Welcome to yet another installment of our movies across country thingamajig. Well, sort of. You see, as I mentioned in the last post, now that we have made it to LA the “road trip” portion of the trip is essentially over and we will be hunkering down in Southern Calfornia for the remainder of the trip.
“Oh,” I can hear you saying, “So now, we will just focus on Disney movies right?”
Yep, totally.
“Great,” then I am assuming you would probably say, “And the ‘trip’ portion of the posts will now focus on your plans at Disneyland, right?”
Well, sort of.
Don’t hate me.
So here’s the deal – while yes, we will be in the area at this point, we actually are not going to Disneyland on our first day. I will get to the plans in a minute but let me put it this way. We have:
- 10 movies to get through (Owen’s top 10)
- 5 total days of vacation left to write about
- 4 days in Disneyland
- 4 weeks until the trip
So we are left with certain “dilemmas.” As I alluded to in my last post, 10 movies over 5 days of vacation creates a problem.
Sort of.
What I plan to do is for each movie, I will write about a half-day. For the most part, this should work since it’s like Disneyland for a big chunk of it so I will write about the morning/early afternoon in one post and late afternoon/evening in another post.
Second, since we only have 4 weeks until the trip, these will be coming at you fast and furious.
Also – since I already wrote about all of these movies in my Top 40 movie countdown to my 40th , I will be asking Owen to provide his reasons for choosing each of these movies. He already has a blog he just started so I know he can handle it. Did I mention he’s going to be 10?
And to be fair with the plugs, Myles also has a vlog – One Little Spark. My kids. So social media.
Also, as with my Top 40, Owen’s Top 10? No particular order.
And with ALL OF THAT said, on with the first theme night in Owen’s Top 10!
Cross-country trip Day 12 (I definitely missed a day there somewhere) – 1st half
So on Day 12, we will wake up in our room at the Howard Johnson Anaheim Hotel and Water Playground and have breakfast down at Mimi’s, which is very close to our hotel. They have breakfast tacos y’all. BREAKFAST. TACOS.
After breakfast, we will then drive over to the Warner Brothers Studio lot. Yup, taking the Warner Brothers studio tour y’all. Why the heck do I keep saying y’all?
Anyways, yeah, this tour? It’s legit ALL GOODREAU. We get to (hopefully) see the Stars Hollow set from Gilmore Girls. Tons of DC comics stuff (yes, we are more of a Marvel family but still – Batman!). Some Harry Potter shizz. And. AND. We get to have coffee in Central Perk. WHAT??
If it wasn’t for all that god awful Big Bang Theory nonsense, this would be the perfect tour.
And then, after the tour, we will probably grab lunch somewhere. My vote is we make the half hour drive to Clifton’s. I have wanted to go here ever since I saw the place on Randomland but last week, this place was featured on The Bachelorette. So, I mean now we HAVE to go.
And then we will…
WHOOPS. NOPE. YOU’LL HAVE TO WAIT UNTIL THE NEXT POST!
The theme night
As mentioned in the title, we started Owen’s portion of the countdown with Pinocchio. And we did this theme night on a weeknight so Nickie and the boys were left to the decorating and cooking because they get home earlier than I do. And they did AN AWESOME JOB. I mean, luckily we still had some stars hanging from La La Land night but still, red tablecloths, yellow napkins. The whole “She Bangs.”
No Wayne, it’s shebang.
What? No sir. It’s based off the Ricky Martin song. What the heck is a shebang? You’re so stupid, voice inside my head.
The food
For the food, we had homemade Stromboli. Which was definitely NOT as evil as the Stromboli in the movie. Dude was gonna chop up a little boy.
We also had Figaro fries, Cleo’s goldfish crackers and blue Gatorade (on account of the blue fairy.)
For dessert, we had “When You Wish Upon a Star” cookies.
We also had baby bunnies…
NO…ugh. I mean they showed up in our neighbor’s yard and we couldn’t stop saying “OMG SO KEWT.”
The activity
For our Pinocchio night, we often make puppets out of paper bags but for this night, we did something different. We each wrote a wish (on a star – RELEVANT) that we have for our trip. Something we wish happens on this once-in-a-lifetime trip:
Yup, both the boys wish they don’t fight with each other. It’s a pretty good wish. I am not holding my breath on it though. Also, we are going to hang these in the car to remind us of what we wanted from this trip. Cool, right?
The movie
Like I said, Owen is taking this part over. But I will link to my original posts if you care to read my take on each movie. Sort of like a point-counterpoint except I assume we agree on things so more like a point-point. My original Pinocchio post is here (Link).
Take it away Owen…
I love Pinocchio because it is such an interesting movie. My favorite part is when Pinocchio is walking with Honest John and Gideon and they are singing. I also like the part when Jiminy Cricket and Pinocchio are escaping Stromboli and Pinocchio yelled,” Bye Mr.Stromboli.” Pinocchio is about a wood carver named Geppeto and his pets Figaro and Cleo wish that a puppet that Geppeto made would be a real boy. Then the Blue Fairy turns the puppet into a live puppet, but the puppet or Pinocchio has to complete Geppeto’s wish of Pinocchio into a real boy. To turn into a real boy he has to prove worthy. At the end of the movie Pinocchio saves Geppeto, then Pinocchio gets hurt and wakes up as a real boy. These are some of the reasons I love Pinocchio.
WeHeartDisney 
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