki Rum." 

The first shop on Main Street is decked out to celebrate the 45th anniversary of The Haunted Mansion, which is my personal favorite ride at the park. :) You bet we  bought lots of merch this trip!

The castle is decked out to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the park, but sadly, we visited just a month early of all the 60th celebrations and festivities beginning. :( But Kyle and I will be back in October, so we're not too concerned. We'll see it all then!

This bird made me laugh. He's just chilling there in all those daisies.

One of the Oregonian cousins. We're on the tea cups ride. 

SOOOO much tasty stuff!

Jack Skellington and Olaf candied apples!

Cinderella carriage candied apples.

My little nephew sleeping on his first big day at the park.

The whole clan group photo in front of the castle. We all had matching "Disney Family Trip 2015" shirts on. At least me and Kyle got to make our black. 

Kyle and his younger sister Kacy on Autopia which broke down and trapped them on it for about a half hour. They're the ones in the second yellow car waving. Oregonian cousins are in the car in front of them. 

Kyle is not paying attention.

Siblings.

The first two rows are my sisters-in-law and the Oregonian cousins and me and Kyle are in the back.

At the end of the day waiting in line for one more ride. If you can't tell, my hair has been through the ringer.

Cousins and sisters-in-law about to get on the rocket ship ride for kids. Believe it or not, it was my first time on that ride and it actually goes pretty fast!

Kacy, Kyle, and me at Trader Sams.

This was our first day at the park at the very beginning of the day so we're full of energy. Notice Kacy photo bombing in the back. 

Side view of the castle's decorations for the 60th.

Tea cups! Kyle always skips this ride because the spinning makes him sick.

Behind Big Thunder there's a lake and a cave.

Kyle and Kacy on Autopia when they got stuck. 

Nephew Nathan and his grandma.

Me, my mother-in-law, sister-in-law holding nephew, and my father-in-law. We were all waiting for everyone to get off Autopia because the ride got stuck.

On the Rockets.

Second day of the trip at CA Adventure. Kyle almost got a shot of me with no one else in it. 

My sisters-in-law and nephew meeting Elsa and Anna.

My sister-in-law Korie and I on the Toy Story Midway Mania ride.

Haunted Mansion ride crispy treat. It was delicious.

All that Haunted Mansion merch! 

More Haunted Mansion stuff.

More Haunted Mansion merch. I could've bought the entire store! It was all so neat!

After all the family Disney stuff was over with, Kyle and I checked into a nice hotel in West Hollywood. It was fairly close to the Viper Room, which is where we went to the Julien-K album release party.

Kyle and I have been to a lot of concerts at lots of different venues, including The Roxy, The Nokia Theater, and The House of Blues in L.A. area, but surprisingly not the Viper Room. We were pleasantly surprised to find that it indeed is pretty much A ROOM with two bars and an amazing sound system. Great place to see small bands or even larger bands in an intimate setting. 

Before heading to Hollywood, we grabbed food at The Gypsy Den, which is one of several restaurants Ryan of Julien-K owns. Last time we saw Julien-K we also went to the same restaurant, but at a different location. This is what I ordered for lunch - pita and hummus. 

We walked by this cool cake place on our way to dinner before the Julien-K show.

The Viper Room bathroom. I'm a dork and I took a photo of it.

The El Capitan was all decked out for the release of "The Avengers" movie. We thought about seeing it there, but decided against it because we wanted to see it with friends back home.

My favorite, Tom Hanks. :)

We briefly met up with my sister-in-law and her fiancé Jordan for lunch a brief visit to the Chinese Theater with all the hand prints. Typical (but still fun) tourist things.

That's Kyle's hand in John Goodman's print. He has huge hands!

Interesting to walk by the Scientology building to be handed a movie screening leaflet and see all the books in the various languages. Interesting to note that most religions will GIVE you their printing of the Bible for free, but you have to buy L. Ron Hubbard's literature (at least, that's my assumption).

It was a fun week-long getaway, but we were very happy to get home to our kitties!

Disneyland for a Few Days

After leaving Los Angeles, Kyle and I headed to Anaheim to spend a few days at the happiest place on earth. We finally invested in some annual passes, so we got to experience Disneyland at a slower pace than we're used to. It was such a different feeling to take our time and eat at fancy Disney restaurants and just kind of wander around the parks. Also, it was weird to leave before midnight because it was off-season and the parks closed at 8:00 pm.

