We flew Southwest Airlines for this leg, and I have to admit, I’m back in the Southwest fold.  Now that most airlines charge extra for, well, pretty much everything, Southwest is a nice refreshing change.  The big switch for us, though, was when they changed boarding procedures.  It used to be a mad rush for the “A” group and such when they called it.  Now it’s a ‘mildly orderly’ boarding due to boarding by range of numbers.  Oh, and yeah, I’m glad they stuck families after the ‘A’ group.

Another nice plus?  Paying $10 extra a person (Okay, I guess they do have a few other fees) to get an early ‘A’ boarding pass.  This was great, in that we were able to board early enough to A) have space for our carry-on’s, and B) get exit row on the plane, giving us “Southwest First Class”.  Totally worth it.

In San Francisco for a few days, we were able to do a few things.

The Walt Disney Family Museum

Let’s get this out of the way, right off the bat.  I enjoy Disneyland.  I like going to Disneyland.  But it goes deeper than that.  I think Walt Disney was an amazing person.  When you see what he accomplished in his lifetime, and the legacy he left behind, it’s very cool.

Having that out of the way, why is the Walt Disney Museum in San Francisco, you may ask?  Walt’s daughter, Diane, lives in the Bay Area, and her and her husband, Ron, have a winery, the Silverado Vineyards in Napa Valley.

Unfortunately, you’re not allowed to take pictures in the museum.   (If you’d like to see some pictures of it, mouseplanet.com was allowed to do a review of it with pictures.)  The museum is very cool, though, in that they have a lot of interactive exhibits and a lot of multimedia as well.

It follows his life from World War I to the end of his life.  The way they ended it with his passing was very touching, and handled very well.  All in all, it was pretty cool.

The next day, we had plans to see Alcatraz.  In the years that we lived in the Bay Area, we never made it out to the Rock, as Sean Connery and I call it.  I guess it was one of those things where when you live there, you never even think about doing the ‘tourist’ stuff.

“Where’s Sean Connery?”

As if that wasn’t enough for the day, we booked a GoCar.  A GoCar is almost like a go-kart, but street legal.    They hold two people, and have built in GPS that tells you about what you’re driving by.

Always wear a helmet when riding in a GoCar

It took us on a tour of the city, and was pretty cool.  The only snag was that the gas gauge didn’t work correctly, so we were worried about running out of gas.  We pull over into a gas station, and put a grand total of 59 cents of gas in the tank.  I guess we weren’t even close.

A few different people even had us pull over and asked where we rented it, and some people on the road pulled out their cameras to take pictures of it.  If you’re looking for an interesting way to see a city (They also do them in San Diego, Miami, and a few international cities.) the GoCar is a good way to see it.

Yes, I need to complete it, so I’ll try and get a few more parts of the series completed sometime.

Yes, we went to Disneyland.  Surprised?  Of course you are.

Our annual passes expire July 17th, so we wanted to get one last trip in before that time.  You see, we decided not to renew our annual passes. (GASP!)   We decided not to renew for a few reasons. First off, we’re in a recession.  Did you not know that?  The constant price increases of the passes has gotten to us.  It’s just hard to justify spending that much money, when with all our obligations, it’s just getting harder to get away to Disneyland.

The other main reason is that for the next couple of years, there isn’t going to be a lot new at the parks.  The new Carsland opens in 2012, so maybe we’ll get passes then.  But that’s a big if.

We went with the Wife’s sister and husband, and the wife’s 14 year old second cousin.  It was nice staying again at our hotel of choice, The Candy Cane Inn.  With the Baseball All Star game happening the Tuesday after we were there, we were a little worried about crowds, but it actually wasn’t too bad.

All in all, it was a good time.  One of the highlights?  The new show in California Adventure, The World of Color.  If you see one show when you go to Disneyland, it has to be this show.  It was that good.  With over a 1,000 jets of water, each with LED lighting that can display any color, it looks amazing.

We ended up doing a dinner package at Ariel’s Grotto. (No, Ariel wasn’t there.)  The dinner package included tickets to the show.  The dinner was pretty tasty, and the location we received for the show was a great view.

Space Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain, and of course California Screamin’ rounded out a great time.

It was a tough time coming back to ‘reality’ and nice and hot Arizona, but it was good to be home.

So that will be the last Disneyland update for awhile. 

Here’s the pictures of the mayhem:

Disneyland Album at Flickr.

We went to Schnepf Farms for their fireworks show. It was pretty good! Look for more pictures soon!

I thought it would be good to have a travel blog about our trip. We did a lot of interesting and fun things, and I wanted to document it for posterity, and to get comments on what other people did, and maybe ideas for our next trip.

Continue reading to read all about it!

Trip Planning

So our trip was going to be 1 week in Maui for our 10th wedding anniversary, which is June 10th.  We planned to be in Maui from June 8th until the 15th.

Since we were staying in my Aunt & Uncle’s condo, we didn’t need to worry about hotel there.  So that left two things:  Airfare & car rental.

I started looking for airfare right away, but I limited my choices:

1. I wanted to fly a widebody to Hawaii.  A lot of airlines are now flying narrowbodies to Hawaii.  US Airways, for example, flies the 757 out of Phoenix.  Alaska flies a 737.  Yes, the same plane that Southwest flies.  That a long flight for that.
2. Wanted to avoid US Airways, even though we both had a frequent flier account with them.  The buy on board, or buy anything, for that matter, is just a little much for me.

So that narrowed down our choices to a few of the majors.  (Such as United, Delta, and Hawaiian.)

After pricing out different itineraries, I narrowed it down to Hawaiian Airlines.  They’ve always received excellent reviews, and they fly the  widebody 767.  They also fly nonstop out of Phoenix to Honolulu.

But when I started pricing the tickets, it was going to be almost $1,200.  That seemed a little high to me.  They also started to run out of window seats on the flight out of Phoenix, so it started making me worried.

But, score!  Turns out that Hawaiian Airlines was starting a new nonstop out of Oakland, CA.  To Maui.  And it started 2 days before we were planning to go to Hawaii.

So, for the grand total of $650 for two, we had tickets to Maui.  Now the only issue was getting to Oakland.  Enter Southwest Airlines.  A cheap fare a few days before, and it all worked out.

Of course, our High School friends live in downtown SF, so that all worked out.

Check out the next part for our pre-Maui San Francisco adventure!

The trip to Maui? amazing. San Francisco? Fun as always.

Of course, I have to go back to work on Monday, so I have a few days to decompress.

Look for a trip log (trilog?) and tons o’ pictures soon.

….from our hotel window in San Francisco. (SF Hilton)

….wishing us a happy 10th! Very cool!

I don’t think they’re getting this whole "Facebook" thing.