Not A Dapper Day To Disney

I LOVE Disney and all things Disney and my family are the same. We’ve been on our “once in a lifetime” family trip to Walt Disney World in Florida five times and I’ve genuinely lost count of the number of times I’ve been to Disneyland Paris. It was inevitable therefore that on our road trip through California, we would absolutely have to go to the original Disneyland Park.

After finally getting to grips with the roads, we set off to Anaheim. The journey took us about two hours and in typical tourist style, we had the top down on the Mustang the whole way. The Americans must have thought we were utter morons. Sir Grumpalot threatened to make an unwelcome return when we found our hotel, but realised we were on the wrong side of the road. As Rich rapidly learned, everyone does u-turns in America and so after a turn with so many G’s an astronaut would feel a bit sick, we arrived at our hotel, ‘The Knights Inn’ and all was well with the world again.

After a short walk in the sunshine, before we knew it, we were standing at the gates of the original Disneyland Park. After handing over a mere $470 for our two day two park passes we headed in. Whilst we had been queuing we had noticed a lot of well dressed people in the line, but hadn’t taken too much notice of them with all the excitement. As we delved further into the park, however, it became apparent that this was going to be a permanent fixture for the day, the park was absolutely rammed.

We persevered, however, determined not to let the crowds get us down. After queuing for 30 minutes for the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, it rapidly became clear to us that we weren’t going to be able “to Disney” as well as I’d originally hoped. All was not completely lost though and after half a day or so in the park, we’d ticked off about five rides, including my all time favourite Floridian ride “Splash Mountain”. Rich remarked after we’d disembarked that the creators of the ride might actually have been on crack, but it remains one of the best rides at Disneyland in my humble opinion.

Except when I don’t have them.

And especially except when the employee controlling the queue didn’t get the memo about how they work.

Remember back there when I said when you return, you must queue for a short while before riding the attraction. This employee did not seem to understand that concept. I don’t know if she was just plain stupid, had been unpopular at school and now enjoyed making other people suffer or if she was just so fed up with the Disney Corporation that she was rebelling; but whatever the reason she was literally allowing every single Fastpass holder to walk straight onto the ride, only stopping when there were no ticket holders in the queue and then letting us mere mortals pass through. I am not even remotely exaggerating when I say that at one point she let 25 Fastpass holders through, then let THREE regular queue people through and then another 15 Fastpass ticket holders. Meanwhile the regular queue was running out of twists and turns and was backing up into the rest of the park.

By 90 minutes in I was seething. Forget Sir Grumpalot, this was Lady Tantrum Takes On Disneyland. I was cursing the Dapper Dans, the inventor of the Fastpass, Tim Blinking Burton, The Disney Corporation and even threatening to disown Walt Disney himself and never set foot in another Disneyland Park worldwide for the rest of my existence. (Looking back, I may have been a TAD melodramatic about the whole thing.)

After some unforeseen miracle, a shift supervisor came to rescue the situation and we eventually made it onto the ride.

And it was terrible.

Like honestly, truly shockingly bad. The giggling fit we had after we got off the doom buggy completely eased the tension, however, and the day wasn’t completely ruined. Fortunately Walt Disney came through for us and after watching beautiful fireworks and me being highly embarrassing and dancing down Main Street, all was forgiven and we were ready to attempt Disney Day Two.

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