Disneyland!

The Trip to Disneyland

We, being the oddly cheapskate people that we are (odd in that we won't pop for plane flights but we'll spend $300 on souvenir crap in a heartbeat), decided to rent a mini-van and drive down to Anaheim rather than fly. And to make it even cheaper (and of course, more fun), we split the cost with our friends Adrienne and Jim. So after picking up our stylin' Pontiac somethin-or-other boatvan, we packed up and headed out of town at approximately 11am on Friday. Josh drove, Jim had shotgun, Dri was in the middle tier of seats, and I was in the back with Eli. Eli obligingly fell asleep in the car for a couple of hours, until we decided to make a stop for lunch somewhere on 580, in the wilds of the far Southeast Bay, at a random Carl's Jr. we found along the side of the freeway. (Normally, I must point out, I never eat fast food, both on "Fast Food Nation" intellectual/moral principle and out of sheer snobby gourmand disgust. But a road trip is a road trip and convenience is convenience. And hot grease tastes ok, as long as you don't wait long enough for it to congeal--or for your brain to register what you just did to your poor digestive system.)

After "lunch" (or perhaps more accurately, our bodily refueling), we piled back into the car and kept drive-drive-driving. We'd brought our computers with DVD players and managed to cobble together some pillows and things to support the computer on Eli's lap so he could watch movies while we drove, which turned out to be a great thing that kept everyone happy. Not too much else to say about the road trip part of Friday except for the fact that we hit L.A. traffic right around rush hour (groaaaaan) and thus it took us a bit longer than anticipated to make it to our hotel (the Howard Johnson in Anaheim--actually I have nothing but praise for this fine establishment. It was great.) It was probably around 7:30pm or so when we made it there, and rather than checking in right away we took advantage of the fact that there was a Mimi's Cafe right across the street and stopped and had dinner. It was actually pretty good food--certainly the best we were to have on the whole trip. (Thank goodness that they had the "best macaroni and cheese in the world"--e.g. Kraft, cunningly disguised in a shallow casserole dish--to appease the mini-monster, who had kept up a tireless looping "are we there yet?" monologue for the last hour or so of the trip.) After dinner we drove back across the street, checked in, unloaded all our stuff, and pretty much spent the rest of our evening trying to convince Eli to go to sleep. I'd say we all finally got to sleep around 10:30 or 11.

The next morning, at 6:15am, the first words out of Eli's mouth were "Mama! It's morning time! Look, I'll show you!" (Upon which he jumped out of bed and went over to the curtains to let in the very beginnings of dawn.) "Now can we go to Disneyland?" It took another few hours and another meal at Mimi's before we actually made it to the entry to the park, but at around 9:30, we were there on Main Street in Disneyland, all of us excited and giddy. The weather, which we'd been warned would be overcast and rainy, was perfect, sunny and cool and just plain SoCal lovely. The park was totally uncrowded, and everything had been all prettied up for the holidays, so it felt very festive and fresh.

What was first? Why, the Haunted Mansion, of course! On the way there we passed through Frontierland and got to meet Woody (I think Eli was tripped out at just how BIG Woody was, but he seemed to take it in stride). But back to the Haunted Mansion: this ride was the pulsing heart of the reason why we'd put this crazy kamikaze trip to the Magic Kingdom together in the first place. See, the point was this: between Halloween and Christmas, the fine folks at Disneyland take what is normally a pretty spooky haunted house kind of a ride thing, and completely re-do it to be all "Nightmare Before Christmas" themed. (For those of you coming late to the show, that's been Eli's favorite movie for quite awhile now, although in recent months it has had some serious competition in his little fickle preschooler's heart. It's also one of Josh and my favorite movies--in fact it was our first "date movie" that we ever saw together, and thus will always have high nostalgia value for us.) You'll see some pictures of the outside of the ride in both Adrienne and my photos, but if you are truly interested in detail, here's a pretty good webpage that walks you through the transformation. Anyway, the ride itself totally blew us away with just how cool it was. Even Eli, who was a bit scared of the dark and spooky beginning parts the first time we went through, was enthusiastically on board for repeat viewings. In total, throughout the day, we went on this ride 5 times. It was really, really spectacular and well done. And fun! And the best part was, the first 3 times we went on it (that morning), there was pretty much no line. And even the second two times we went on it (later in the evening, all lit up and looking so cool), there were minimal lines. So that was a big bonus.

After the Haunted Mansion it was down the street to the Pirates of the Caribbean, also a huge hit with Eli (who has been loving pirates lately). I must admit that it was a bit difficult to explain what the pirates were doing with all those women ("Well, honey, the pirates are trying to sell those women as "brides". I mean, they want to see who wants to marry those women. Um, that they captured. And of course people aren't property, but...is this really a Disney ride? Oh well. Never mind. Just laugh at the fat lady like everyone else.") After that it was time for a shopping break at Le Bat en Rouge for Nightmare Before Xmas swag and Pieces of Eight for pirate booty (while the non-preggo grownups got to go on a quick Indiana Jones ride), and then we all met up again for lunch. (A brief digression here: the only negative things I have to say about Disneyland, or about our Disneyland experience, is that the quality of the food served there was uniformly awful. I mean, worse than fast food, worse than cafeteria food awful. I know they're trying to please all kinds of palates of all nationalities and all ages, but really. Have some standards, people. McDonald's could show you how to do it better. Sheesh.)

