We pulled into the hotel self-park and smiled to each other knowing the weekend adventure that was in store for us. We were still a little early for check-in so we decided just to walk around and get something to eat. Kathy suggested Croc's Bits and Bites at the hotel, which is exactly what I had in mind. So we headed over to grab a quick bite from there.

Kathy ordered the cheeseburger combo without cheese while I chose the cheeseburger combo with cheese. We sat down at a table while we waited for our food to be ready. I grabbed condiments and waited near the pick-up window so that I could hear our number called out. They were calling out numbers after ours, so I was worried that I had missed it. But since Kathy's burger had to be cooked fresh without the cheese, it was just a matter of waiting a little longer. After our number was called, I sat down with Kathy to begin our meal. As I scraped the Thousand Island dressing off and put some ketchup and mustard on, I noticed that something was missing. I had cheese so it wasn't that I had Kathy's burger. I also had lettuce and tomato. But I had no meat. No burger. No patty. Just a bun with some toppings. I had noticed my burger was lighter and smaller than Kathy's but didn't catch on. I brought it back to the window and got another one.

The view immediately outside of our room.

We still had a little bit of time before we were supposed to check in, so we walked over to the Paradise Pier Hotel's gift shop to look around. It helped pass the time and when we were done we decided to head over to the registration desk to check in, even though we were a couple of minutes early. The hotel cast member working the check-in desk said we were in a room in the Sierra tower with a king-sized bed, gave us our room keys and we were on our way. We decided to go check it out before bringing our stuff up so we headed over there. It was on the fifth floor and as we got off the elevator we hung a right to follow the numbers leading to our room.

I was a bit confused since we had an even room number and they seemed to be facing the marina and not Downtown Disney. The problem didn't correct itself either as our room was on the wrong side of the building. We went in and it was a beautiful room (they recently remodeled all of the rooms at the Disneyland Hotel). We checked out the fun features that I had known about, like the bedspread with various Disneyland attractions featured in it, the headboard of the bed Herb Ryman's drawing of the Disneyland castle, lamps held by Mickey's white gloves, etc. The touches really were nice. But I couldn't help being bummed about the view. Instead of Downtown Disney, we were looking right at the roof for one of the restaurant buildings. Blech! I was really bummed. I asked Kathy if I should ask about another one but she said that the room was fine.

Also from our room, slightly better scenery if we looked to the right.

So we went to the car and brought our stuff up. It was a long walk from the elevator to our room. It wasn't until later that we realized there was another elevator right next door to our room. We got settled in and I took pictures of the room but still couldn't help feeling a little down about the bad view. Kathy assured me it was fine and I wasn't about to let it ruin the weekend.

After we rested for a few minutes, we walked through Downtown Disney to the theme parks. We went to the esplanade area between Disneyland and Disney's California Adventure to look at our brick in the walkway. This is our tradition whenever we visit the park. We always look for our brick before we enter the park and when we get ready to go home. Since the date on it is our wedding date, we thought it was a good idea to continue the tradition on our anniversary weekend.

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