Halloween at Disneyland

So here we are for this Halloween! We're going with a decidedly Mario World theme, with Joshua playing Mario, Marcus playing Luigi, Brandi as Princess Daisy, and myself as Waluigi (in PURPLE no less). We should be appropriately frightening, and are looking forward to it. The kiddos are only going be at the age where they enjoy this for a few short years, so we're going to make the most of it while we can.

So, we went to Disneyland recently. It was the boys first trip there. My mother-in-law won a trip from some contest at her work, and was EXTREMELY gracious to share it with us. She joined us there for the whole 5 days, and we even got to see Brandi's brother and his wife for a day as well. THANK YOU GRANDMA!! It was a great trip! And I've got a few musings and observations to share about it.

Observation #1 - Generation Gap.

Brandi and I really enjoyed everything Disneyland had to offer. The rides were great (especially with the new 'fast-pass' option), the shops were great, the food was great (way expensive, so we didn't indulge more than twice and had a TON of food essentially trucked in with grandma, enough to have sustained a small army. Thank you Arnie!). But the kids were less than impressed. They kinda enjoyed the rides, and kinda enjoyed the characters, and kinda enjoyed looking at the castles and stuff. But they seemed just as happy to go swimming in the hotel pool or play video game (more on this later), or play card and board games with Grandma in the hotel. This was fine for Brandi and I, as we got to go back to the theme park after dumping the kiddos in Grandma's lap and have a ball. But I can't help but think that unless Disney makes some fundamental changes, Generation X will be the last to fully enjoy the park. Now what those changes should be . .. . .. . is a whole different blog posting, and too much work. They obviously DO realize this though, and have been making major modifications to the California Adventures theme-park right next door, as we all some changes in Magic Kingdom. For example, the first day we were there, the Haunted house and Space Mountain were closed. They were being changed into more Halloweenish themed rides based on The Nightmare Before Christmas and Ghost Galaxy. They were really quite different. Brandi and I had never even heard of these changes before, and really enjoyed them.

Observation #2 - My kids are Yin and Yang

This will come as a surprise to no-one, but my sons are like polar opposites of each other. Joshua has absolutely no sense of self-preservation what-so-ever (his first word was 'uh-oh', and apparently this was our first clue), and Marcus has all of the nerves and pain threshold of a kumquat. This could not have been more apparent than on the Space Mountain (or Ghost Galaxy as it was currently), when as soon as the ride exited the final tunnel, Marcus turned to me and said, "I am never going on that again." And he was right. His 5 year old little brother however enjoyed the ride 3 more times. In fact, the ONLY time we got Joshua to scream was on the big drop at the end of Splash Mountain. He nearly fell asleep on the Matterhorn, and that was at 9 o'clock in the morning. Hilarious.

Observation #3 - Repressed Memories pick the weirdest times to surface

This portion is not for the faint of heart, so brace yourself if you read further.

When I was around 10 years old, I made my first trip to Disneyland with a bowling team. I don't remember a lot from this period of my life, but I can recall some visuals from this trip with stark clarity. I remember the van we road in was white. I remember there was an anniversary celebration going on at the park of some sort (25th or 30th I think), and they were giving away some prizes or hats or something to every 30th person through the turnstiles or something. And that was about all I remembered. . . . . until . . . .

The kids really enjoyed the video games, and the arcade at the hotel, while nice, paled in comparison to the arcade just outside of Space Mountain. They really didn't care of course, but I figured if we were that close, and the Monorail was that close, and grandma was providing the tokens anyway (THANK YOU GRANDMA!!), why not get the best bang for our buck? So I'm sitting there in the arcade, and I have a stunning recollection:

For my first trip to Disneyland when I was 10 or so, I had saved up 22 dollars to spend on the trip. This was around 1983, so 22 bucks was nothing to sneeze at, whereas now that might get you a hot-dog. No bun, just the dog. ANYWAYS, I spend my first 5 dollars on a wallet to keep my remaining cash in. It was a red and white striped wallet with a picture of Mickey Mouses' face right on the opening flap. It looked GREAT. I put my remaining 17 buck in there and went about my business.

But I was pickpocketed. Someone lifted my wallet from my back pocket. Now keep in mind I grew up in a pretty rough neighborhood, so there was NO WAY (to my mind) that anyone at Disneyland should have been able to pick pocket me. I was the only one on the trip who wasn't white, and would have been the last target (I thought incorrectly) to get swiped. But there it happened. I didn't tell anyone because I was embarrassed. And I KNEW I still had to bring some sort of memento of the trip home for my mother. I ended up shoplifting a pen for her (Did I mention I grew up in a bad neighborhood?), which ironically started a tradition of me bringing her back a pen from any trip I took (I paid for all the other pens mom, don't worry).

Well, to make a long story even longer, I remember sitting in that arcade, at age 10, holding my mother's pen, during a 2 hour break we had to do anything we wanted at Disneyland, and all I wanted to do was play all of these arcade games (remember, 1983, video game golden age), but I couldn't, because someone had lifted my new wallet with my 17 dollars in it. So I spend the 2 hours watching others play them.

I don't remember if I cried or not that day, but I KNOW I shed one little tear down the left side of my face, 25 years later, as I'm sitting on the exact same bench in the exact same arcade watching my sons have the time of their lives romping around and playing DDR and Guitar Hero and Air Hockey to their hearts content with limitless coins provided by grandma (well, *I* had some limits. They only got to get 5 dollars worth of tokens at a time each, and they had to wait until BOTH of them had used them all before coming back to me for another allotment. But they shared well and played together well, so I couldn't have been more pleased, and THANK YOU AGAIN GRANDMA!!). This moment was only enhanced if you know the whole history between my in-laws and I, which made the whole circle even more complete, and almost freed a second tear from my right eye. But I managed to hold it together, enjoy the moment, and then shared it with both wife and grandma that evening at dinner.

What a great trip!