For lunch we headed over to Tomorrowland, so we could go eat at Club Buzz and see the Buzz Lightyear stage show. We actually did get to meet Buzz Lightyear (very exciting for Eli, who when faced with Buzz himself was, like many a 3 year old before him, suddenly stricken with shyness). That was the best part, from my perspective. The food at Club Buzz was truly horrendously bad (causing me to think fondly of my Carl's Jr. lunch the day before--really), and the stage show was groaningly cheesy. But Eli seemed to enjoy it (although he really wanted to go sit right up against the stage with a bunch of other kids, and we'd thoughtlessly gotten a table up on the edge of the restaurant from which you could actually *see* the show, and he was upset when we wouldn't let him go down there because once the show started, it had been roped off and was impossible to access).

After refueling, we headed through Sleeping Beauty's castle to Fantasyland, where we stopped to get Eli the requisite Mickey Mouse ears embroidered with his name (his idea, and he was thrilled). Then we waited in the longest line of the day at the Peter Pan ride. Eli was actually very patient. (Along with Eli's recent pirate obsession has come a Capt. Hook obsession, of course.) After that we split up with Adrienne and Jim, and went on the King Arthur carousel, then took Eli on It's A Small World (all dressed up for the holidays and very pretty). Eli liked both but wasn't particularly over-the-top about either. After that we headed over to Toon Town to meet up with Dri and Jim.

In Toon Town, Eli got to go a couple times to Goofy's Bounce House, and then we all took a break for some food. After food we waited in line to meet Goofy (all dressed up as Santa), and then went to Mickey's house and met Mickey. Strangely, I found meeting Mickey to be a somewhat emotionally moving experience. I guess there's something to be said for cultural icons, after all. And it was the way they moved us through Mickey's house, then had us wait inside his "movie studio" watching old cartoons while each person or family was ushered into the "back room" of the studio to meet the mouse himself, that really made it feel special. You really started to feel like you were going to meet a movie star. It was cool.

It was now somewhere in the neighborhood of 4pm, and we were all feeling a bit tuckered out. Eli wanted to go back to the pirate store and to the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, but rather than walk all the way back over to that corner of the park, we decided to take the train. This turned out to be kind of fun in and of itself, because we got to see more of Tomorrowland and also the ancient yet still fun Grand Canyon and Dinosaur displays. So we went to the pirate store, and got Eli his Captain Hook hat with the feather (he'd already gotten the sword, hook and eyepatch-turned-swordbelt earlier), and then took him on the Pirates of the Caribbean one last time. After that he wanted to go back to the Peter Pan ride dressed in his full Hook regalia, so back we went to the absurdly long line. After that ride we split up again--I took Eli on the Pinocchio ride while the other, non-preggo grownups got to go over to Thunder Mountain. Eli really wanted to go on the Pinocchio ride again, so I did that with him (while wistfully imagining how much fun Thunder Mountain must be), and then we headed back over to Frontierland (or was it Adventureland?) to meet up with the grownups and have some dinner.

We ate another bland, tasteless, far-too-expensive meal of pseudo-Mexican food, and then decided it was time for another spin through the Haunted Mansion. The whole thing looked even cooler at night, and although the line was somewhat longer now, it was still not bad, and we got a fastpass on our way in so that we could get off and ride it again immediately. It was around 8pm by the time we got on it for the second time, and Eli, who'd been going strong (and had been remarkably tantrum-free, overall, considering he'd had no nap and far too much stimulation) actually fell asleep in the middle of the ride, slumped up against Mama in the dark, comfy car (albeit in the middle of flashing lights and loud sounds). So after a near scare that we'd misplaced our stroller, we put the sleeping kid in it and wandered back to Main Street to find a comfy place to sit and watch the fireworks.

After the fireworks (which were cool but not outrageously impressive), we split up again. Josh and I went back to do all our end-of-the-day shopping for Nightmare Before Xmas crap (yes, that's pretty much all we bought at Disneyland, thanks for asking), then exhaustedly made our way out of the park. The only bummer note to the day was when we had to turn in the stroller we'd rented--in our attempts to comfortably carry the sleeping Eli, he woke up and was extremely grumpy that he couldn't stay in the stroller. He whined and complained and cried (and stayed awake) all the way back to the hotel, but then promptly fell asleep when we put him in the bed (phew). We were pretty damn exhausted ourselves at this point, so we followed suit.

Not too much to say about the roadtrip back, except that it was long, but with less traffic. We stopped off in Dublin for a pee break, and to our delight found there was a Mimi's cafe at the bottom of the offramp, so of course that's where we had dinner. We got home around 8:30pm or so (Eli had fallen asleep in the car after dinner, as expected), and that, my friends, was the end of our magical adventure. Awesome!