David, Grace, Sarah and Emma Bellis

Week 2 begins, with another day at Disneyland. Jessie says she was pleasantly surprised that the Disneyland Hotel was a good, comfortable hotel - she was expecting something much more spartan.

A couple of good reasons to stay there. First we got 2-day passes for the price of 1-day passes. Since you're staying overnight, it makes a lot of sense to check out, drop all the luggage with the concierge, and pop into the park again on the second day to catch anything you've missed (though we ended up spending almost all the second day at the park too!).

The other good reason is that if you have the breakfast at the hotel, the children get to meet the main Disney characters close up.

I met the gang at the staion at around 11, then we all headed over to the park. The first ride of the day was the Buzz Astroblasters, where I think dads secretly have more fun than the kids (and my score was much higher than Nick's!!!).

We went for a drive on the cars, but managed to lose Jessie. Flat tire? Took a wrong turn?

The girls enjoyed the ride, but I'd say that it's not worth waiting for if there's a long queue. Luckily on that day the park wasn't busy at all, so we walked straight on to most rides.

After the cars, Nick & I snuck off to the Space Mountain. Weeeeeeeeeehhh.

In the afternoon we walked over to the Lion King show.

Then it was time to cool off with a lolly. (Great idea these - they're made of some type of jelly, so they don't drip or fall apart like a normal ice-lolly).

Then it was back over to the Pooh ride, where it looks as though Nick had reached a "why am I here?" moment. If you do visit the park for a second day, and don't want to watch the parade again, that's a great time to get on the busier rides without having to queue.

By this time the rides were so quiet it was getting silly. You could just get off a ride, walk around and get right back on again. So we did.

Louisa was getting personal service on the Dumbo ride, with the staff calling out her name over the loudspeakers.

Meanwhile, the big sisters were whizzing around on the carousel.

After that we made it over to the last of the Golden Mickeys shows for the day (we'd tried for the first two, and missed both). Another very well done live show, that went down well with the girls. Plus there was more of that gold shiny tape, just like at Ocean Park!

Time to head for home, and the girls get a ride on shoulders. Check out the shadows to see how high we managed to jump. Jessie, we'll be looking for a much better performance on the next visit. You might also want to work on getting Sasha to use a lighter grip around Nick's neck!

Another day done?

Not yet. Here we are after picking up our bags at the hotel. We went home after this, but I think Nick & Sasha went out again on an expedition to collect Nick's new glasses.