Disneyland Highlights

The initial plan was to blog about every day in Disneyland. HA! That plan has gone the way of the Dodo. I looked at the pictures we took and realised that they aren't that many. It's tough to take pictures when your fingers feel like frozen sausages. So I'm just going to blog about the highlights. *cop out*

:: Highlight 1 ::

... has got to be meeting Mickey Mouse. DN just loves this mouse. The wonderful thing about staying in a Disneyland hotel is the meet-and-greet in the hotel. No queueing in the bloody cold and getting all miserable waiting to see a man in a mouse suit. At least here, we could queue in relative comfort.

EVERY time he met Mickey Mouse, he squeezed his nose!


:: Highlight 2 ::

The snow was so NOT a highlight for me. When I saw the snow, I was like, "Ah... @#**%!! This is just great." PF and DN felt otherwise. They really thought it was great.

:: Highlight 3 ::

Ooooohhh... this has got to be DN's favourite ride in all of Disneyland. He got to drive a car on a track and he just loved it. We almost didn't get to try this at all because it was shut (because of the snow) the first two days we were there. The queue was long though. UGH. We sought refuge in a gift shop for half an hour after the ride just so I could thaw my toes.


:: Highlight 4 ::

Hmm... this is more a semi-highlight than a highlight. We had dinner at an American style diner and DN's menu came in the shape of a car which fitted Bear to a T!


:: Highlight 5 ::

Er... another semi-highlight. I put this in because DN looks so funny in this picture! He's posting a postcard back to Singapore.

:: Highlight 6 ::

... has got to be the kiddie meals in Disneyland. All of them came on Mickey plates with removable ear bowls, heh heh. Here, DN is eating a fried fish fillet with rice and stir-fried vegetables. He also had a small bowl of salad (corn nibblets, lettuce, cherry tomato, cheese cubes) and a bowl of fruit for dessert.


This was his favourite meal - Mickey pasta with tomato sauce, mini-salad and a fruit bowl with chocolate sauce for dipping. DN ate ALL the pasta can you believe it?


So I bought 1kg (yes, you read right, 1 kg) of Mickey pasta to bring back home. What do you think DN does when I cooked his first Mickey pasta dish out of Disneyland?


Yes. He refused to eat one bite of it. -______-"

Disneyland :: day one

I highly suspect there's a corelation between the proximity of one to a train station from which one is to depart in the early morning and well, erm, complacent pig-headedness. Because our hotel is just 20 seconds away from King's Cross St Pancras station, we collectively fluffed about in the hotel room until 7.45am when PF and I went, "!!!!!" and flew about the room packing bags, baby and ourselves up. Our train was an 8.30am one and you have to check in 30 minutes before departure. I don't know why, but we ALWAYS make it just in time. We seem to be constantly collapsing in relief on trains and planes. Not good. It's highly stressful and causes hairfall, so please don't try this at home kids.

I'm not going to say anything about the 3 hour train ride except, "Gee, I just LOVE taking long rides in a confined space with a toddler who hasn't really learned all his social cues yet. Can't wait for the train ride back."

We reached the Marne-la-Vallee Chessy station at about 12.30pm and my first thought was, "Oh crap. Maybe Disneyland wasn't that good an idea. I hope it gets warmer tomorrow." Of course it didn't. It got colder in the days to come instead. @#$$@!! I swear, someone up there is trying to get me for lying about my weight (and height!) and sneak-packing food at buffets.

DN was okay though.

We boarded the shuttle to our hotel (that's what it looks like below... yup, it's a themed cowboy hotel) and tried to check in but were 2 hours too early, so we collected our park tickets and headed straight to Disneyland.

We got there with 20 minutes to spare before the daily parade started. DN was truly truly bored just hanging around and waiting (for nothing, it seemed to him), but we managed to secure a pretty good spot along the road so we weren't going to budge. Here's Mr What's-The-Big-Deal before the parade started...

and Mr This-is-the-best-day-of-my-life during the parade. Seeing this smile almost made my frostbitten toes worth it. Erm, okay, maybe not.

