The Happiest Place on Earth - Sunday

I was too excited to sleep... which made me restless and very awake when the fireworks went off ("we're under attack!!").

Natalie slept... soundly.

So, when the wake-up call came at 6:30am, I was ready to giv'r and jumped out of bed to shower and get dressed. Natalie made fun of my eagerness. How cruel.

Fortunately, we were staying at a hotel that was close enough to the park that we could easily walk to Disneyland inside 20 minutes. We arrived at 7:30am for a 8am opening. I think Natalie may have been getting at least a bit excited now. Disneyland helps to heighten the excitement and anxiety by ensuring we stand in long lines waiting to get in the park and then they did a countdown until the gates opened.



Relevant aside: I remember one of my previous trips to Disneyland with the family. We in a similar situation: waiting in line until the park officials release the hoards. Once the barriers come down, they are very specific that there must be no running and that you must walk calmly to your first distination. The next thing I remember? Dad sprinting like a middle-aged gazelle toward Indiana Jones Adventure. As I recall, mom started sprinting after him and Arone and I were left to exchange glances and wonder if we'd all heard the same walk-don't-run warning.

Yeah, that pretty much describes how Natalie approached the morning. Elbows up!

While I was speed-walking to keep up with her as she passed through a gate into Adventure Land, a stern security guard reminded us loudly "There's no running in the magic kingdom."

"Yes," I called back over my shoulder. "I'll be sure to explain that to her."

Indiana Jones was the first ride we did. It would be riden 15 times over the next five days. Good times indeed.

So we did rides. That's more exciting for us than you, so I'll spare the details.

I've always been under the impression that it's cheaper to eat outside of the park then inside, so at lunch we were walking down Harbor Bvld when we were randomly accosted by a lady who said "Where are you from?"

"Um... Canada." I've learned that you start big and narrow down depending on your audience. Sometimes Canada is really enough.

"That's great. And how old are you?"

"Uh... 25." We're a bit worried now.

"Hey, would you like to have a free lunch and $100 to spend at Disneyland."

"Um... yes."

And so a free lunch and money roped us into a time-share presentation. You may cringe, but you may not know that a communication degree adds +10 to Rhetoric Shield.

We'd agreed well ahead of time that this wasn't for us, so we both were looking forward to hearing an argument and poking holes in it. Yeah, we're nobody's friends.

Since we're not inviting you to our condo in faboulous Wikiki, you can guess the outcome. It was supposed to take 90 minutes and we extended it to at least two hours with our questions. In retrospect, our salesman didn't adjust his argument to suit his audience (us). For two people who would rather do a tour of military battlefields while staying at a 2-star hostel than lounge in a luxury condo with marble countertops and singing angels and dolphins in the bathtub and micro-brew beer coming out of the taps... um he didn't seem to get us. He might have been thrown off by Natalie's first comment that her dream trip would be to Antarctica and my final comment that our next trip might be to Old Montreal.

It was a bit sad because when we finally said no, it was easy to identify the exact moment when his heart broke in two. We simply did not choo-choo-choose his time-share.

After rejecting him, we had to reject two others to get to our prize of $100 Disney dollars.

Then we got their limo to drive us back to our hotel where we had a nap and prepared for the rest of the evening doing Disneyland. We skipped dinner so we could spend our new-found bounty on clam chowder in the park. With an extra $100 in our pockets, we had no fear of eating in Disneyland, which would mean churros, Dole whip, pineapple, frozen bananas and a number of soups/chilies in a bread bowl.

I use to fear time-share presentations. I fear them no more.

The evening ended with three more hours of rides, the brilliant spectacle of Fantasmic and fireworks. Oooooo...