Hello everyone! I’m happy to be here with the rest of the AllEars.net “Blogging Brigade”.

A brief introduction, since I’m sure most of you don’t know me…Hi, I’m Laura, and I live in San Diego, CA. I’m AllEars.net’s Disneyland Correspondent. With that address and title, as you might expect I get to Disneyland a little more often than to Walt Disney World. So for the most part I will be sharing with you my thoughts about my visits to Disneyland, and hopefully be bringing a little different perspective than you might otherwise be reading.

So here we goooooooooooo!

Last weekend my husband Lee and I were at Disneyland to cover the first of this year’s Food and Wine Weekends at Disney’s California Adventure. And we did something we’ve never done before…we went to Early Entry at Disneyland!

It’s something we’ve just never had the opportunity to do before since there are only two ways to do it: 1) have a multi-day ticket that has a one-day Early Entry feature (nope, we’ve got annual passes!) or 2) stay at one of Disneyland’s three resort hotels (we usually drive up just for the day). The Early Entry feature for resort guests is not something Disneyland advertises on its web site, though we were told about it at check-in. Resort guests may participate in Early Entry any morning it is offered during their stay – currently it’s Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.

Most of the attractions in Fantasyland and Tomorrowland and some of the shops on Main Street open an hour before regular park opening. (There’s no Early Entry at Disney’s California Adventure.)

I can’t say Lee was very enthused about getting up in time to be at Disneyland at 7:00 a.m. – especially since we’d been awakened at 4:00 a.m. when the fire alarm went off at the Grand Californian. Fortunately it was a false alarm but we didn’t know that until after we’d gotten dressed and hustled outside!

But once inside the park…we had a blast. There weren’t very many people around, and we walked onto Space Mountain (which thankfully is back to being “regular” Space Mountain instead of Rockin’ Space Mountain), Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters (twice) and then Snow White’s Scary Adventures and Pinocchio’s Daring Journey in Fantasyland. Casey Jr. Circus Train wasn’t open during Early Entry, but we were on the first train when it opened at 8:00. I hadn’t ridden that since I was a small child. I enjoy Storybook Land, with all of its miniature scenes and topiaries, and this gave us a little different perspective than you get from the Storybook Land Canal Boats.

So six rides in an hour – not bad! Especially since that’s more than we usually do in an entire day.

We had a wonderful time, and I’m really glad we got up early to do it…especially since given the requirements it’s not something we’ll get to repeat any time soon.

So that’s it for my first blog entry – if you have any comments, or things you’d like to hear about, please let me know!

Read my Food and Wine Report and check out the Photo Gallery!

And have a Disney Day. 🙂

Laura