After the parade, we went on the Buzz Lightyear Laser Blast ride and that marked the first of our 4 days of QUEUEING. That's what they fail to tell you on the Disneyland website, and that's why 1 day is never enough because you spend half of it in a blasted line. I found myself doing quite a bit of mantra-chanting over the next 4 days, "All for the baby. All for the baby. All for the baby." Thankfully, we didn't have to queue for It's A Small World, and DN really liked this one! He started dancing in the boat towards the end of the ride.

Can you spot what's wrong with this picture?

Yes! The exposed ceiling boards and floodlights! I know it looks dark in the picture but the entire place was brightly lit with flourescent ceiling lights. I think someone forgot to turn the working lights off. Tut tut.

When we got back to the hotel, I discovered tons of photos like these in the camera. Yes, photos and photos of duck butts. My husband had taken it upon himself to take millions of pictures of the ducks that were floating around at It's a Small World. Unfortunately, he only managed to capture their butts. These were fast ducks!

After It's A Small World, we hopped onto the Peter Pan ride and then a carousel.

And that was day one. :) We survived!

Going to Disneyland...

... turned out to be a really longdrawn affair. And to complicate things, raise my blood pressure and take 5 years off my life, we set off late. Again. If you're a friend, you're probably chuckling to yourself and thinking, "Well, if the Ongs are ever prepared and on time, I will eat my socks!" Yeah, I will eat mine too.

To cut a long story short, we had to take a train to London because that's where the Eurostar leaves for Paris. And before that, we had to deposit the car at a friend's place for safekeeping while we were gone, then take a cab to the train station, get tickets... yadda yadda yadda... it sounds boring because it was!

How do you keep a toddler (who often behaves like he's on speed) entertained on a 1.5 hour train ride? We packed a sticker book, little toys (trains, cars) and some tranquiliser. Just kidding. We packed an interesting (and legal) snack pack for DN instead - juice box, grapes and an onigiri. And it was gobbled down in 5 minutes. *sigh* Dang, we should have packed a turkey.


He doesn't look it here, but DN was really excited to be on a train. We took the 3pm train and expected him to take his afternoon nap on it, but no dice. *sigh* I knew we should have brought that tranquiliser!

We got into London at about 4.30pm and then had to catch the tube to King's Cross station where the Eurostar leaves from. Did we then catch the 3-hour Eurostar train to Disneyland? Hell no! I know what torture is and no way was I going to handle a 3-hour train ride with a grumpy toddler. We booked a hotel just across the station and spent the night there. And what a hotel it was! For £89, it was worth every penny. It was really quite fancy-schmancy.

Here's the walkway to the bathroom... which was stocked with Gilchrist and Soames toiletries. Woah nelly.

And we had one of those Grohe shower systems that can massage you, recreate a rainforest shower and cook your dinner. Like I said, fancy-schmancy.

We ended up staying in the hotel the whole time and had dinner there too because it was so nice (and had free internet access!). To keep the little one amused, we let him have a bubble bath.

Coming up next... Disneyland updates!

Dummies Guide to Baking with Toddlers

Haha, I cheated! I bought this instant croissant pastry from the supermarket for about £1.60. Since we're only here for a short while, it doesn't make sense to buy all that flour and butter for 1 batch of croissants. Okay okay, it's also because I'm a lazy bum!

It's really easy. Just peel off the cardboard packaging, untwist the roll and out pops your croissant pastry, all ready for rolling. It's all perforated too. So thoughtful!

DN had a ball rolling the croissants. I demonstrated one for him and he rolled the rest. Never seen a toddler so pleased with rolling before.

DN kept wanting to check on the croissants in the oven. They took about 20 minutes to reach a nice golden brown colour. We each had one for breakfast, with strawberry jam, lemon curd and smudge. :)

DN ate 2/3 of his croissant, with jam and lemon curd. Guess who had 1 and 1/3 croissants? -_-

The reason why I wanted to bake croissants with DN is because we're going to the land of croissants tomorrow. Oui oui! There is a special offer going on now at Paris Disneyland - stay 2 nights and get the 3rd night free. Free? Free? Did someone say free??? *push old people and little children out of the way*

I need to stop doing this. I need to stop buying everything that's on offer. Things are on offer for a reason! It's the dead of winter! Unless you're a penguin or an eskimo, no one goes to Disneyland in winter! You get off any ride looking like a popsicle! If I don't do something about this nasty habit, before long, I'll be carting home things like Betamax players or BROS t-shirts because they were on sale.

