Once more, with feeling

I'll give you one educated guess as to what we did today.


Yep.


Our original plan was to go to Disneyland in the morning, when it first opened, and to stay for maybe two hours, just long enough so that Alex could ride the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad and Phantom Manor: we hadn't yet gone on a single ride that he'd chosen, and we were Dennis and I were feeling pretty bad about that.  But Ella decidedly did not want to go on either: she was absolutely done with any rides that were even remotely scary.  So Dennis told her he'd take her and Joey back to some of her favorites in Fantasyland while they waited for us.

So when the gates opened, Alex and I trotted over to Phantom Manor, in a corner of the park that was oddly quiet.  And there, at the entrance, were two employees, armed with their best apologetic expressions.  Technical difficulties.  But Alex recovered quickly: "The other one, mom! Let's go to the other one!"


Well, the rest of the world learned on Monday that the other one, the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, was closed, indefinitely: some scenery fell on a trainload of people, injuring several and sending one person to the hospital.  But we found that out much later: the gate keepers at that ride simply told us, again, "Technical difficulties."

Dennis, heroically shepherding three kids through an
extraordinary line.

Oh no! Poor Alex!


But, when I called Dennis to tell him our plans had changed, he suggested I scoot over to the Dumbo ride so that Alex could join them in line.  He'd like that, Dennis was sure.  And Alex did enjoy the ride, for the 90 seconds that they were in the air.  However, I'm not sure how much he enjoyed the 45-minute wait preceding their flight.  I did my waiting on a comfortable bench: sometimes having a weak stomach isn't such a curse.


And, after all of that waiting, Dennis really took one for the team. Victim to Ella's big brown eyes, he took her and Joey directly into another half-hour queue, back to those teacups.  After all that waiting and waiting, Dennis was understandably worn out and ready for a nap, although Ella and Alex were doing just fine, and ready for more.  So we made a plan: after lunch, Dennis would take Joey home for a nice, long rest, while I, with my Disney gene, would take Ella and Alex go wherever the wind took us.


We had lunch at Pizza Planet, inspired by Toy Story.  There was a large soft-play area that, I remarked, seemed to be designed for maximum people and minimum fun. "Don't you realize you just described all of Disneyland?"  Well, yeah, but...


All day long, I noticed lots of little differences between this park and the American ones. One that I found most amusing is their idea of what constitutes dessert. In America, at the buffet lunches, the kids would go back again and again for enormous ice cream sundaes, obscured by gummy bears and M&Ms.  Here, for dessert, you may have apple sauce or drinkable yogurt (or, if you're lucky, pudding). But apple sauce and yogurt: that's the healthy food I make my kids eat in order to earn their dessert. 


But Ella and Alex got their sugar fix, instead, with candied apples, sold outside Snow White's Scary Adventure. Ella thought they were so funny: "Who would buy a poison apple," but there was something about that shiny, shiny apple that she found irresistible, and it became her heart's desire, preferred over ice cream, even.  And because Ella wanted one, Alex, too, decided he must have one, too. They licked away at those apples for about 45 minutes, each, and never even made it through the candy shell, before throwing them away because they couldn't be taken on rides.  Both admitted that they would have liked a regular apple better.

Practicing his scary faces in line for
the Haunted House

Alex did eventually get to go on Phantom Manor today, and he was absolutely delighted with the ride.  It's much different from the American version: it's creepier and spookier, instead of goofy. Throughout the house, a murderous bride keeps popping up, and at the end, your car descends underground, past the corpses of her dead husbands.  But Alex was nonplussed: "What's so scary about a princess," he asked.


But I also took the kids on it's a small world again, and a fairytale boat ride, and Casey Jr.'s Train, and after each, Ella told me, pointedly, "Oh, I really liked that ride. It was just so sweet. And innocent. Not scary at all."  Yes, Ella. I get it. I'm sorry.

Good friends for the day, getting ready for a boat ride.

One of the difference between this park and the American ones is the way they handled the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea ride.  The whole of Tomorrow, er, Discoveryland seems to pay homage to Jules Verne, with a science-fiction, steam-punk feel.  But the 20,000 Leagues ride is notoriously slow-moving, and takes up too much space. So instead, they created a walk-though of the Nautilus, which had absolutely no line at all.  And Alex loved it.  He must have run through that ride a half-dozen times at least, three of those times today. "Oh, I love this part! Look, there's the captain's bed! And there's the window! And that's where he shaves." Whatever makes you happy, honey.


Ella wanted to flounce through Alice's labyrinth once more, by herself, so that she could really get into character this time, and Alex was getting tired and seemed to be teetering towards a breakdown, so he and I rested while Ella had her own little adventure.  And when she came out, she caught the White Rabbit.


During our little break, Alex miraculously recovered his stamina, and the both kids begged me to take them on the Buzz Lightyear ride, a ride-through where you get to shoot laser guns. Just one problem: the line was seventy minutes long, and even I have my limits. But they were certain, quite certain, that it would go by quickly.  Well, it didn't, but I did get a nice, big "Thank you, Mom," when it was done.


After that, we met Dennis and Joey for dinner at Planet Hollywood, which Dennis and I both had been looking forward to much too much. You see, we haven't eaten hamburgers in four months, and we decided to treat this visit to Disneyland as a trip to pseudo-America, and to get the hamburgers and milkshakes that we so sorely miss.


But it was not the meal we were looking for.  The milkshakes were really more like vanilla milk, and the burgers were, well, something wasn't right. And we discovered that Planet Hollywood is decidedly not a family restaurant. "Mom, why don't the women dancing on television every have any clothes on? I don't think that's such a good idea." Oh Ella, me neither. But she did approve, at least, of Planet Hollywood's idea of dessert. No yogurt there: they had Kinder Eggs.  But the prizes in France are different: Ella and Joey got some fun little toys, but Alex got a tiny model of Mr. Burns.  "Why?" he asked. "Why did they give me a little grumpy man as my prize?"


We went home and did a little of this...