Chaos Attraction

Christmas At Disneyland

2011-12-28, 1:25 p.m.

Okay, the Disneyland Christmas album is up almost in its entirety. After a week. Frankly, I don't have the energy after all of that to ALSO size them down properly to post pics directly into this entry, so you'll have to deal with links. Sorry!

The rides you must see at Disneyland at the holidays-- no matter how long those lines are, they're worth it-- are the Haunted Mansion and It's A Small World. Those rides really redecorate. I was told that Haunted Mansion redecorated with a "Nightmare Before Christmas" theme, but I had no idea how thorough they redid it. I would say it's 95% a completely different ride, built on the bones of the original. I attempted taking pictures inside the ride-- which actually works a little better than usual because there's a lot of neon decorations in there that show up in the photos better. It's freaking amazing. Went on this twice.

We also went on It's A Small World twice, once during the day and once at night. I would definitely recommend going at night because WOW DO THEY LIGHT THE PLACE UP. They also did some kind of strange show every 15(?) minutes in which they projected various pictures onto the backdrop of the ride. Gave you a lot to look at while in line. It's not a completely different ride once you go in in the same way that "Nightmare" is, but there's a lot more holiday tunes playing and probably about 3/5 of the rooms have new holiday bling related to what country they are in. It's also really amazing.

They also have "Captain EO Tribute" playing at Disneyland again. I was always a fan of that growing up, and was delighted to see it return now that Michael Jackson's dead and all. Upon re-viewing it for the first time since the 80's, I can certainly see (a) why they dropped it and (b) why they brought it back. It's incredibly cheesy.

The plot, for those of you who don't recall:
Captain EO is the only human on a Firefly-ish (though even smaller) ship with a VERY RAGTAG crew consisting of puppet aliens and droids who have no effing idea how to fly a spaceship. (This is because they are all the Captain's backup band. The droids are the instruments.) Since George Lucas made this, the piano player is an elephant-y alien called "Hooter" that does stupid shit straight out of the Jar-Jar playbook of ridiculosity. However, I adore Fuzzball, the flying furball with butterfly wings and a rat tail that perches on the Captain's shoulder a lot. (More on him later.) They crash their ship on the way to their secret mission, which is to give the "Supreme Leader" Spider-Borg-Queen a "gift," which of course is THE POWER OF SONG AND DANCE! And Captain EO blasts Borg people with his magic beams, turning them into 80's dancers! And eventually he blasts the Spider-Borg-Queen and turns her into Anjelica Houston, as you do. Ta-da!

So, yeah.

Anyway, I always wanted a stuffed Fuzzball after watching that movie, but Disneyland somehow never effing sold them when I was in the Star Trader after the show. Much to my delight, THIS TIME THEY HAD ONE! ("They come in and out," an employee said.) My 80's memories have been satisfied!

I am seriously wondering about my manifesting stuff this December. There's not only that story, but the guitar pick story. I used to find guitar picks (about 7 in all) over the last year, which was very mysterious-- especially the origins of some of them and one of them had a whopping synchronicity. I put them all onto a bracelet, which I lost on the vision quest in August and I haven't seen any since. Well, I was e-mailing Jess before the trip and mentioned this and she said she'd ask her higher power to send me them again. I was all "I like the idea, I just feel like they're done with me or something." I'd also asked if there was anything she wanted at DLand and she said "oh, a Tinkerbell charm."

This is what I found the very next day. I am not kidding.

I have read hippie science books that claim that time is kind of all present and you can ask for something or other or make a wish or something and somehow shit goes back in time and makes it happen, or psychic stuff happens or messages get picked up BEFORE the person consciously sent them. (Look up Edgar Mitchell's experiments while he was in space, for example, or Russell Targ's remote viewing experiments.) I am seriously starting to wonder if something like this happened to produce an object that was THAT specific to both Jess (BFF, Tinkerbell) and me (guitar pick shape, tie-dye look). That's effing strong coincidence to me. I later found a pin with Tinkerbell embedded into a guitar, picked that up too. I hit the Lego store and found a keychain Princess Leia, so that made me happy. I got a Vinylmation charm that was the one charm I wanted the most out of the set--the teal one with pink guitar. Mom found this Ariel shirt that is apparently next to sold out everywhere else, so that made her happy. About the only thing I didn't find that I wanted on this trip at some point was a Santa hat with Mickey or Pooh ears. I saw them on other people, but they weren't for sale anywhere this year. Darn it.

One day, I dragged Mom onto Star Tours. She was Not Happy. It's a nice ride re-do, though. I am told there are something like 50 scenarios you may go through on the ride this time. We went to some Ewok-ish planet and saw Chewbacca climbing around.

On our second turn through Pirates, we were stuck in line behind a family of four. I normally don't give a crap what everyone else's kids are acting up to in public, but this was a little special. The baby girl was quiet, but the 2-year-old or so boy was a born whiner. His dad was super patient with him, so that's good, but we were both horrified to hear the kid whine that his legs hurt already. This was at 8:42 in the morning. "If you're already tired at 8:42 a.m., life may be hard for you," I muttered to Mom, who giggled and gloated about how I never acted like that as a kid. (Well, except for the part where I threw a fit in the parking lot because I hated Pirates as a kid. But anyway...) Then the kid broke out into very unhappy moans when his dad wanted to break out the hand sanitizer. Kid, life may continue to be hard for you if you find that traumatizing. Happily, they got pulled out of the line to go on a different boat than us. I shudder to think at how miserable that kid would have been on the ride. He might have been worse than me at age 5 so many years ago.

I didn't think the lines were that bad for the most part. 60 minutes to go in Haunted Mansion the first time, and it was a long-ass 45 minutes to get on the submarines, but mostly we did fine. The worst line of the entire trip was the damn line to get your picture taken with Minnie Mouse, which Mom insisted on doing because of the ears we made. Over an hour for that one, hoo boy. We got our pictures taken with 4 other characters that day and all those lines were shorter!

By the end of this trip, I have been to Disneyland 33 times, as many years as I've been alive. Awesome.

And before I finish for the day, look at:
Sleeping Beauty Castle by day and Sleeping Beauty Castle at night.

The tree and Main Street. And the castle.

New Orleans Square wreath and tree. (And me with the Minnie Mouse ears.)


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