Welcome to the Disneyland Resort at Halloween Time in 2009. Literally, 2 months and 2 days after getting married and a little under two months after returning from our honeymoon to Walt Disney World, Brooke and I headed down to Disneyland to check out how the theme parks were decked out for Halloween. For this blog post, I’ll focus on our time at Disney California Adventure.

Remember the old C-A-L-I-F-O-R-N-I-A sign in front of DCA? Remember the Golden Gate Bridge that the Monorail went over? Welcome back to the days before Cars Land…while Disney California Adventure was undergoing its massive re-imagining.

The Golden Gate Bridge was all decked out for with candy corn.

Happy Halloween!

They really did the whole candy corn thing up at DCA back in 2009 for Halloween Time.

Before visiting Candy Corn Acres, we caught the High School Musical 3 Pep Rally. It was something we had to check out. After all, a few months earlier, we had seen the same pep rally at Disney Hollywood Studios. High School Musical Coast to Coast!

After the pep rally, we made our way to “Candy Corn Acres” and got to meet harvest Minnie.

We also got to meet Chip…

and also Goofy! It was so much fun meeting the harvest versions of these classic Disney characters!

The candy corn theming was a bit over the top, but still very fun!

Before they had the night-time parties like Electronica and The Mad Tea Party, there was this really cool fountain of sorcerer Mickey in front of Monsters Inc. Mike and Sully to the Rescue. I miss that fountain!

We had lunch at Ariel’s Grotto. Back in October of 2009, they were still working on Paradise Bay to make it ready for the Wold of Color show.

To give us an idea of what we would see, they had these kind of glass plates up at a few points around the empty bay.

Here they are setting up the main viewing area for the show. Gotta love construction photos. Right?

It’s fascinating to me to see Paradise Bay without the water. Did you know all that cable was under the water?

Back in 2009, they hadn’t opened the Little Mermaid: Ariel’s Undersea Adventure yet. So, all Brooke could do is dream.

Ariel is Brooke’s favorite Disney Princess. So, she didn’t want to wait until 2011 to experience Ariel’s ride.

Along the construction walls they had things like this map to give you an idea of what Disney California Adventure would eventually look like.

Not too long after I took this picture, they walled up the train facade to begin work on what would eventually become Buena Vista Street. I remember because I took a photo to remember how things used to look. I kind of liked the train facade. For those of you who didn’t visit Disney California Adventure 1.0, this is close to the Condor Flats Area. I believe that the location that took over this spot is where you can currently get Starbucks.

Brooke and I did have fun at Disney California Adventure. However, back then, this park was one we’d typically only spend a couple of hours at before heading off to Disneyland. That’s what we did back then. We took in the sights of DCA at Halloween Time, ate lunch at Ariel’s Grotto and made our way to Disneyland.

I don’t have the time to finish off this walk down memory lane today. So, we’ll call this Throwback Thursday post Part 1. Next Thursday, I’ll write about our visit to Disneyland on the same day. When we planned this trip, we thought it would be cool because we’d get to see all 6 North America Disney theme parks in around 2 months time! Of course, I would top that feat when I visited all 6 North America Disney Theme Parks and all 3 Universal Theme Parks in one month. I hope you enjoyed this trip down memory lane.