I decided to take my sisters (Terry and Penny with Penny's husband Rick) to Disneyland this year. This was Disneyland's 60th anniversary and roughly our 50th anniversary of visiting for the first time in the 60s. You will find a B&W picture from 1967 of the three of us in front of the castle.

Whenever we visited as kids this was a day trip for us coming up from San Diego. I got us a suite at the Disney Hotel. The monorail used to run through the hotel, I was disappointed that was no longer the setup.

As a kid, I used to see the tour groups walking through the park. I always wondered what that experience was like. I thought the tour we on took us through Walt's office above the fire station but it didn't. We did get to visit the Dream suite in New Orleans Square. We couldn't take pictures inside but you'll find several images taken from the balcony.

We stayed for a couple of nights and had a park hopper pass. I think my last visit was in the late 70s. First addition to the area was California Adventure and then I believe the whole Downtown experience grew up around the park. I had been to Disneyworld a couple of times in the 2000s, but this was the first time back to Disneyland.

This was an interesting visit. We came in October which starts the holiday season at Disneyland. The Haunted Mansion and It's a Small world are decorated differently at this time. They have an evening trick-or-treating experience in the evening. I didn't realize that they chase everyone out of the park around 5pm and you can only get back in with a special ticket. My sister was so upset about this that she wrote a letter to Disneyland to complain about the shortened visit time. They replied with two passes that she used in the next year.

We had a good time and this was the first time I had a good camera in the park so I was happy. There were a couple of strange things. The Marvel universe was added to the characters wandering the park that just didn't feel right in the house of Mickey. The other real issue was that many of the rides were breaking down and not available. We had issues with the Haunted Mansion where the conveyor stopped for brief periods. The worst problem was with the Indian Jones ride. It also stopped a couple of times which breaks the illusion, but it did allow us to study in more detail the environment we stopped in. After a couple of failures, they actually stopped the ride and we had to walk out after they brought all the lights up. I don't ever remember the rides being open like this when they were experiencing problems like this. I do remember rides being unavailable when we visited, but never failing mid-ride.