The Disneyland Post

I will leave it to you all to debate the wily moods and facial expressions of my dear husband, but I will add a little interesting factoid that the still photo of Wes at Small World can’t quite capture: he was doing a little bendy-knee oom-pah-pah dance along with the music when I took that. Really. I shot video but you can’t quite tell what he’s doing and he sticks his tongue out at me when he realizes I am filming so it’s not so good. But really. There was a lot of dancing by Wes at Disneyland. A lot.

When we checked into the Disneyland Hotel, I was delighted to discover that we had Early Entry, giving hotel guests an hour to play in Tomorrowland and Fantasyland before the rest of the hoards were admitted. This is useful at any time of year, but given that we were visiting during THE busiest week of the entire year, it was really good. We unfortunately thought that the monorail line was a little lengthy and decided to walk it, which led to a giant line at the main gate and 15 minutes of our Early Entry hour wasted. I was pretty mad.

Something happened, though, that changed my ire into gladness, the happiest I have ever been at any Disney park. Ever. We walked up to Space Mountain, the best ride in the park without a doubt, and it said TEST where there’s usually an estimate of the length of the wait time. They weren’t letting anyone in yet, even though we were 15 minutes late, because they were still testing – it was revamped over the summer so they must have lengthier tests to run lately. Anyway, we were just going to walk up and ask the "Cast Member" (person who works there) what time they would be opening. But just as I opened my mouth to ask, the woman said, "OK! We’re open!" And they walked us back in a group to be among the first 10 or so people on Space Mountain for the day. It was like winning the fricking Miss America pageant. I am not sure I have ever smiled so much. Here is a photo of all the people who were ahead of us in line.

The new Space Mountain is absolutely thrilling. It is spectacular and fast and has a thrilling soundtrack and the visuals are excellent and it’s so fun that I scream the entire time. Sustained Screaming, Z called it later. Amazing.

Melissa had shared an excellent tip we got from RideMax (a service that gives you an EXACT timetable about which rides to use – great for use during the morning and at a few other times, but not great if you ONLY intend to tour at night like M and Z did) – you can get a FastPass (a ticket for a ride that lets you come back hours later and get on the ride within 10 minutes or so rather than waiting in line) and use it absolutely any time – they give you a one hour window but they don’t actually care when you use it as long as it is after the starting time. Sooooo… Wes and I developed an absolutely BRILLIANT scheme to insure that Melissa and Zach would get to experience Space Mountain. We got two FastPasses for ourselves – they were for 9:40 am but we didn’t use them. We then waited until the FastPass return time was about 9 pm and got two more for M and Z. So then when they were with us that night, we all got to go on together with a very minimal wait. But I digress.

Wes and I followed the RideMax schedule for a few rides – it works well about 60-75% of the time and sometimes knows brilliant things like what time they will add a second train for Big Thunder, thereby making a line that claims to be 45 minutes into a 20 minute one. Anyway, we rode some things and wandered a bit. We went on Small World, as you know, which was decorated for Christmas much to Wes’ dismay. He could write his own blog entirely on the wrongness of adding green and red lights to the final, all-important, everybody-is-friends scene. And I’d be willing to be a guest rider for that blog on the topic of how in Disneyland, ALL countries celebrate Christmas and there’s no such thing as Hanukah or Kwanzaa or Ramadan or Diwali or any other culture’s winter-ish holidays. The ride would truly be fabulous if they included such things. Maybe they will eventually. In any case, here were the New Years-ish French can-can girls – they were wearing masks and holding a string of lights and you can see the Bonne Annee sign above them:

Also for Christmas, they turn a corner of the park into Santa’s Reindeer land or somesuch shit. We love animals (no, really?) so we spent some time watching these two – one who ceaselessly rubbed his neck on the trough and one who continuously licked the fence.

By this time, it was noon and the park had reached crowded proportions the likes of which I have never seen. It was wholly unpleasant and we retreated to the incredibly expensive but oh-so-worth-it-when-you-want-a-quick-escape Disneyland Hotel for a jacuzzi.

Then Z and M joined us and we headed to the park to ride Pirates of the Caribbean before dinner. We were shocked – SHOCKED – to find that we were all 3 wearing red shirts and olive over-shirts and jeans. The red thing is particularly odd since just weeks ago we were the bridesmaids in Asia’s wedding where the color was also red. This is Wes’ favorite bridesmaid picture, because Melissa is showing some skin.

Melissa made me take a picture of this pirate’s butt:

Then we went to dinner at what is supposedly the fanciest/best restaurant in Disneyland, Napa Rose. It was just fair food-wise and totally ridiculous price-wise – a total bust of a time and I couldn’t sleep for thinking about it the rest of the trip. My apologies once again because I hate when Disney things don’t go just right and we shouldn’t have gone there and I still feel dumb.

After dinner we headed back to the park and rode Buzz Lightyear’s Astro Blasters while waiting for our time to get on Space Mountain. It is a fun ride because it is interactive and you get to shoot things and get points. Zach took it very seriously.

And then it was time for our big Space Mountain ride. I was scared our scheme wouldn’t work, so had a whole story prepared for why Wes and I were using FastPasses from 9:40 am at 9 pm. The man stopped us and told us we would have to wait because he thought it said 9:40 pm. I said one word, the beginning of my practiced explanation, and he noticed the AM and said, "Oh. AM. Go on." And that was that. We had a brief wait, during which Wes expressed his jealousy of how many pictures I had been taking of Zach rather than him. He had a small baby-self moment, "Take pictures of ME ME ME!"

And then we rode. Oh, how we rode. Z later described it as a 3 minute orgasm. Here is a photo of the photo they take when you are on the ride – they do something techno-ish to block you from taking this sort of thing, but still you get the gist:

And here is an artsy picture of how ridiculously happy Z and Wes were after the ride:

Nothing else we did compared (Z said it was worth the entire admission price), but worth mentioning are Wes’ endless Do-Si-Do-ing during our 5 minute wait for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad (hard to tell what he is doing but Melissa’s arm position helps verify the square-dancing nature of his movement):

and Melissa’s triumphant, therapeutic return to Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, an experience which permanently scarred her when she was 3 years old. It’s good to confront your demons:

A few additional photos can be found here at my photo album (scroll to bottom). LA and New Year’s posts to follow.