It's kinda boring to tell the story of what we did at Disneyland, unless the audience happens to be a bunch of Disneyphiles (which I highly doubt). So, I'm not really going to talk much about what we did, I'm going to share a bunch of photos with captions instead. Makes for a much more interesting post I think. ;-P

So, here goes! Oh, and by the way - they are in no particular order.

Kyle eating his first Starbucks treat from Main Street. We hadn't been to the park since the Starbucks got put in.

Kyle enjoying a beer at Carthay Circle in the early afternoon.

The salad that was served with our meals at Carthay Circle. Just delicious.

We both ate salmon for lunch at Carthay Circle. It was such a great way to fuel the rest of our day until dinner.

Carthay Circle dessert. We're not pigs and can't eat this much, but the meal package we ordered to get good seats for World of Color included a three course meal, hence the appetizer, entree, and now, dessert. It was some sort of chocolate flan BTW.

I took this photo in the Carthay Circle bathroom because it's probably the nicest bathroom in all of California Adventure. It was such a slow day that I had the whole bathroom to myself.

Radiator Springs Racers. My hair is going crazy.

First Tower of Terror ride of the trip. It's funny because you can tell who the Disney regulars are based on if they're posed in the photo or not. 

Kyle's drawing a cartoon in the animation building in CA Adventure. You put the cartoon in the spinner and it shows you the picture in action.

Urusula on the Little Mermaid ride.

"Frozen" is so popular that Disney apparently has to limit the number of items guests can purchase. I found that amusing.

I got a vegan burger at Carnation Cafe on Main Street. It was really good. Plus it's good to know that Disney is taking into account all the diets that people have.

You better believe I had my mid-day Dole Whip. You buy one of these babies and head into the TIki Room when you start to get tired and it gives you a second wind. 

Disney makes "Frozen" everything, even rice crispy treats!

Space Mountain Ghost Galaxy. Again, you can tell the Disneyland people because they pose in their photos.

We had a fancy dinner at the Blue Bayou, which is inside of Pirates of the Caribbean, in case you didn't know. It's pretty romantic in there, especially when you get a seat close to the water…which we did not. Haha.

Kyle ate a steak at Blue Bayou. No surprise there.

Disney has really upped their game when it comes to salads. Every salad I had at the park was delicious and perfectly balanced between sweet, acidic, and savory flavors. 

My dinner at Blue Bayou was some sort of mushroom and spinach thing with couscous underneath. It was very good. I took a gamble ordering it because I had never ordered anything like it before, but I'm glad I tried it.

We got to enjoy the Halloween decorations because we went the day before they took it all down and started putting up the Xmas stuff. It literally happened overnight. Each day we went, there was a bit more Christmas sprouting up at each location.

Toy Story ride. 

He always beats me at the video game interactive rides. Not fair.

Second go-round on Tower of Terror. We ran into our sister-in-law who works security at CA Adventure and she gave us a pass to get to the front of the line because we chatted so long with her that we missed using our fast pass. *wink wink* Not that it mattered much. The park was so slow, the wait time was only like 20 minutes anyways.

Radiator Springs area looks so pretty at night.

Ghostly travelers on our way back to our hotel.

Kyle's caption for this one on Instagram was, "You must be this tall to take a selfie." Haha. I tried to tell him I wasn't tall enough, but he didn't listen.

Kyle had a chocolate parfait, which was also super good. Pretty much everything we ate this trip was delicious. 

Pirate's booty.

Lookit all that treasure!

The treats inside the Starbucks. Yum!

Just looking at this photo makes me want to eat it.

Mickey bat cookies?!? Yes please!

The Mickey ferris wheel at night. Always makes for a great photo.

Our final day before we flew back home, we made a small drive to a restaurant run by ex-Orgy member Ryan Schuck (he's now part of Julien-K, who we saw perform live back in July). He has a few restaurants in the area and we went to the one called Gypsy Den. They had vegan and vegetarian food (mostly) so I was so happy to eat there, never mind the fact that it's owned by Mr. Schuck.

Kyle was taking a picture of the art on the walls, but he captured me looking bored instead. I wasn't bored, just intently trying to figure out what to order since I was able to eat pretty much everything on the menu. It made my choice super hard!

I wound up ordering a vegan chipotle chicken wrap with fries. It was seriously so good. I wish I could make food this good at home.

We also had hummus and pita, which is always a good choice. I don't think I've ever met a hummus I didn't like.

Exterior of the restaurant.

It was a super fun trip, but we were thankful to get home to our kitties.

Until next time!