LA, Day Three

Holy cow, has Disneyland gotten expensive! I mean, it was always expensive, but I'm pretty sure that their prices have gone up faster than inflation. And, that's just the tickets for one park...not one of those Park Hopper deals where you can go back and forth with California Adventure.

But, with the number of classmates of Marty and Casey that vacation every winter in Florida at Disney World, there really wasn't a choice about whether or not we were going.

Sticker shock aside, I've been to Disneyland plenty of times with a variety of people but the only times I've been there with my own child was when Marty was essentially a baby. This time the kids knew what was going on.

Oddly, I was expecting them to be a little more excited when we first got there, but maybe you go into a kind of shock that you're actually at someplace like that the first time. I had picked a Tuesday, because I thought it might be less crowded...but it was still plenty of people.

I forced my family into doing my traditional circle, meaning that you start with Adventureland and then you make your way around from there. The main flaw in my plan was that even though the park had only been open for a half-hour when we got there, Indiana Jones was already down. I've gone on Indiana Jones as the first ride, I'm pretty sure ever since it opened, but fate's fickle finger pushed me over to the Jungle Cruise instead. (Indy did reopen, and we did get to use our Fast Pass for it, so I guess all's well that ends well.)

Marty and Casey both really liked two of the rides that I didn't know how they would take -- Pirates of the Carribean and the Haunted Mansion. They're not really fans of the Pirates movies...and we won't even talk about the Eddie Murphy HM film. Maybe it was just the cruising around looking at animatrons, but they thought both of them were cool.

Less shocking was how much they enjoyed Splash Mountain. It is August after all.

And, also in grand Disneyland tradition, Amy, Marty and Casey got stuck on a ride in Mickey's Toon Town. They finally got to walk out after about 15 minutes of sitting in Roger Rabbit's Car Toon Spin.

Also in keeping with tradition, Casey was a little freaked out about meeting Mickey Mouse. You have to wait in line, and he kept trying to convince me that we should leave and go do something else (Marty was busy watching the cartoons they were showing). Someday, I'm sure that he'll be happy that I made him meet the mouse...and, luckily, he didn't have the same reaction to Goofy.

In all the times that I've been to Disneyland, I've never stayed in Anaheim...in large part because that would've been silly. However, since we were doing it this time, we decided to go over to the hotel for part of the afternoon to rest. Turns out that's a really good idea.

I went to get fast food for us -- which cost about 1/10th what it would've been in the park -- and had a guy notice my USFL Michigan Panthers T-shirt. He struck up a conversation, mentioning that he used to go to the LA Express's games. I didn't really ask, but I'm pretty sure the guy was from the front office of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim since it was game day and we were about a half-block from the park.

We had to get back to the park in time for our Fast Pass to Space Mountain. Man, do I still love me some Space Mountain. I'm not really a "ride" guy, but I love that one. I wasn't sure how the boys would take it...I have to remind myself that they are still kind of young...but they both got it. Roller coaster in the dark...coolness.

Everyone else would've been happy to leave not long after that, but with what those freakin' tickets cost I insisted that we stay for the fireworks. We also watched the Fantasmic! water show, which I had never actually stopped to watch before. Just like a parade, though, the boys had trouble seeing, so there was a lot of jostling around to try to get them into position to see the action. That's when everyone's best instincts come out as every parent tries to shove their kid someplace with a decent view. It always reminds me of that scene at the end of "Animal House" at the homecoming parade where the father asks one of the Deltas if his son can stand in front of them, and the the Delta says simply, "No."

Yet again, by the time the boys got to the hotel room they were already out cold. If I could figure out a way to get them to walk 5-10 miles during a school day, apparently bed time during the rest of the year wouldn't be such an issue.