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2003-04-09 - 12:03 p.m.
Didn't I just go to Disneyland in October and write about it extensively? Yes, but in all my many visits to Disneyland I've never gone with people who have been there more times than me. I am so glad Mo Pie took me along. She is the nicest person on earth, again! I like Mo's social network. People really care for her, she really cares for them—it's like a Hallmark movie, but not in a sappy way. By contrast, my own network of friends seems extremely lame. My closest friends are also the source of a lot of Drama, something that was absent this weekend among the Mo Tribe. Maybe they've had drama in the past, but this weekend, as I found myself waiting for some drama to bust out at any moment, there was none. That made me think I have too many dramatic friends, if drama is what I expect as the status quo. All the tensions surrounding my last trip to Disneyland occupied a huge portion of my consciousness. This weekend, though, was entirely La De Da, despite a full day spent at Disneyland and an enormous complicated dinner the next day.
Mo's friend Bruce went with us. Bruce spent five years working at Disneyland. If Mo has gone there a thousand times, Bruce has gone at least two thousand. He knows everyone who works there. They love him. Sometimes physically. (By the way, Pluto is gay.) He still goes there a lot: in the back seat of his car were two or three parking lot passes from this week alone. He knows the intimate history of each attraction and restaurant. He was also smart enough to hold on to his employee ID card, so he gets some additional perks.
At first, I didn't exactly believe that we were really all going to get into both Disneyland and California Adventure, or "DCA," for free. Until I saw it for myself, no one had conveyed the depth of affection people at Disneyland have for Bruce. We got to kill time with Pluto! We got to hear Pluto say he was ready to slit his wrists over dealing with children! That's a little disconcerting to hear Pluto say, even for an adult.
This is the first time I've been to Disneyland with such insiders. Bruce told us that "the magic is gone" for him, reminding me of when I visited a friend in Jerusalem, a place that overwhelms most travelers, and to her it was just a dumpy little village. She sucked the magic right out of Jerusalem for me; would Bruce do the same with Disneyland? No, it was not possible. Still, the vibe was noticeably different today. As befitting any thousand-timer, Mo has some rituals about visiting, one of which is to visit Adventureland first. It was amazing that we didn't ever bicker about which ride to go on next, though cell phones do help immensely. They make it simple to split up and reconnect. We rode the Jungle Cruise, and the Pirates, and visited the Disney Gallery, then Bruce showed us around DCA. He felt DCA was getting a bad rap, and wanted us to see that it was really a good place after all. I have to say that he did convince me, but considering that they built DCA literally across a walkway from Disneyland, there is no way DCA is ever going to be judged solely on its own merits. Sorry.
In its defense, DCA was constructed with the same attention to detail that the old park was, on a less constricting scale. The new park has plenty of wonderful eye candy—and it serves alcohol! Bruce introduced us to Lisa, the bartender who pours the strongest drinks in the park. She liquored us up but good. I ordered what I thought would be the manliest drink on the menu, only to discover it was pink. Oh well, it was jam-packed with alcohol. I was numb after I drank it. Probably the last thing I should have done after that was to go on an upside-down roller coaster, which is of course exactly what they took me on next. When I saw the loop, about two seconds before going through it, I yelled out "Nooooooooo!" Fortunately nothing worse happened. We took silly tours of a tortilla factory and a bread factory—yes, DCA has some lame attractions.
Bruce's ruling passion is Millionaire, a replica of the ABC set (Disney owns ABC! I'd forgotten). Bruce kept saying he was going to use my keypad to get me in the hot seat, but I didn't completely believe him, since there were 600 people all vying for the same thing, yet he did it—it was kind of stunning. Time ran out before I got my shot, which might be for the best considering the drinking. (That's my second use of "considering" in this entry, if you're keeping score.)
We met up with a friend of Bruce's after that, then Mo and I went off to Disneyland for a while. That was when it finally felt magical to be there. I might have gotten that feeling earlier in the day, on Pirates, but some jerk in the row ahead of us told us to be quiet while Bruce was telling us about eating at Club 33 (Club fucking 33!). That rained on our fun. Now, though, I was in the magic envelope. Mo and I went on Mr. Lincoln, and the Haunted Mansion, and the Jungle Cruise again, Pinocchio, the Storybook Land boat, Mr. Toad, and who knows where else. It was so fun to be there with her. She pointed out stuff about the park that I didn't know, and vice versa. We had what I think was the best Jungle Cruise guide ever. We ordered pretzels and got caught on the wrong side of the sub-par Parade of Princesses.
Once we all joined up again, we rode Space Mountain. There were hordes of what we think were Christian youth all over the park today, yelling an inane cheer back and forth, and we got to hear them push a Space Mountain employee over the edge who told them to shut up. Later we went to the Tiki Room, where Bruce impressed me to no end by reciting the entire spiel along with the birds. And, see? I'm not mentioning the Matterhorn incident.
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