Disneyland is the first amusement park I ever went to. At least I think it is. At the very least, it's the first amusement park that I remember going to. I went there first when I was seven, and again when I was eleven. Those trips are probably blog posts in themselves, although I'm sure in the dark recesses of my mind one trip has bled into the other, so I might be a little soft and loose with the facts.
I was there one more time, when I was 20. I was in college, and we went to California for the University of Arizona – UCLA football game. It wasn't a great weekend – UofA lost the game – but a couple of us went out on the town, as it were. We went to Disneyland and had a great time. That was 23 years ago.
This trip was totally different than any other one. This one I got to experience through the eyes of my children. Their fascination, awe, and wonder was just amazing to watch. I'm not really sure I can do it justice in words, but I'll try a tour through the park to see what happens.
Main Street USA
Walking in to Main Street USA is like walking into another world, another time. The most amazing thing about this area of the park was the characters. (I mean the Disney characters, not the other visitors.) Each day when we arrived, there were at least three characters in the town square signing autographs, posing for pictures, greeting people. It was cool. Beenie got an autograph book and started a collection. Munchkin was so excited for some of the characters that I thought her head was going to blow off. Stewie surprised me with that excited look on his face, but holding it together until he got to the character, then giving them a big hug. Keke was 9-year-old cool, until afterward when she was very excited in her retelling of the encounter. Even Ellen was excited as she got to meet Cruella DeVille! (I later had that excitement when I got to meet Sully from Monsters, Inc. - another park, another day, another post.)
Main Street hasn't changed much that I noticed in the years since I've been there. Shopping, mostly, and the arcade with the machine where you grab the two metal poles and see how much electrical current you can withstand. I forgot to go back and do it this trip, but 23 years ago I maxed it out. Of course, my left arm twitched the rest of the day. Ahh, good times!
We found the Magic Shop, which was in, or at, the castle when I was little. Beenie spent time chatting with the clerk and checking out the card tricks. He ended up buying a deck of cards that glow in the dark, and have pictures from the Haunted House on them. That night when we got to the hotel, he discovered that the 2 of clubs was missing from the deck. I went back to the shop to return them and told the clerk that they must truly be magical, as they are missing a card. She looked at me like I was an idiot. But, she exchanged the deck, and that was the goal.
We seemed to have pretty good (or bad) timing, in that almost every time we tried to go down Main Street, there was a parade going on. It was called “Celebrate – A Street Party.” Designed to celebrate all the reasons people were visiting (“First Time!” “Birthday!” “Colonoscopy! Yay!! Good for you!!”), it is a parade with singing, dancing, and characters, and these confetti canons that shot Mickey-head shaped pieces of paper all over the place. Thanks to Munchkin, I have a whole backpack pocket full of them (inexplicably crumpled up, though). We studiously avoided the parade until the day that Ellen took Beenie on the Matterhorn and I took the rest of the kids to It's a Small World. We couldn't get there because of the parade so we watched the parade. The kids did really enjoy it, though.
