11:05 p.m. - 2005-04-23
Disneyland. At Length.
So. Disneyland. It's now almost a month since we left, which is almost impossible to believe. It's hard, this post-vacation blues. Because while I have a ton of stuff to look forward to in the next few months (uh, duh), they all require more work and organization than I really feel like doing. Disneyland was just...easy. Sure, I did a crapload of organizing before we went, but once we got there, it wasn't organizing. It was just fun.
We were there during one of the busiest times of year: Easter. This was not my first choice for when to go, but the Raisin works in a school and doesn't have any other vacation time aside from school vacations, so we went over spring break. For the average Disneyland fan, that would mean endless lineups and exhaustion pretty much all the time. Fortunately, I am a super-anal pre-planning Disneyland fan, and thus we managed to avoid waiting in a single line for more than half an hour the entire time we were there.
For those of you unfamiliar with Disneyland, that probably doesn't seem very impressive. After all, most places waiting half an hour for a ride would be totally ridiculous. But Disneyland is sort of this weird vortex where you cease to have any concept of what a reasonable time to wait for a ride is or what a reasonable amount of money to spend on things is. You happily wait in lineups for pretty much anything (except bathrooms! Disney gets a lot of kudos from me for having a billion bathrooms - we didn't wait in line to pee even once the whole time we were there. We only found one lineup in a bathroom the entire time, and that was immediately after getting out of a show in a theatre that holds 1800 people. We just went to the next bathroom a few hundred metres away. Problem solved.), and you fork out obscene amounts of money for food/drink/souvenirs without really thinking about it. I think part of the problem with that is the American money factor.
I really dislike American money. Part of my dislike stems from the fact that it's just plain ugly compared to Canada's colourful and decorative bills, featuring animals and pretty vistas and the like. But the main problem with the ugliness is it's all ugly in the exact same colour. So when I go wading through the gigantic wad of bills (more on that in a second), I can't visually identify a five, or a twenty, or whatever. It's really annoying. I didn't haul my (large) wallet around with me, so I just had my bills stuffed into a pouch in my trusty messenger bag. And when you're paying for things while constantly on the move and with a huge line of people behind you, it's not really in your best interest to stop and carefully rearrange your bills after each transaction. Thus, they got stuffed willy-nilly into my bag and were extremely annoying.
But that wouldn't be so bad if there weren't so freaking MANY of them! I'd pull out this wad of cash and be like, woo! I'm rich! And it would be, like, seventeen dollars in ones. That is not rich. In Disneyland, that's like one overpriced sandwich and a drink or two. It's very unsatisfying when your bills give that impressive air but turn out to be virtually worthless. Get with the times, America! Get some coins with some value! A pocketful of coins are pretty much useless (especially in overpriced Disneyland), so we both ended up with a ton of leftover American change. Boo.
Uh, ok. Where was I?
Right! The lines. So. Over spring break, Disneyland is a total madhouse. They compensate somewhat by having park hours from 8am to midnight every single day, and they have lots of shows running and stuff to sort of distract the crowds, but it was still totally packed. From about noon until about 9pm, you had to wade through hoards of people to get anywhere.
But! The key part of that sentence is "noon." From 8am to noon, the park was actually quite reasonable. For those who know me, my cheerful willingness to haul out of bed is totally out of character. But we were at the park by 8 every single morning with the exception of our first day, Saturday. Upon which delightfully sunny morning, we arrived at the gates at 6:50. Yes, that's AM.
We had early entry for that first morning, and it was worth every single yawn for the rest of the morning. We sensibly chose to use our early entry on that first day because we knew we'd be the least tired (very wise decision) and the most hyper. Between 7am (when we got into the park) and 10 or so, we probably went on ten rides. We didn't wait in line for more than ten minutes, and we packed in a ton of really fun rides. We used as many of the tricks as we possibly could - fast passes, single rider lines - and mostly were just willing to bust ass running all over the park. It's amazing how much time the willingness to walk can save you. Sure, walking back and forth across the park takes time too, but I'd rather that than spending my time waiting in line.
