ill feel no guilt going on and on about how much i love disneyland because it is tied directly into my love of indiana jones.
i love disneyland. more than someone my age reasonably aught to. i always have. it has always been for me, literally, the happiest- realest- fake place on earth.
its magic. it really is a magic kingdom. it is the stories you love and the characters you cherish brought to life. real, fake life.
when i was a kid we took a trip to disneyland and, delightfully, my sister got sick from the rides. my brother was to little to stay up late, so mom took sis and bro back to the good neighbor hotel and i got to spend an enchanted evening at disneyland just me and my daddy. i remember with perfect clarity being insanely giddy at getting to pick, without argument or objection, exactly everything we would ride and do and see for the whole night. i remember buying the biggest lolipops i could ever possibly imagine, and getting to start in on mine while sis and bro's lollys stayed safely tucked away. and i remember the walk down main street on daddy's shoulders when i was too tired to walk and had experienced all the fun i could take.
i remember when the indiana jones ride first opened. i mean FIRST opened. i remember waiting in line roughly four hours with my family. youve probably seen all the cryptic writing on the walls and floors and ceilings when you walk through the line of that ride. well, the first year it was open everyone was issued a translation card. you can pretty much still read it because its basically just english letters with some extra embelishment thrown in... but that first four hours through we Stewarts translated everything perfectly and with enormous enthusiasm.
it was really one of the first rides to have an interactive waiting experience for you. and, so many variations of the ride experience. after the first bumpy jaunt through, it was easy to convince my family to que up for another four hours.
i remember bringing my little girl zoe to disneyland when she was three. she was a big time nightmare before christmas fan, and we were there for haunted holidays- for halloween to be exact. we had just arrived and we were walking towards the haunted mansion for our first choice of ride. zoe was fit into her stroller wearing a tiny and adorable sally costume, with her stuffed sally and jack taking the ride with her. we had just passed pirates of the carribbean when they came walking out of a side street- jack and sally- arm in arm. it was early and not crowded yet. they walked right past us and, although they were being herded by a character nazi (you know, those polo shirt wearing heartless monsters who tear you off of goofy when its his break time) still, jack and sally passed by zoe and stopped, and talked to her. i can tell you, her mind was blown. the look on her face was worth whatever dollar amount disney deems fit to charge.
and although she was very little and probably doesnt remember it with the clarity that i do--- I DO. however happy she was, i was ten million times more happy. the magic was, and is, real for her. and for me.
my sensible-minded husband assures me that it is no great failure on my part that our little guy, rocket, is 2 and still has not visited the magic kingdom. i disagree. "he wont even remember it," dorian says. but my little rocket LOVES mickey mouse and he LOVES jake and the neverland pirates and he LOVES darth vadar. i know that if we take him he will spend the hours as a shaking pile of overwhelmed joy. even if he doesnt remember, i will. i will and, really, its for me. so that i can remember the times i made my kids so mindlessly happy that they drool. the time when i can get my kids the biggest lollipop they could possibly imagine, and let it color the drool like a big sticky, happy, rainbow. thats for me. i want that.
still, as much as the disneyland magic was magnified for me when i saw it through the eyes of the creatures i most adore.... those little monsters arent big enough to ride indiana jones yet. and so i will not hesitate to send them packing off to the tarzan (formerly swiss family robinson) tree house so that I can ride indiana jones.... and feel that wind whipping through my hair as my spine is joyfully jostled into disalignment.
oh, one last disneyland memory- on that same trip when i got a daddy evening to myself, i ALSO got to pull the sword from the stone. yes, THE sword from THE stone in front of the carosel in fantasy land. i got a crown.
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