2015-07-14: Disneyland

Probably there are some places we shouldn't be allowed to go. Certainly there are frames of mind we get into which get called childish but really should be times we are kept segregated from children.
Well I assume that is what the parents would say anyway. My experience with children indicates that they are likely to join in and probably egg us on.

Nemo ride is clever, they do really trick your eyes into believing you are diving in a sub exceptionally well. Probably the most impressive trick they did all day.

It doesn't take much to egg us on though, normally just the appreciative giggles from each other spurs us on to further outrages of common decency.

Canoe paddling had a short queue and was one of the more fun activities

The behaviour of Disney cartoonists over the years means Disneyland is probably a place that, deep in its underbelly, is appreciative of our childish behaviour so today we will go there.

Toon town is colourful. But also I know about the Who framed Roger Rabbit naughty things and that did not get me into a grown up frame of mind.

For some reason the GPS in the rental managed to lead us a little astray. We figured that putting Disneyland into search and selecting the entry "Disneyland - Tourist Attraction, Anaheim California" would probably get us there.

The canoe paddling guides are actually quite funny as well.

Not sure how The Beatles feel about this. Maybe Disneyland has better lawyers than Apple does.

Instead we wound up close to Disneyland but not close enough that there was any faint hint of anything which was Disney oriented. Not even Disneyland Dry Cleaning (we passed that on the way to where the GPS figured we wanted to be).

Light guns have little in the way of recoil. Probably varmints in the ceiling.

Better than the stupid Hollywood sign. No photoshop required.

We have also decided that the GPS has another issue. Or we have decided We have an issue. Or something. There is definitely an issue with something. Occasionally, and only occasionally, we all swear that the GPS voice says Turn Left when the screen clearly indicates that we should turn right.

I have a photo of the camera taking the picture of me taking a picture.

Ewa is getting into roller coasters with a worrying amount of excitement. The roller coaster in the dark is actual an awesome idea.

It is almost impossible for us to believe it is an accent thing but the idea that they have several different audio files for Turn Right is equally unlikely. The only explanation we can thing of is that the programmers have screwed up somehow. This fits our preconceptions with the world so we are happy with it.

I can see blue things.

I can see blue Chipmunk houses

When I say that the GPS Clearly indicates we should turn right during these escapades there is a slight caveat. Lots of the time I pay attention to the GPS so I can give Al more information than the voice we no longer trust gives him. We discovered that the GPS highlights the route to be followed in a colour I can't see. This was an amusing discovery and explained some of the vagueness in my instructions regarding the GPS over the past days.

We didn't ride the teacups but probably should have.

The queue was long enough for us to wonder if the geological nature of the ride was a hint

We have discovered that switching to night mode means I can sometimes make out the highlighted route. We cannot find the option for changing the colour of the highlight for the route. We blame this on the programmers as well and have applied all 3 of our distinct sets of skills to the problem both individually and combined.

Indiana Jones ride is colourful

And the trucks have a really unique movement. Good ride. No GPS in the trucks fortunately.

Getting more excited every time

After turning the GPS off and using our favourite navigation method Dirk Gently's: Follow someone that looks like they know where they are going, there'll be something good we made it to the Minnie Mouse carpark and caught the Train Of Excited Children to the gates of The Happiest Place On Earth.

Seems shoe horned in.

The Happiest Place On Earth features queues. Queues tend not to make people happy. Jumping queues makes people even happier than there not being a queue. Disneyland has applied it's best and brightest to coming up with a scheme that keeps everyone happy. Happier anyway.

First Horsies in Ages. We were far and away the oldest, least pink and least tutu wearing of the queue.

We also did not cuddle the horsies the most, I think we were third most cuddly.

Many of the more popular rides have queue jumping tickets. You can go to the ride and grab one which, about 2 hours later, le's you almost straight onto the ride. Programmers being the people we assume they are there are a few bugs in the system, some rides have longer queue jumping wait times than others, some queue jumping tickets mean you can't get another one.

Acclaimed as The Best Corn Dogs in The World on many sites. No queue jumping tickets available.

In the same way people get pleasure from jumping the queue some people get pleasure attempting to work out the optimal system for obtaining these tickets. We found a web site with advice on optimising your queue jumping tickets which we sort of followed. Interestingly, and something I applaud, you apparently cannot just buy your way into faster ride access. Even the over the top pricing of the personal guide only gets you someone that knows the rules for optimising your experience really well. The disabled / wheelchair person is a known way of beating the system but Ewa insists she is enjoying walking at the moment.

I suspect we are not the aficionados of corn dogs we would need to be to appreciate my queue planning skills

Traveling Advice: Disneyland

One piece of advice the site didn't have was the Single Rider advice. Lots of the rides have a queue for single riders, they use this queue to fill logs, boats, cars and coasters with empty spots caused by groups of people.

I suspect this was roughly when the sun and queues reduced our Grown Up Tendencies below our Puerile Preoccupations

A lot of these rides are ones which don't even have side by side seating. The Single Rider queues are often a couple of minutes when the normal queue is over half an hour.

Rating: 9/10 (We were very proud of ourselves for working this out)

Disney and Mickey, childhood dream achieved

The website had the advice that around about mid afternoon you ought to just retire to your hotel and have a snooze as the queues and tickets would be almost unusable for any practical sense. We didn't follow this advice as it was probably from a programmer and also we didn't have a hotel.

You have to stand on Alastair's crouched back to get the angle right for Mickey's nose to come out of Disney's fly. But it is worth it, childish humour achieved

At around mid afternoon we did run out of queue jumping tickets to use and joined a queue that lasted about an hour for a wild west roller coaster.
I am going to claim the sun got to us and we started making our own fun. This is a lie as we had been childish and puerile the whole day but at least it is a form of defence our behaviour.

This cannot even faintly be our fault