Oh Mickey, You’re So Fine!

I must preface this blog by stating that it concerns the exploits of my six-year old son, “T”, and I at Disneyland Resort in Southern California. If you have not visited this amusement park, many of the references will most likely be lost on you. If you have visited California’s Magical Kingdom, then by all means read on my friend, read on.

“T” and I traveled to Disneyland from our hometown after he got out of school on a Friday afternoon. I truly fancy myself a modern day Clark Griswold of the Vacation movies franchise, and definitely believe in conducting my vacations/trips with the goal of experiencing maximum fun time. We left on a Friday afternoon so that we could stay the night, and get to the park as soon as they opened, which did occur as planned. When one arrives at Disneyland when they first open, the optimum strategy is to make your way to attractions that traditionally have the longest lines, and therefore you are able to get on these rides with minimum wait time before the parks population inevitably balloons to what I can only describe as a mass of stampeding humanity. Given that this trip focused on wanting “T” to have fun, I defered to him and allowed him to select the first ride. “Maximum fun time” approach was immediately scattered to the wind when he answered unequivocally “The monorail”. My well thought out arguments as to why the monorail is an illogical first ride choice coupled with pleas of desperation not to subject me to such an act of pure cruelty fell on the deaf ears of a six year-old child, and so the monorail it was to be. In all the years I have been visiting Disneyland, I never knew that you could ride in the very front of the monorail where the engineer/drivers sits. Heck, I never even knew there was a driver/engineer, and just figured the whole thing was run by the guy on the platform or maybe even at master control in the secret deep, dark recesses of the park, where unnatural acts take place including, but not limited to, the maintenance of the cryogenically frozen body of Walt Disney, the planning of how to sell even more products at exorbitant prices and perhaps the most depraved thing of all, the repeated torturing of unruly patrons who decide to rip off the plush masked heads of the beloved Disney characters walking throughout the park, those who won’t keep their damn heads and arms inside the rides or the worst offenders of all: those who use flash photography inside the Pirates of the Caribbean. Thanks to Disneyland employee of the year, Bill Mindyourowndangbusiness (I swear that was his last name), we were informed of our option to ride up front, which would end up being a pain in the butt for me as the trip went on. You see, there would be 4 ½ more trips on the monorail (no, I did not jump out of the car mid-trip because I could not take the ride anymore…we just went only half way around one time), during which one there would be tears in “T’s” eyes because he could not sit up front, and yet another ride during which we would wait for two different monorails so that we could ride up front. When we weren’t wasting our $70 park tickets riding a glorified train on stilts, we spent the majority of our day traversing the park in the most inefficient manner possible. The smart person would ride all the attractions in one land, and then move onto a new land. But not us. The “maximum amount of fun time” approach had been displaced with complete attraction visiting bedlam as we sporadically walked from one side of the park to the other, over to California Adventure and back again, in a pattern that made as much sense as flying from Los Angeles to Las Vegas with a layover in New York.

After a long day in the park, we decided to eat dinner outside of Disneyland, and I discovered that inside the park was not the only place to get financially raped for a meal. “T” had decided he wanted breakfast for dinner, so we decided to visit a familiar casual dining restuarant. I perused the menu, and thought some artery-clogging fried delicacies would hit the spot. Mozzarella sticks. Oh yeah, that’s what I’m talking about. Let’s see, five cheese sticks, $11.99. I literally had to do a quadruple take to make sure I had read this right. Now I understand that there is a cost of living difference between my hometown and Los Angeles, but this was a good five dollars more than our town charges for the exact same crappy mozzarella sticks (notice how those once deliciously-perceived golden fried sticks of heaven had become barely tolerable nuggets of grease due to a simple change in price). The thing that irks me is I know they must buy from the same distributor for all their restaurants (or at least the same one in a given region, and I live only 120 miles away from Los Angeles), so I am fairly confident the cost of the item to the restuarant is the same in both towns. I am sure they probably pay the poor overworked servers minimum wage in both towns, so you really only have the cooks, janitorial staff and the managers who may make more in LA, so I really doubt they need to practically charge double for their mediocre food to make up the difference. I contemplated asking the server why the steep price differential, but decided to forego that line of questioning after I played out the following potential conversation in my mind, “So, I notice the cheese sticks are 12 bucks?” “Yes sir, they are, but keep in mind you get nearly half a dozen cheese sticks for that price, plus they come with your choice of dipping sauce.” “Thanks for the math lesson and letting me know that five is almost six. And I actually get my choice of dipping sauce? Oh, be still my beating heart! Uh yeah, that’s great, but why do they cost so much? Do you use some type of fancy French cheese or something?” “No, sir, regular American cheese.” “Well, for the love of goodness sake, at least tell me you use Wisconsin cheese, and the high cost of this culinary delight is due to having to pay for the cost of the cheese to make the trek half way across the United States.” “Uh no, sir. We use the finest local government cheese that belongs to our grossly underpaid janitorial staff, and we simply extort it from them by threatening to fire them. Your cheese stick is then lovingly dipped in the discarded grease that we steal from the ten gallon drums outside the neighboring restaurant’s back door.” “Okie dokie then. I will just have the overpriced ham and egg melt instead.” The only thing that made the bill semi-tolerable was the fact that the my son’s meal was free, therefore deleting eight dollars from the tab for his giant pancake that had three miniscule cherries, four bruised banana slices and some yogurt.

After spending a pleasant evening in our hotel room away from the hubbub of the park , we arose early the next morning to once again be at the park at the time of it’s opening. The majority of the morning was spent actually visiting other attractions other than the monorail, and the day passed relatively uneventful until right before we left. We had decided to go for one last jaunt around the circumference of the park on the Disneyland Railroad train. At that time, we encountered the most hated of all the Disneyland patrons: the Disneyland Know-it-All. This is the 50-something year-old guy who has visited the Magic Kingdom every six months for the last 30 years, and who has dubbed himself the Unofficial Guru of Disneyland Trivia. This guy talked to his wife loud enough for “T” and I to hear even though we were a good fifteen feet away from him, and appeared to be putting on a private show for us as we were the only other travelers in the same train car. First, he went into pointing out the most innocuous differences in the Disneyland landscape since his last visit, “Look honey, they used to park the double decker bus by the bank, and now they park it by City Hall”, and “Well, would you look at that. They have Chip signing autographs during the ten o’clock hour instead of Dale”. How the flip this guy can tell the difference between those two rabid woodland creatures is a mystery to me. As we moved along on what had quickly become an annoying journey, Mr. Entertainer started making obviously scripted jokes based on the train’s automated overhead messages that were so bad he should have been driving a boat on the Jungle Cruise. The sad thing is that after every joke, he looked at me for desperate approval that apparently he had not gotten from his parents growing up. The final pleasant experience of the day came as we were walking out of the park, and I witnessed a defenseless toddler, tears streaming down his painfully distorted face, repeatedly having his mother target his unappreciative buttocks with a loving open hand. Nothing says Happiest Place on Earth like a good ol’ fashioned public ass whooping!