Monday, August 6, 2007- Disneyland Revisited

As if anyone really needed proof, today demonstrated two things that we already knew about Disneyland. First, there are more people in Disneyland than there are in California Adventure. The same is true in Florida with the Magic Kingdom and the other three parks, but seeing is believing. We went on Monday, in part because we wanted to save one Disney day for the end of the trip, but we also expected fewer people on a weekday.

Secondly, there is just no way to see everything in the park in one day’s visit. We saw a lot, and filled in gaps from the things that we didn’t see on our first day here last week, but we couldn’t possibly do it all. Even with Fast Passes working for us as much as possible, we still were only able to cover maybe half of the park.

Emma wanted to start with her favorites in Fantasyland, so we went to Peter Pan’s Flight first. As the three girls rode that, Scott went to get Fast Passes to Space Mountain. The family rode a few more of Emma’s favorites in Fantasyland-- Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, Snow White’s Adventures and Alice in Wonderland. When the Fast Pass times came for Space Mountain, Anna and Mommy got to ride through it twice while Emma and Daddy went on Small World.

The family met again for an early lunch, and then the three girls went on Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin while Daddy went and got Fast Passes to Thunder Mountain. There are quite a few rides that take your picture in order to try to sell you expensive copies of it at the end, but Buzz Lightyear lets you e-mail the picture home for free. That was neat.

Things slowed down a little when we rode the Mark Twain Steamboat. In fact, it allowed Emma to continue with a catnap. We went to Tom Sawyer’s island next, which has been given a cosmetic change to become the Pirate’s Lair to try to take advantage of their current popularity. Some of the changes work, but in a lot of places it’s obviously trying to make use of or cover up the old Tom Sawyer stuff. Still, the girls got to meet Captain Jack Sparrow “in person.” Scott thought that he’d seen several people at Comic Con who did a better impression of him, but it was still fun.

Things were a little quieter at Thunder Mountain Ranch. The girls got the picture taken with Toy Story’s Woody and Jessie. They enjoyed sitting for a few minutes and coloring pictures of the “Happiest Horses on Earth,” while Mom and Dad read about Walt’s interest in horses. It’s funny-- Here we are in Disneyland, and the girls want to take time to color pictures. It seems that it really is the simple things that can please you sometimes. The girls then spent a few minutes petting the goats there and seeing the turkeys that the President pardons at Thanksgiving.

Anna and Daddy used Fast Passes to ride Splash Mountain twice, by passing a line that had more than an hour wait. Daddy was crazy enough to try to take video of the 50-foot drop during the second ride down the flume. Meanwhile, Emma and Mom rode the Dumbo ride, and then they got dinner for the family. The walkie-talkies we brought have sure come in handy on days like today. We save a lot of time looking for each other.

After dinner, Emma asked to go on Pinocchio's Daring Journey. We followed that with Mickey’s Toontown in the early evening. We started in Toontown with Roger Rabbit’s Car Toon Spin, the ride that we all remembered as the one that Emma broke last year by not staying in her seat. It was almost an hour of waiting in line, and while it’s an OK attraction, it didn’t seem worth that. We were counting the families that were giving up and making their way back out of the line. We were hoping to get some more character autographs there, but the characters were busy elsewhere. We visited the houses of Goofy, Donald, Minnie, and Chip and Dale. We went rode on Gadget’s Go Coaster, which was probably Emma’s first roller coaster ride.

Then, sadly, it seemed like we should call it a night. It was about 8:30 and we have a lot to do to get ready for the plane home tomorrow. If we waited for too much longer, movement through the park gets all tied up with the fireworks. As with every day at a theme park, the girls could choose one thing to buy but they have to wait until the end of the day to buy it. This rule has worked very well for us in the past. It keeps us from getting teased about buying things all day, even if we go into gift shops to browse, and we don’t have to carry things around through the day. So, we made our way out through and down Main Street U.S.A., knowing that it was the last we’ll see of Disney for a while.