Walnut
2128hrs
On the way to Disneyland we stopped off at some Lamborghini dealer. Colin's brother's a Lamborghini fanatic, so he picked up some leaflets and took some photos for him.
Then, Disneyland. Darin dropped us off outside the Disneyland hotel, just outside Disneyland itself. There's a monorail from there into it, and you can buy your ticket when you get on, thus bypassing the queue to buy them at the entrance.
We started in Adventureland, and went on the Jungle Cruise. There were two queues.
"The left queue is shorter than the right queue. Please get in the left queue," said a voice over the Tannoy. Shortly afterwards, the voice spoke again.
"Due to the last announcement," it said, "everyone has got in the left queue. There is now no one in the right queue. Please get in the right queue."
The line moved further forward.
"Because of the previous announcement, everyone has joined the right queue, and there isn't anybody in the left queue. Please get in whichever queue is shorter." We got in the left queue.
The Jungle Cruise is pretty self-explanatory. It's a cruise. Through a jungle. Not a real jungle, of course. Like everything else in Disneyland (except for Mickey Mouse, obviously), it's all fake.
I remembered the Jungle Cruise from when I was here before. I didn't remember the Indiana JonesTM Adventure, but none of the Indiana JonesTM films had been made then, so I don't suppose they had it. The sign said there'd be a half-hour queue, but there was nothing of the sort. It took about ten minutes to get at the ride, but that was just walking through the maze of underground (fake) caves and (fake) chambers that lead to it. They believe in making queuing a part of the ride at Disneyland, and quite right too.
That was a really good ride, in the true spirit of the Indiana JonesTM movies. Falling rocks and rolling boulders, all kinds of good stuff.
So much for Adventureland. We went to New Orleans Square next, where we went on another ride called Pirates of the Caribbean. This was pretty atmospheric, with huge fibreglass scenes (everything in Disneyland is made of fibreglass) and fibreglass pirates running around. Actually the pirates probably weren't fibreglass, but they might've been.
We went in the Haunted Mansion next. First we walked through a couple of rooms, and thought it was just a haunted house, but then it turned into a ride. There were skeletons and Pepper's ghosts (an old theatrical trick where concealed models reflect on a glass screen and look all ghostly), and all kinds of really clever things that it's hard to see how they did. At one point there was a screen with coloured lights flashing across it, and we seemed to pass right through that. Magic.
After New Orleans Square we went to Critter Country. We saw a ride called Splash Mountain from the outside, with the cars zooming down a steep drop and being engulfed in a wave of water. That looks fun, we thought, and we queued up. This was the first ride where the queue lasted more than a few minutes - only a couple all day lasted for half an hour or so.
We got on the ride, which trundled around a bit and went down a bit of a slope and there was a bit of a splash. That's nothing, everyone said, just wait for the big one at the end. Then it stopped. Apparently, that was the big one at the end. It looked a lot better from the outside,
That was the only thing worth doing in Critter Country, so we moved swiftly on to Frontierland. There was even less to do in Frontierland, so we went to Fantasyland.
Mr Toad's Wild Ride was your basic little-car-going-round-lots-of-sharp-corners-and-looking-like-it's-going-to-hit-a-wall-but-not-quite-doing. Good fun, though. We then moseyed over to Mickey's Toontown, by which time our feet were starting to get tired, so we hopped on the Railroad train for a tour of Disneyland.
Disneyland isn't actually that big, but it's very compact and gets a lot of stuff into a fairly small space. Which means that even with stops, it didn't take that long for the train to go all round the border of the place. It went through a few tunnels with stuff in them, and in one was 'the Grand Canyon'. This was made largely of cardboard, and looked exactly nothing like the actual Grand Canyon did a week ago.
"This is how the Grand Canyon looks today," insisted the announcer. It's lost a lot of its beauty in the last seven days. It looks like we got there just in time.
The same tunnel also included a reconstruction of how the world might have looked when dinosaurs roamed the earth, but given the unreliability of their depiction of the Grand Canyon, I couldn't help but view the accuracy of this vision sceptically.
We soon arrived back at Mickey's Toontown and disboarded. We went on a rollercoaster called Gadget's Go Coaster, whatever that's supposed to mean. This lasted for roughly fifty seconds, and basically went round in a circle, with a slight dip. Not the most terrifying ride, but fun.
