July 22, 2003
The Happiest Place On Earth
Today marked my return to the Happiest Place on Earth ® after a FIFTEEN year hiatus. That's right - I hadn't been to Disneyland in over a decade! And I live in Southern California! I know what you're all thinking by now - what in the hell is wrong with this guy! I'm not going to even try to justify myself. Let's just put it past us and read forth about what happened.
I woke up super early (like 6:30am) because I was meeting the rest of the folks from CalSO at 8am at Disneyland so that we could completely utilize our money. That didn't happen thanks mostly in part to stupid construction all over the place, but hey, we were only about 30 minutes of schedule. The ticket cost $47!!! What the hell is this!? And not even a damn Southern California discount! Even Disneyland isn't worth 50 bucks. I'm sorry. Whatever - we bit the bullet.
After entering, the realization slowly came to me that I had no idea where anything was. This place was enormous! In a hurry to avoid the marching armies of rugrats, we ran to get to rides. The first few were fun - I can't even remember what they were now. At lunch, we ate at this one horrible place. The food was exorbitantly priced and to top things off, the pizza gave me the worst stomach ache. The pain was unbearable. All those who ate the pizza experienced similar pain. To tell you the truth, I would rather have paid someone $8 to punch me in the stomach than to have my lunch do it, but that's just me.
Still aching from the pizza, we were off again, only stopping to take pictures at The Spots. Small World was a lot shorter than I remembered and even more horribly offensive than I could ever have comprehended. I think however that my favorite ride of the day would have to be Pirates of the Caribbean because it looked pretty realistic! The rest were all right, but Pirates was actually pretty good, even after 15 years.
At dinner, the whole group was a total mess about what to do, but then me and Tony finally took the initiative and said that we were going to eat in the park, but the rest of the people were welcome to go to other places if they wanted to. This solid display of leadership was not taken well by the rest of the group - I really have no idea why. I had to take off after dinner, but at this point, I was so exhausted, I wasn't too sad. Needless to say, I got hopelessly lost amongst small children trying to find the parking lot, but about a half an hour later, I did get to the lot and was able to go home.
In writing some final thoughts about my experience today, I would have to say that Disneyland was very similar to what I remembered it from 1988 (when I last went at the age of 5). Going there with an "adult" perspective was a very weird experience - I had a great time, but I think that was more in part due to the company rather than the actual venue. The way I see it - Disneyland has cool rides if you're seeing them for the first time, but they aren't rollercoasters and so there is no thrill once you've already seen everything. I don't foresee myself returning to the Magical Kingdom anytime soon. Maybe another 15 years will pass - who knows, maybe the next time I decide to go will be when my kids are old enough to enjoy it...