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Before Downtown Disney offered innumerable menu choices, the Disneyland Hotel served up its own assortment of enjoyable restaurants.  My favorite was the cult-classic Monorail Cafe.  If you are unfamiliar with the Monorail Cafe, it was an up-beat diner situated across from the Monorail station.  However, one of my favorite Disneyland Hotel memories was at Stromboli’s [...]

My Disney family took quite a hit this week, and it sent shock waves through all of us.  I’ve never mentioned it before on Rays of Disneyland due to social media rules, etc. but I worked at the Disney Store, here in Denver, off and on, for nine years.  I worked at three different stores [...]

After two warm, but cloudy days, September 23rd bloomed into being with all the bright, shining promise of sun that a birthday should hold.  And, I was awakened by a knock on the hotel room door and a special delivery of one, stunning, Princess Tiana birthday cake, which we ate heartily for breakfast!  Every day [...]

When Downtown Disney at Disneyland opened in 2001, my excitement was for a new park, a new hotel, and a new shopping district was tempered by my disappointment in the changes made to the Disneyland Hotel.  The renovations began in 1998 and by 2001 gone were the only remaining buildings from 1955, the Monorail Cafe, [...]

It’s a lazy, breezy song for a lazy, breezy Sunday afternoon… about a year ago I discovered the song Disneyland by Five for Fighting while lsitening to my favorite podcast, Window to the Magic.  I instantly fell in love.  The song, is actually a romantic ballad of sorts, but comes off as an ode to [...]

Okay, so it’s true, I just can’t get enough of Tinker Bell and her fairy friends, so visiting her home in Pixie Hollow at Disneyland is one of my favorite things in the world.  So, in honor of what seemed to shape up as fairy week on Rays of Disneyland, here are some of my [...]

I haven’t picked up my copy of Beauty and the Beast Diamond edition, but I did have the awesome opportunity to see the Sing-a-Long version on the big screen last week.  It was so great!  I’ve always wanted to be able to sing-along with reckless abandon to Disney movies at the theater! I love when [...]

Day 1 For me, no feeling on Earth compares to that of waking up – way too early in the morning – and coming to the groggy realization that the day has finally come for THE Disneyland Vacation.  This year was no exception, and while my alarm was set for 4:30 AM (!), it was the only [...]