We arose early and got on the road around 6AM, arriving at the Disneyland parking are a few minutes after 8am. It was a bit disorienting getting off the freeway, I knew that Disney now had reworked the area formerly known as West Street into Disneyland Drive, and I had assumed that was where their exit from the interstate put you (thinking It would bring me in from the north), but coming from the south it actually brings you in on a road parallel to Katella that brings you onto Disney property not far from where the old sign on Harbor Blvd. used to be, where you pay for parking before being directed across what used to be the far south end of the parking lot and now is the area behind Disney's California Adventure. I had no idea where I was until I saw Harbor Boulevard. Still, I figured out quickly enough that we were, after all, being funneled over to the big Mickey & Friends parking deck. We were parked out near the far end of an aisle on Daisy deck. While waiting for the tram I took our first " Disney " pictures of the trip. Now, it may seem odd to take pictures of the trams but...well theres not much I can say about that since, I guess it is odd
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The tram wasn't too crowded and so we got on the one tram I have pictured, so that's all the tram photos from the first morning, but for those of you wanting to see even more Parking lot tram photos, fear not! there were more taken later in the trip.

When I last visited Disneyland in 1981, there was no parking structure, no downtown Disney Shopping District, no Esplanade, and, of course, no Disney's California Adventure theme park, still being a big fan of the park I had followed the changes over the years through various web sites, the (now defunct) Disney Magazine, and any other source of information on Disneyland I could get my hands on, so the new discoveries for me tend to be in the small details rather than in the big picture of how things fit together, perhaps that explains, to some extent, why I'd take pictures of odd things, like parking lot trams. Still, as it had been so many years since since I had been to Disneyland I wanted to take pictures of many of the more typical Disneyland sights too, but first we had to wait in line at the turnstiles giving us a few minutes to look at the entrance of Disney's California across the Esplanade.

Once in the park we got to take our first "typical tourist pictures"

I do like the way they have altered the "Floral Mickey" for the 50th anniversary celebration. I took a picture of Carlene in front of it, then handed her the camera and tried to get her to take one of me from the same angle, but she insisted on taking her fist few pictures from an angle that I knew would obscure the flowers behind me she explained later was to get the photo of the steam engine pulling into the station.

and, since I cropped Carlene's best shot of the train here's mine with the same treatment.

As much as I had enjoyed seeing all the changes to the Disneyland area so far, and as much as I enjoyed being at Disneyland the real "I'm finally here" had not occurred just yet but it's getting really close for that continue on to... the next page!