Star-Studded Cars Land Red Carpet Grand Opening Celebration #CarsLand #JustGotHappier

Cars Land in Disney’s Cal­i­for­nia Adven­ture offi­cially opened to the pub­lic on Fri­day, June 15th and I was hon­ored to attend the Red Car­pet event & Grand Open­ing Cel­e­bra­tion the Wednes­day night prior. (Emily from Fam­ily and Life in Las Vegas and I)

The whole evening was a star-studded cel­e­bra­tion com­plete with lots of media, Walt Dis­ney Com­pany execs & imag­i­neers (the likes of Bob Iger “Walt Dis­ney Co. CEO”, Thomas Staggs “Chair­man of Walt Dis­ney Parks and Resorts”, Meg Crofton “Pres­i­dent of Walt Dis­ney Parks and Resorts Oper­a­tions”, and of course, the one & only John Las­seter “Chief Cre­ative Offi­cer at Walt Dis­ney and Pixar Ani­ma­tion Stu­dios”.), a slew of celebri­ties, and other invited guests.

It was a blast being on the red car­pet and I was so impressed that many of the celebri­ties gave the blog­ger cor­rals the same amount of attention/interview time as some of the more tra­di­tional media out­lets. Here are some of my favorite celeb shots that I was able to capture:

The red car­pet high­light for me was talk­ing to Larry the Cable Guy! I’m not only impressed with all the work he did for Mater’s voice in the park, but he is a HUGE Husker fan!! Given our shared love of that, I had to tell him. He then had to pull out his Huskers chain & show it off and we chat­ted about a few Nebraska things! So fun!

And, thanks to Jan­ice from 5 Min­utes for Mom, I now have a great photo of the two of us for a lit­tle extra spe­cial red car­pet mem­ory! Fol­low­ing the Red Car­pet Event, we all headed over to the Cars Land entrance for the Grand Open­ing Cel­e­bra­tion, where we were greeted by some live music from “Cars”.

The whole cer­e­mony fea­tured video of the Cars Land imag­i­neer­ing process (amaz­ing), speeches from Bob Iger, Tom Staggs, and John Las­seter, and intro­duc­tions of the Cars movie celebri­ties in atten­dance. This was fol­lowed by HUGE excite­ment & gen­eral rev­elry as the stage back­drop came down and Mater & Light­ning came dri­ving down Route 66 toward us. Tom Staggs & John Las­seter then attached jumper cables to a bat­tery, spark­ing fire­works, con­fetti, and all the neon lights of Radi­a­tor Springs! Total magic!

You can check out the whole cel­e­bra­tion below, thanks to Shelby from Orange County Mom Blog! I’m extra fond of her van­tage point as I can see my hands & cam­era go up a few times, as well as myself walk­ing into Cars Land at the end of the cer­e­mony. So fun!

Which celebrity would have been your favorite to see?

*Stay tuned for more Cars Land & Dis­ney info to come!!