By the time we got to Splash Mountain, the wait was two and a half hours. That is 150 minutes. For one ten minute ride. Sure, it's a really fun ride, but...two and a half hours. We went on ten rides in that amount of time! We took the single rider line and ended up two logs apart after a ten minute wait.
Man, that ride is fun. My biggest concern about this trip was that things wouldn't possibly be able to live up to the last trip, which was unprecedented awesomeness. I didn't need to worry. First of all, I'd forgotten a lot of the best parts of the rides, and most of them managed to take me by surprise. Secondly, last time we went, I was broke and we were totally on a shoestring. This time, I had quite a bit of money saved up and I had a good job to come back to. So I didn't need to freak out about every penny I spent. This, of course, meant I spent a crapload of money, but it also meant we got to go and see the Lion King stage show, which was incredible, and eat in the nicer restaurants, and do fun little things that just cost a bit extra. It was so nice.
And, of course, I'm pretty much guaranteed to have a good time when I hang out with the Raisin. Even when we were tired and snippy at the end of the day, it never took much to cheer us up an obscene amount. It might have been a favourite song on the piped in music, or the sighting of a cute little kid in a costume (something we are both totally unable to resist), or the fireworks kicking off, or a particularly fun ride for the millionth time, but there was no shortage of things to make a bad mood disappear in a way that's just impossible in the real world.
We went on pretty much all our favourites at least three times, carefully planning our fast passes and timing so we never waited in long lines. Splash Mountain is one of my favourites anyway, but it's extra satisfying to wait for ten minutes when you know the regular line is two and a half hours. Tower of Terror was totally killing us with the anticipation, but it was the perfect combination of scream-inducing freakouts and hysterical laughter. (Although we did only go on that one twice, and now I'm regretting not going on it at night, because it would have been really cool to get that view of the parks at night. Oh well. Hindsight!) We must have gone on Big Thunder at LEAST a dozen times, and I think it was more than that. The number one cheer-me-upper was Soarin' Over California, a ride that is almost impossible to describe but leaves me with a big stupid grin on my face for at least half an hour afterwards. Grizzly River Run is way more fun that I remember it being, and it was also the ride where we always seemed to end up with a ton of other Canadians, all of whom were extremely friendly. Fantasmic, the show we've been wanting to see since the day we became friends, pretty much, was totally worth the wait, and the fireworks that we weren't supposed to have capped off every evening perfectly.
The weather was beautiful, which also helped, and the extra long hours meant we got to spend lots of time in the park every day even with going back to our hotel for a few hours every afternoon. (That nap is a lifesaver, let me tell you.) We also got to be there in the dark a lot more than last time, which is very cool and makes some rides particularly fun. But most of all, it was spending six days straight with the Raisin, laughing and joking and goofing around but still spending hours dissecting our lives and discussing our futures. We moved from deep serious life discussions to hysterical giggling without even blinking, and it was so incredibly awesome to get to spend all that time with her having so much freaking fun pretty much constantly.
In short (or, rather, judging by the length of this entry, in long!), it was perfect. It pretty much could not have gone better. It was exactly what I needed at the perfect time for both of us, and it is a trip we will not soon forget.
I have a million pictures up online, so if you're fanatical enough to want to see them, check out over here for most of them. (I put them online so the Raisin could see them until I make her a CD. If you're an obsessive picture taker, I highly recommend taking a digital camera and a laptop on vacation. We never had to worry about running out of space.) But here's one of my favourites. The great thing about photos in Disneyland is that when you're in pretty much a constant good mood, your pictures turn out really well because you're almost always genuinely smiling.
I'll have to remember that for the wedding. Think it's too late to move it to Disneyland?
(Thanks to flickr for the awesome photo source, by the way.)
