Today has been a "game of two halves"

1st half - waking up at Helen & Bens in the beautiful NZ Welcome Bay area.
After breakfast & farewells, the three of us loaded up & headed for Auckland. It was a pretty journey, but made very slow by interminable roadworks.
We arrived at the terminal with time to spare though, and after handing back the hire car I thought we would breeze through check in. Sadly not. One of my bags (the one that has died on the trip & requires a lot of gaffa tape to keep it intact) was overweight - just.
So I had to tear all the tape, remove one (yes one) item & transfer it to the other bag. Now the problem of the decrepit suitcase!
After a fruitless hunt of the terminal shops, A lovely lady was so worried she had no tape to sell me, she gave me a roll of packing tape. Not ideal, but needs must - so i used the entire roll & crossed my fingers!
We boarded by the skin of our teeth & settled down to a comfortable plane ride. We all slept for 5ish hours too!

2nd Half - having left Auckland at 3.10pm, it was somewhat disconcerting to arrive in LA at 6.30am THE SAME DAY. Wednesday continues!!!
We had a supremely easy transfer to the hotel & got checked in (at 8.30am - result!!)…and the suitcase has survived - I'm not touching it again until safely on British soil!!!!
After a shower we hit Disney - just before the parks opened at 10am. They were dead quiet & we went on 5 rides before midday - what a blast!!!
And we have just arrived back at our hotel at 8.30pm after dinner & the parade. I think you can safely say we made the most of the first day of our park tickets!

What a day!!!!