Disneyland has been well and truly done and dusted. We arrived Tuesday afternoon and after a small clusterfuck at the hotel (and further clusters booking stuff for the next few days), I tried hard to put my frustrations aside and take the kid into the park with a ‘we are going to have fun if it kills me’ attitude.

For someone who wasn’t too excited when we first said we were going to bring him over for this, the Small Child knew exactly where he wanted to go – straight to the Radiator Springs Racing ride in Cars Land (apparently he and Dad had been doing their research before he left). It was mid afternoon and not too hot but the line up was over 60mins and we had done a 5 hr drive that morning so I was getting ready to grin and bear it, when we saw the ‘Single Riders Only’ queue. Cool. We didn’t care if we were sitting together and definitely didn’t care enough to wait an hour for the privilege, so in we went. In less than 10 minutes we were on the ride! And wow, what a ride…

Disney has obviously changed a lot since my last visit in 1998. The ride puts you in a race car and takes you through the town from the movie cars with all the familiar characters leading you through the ride and next thing you’re on a race track with some other riders beside you. The countdown begins and then you’re off and racing. And shit this thing flies. It speeds you through a desert landscape like the movie and the two vehicles race at breakneck speed along a track to the finish line where one vehicle will have pulled ahead. It was fast and smooth and awesome fun. When I got off this ride I thought, ‘This is why Californians won’t allow mandatory helmet laws!’ It was so much fun we lined up and did it again straight away.

Most of the rides in the California Adventure Park
seem well targeted at both older and younger attendees – the
characters appeal to the kids and the rides are a bit more exciting
and grown up for the adults, when you compare them to Disneyland
proper.

That evening we managed to go on the Mater’s Junkyard Jamboree (fun, swings around a lot, but a bit jerky , the Luigis Floating Tyre thing (not so great, leave it to the little ones), Flik’s Flyers (you can see one four leaf clover in Bugs Land from up there), the Golden Zephyr (good plan to get off the pavement and cool down a bit in the fresh air), Goofy’s Flying School roller coaster (fast, lots of drops, sharp turns and VERY jerky…ouch), the Swinging Symphony chair-o-plane thing (not for those afraid of heights), and the Little Mermaid adventure ride (definitely for the kids, but lots of fun – found myself singing along with all the songs). We didn’t wait in line for anything for more than five minutes which was a huge bonus, and I’m pretty sure we doubled back in there somewhere for another go at the singles queue on the Cars. 🙂

We were still there at 9pm when the ‘World of Color’ night time spectacular thing was on. We found ourselves a spot and watched the fountains, and lights, and animation projections and fireworks and flames over the Paradise Bay area in front of the huge Ferris Wheel. I don’t know if it’s because I have OD’d on the incredibly sophisticated, skilled and nuanced Cirque du Soleil performances lately, but as a visual/theatrical presentation, I found the whole thing rather unimpressive and too long by half. Must he getting to that point in my travels where spectacular ancient ruins become affectionately referred to as ‘more crumblies’… jaded traveller syndrome obviously kicking in.

We had a great afternoon/evening and even found something nice to have for dinner that didn’t feel like someone had extracted your wallet without the courtesy of lube!

Here’s a free tip for beginners – do not drive from San Francisco to Anaheim with the intention of hitting Disneyland for half a day when you get there. The reasons for this are two fold:

1. The drive between these two cities is monumentally boring. If you make it through this long flat disinteresting dust bowl of a countryside without resorting to holding your eyes open with matchsticks; you deserve a bloody medal.
2. Even the best laid plans can, and will, fuck up on you… in our case, checking into a $500 a night hotel with an international reputation for exceptional guest service, proved to be obstacle to keeping our planned schedule… who’d’ve thunk? Yes, that’s right. We arrived to check into our stupidly expensive hotel room at the Disneyland Hotel ON TIME, only to be told our room wasn’t going to be ready for potentially up to two hours. So we checked in (or thought we had) and left our luggage with the Bell Desk to be retrieved later.

