While Grandma Gail and Grandpa Dan were in town Siena learned about pumpkin decorating and decorated a few pumpkins herself. Since she had pumpkins on her mind she and mommy headed off to Pumpkin City to visit the pumpkin patch and to ride some rides. They had such a good time they took daddy back a few days later. Siena is very much into exploring and trying new things and pumpkin tipping and rolling were great new experiences. She also enjoyed the bounce house and won her first carnival prize in the magnetic fishing game. She is now the proud owner of a pretty good size pink inflatable dolphin.
For this Halloween Siena wanted to be Rapunzel. She has the Tangled video pretty much memorized and wanted to let down her hair and be a favorite Disney character. To be a princess you must come from royal lineage, so your mom and dad must be the king and the queen. And so we were.
In this day and age, “safe” venues for trick or treating are always a good thing and so we signed up to do Mickey’s Halloween Party at Disney. Our friends Peter and Kristen Athans invited us to the Disney employee night Halloween party too. As it turned out they were on consecutive days, so we got to spend two consecutive night of trick of treating at Disney.
The Disney employee night was called the Little Monsters Party and all the kids were in costume and ready to enjoy the evening. We started out with a nice dinner at Catal and then headed into the park. Siena enjoyed spending time with Sydney and Grant and got to practice her first “trick or treat” requests. The employee night trick or treating has good-for-you things like toys, pencils and other nice trinkets. It is light on the candy front, which was a good thing. They also give all the children engraved Disney name tags to wear. This was very exciting for us since we never see Siena’s name on something collectable. She now has a real name tag with her name engraved on it and nice collectible to remember the night. Thank you Athans family for a great night! The next night we went back for Mickey’s Halloween Party, but this time Rapunzel had her king and queen in tow. Last year we did “costume light” for our trick or treating with Siena. But this year we got real costumes for our night with Siena. You couldn’t wear a costume to the employee event unless you were a child, but at the paid event costumes were encouraged and it seemed like everyone was dressed up for the night. Since it is Disney, many folks come dressed as their favorite Disney characters. I am guessing this must create some confusion for small children who probably aren’t used to seeing 3 Belles standing around together all of a different shape and size. Or to see Aladdin walking around with Christopher Robin, things are a little out of context here. Siena, however, didn’t seem to mind and even asked one faux Belle to take a picture with her.
The Disney folks put on a great evening. The event is usually held in California Adventure, but there is so much construction going on there it was held in Disneyland this year. There was plenty of extra lighting and theatrics to set the mood. They also had a great Halloween parade and fireworks show and the rides were open with almost no lines.
The event is well thought out and instead of trick or treat stations; they have trick or treat trails. So once you get in line to do some trick or treating, you do three or four stops as they lead you through a park attraction. By the end of each trail you need to empty your candy bags into a bigger one to make room for the next stop. They have good for you snacks like carrots, raisins and apple slices too, if you don’t want candy. We got a mix of treat and Siena got to try lots of new candy types she hadn’t ever had before. We ended up with enough candy not to need to buy any for Halloween hand outs this year.
For this special Halloween Party Disney had a lot of the characters out for picture taking and our night ended taking pictures with a character you seldom see at Disneyland, Jack Skellington. I can’t really think of a more appropriate character to have your Halloween picture taken with.
We had two great nights of Halloween family fun and Siena now understands Halloween better. She said “trick or treat” and “thank you”. She also says “Happy Halloween”. I know next year she will be so much more grown up and these things will seem natural, but this year it is magical to watch her learn about something new.