Anyway, we paid £358 for 3 nights in a Disneyland hotel, 4 days of park tickets for 2 adults (DN is free), 3 breakfasts and 3 lunches/dinners for the 3 of us. The thing that sealed the deal was the £59 offer from Eurostar. That's £59 per adult to Paris Disneyland (return). Mickey Mouse, here we come (all frozen and cold).

Shopping with Bear

Shopping is really not DN's cup of tea and although I'm gutted, I don't blame the little guy. Everything looks boring and it's out of his reach anyway. So what's a toddler to do? DN often chooses to announce his annoyance to all and sundry by...

(a) whining
(b) wailing
(c) hijacking our stroller and pushing it into other people's legs
(d) lying face down on the floor in the shopping centre
and his favourite, (e) all of the above, but on repeat and shuffle mode

I decided that enough was enough and decided to stop shopping altogether (yeah right!) buy him his own little stroller to keep him busy as we shopped. We had a feeling this would work because he's always hankering after our stroller and trolley. And it DID work!

We popped into ELC to buy this blue stroller. And since this bear was 50% off, we got it too. Anyway, I much prefer this to a spooky doll with those "automatic open-close eyes". Eeek.

It was a build-your-own-bear (version 1.0... no rocket science here) and it came with 2 bags of stuffing, a jumper, shorts and a really dehydrated looking bear.

I had to help DN with the stuffing. Now he knows how bears are made!

Here's the maker hugging the finished product in glee! We asked DN to name his bear (because the kit comes with a birth certificate for the furry one) and he said, "Bear!" -_- Ohhh-kay.

The happy bub and his happy bear. We shopped for 3 hours that day. Woot!

Since then, DN has been taking good care of Bear. Bear sleeps with him every night now and he occasionally gets a grape from DN (ha!) .

I've always had this romantic notion that DN will grow to love a stuffed toy that will sleep with him, eat with him, play with him etc... When he first started dragging Brownie around, I thought Brownie was it. Then Brownie was forgotten and tossed aside. :( Maybe Bear is the THE ONE!

Brrr!

It's getting colder and colder around here. Temperatures hover between 1-5 degrees (celsius) during the day, and between -4 to 0 degrees at night. Brrr indeed!

So how do we keep the little turnip warm and toasty? (His nose turns red in true Rudolph fashion after 10 minutes of being out in the cold.)

#1 In a Foot Muff

We decided to get one of these after a week of lusting after other babies' foot muffs. 2 hours, 2 returns and 4 seperate trips to both Mamas and Papas AND Babies R Us later (Mom, you know the whole story!), DN had his own mobile bed!

The first time we zipped him up in it, he said, "So nice!". The inside is a soft, puffy sheepskin-like material and the outside's a powder blue suede. I really wanted to get this, but we needed something that would also go with our other stroller and anyway, this was 50% off. Show me a person who can't resist a bargain and I'll show you a non-Singaporean. Heh.

#2 In Woolly Slippers

I don't know what DN has against slippers, but he just won't wear them. Even when they're this cute! I am grateful for those days hours MINUTES when he deigns to put them on.

One thing I'm really grateful for though is how he LOVES his Uggs. Big phew.

#3 In a Spiffy New Coat

The two hand-me-down jackets that PF brought up were just not cutting it. In PF's own words, "Maybe in Genting...". So when the Boxing Day Sales started (WOOT!), we decided to see what Debenhams had to offer. We, or rather I, couldn't resist this woolly brown fisherman's coat with big buttons. The lining's a brown tartan, yummy.

The only downside is, it's achingly painful to walk next to DN now. He's more stylish than both of us put together... in a Marc Jacobs bag.