NYE at Disneyland

How are we already almost 3 months into 2017? I’m going to use my master’s thesis as an excuse for why I am so, so behind on blog posts. But, really, we all know it’s cause I’m the VP of Procrastination and General Laziness.

Anyway. As is the norm for the Hutton brigade, I spent this past NYE with family at the Happiest Place on Earth (in the Happiest Hotels on Earth). New Years Eve is a notoriously crowded day at the Disney Parks, with Disneyland usually reaching max capacity by mid-afternoon, forcing cast members to seal it off to new parkgoers until others leave. It gets pretty nutty.

This year, though, we had rain on the forecast! And, boy oh boy, that did wonders for the crowd situation.

We were absolutely loving the rain, but you could tell that there were lots of not-so-happy campers underneath those Disney ponchos. It poured for about an hour — long enough to encourage a lot of the party poopers to head home for the rest of the day and significantly lightening the park crowd index. Hurray!

The NYE holiday also coincided with the last couple days that the beloved ride, Tower of Terror, would be open to the public. On January 2nd, they closed it forever, and got to work on replacing it with a power plant monstrosity.

They’d already started on construction of the new ride in December, so to hide whatever handyman work they were doing inside, they ran Tower of Terror in complete darkness.

I wasn’t sure what to expect — besides pitch black, obviously — and was surprised at how exhilarating it was! The ride was completely blacked out, and also didn’t have the usual soundtrack, so everything felt that much creepier. It was a very worthy way of saying goodbye to a classic.

After getting our fill of the rainy parks all afternoon, Mark and I spent most of our night at the Napa Rose NYE Gala, a fabulous black tie dinner party at the flagship restaurant in Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel. (Full review here)

The Napa Rose gala featured a dance floor littered with dozens of sparkly balloons, but we ended up skipping the post-meal boogie to meet up with my family in front of the Funwheel instead. Cause fireworks > dancing!

The only thing better than spending the last moments of 2016 with my favorites at my favorite place is being able to ring in the first moments of 2017 in the same fashion. Looking forward to lots more memory-making at Disneyland in the years to come.

xo,

K