Seeing that the theme parks are about a 15-20 walk up through the Downtown Disney District, we thought we’d loiter around the resort and hope the promised text message with our room number in it, would arrive sooner rather than later.  It actually didn’t take too long before the much anticipate text arrived… telling us our room number was 2378 which was on the 5th level of Frontier Tower. Cool. We march over and go up to the 5th floor and excited as he was, the Small Child wanted to use his Mickey Mouse room key to open the door. He sticks in the key, flings open the door and goes: ‘Ta-da!’  Only, we take one step in, hit a light switch and see stuff everywhere – this room was most definitely NOT vacant.

Hmmm… Interesting fuck up.

As head travel agent, tour guide and fuck up fixer, for this entire schmozzle I sent the others to go off and have a swim, knowing full well this wasn’t going to be a quick fix, and trudged back over to the Concierge Desk in the other tower. I spoke to someone who seemed to know what he was doing and got the expected apologies etc, along with a ‘We are fully booked tonight ma’am,’ speech, that was swiftly followed by a ‘You have a party of three booked into a room that accommodates five (two queen beds and a day bed for the rug rat), if you wouldn’t mind taking a room with just two queens that would make things a whole lot easier…’ My reply was delivered with stoic impassivity and went something along the lines of a polite version of: ‘Seriously? You people just sent us off to invade the privacy of some of your other guests giving us keys that opened someone else’s OCCUPIED room, fucking up big time, and now you’re trying to fob me off with a room that is inferior to the one I booked months ago? You wanna rethink that there mister?’

He eventually located a room for us and then asked me to sign the registration paperwork. It seemed ditzy bint who signed us in, gave us room keys and an occupied room but failed to have me actually sign for the outstanding balance on the room so they could charge
my Visa! Something tells me Meradeth, (with a name spelled like that, do we expect anything more…?!) probably got dragged over the coals on that one.

But wait, there’s more! You see, upon being given our personally printed room keys, I erroneous assumed they were like cruise cards and would be our entry into everything – the room, the resort, the parks, etc… But no, apparently the park entry passes are a small cardboard job that the (previously designated ‘ditzy bint’, but now downgraded to ‘chicken fuckin’ moron’ status, of a) receptionist had completely failed to give us! If we had we marched the 20mins down to the park straight up without them, we would have found ourselves heading straight on back again! So three cock ups in the space of about an hour and I was starting to wish we’d just gone to the Holiday fucking Inn!

Uptight Concierge dude, who seemed seriously unimpressed with me about my refusal to accept the smaller room (or at least, as unimpressed as a Disney Cast Member is allowed to be with a Guest – I know the rules), finally sorted things out, gave us reprogrammed room keys, had me sign all the bullshit to pay for it, and gave us our actual theme park tickets this time. After having made only one single terse comment about my check-in experience not meeting my expectations of any Disney establishment, (Disney’s entire ethos is about exceeding Guest expectations and all…) I decided to spend the remainder of my time watching him put the shit back in the cat, just staring at him – vaguely impatient and seriously unimpressed.

At the end of his stuffing about with computers, and popping out the back, he hands over the keys and the tickets with a flourish, and his very insincere hopes that we enjoy our stay. I’m staring at him and do not leave… He then seemed to assess me and finally reaches under his counter and brings out ‘The Book’, saying he’s going to give us a special ticket to make up for the inconvenience. This ticket would allow our party to jump to the head of the queue of any ride in the parks and potentially save us a couple of hours.

Did I mention while I was waiting for the supercilious concierge I received four more SMS messages from the hotel : three more reiterating the wrong room, and a fourth saying we were in 2324?!?).  Anyway as he gives me the ticket, I looked at it and said to him, ‘Excuse me, but this afternoon’s complete and utter ineptitude has inconvenienced all THREE of us.’ He did a momentary double take and hesitated for a few seconds before reluctantly saying, ‘Yes, of course Ma’am, I was just about to write our another two tickets.’ I took my three Golden tickets, turned on my heel during the ‘Have a Magical Day’, that I’m sure was uttered between gritted teeth, went out to the pool, found the others and went looking for our room… again!

Across the complex, through to Frontier Tower, up to the 6th floor to room 2478, opened the door to find – a cleaner. Who had just shampooed the carpets leaving the room stinking of chemicals and the carpets all wet… Le sigh.