Travel Day #19: Disneyland

The first city bus pickup from our campground to Disneyland was at 6:15am, and the park opened at 8am. Our server at House of Blues at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, a season pass holder, said to get to the park before it opens so that we could get a spot for “Jedi Training” in the Star Wars area. Most of us are not early risers, however.

As usual, I was up first, so I used the time to plan the day a little bit. The night before, I had tried to buy the tickets to the park at the campground’s office so that we could avoid the line in the morning, but their printer was not working, so my first task this morning was to get those tickets purchased online. I noticed that the website said that it could take 24 hours to receive the email with the tickets, so I decided not to risk it. Next, I checked the park’s parking fees: $23/day for oversized vehicles. That was only $3 more than a city bus pass for the day, and a lot less than the $60-$80/day one of the other campground guests said they’d heard from the campground staff. It was an easy choice to pack up our whole rig and drive it over to the park. That would give us an air-conditioned restaurant at our convenience, any time we wanted it. We ended up using it for both lunch and dinner, and, in so doing, were able to stay from just after 9am until the park closed at midnight!

In terms of our park experience, it was overall VERY good. Except for one minor incident in our last hour, when Sean JT, who overreacted and whacked Sean, who overreacted and caught my attention, who overreacted…. but Mom separated us for a few minutes. Once we all understood what happened, we all apologized and headed for our last ride: Peter Pan. While I enjoyed the rides, my stomach wasn’t in love with them. JT wasn’t interested in one of the roller coasters, so I gave him some money and he went off by himself to find an ice cream that I had wanted to treat him to after some good deed in Las Vegas. While we stood in line, he kept in contact with us by text message, and, using my map, I helped direct him to the place. By the time he’d gotten there, waited in line himself, eaten his treat, and returned, we were almost done with the ride. He spent the remaining wait time playing Pokemon Go. Today was his first chance to see what all the hype was about. Apparently, the park is an excellent location to play, with constant opportunities to collect characters and do other things (whatever it is you do in the game). After dinner, while I was waiting for everyone to come out of the gift shop, the fireworks started. I noticed people walking by looking at the cell phones, and could see that Pokemon Go was on their screens. I guess their 4″ screen is more exciting than fireworks. I decided to count the number of people who were playing the game instead of watching fireworks. I counted 62 people! The number of people using their cell phones but doing something else, or who’s screen I couldn’t see was about a half dozen – less than 10, for sure. The number of them who were kids: maybe 3. Amazing. And sad. But it did spark one conversation while waiting in line for one of the rides. So that’s pretty good. Otherwise, I wouldn’t let him play it constantly, and he even put it away on his own a couple of times. I haven’t seen the game come out since. This, to me, means that the real world is still slightly occasionally more interesting than video games, sometimes. Whew!