Disney Magic, love bites

California Dreaming: Los Angeles (Part 2 – Finale)

Leg 5: The happiest place in the world

The castle
The castle

I have to devote a whole post to Disneyland because it is hands down the single happiest place in the world. It’s an insane amount of happy thoughts packed into 85 acres. There’s fairy dust in the air that makes all your troubles disappear and turns kids into tiny little balls of sunshine (even the bratty ones). It’s impossible to feel depressed in Disneyland. Even the Grinch would have turned into Tinkerbell if he had the sense to go there. Only in Disneyland, you could be a kid and no one would judge you.

I originally wanted to get a 5-day pass but the husband threatened to leave me there alone so we compromised and decided to go for 3 days instead. It was 3 days of non-stop action. I dragged his ass out of bed at 5.30 every morning just so that we could be at the gates by 6.30 when the doors opened. And I refused to leave till they chased us out at close to midnight. I’m like a hardcore Disneyland fanatic.

If there’s one bad thing about the place, it’s the crowds, which is legendary. The average waiting time for popular rides like Space Mountain and Indiana Jones was about 2 hours, so you either had to forego the experience or spend up to 12 hours just waiting in line. But not us, because before we left, I spent hours developing a genius of a masterpiece – Daphne’s Disneyland Touring Plan. I had the day divided into 15 minute segments and it required massive amounts of discipline and a lot of running. The folks who walk in Disneyland are the queuers and the smart ones, well, they have to sprint from one end of the park to the other. But the result was that we never spent more than 15 minutes in the queue. Ever.

Seriously, if you’re planning to head down, just drop me a mail and I’ll send it to you. You will be eternally grateful to me, and you can also come clean my house from time to time after that.

I kept these 2 Disney dollars from my trip in 1998
I kept these 2 Disney dollars from my trip in 1998
Our stash of fastpasses
Our stash of fastpasses

Besides checking out the rides, I was also on a mission to collect autographs and photos of all the characters I could find, which is way harder than it sounds. First, there are tons of crazy kids thronging them all the time, and they don’t have a fixed schedule of appearance. So they can just pop up anytime and then suddenly disappear. Since I was way smarter than all the pesky kids, I bribed the staff to give me their schedules for the day so I could beat them all to it. Actually I had to grovel and offer some special services for it, but hey, whatever it takes baby.

Eeyore
Eeyore
Pooh
Pooh
Pluto
Pluto
Chip or Dale
Chip or Dale (I could never tell)
Goofy
Goofy
Minnie
Minnie
Mr Incredible & Frozone
Mr Incredible & Frozone
Sully
Sully

But I think it’s karma. After spending 3 days shoving babies out of the way to collect autographs, I actually lost the autograph book, which was far more upsetting for me than when I lost my wedding band in Tahoe. (see, I didn’t even bother to mention it in the Tahoe post, but I did. I lost it up on Adventure Peak) At least I still got the pictures to show for it.

So that’s it. All 3 weeks of our honeymoon. The best 3 weeks of my life. When it was time to drive back to LAX, I was turned to the husband all Arnie style and said “I’ll be back”.

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7 Comments

  • Reply What’s better than bringing home the bacon? Being home with the bacon. March 26, 2010 at 12:11 pm

    […] mind, you’ll always be thinking about how it’s going to suck after. That’s why the last three days of our honeymoon was spent in Disneyland so we wouldn’t have time to sit around and […]

  • Reply Theme park heaven August 27, 2010 at 9:47 pm

    […] Disneyland by any means, but definitely […]

  • Reply Even better than the real thing | MOTHER, INC. September 29, 2010 at 3:07 pm

    […] anyway, we were supposed to take a second honeymoon to California for another dose of Disneyland magic before having settling down and having kids but my son got impatient and came a year and a half […]

  • Reply Maybe Baby Blog » Even better than the real thing. January 10, 2011 at 4:10 pm

    […] anyway, we were supposed to take a second honeymoon to California for another dose of Disneyland magic before having settling down and having kids but my son got impatient and came a year and a half […]

  • Reply I AM GOING TO WALT DISNEY WORLD FLORIDA!!! | MOTHER, INC. February 21, 2011 at 10:47 pm

    […] at Disney Resort Hotel, passes to Disney World and meals are fully sponsored by Disney. I didn’t think I could love Disney any more than I already do, but OMG YES I […]

  • Reply Hong Kong Disneyland – Part the First — MOTHER, INC. March 19, 2012 at 10:03 pm

    […] the years, I’ve been to Walt Disney World in Florida, Disneyland in Tokyo, and back to Disneyland Anaheim. And every single time, I’ve felt the magic standing at that same spot along Main […]

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