Actually, by this point I'd bought my souvenir. Travelling across the country, I'd gotten into the habit of not buying anything, since whatever I did purchase would increase the load for the rest of the trip. But I had to buy something at Disneyland, and noticing a rather neat Mickey Mouse beanie hat, I kept it in mind for later. I didn't want to buy it then, since I'd have to wear it all day, but as the heat continued to beat at my brow, it occurred to me that this might not be a bad idea, and we went up to the nearest stall to see if they sold them. They didn't, but the man told me a couple of places nearby that did. We thanked him and proceeded to the nearest, which sold nothing of the sort. Declining to trust him further, we returned to the original stall and I got it there. We did, incidentally, visit the other place he'd mentioned later on. They didn't have them either.
We went on Roger Rabbit's Car Toon Spin, which had a long queue and wasn't that great, but it was okay. You sit in a car that moves along and spins around, surrounded by props and scenes from Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Nothing too exciting.
Outside in Toontown was Donald Duck, who Colin wanted to be photographed with, so we queued to see him. It wasn't much of a queue, just a load of people milling around, and before we'd got to the front Donald pointed at his wrist to indicate that he'd spent quite enough of his day being hugged by little kids, and left. Fortunately I had already photographed him, content with a picture of Donald and somebody else's family.
Mickey Mouse is quite another matter. I wanted a picture of me with him,
and was prepared to queue for it. It wasn't a long queue, and I got
my picture. It was the last one in the film, which Colin reckons means it
might not come out, but I hope it does. You had to go all through Mickey's
house to get at the queue, which was pretty cool, and mostly fibreglass.
In Tomorrowland we went on Star Tours, and Submarine Voyage. Star Tours was a lot like the Back to the Future ride at Universal Studios, i.e. virtual, but rather than having lots of cars with a few people in each, it was a whole cinema with moving chairs. Based loosely on Star Wars, you're supposedly in a spaceship which flies through asteroid belts and the like. Those rides where your seat moves but nothing else does are quite fun, but not the same as the real thing.
Submarine Voyage was something else I remembered. You climb in a submarine, which supposedly goes deep underwater, except at no point does the top half go under, and you see loads of fish and mermaids and monsters through the portholes, except they're made of fibreglass. I did actually see one real fish, which is probably more than most people. Are the ones on the other side called starboardholes? Just a thought.
It was pretty dark now, and there wasn't much more than half an hour until it closed at eight. We'd been in all the areas, and gone on everything we wanted to, so we decided to go back to Main Street. We'd started there, but it was just shops, so we'd gone straight on to Adventureland. Now, though, we liked the idea of looking in shops, besides which I needed some postcards.
We went in a few shops that didn't sell postcards, then one where Colin wanted to buy a plate for his mum. Since we were short of time, I arranged to go and get postcards and meet him back there when he'd paid for his plate.
There's no way postcards I send now will get home before I do, but for reasons I mentioned yesterday, I'd better send some more. I went all back down Main Street on the other side, and part way into Frontierland, but still couldn't find anywhere that sold postcards. All day we'd been past places that sold them all the time, but now I needed one they were nowhere to be seen.
We didn't have long before the final monorail train, so I admitted defeat and returned to Colin. We left for the train, and immediately reached a stall selling postcards. I picked up a few hastily and paid, and we left.
Having taken a few wrong turnings, we managed to locate the train stop in little less than the nick of time, and left Disneyland on the last train of the night.
It differed significantly from my memory. I remembered a lot more Disney characters wandering around. I'm sure you could meet Mickey in the street before, but now you have to queue. And I remember more shows, there was one thing in a theatre with a revolving stage. They probably still have that, we just missed it. I also remember a light parade down Main Street, with carriages parading along in the dark, each lit with a thousand lights. That looked gorgeous, I'd have liked to have seen it again. But no matter.
Darin picked us up where he'd dropped us off, and we went to a drive-through McDonalds on the way back. We did the same yesterday, when they misheard our order and gave us the wrong thing, which is I believe a constant source of irritation to Americans. You haven't been to America until you've been annoyed by a moron at a drive-through McDonald's.
Indeed, going to a drive-through at all is one of those very American experiences, without which the holiday wouldn't be complete. Actually there are a couple of others which I still haven't done - I haven't seen any tumbleweed, and I haven't been shot. It would have been nice to have been shot, being as it is an integral part of American culture. I'd feel like I'd really been accepted; a tourist being shot by an American is, I think, a lot like a baby cuckoo being fed a slug by the lady of the nest it has intercepted. Not a pleasant experience in itself, but a rite of passage. Symbolic.
There's still a day or so left, of course, but I can't see it happening now. I must be strong, and accept the loss. One can't do everything one wants to.
