The Vacation Part 2: Disneyland

According to my wife, a visit to Disneyland is every American's birthright. Now, I don't recall anything about Disneyland being in the Constitution, so I'm not so sure it's actually a RIGHT. I can say that it's one place everyone should go to at least once, no matter how old you are. Unless, of course, you can't check your adulthood at the door. That's the one big rule for Disneyland, you check your coolness at the door. In fact there's a sign right past the gate that says pretty much that exact same thing. And you know what? Most people follow that simple rule. I can't tell you how many people I saw wandering the park, big guys with tattoos and NASCAR t-shirts, goth girls with multiple piercings, people from all over the planet, all wearing Mickey ears or Jack Sparrow hair. Disneyland SO rocks!

First thing that happens to us, as we hit the park, I lose my wife to a dog. We stopped at City Hall (which is where guest services is housed) to pick up a little device that would close caption the rides. We're crossing the center of the little plaza at the end of Main Street, looking at our maps trying to figure out where to go first when suddenly I hear, "OH MY GOD!" and VOOM! My wife is gone. I didn't even see where she'd rushed off to at first but after a cursory scan of the area it was pretty obvious. Yes, that's right, Pluto was making the rounds and she dropped everything to go get a picture. I caught up to her just as she was getting to the front of the crowd he had drawn.

What CC REALLY wanted to see, more than anything else, was the Haunted Mansion. We'd seen it on TV on one of the travel shows. They did a special about all the stuff that goes on behind the scenes and the special effects were really cool. Me, I wanted to take things a little slow, work our way up Main Street, look in the shops, that sort of thing, but it got pretty obvious pretty early that CC wanted to do the Haunted Mansion NOW :-) We plotted the fastest way to get there and off we went.

Now, the whole park is done up for Halloween and that means a lot of the rides are also done up for Halloween. The Haunted Mansion, for example, had been redone in a Nightmare Before Christmas theme. This made things kinda funny because instead of being dressed up as a haunted mansion, it's dressed up in a sort of mixed up Christmas-Halloween. All the characters from the movie were there, of course, and they even re-recorded the audio to match (which made the captions pretty useless but also interesting in that I sort of got both versions).

From there, since we were in the general area, we hit the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, which was pretty cool. They've redone that one a little bit as well to match the movie. They've put in several animatronic Johnny Depps and they've got a pretty cool Davey Jones in there projected onto a wall of fog that you pass through. WAY cool ride.

Now, one joke that we kept making, and probably shouldn't was the New Orleans joke. See, they have one area set up like New Orleans. That's where Pirates and the Haunted Mansion are, along with lots of little shops and places to eat. We kept joking that at certain times of the day, the protective dikes that hold the water in the main pool will break to give you that REALLY authentic New Orleans experience. Yes, I know, bad taste but we couldn't help it. Besides, we didn't say it loud enough for anyone to HEAR us :-)

The rest of our first day at Disneyland was a mix of character photo shoots and CC on roller coasters. Me, I don't go on them anymore because after the surgery to correct my hearing, I'm WAY more prone to motion sickness and vertigo from the more extreme rides. But that didn't keep me from filming CC while she went on them. She's got the video on her hard drive and will post it later, I'm sure.

Towards the end of day 1, we made our way over to Tomorrow land just in time to catch something on the schedule called Jedi Training Academy. Now, I was a bit skeptical at first, but I thought it might be kinda fun to see what they do. Little did I know that it would turn out to be a MAJOR highlight of our day.

CC has the video on her site so make sure you go over there and check it out. There's a little stage there and the kids all gather around that. The music comes up and the Jedi come out. They ask for volunteers and you should SEE the kids go nuts, jumping up and down for this one. The kids that get picked come forward and are given a Jedi robe and training light saber to use then they're taught a series of moves as part of their Jedi training. At that point stormtroopers come in! Then Darth Vader! Then Darth Maul! Ok now we've got a problem. Jedi to the rescue!

The kids line up and take turns going through their newly learned Jedi moves, fighting either Darth Vader or Darth Maul depending on where they're lined up. Oh it's a REAL hoot. Imagine, you've got your 3 foot tall kid holding a little plastic light saber standing in front of 6 foot something Darth Vader. All the while the head Jedi is making some REALLY funny remarks. We know these are funny because at one point he uses the Jedi Mind Trick to tell us that we'll find all his jokes funny.

Let me tell you, if I was still a kid, I'd be right down there in front jumping up and down with the rest of them. That looked like SO much fun. And, in the end, you get a little certificate saying you've been to the Jedi Training Academy! How cool is THAT!

At that point, CC and I were both dragging a bit. We went through an exhibit on high tech things that either will be coming out or are already out. They had all sorts of little displays, like one where you stand on a scale and it tells you how much you'd weigh on every planet in the solar system. That was pretty cool. That's where we got the shots of us in the space suits. Everyone in front of us was doing it all BORING so we spiced things up a bit. Here's me playing the role of the guy who makes the really awesome discovery right before he gets ripped apart by aliens or blown up in an explosion or something. You know this guy. In the movie he's usually the guy who fixes everything and has his hat on backwards.

We wandered around the shops for the rest of the day and watched the parade that night. Then we joined the throngs of people heading for the parking garage. There's WAY too much to do at Disney to cover the whole park in just one day, which is why we set aside TWO days for our visit :-)