This is the finale of a series about our trip to Seattle and Disneyland in April 2016. All the posts about our trip will be listed here! Make sure you read the previous days before this one 
Tuesday, April 26, 2016
So here we are… exactly a year ago today, Chris and I were flying out to Seattle to start our vacation extravaganza, and today I’m publishing the last post in this series! I have had so much fun writing about this, and I’m sad it’s come to an end now! But I’m getting ahead of myself – let me write about the last day first, and then I’ll recap the whole trip and spill all my thoughts haha
Our wake up call was bright and early as our flight left at 8am. Staying at an airport-area hotel and taking a shuttle was a great idea – we basically woke up and hopped on to head to the airport. We quickly made it through security and got Starbucks, then headed to our gate.
I won’t bore you with the details of us getting onto a plane and flying home haha. It was an uneventful flight, aside from this odd illustration of a creepy baby on our safety brochure:
Our plane this time had a cool flight tracker in the back of each seat:
Byeeee LA ;(
Before long we were back home, and somehow 8 hours in the future:
We landed and rode the fake monorail sadly to find our friends who were picking us up!
And with that, our vacation was over!! We had SUCH an amazing week, I was dreading having to go back to work in a few days.
Final Thoughts
Now for the wordy part: Our Seattle and Disneyland trip was more fun than I could have ever hoped!! The trip came at a perfect time and was a much-needed break for the both of us, and we had the most amazing time.
Chris and I both absolutely loved visiting Seattle. It was such a fun, laid back city and it’s one of those places where everyone who lives there loves living there. It was a beautiful place with a great mix of cultural things as well as tons of nature-y activities. I feel like we really got a “best of” tour on our trip there, with a little bit of everything. My favorite part by far was visiting Pike Place Market and trying all the different foods. It was also awesome to see my siblings since we all live so far apart – the next time I see them is probably going to be for our wedding. It was really great to have them as our tour guides and I’m sure Chris and I will be back to Seattle again in the future.
As for Disneyland – both Chris and I were so overwhelmingly surprised by how much we loved it. I was nervous that one of two things would happen…first, that we would go out there and everyone would have built it up so much that we would be let down or disappointed by Disneyland, or that we would go out there and love it so much that we never wanted to come back to WDW. Luckily, neither of those things really happened. We obviously weren’t disappointed in any way by Disneyland – but it also made us appreciate Walt Disney World more, in a weird way.
Everyone always compares Walt Disney World and Disneyland because it seems like an obvious comparison to make, but I don’t feel like it’s fair to either park to compare them. They’re similar, but also sooooo different. Walt Disney World is big and awesome and grandiose and magnificent, while Disneyland is quaint and charming and cute and sentimental. I also see a lot of people saying that EVERYTHING in Disneyland is better, which I also don’t agree with. It’s easy to compare rides that exist on both coasts and have an opinion on which is better (and in most cases, it honestly is Disneyland’s that is better)…but I don’t think it’s fair to say everything is.
Most of all it was fun to be in a Disney park that I didn’t know everything about. It was really cool to be able to walk around and not know all the secrets or where everything is – I always say you haven’t really been somewhere til you get lost there. I love being a cast member, but sometimes I feel like I just rush through the parks these days because I’ve done everything a million times. I don’t stop and notice the small things because I’ve seen them all. Being in Disneyland and exploring the place, taking everything in – it was a different experience. It actually felt like being on vacation at a theme park again, a feeling I hadn’t had in a while before that.
Finally, as cast members it was really cool to be able to go back and see “where it all started”, if you will. I think visiting during the Diamond Celebration was a perfect way to do our first trip, and really allowed us to appreciate the history of everything that much more. We both had SUCH an amazing time taking it all in, and I know we will be back soon!
This was also me and Chris’s first REAL vacation together, and it was so much fun!! It was so great to be able to travel with him and I can’t wait to do it even more in the future, starting with our honeymoon 🙂
I hate to say it, but that pretty much wraps it up! Like I said, I have LOVED writing about our trip and I’m so glad I did – I’ll be able to look back and remember all the fun we had and all the little details. I definitely plan on writing about future trips like this if I can, too! I really hope you enjoyed this series and if you’ve been reading since day one, thanks for sticking through to the end! Hopefully I’ll have more vacations in my future to write about like this as well 🙂
<3, Kaela
