One day, Dez got an email from one of her classmates. Through a chain of human generosity this classmate of Dez’s was able to offer us free passes to Disneyland. We have been meaning to go there for a while, but have not yet had the means to do so. Suddenly, however, that changed. But, the passes were for a weekday--could I get off of work to join Dez? As it happens, yes, my employers are also quite generous, and I was allowed to work on Saturday in place of the Thursday we would travel to Disneyland. With our sunglasses, camera, good spirits and friends we set off on a journey into the emotionally engineered, fabricated experience that comprises the realized imagination of Disneyland!
Dun na naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! Gong!
So, we arrive early. We are in a good position in line. We are allowed to enter into the narrow gates of admission and proceed into the great lobby of the land, Main St. USA. But there is more to this park then the lobby, and we wish to proceed further. We press ourselves forwards and find that no one is allowed further into the park! There is a crowd gathered, and we all press and inch our way forwards, awaiting the opening of the rest of the park.
Finally, the judge steps forth and says “Welcome, all you sheep! The goats have been sent to their hellish work, but you, my sheep, are welcome! Come further in and further up!” With that (I took some poetic liberty on that last part by the way) the last boundary was removed and we were released into our man-made heaven for a day.
We split up almost immediately. The four of us went to go jump in line at the Matterhorn, and the fifth of our quintet ran for Space Mountain, to get these clever little things called FastPasses. As we waited in line for the Matterhorn, there was a guy standing a ways behind us that looked strikingly like Billy Boyd (who played Pippen from the Lord of the Rings.) But that happens a lot out here in the desert of Los Angeles—you think you see all sorts of things. Mirages I tell you! Mirages! And yet…. Anyways, after the group was reunited we rode, and were, more or less, disappointed. The Matterhorn is a very bumpy (and not a pleasant sort of bumpy) ride through some somewhat uninteresting terrain, especially compared to many of the other rides we experienced that day. The Matterhorn is much more pleasant to look upon than ride I’m afraid. We moved on.
Next we did Star Tours. Now this is a ride I remember from some childhood adventures in Disneyworld. I was less impressed by the ride than I remembered, but the flood of fond memories it brought back made me somewhat gooey inside.
This goo, however, was promptly removed with centrifugal force. The line for Space Mountain was nil. We rode it twice. This ride was re-done from what I remembered, with a new soundtrack that really worked stunningly well. I was not just sufficiently but rather quite over-abundantly entertained. In no small part because Dez liked it so much, which really stunned us both. She is not known for her Roller-Coastering, but this ride took her by surprise. I have since used this ride as an excuse to rent more Sci-Fi movies. However, this is not entirely easy nor satisfying because nobody seems to be making any movies with Samurai and Robots. This boggles me, but I digress.
We ate lunch at a pizza/cafe type place. I have much to say and opinions galore on this particular event, however, at this juncture I’ll keep them all rather painfully to myself.
The Buzz Lightyear ride was very extremely excitingly fun. So great, that it should really have a few more adjectives, like “tremendously”, and “enormously”, and maybe I’ll throw in “vastly” and “a great deal” just for good measure. The ride is simple, your sit in a little car, with a Space Ray in your hand, and you shoot things. They take your picture, and they let you email it to yourself. We rode this twice. Our trigger fingers bled.
Life was a bit of a blur for me after that funness, until I found myself outside the door of the Indiana Jones ride. This was great. Pretty much all the fun coolness of the rides before, only, it spoke deeply to my childhood picture of manhood. I was raised on Star Wars, Robin Hood (1938), Captain Blood (1935), and of course, Indiana Jones. Harrison Ford and Errol Flynn were my pictures of what it meant to be a man. Now that I’m older, I realize those characters I so admired are perhaps better pictures of what it means to be a boy. But that is really too deep a statement to be making at a juncture like this, and too new a thought for me to discuss intellegently anyway. On top of all that, I'd hate to get all the John Eldredge fans of the world mad at me for calling all their manly hero's "boys". (Not, at least, withouth proper justifaction that is.) Still, the point is, even mention Indiana Jones and that marvelous goo promptly returns to my insides.
The Indiana Jones ride was indescribably great. You feel, just for a few moments, the adventure you love so much in the film. I really can’t do a written description of this ride in justice, you’ll just have to ask my about it. I can get very excited. Beware of flailing arms.
I was pretty content at this point, and took what would be in effect a gluttons nap; meaning, I walked around in even more of a daze than I was in before. We went on a few other “lesser” rides that I don’t remember all that well, and eventually wandered over to Disneyland’s other land, “California Adventure”. Personally, I think “California Adventure” is a really unexciting less-than-inspired name, but I didn’t let that ruin anybodies day.
Moving right along, we found ourselves in line for the rollercoaster “California Screamin”. Dez had to be talked into going on this ride. But she trusts me, and it paid of well for her. Because, as it turns out, she really enjoyed it; even, perhaps, more than I. It is a really exciting rollercoaster that blasts music that matches the curves you travel along as it shoots you through the air at very high speeds. It really plays around with acceleration. You start at the bottom at a dead stop. Then, before you can blink, you realize you have been pushed to the back of your seat as the car is rocketed straight to the top. Then, you go down. And down, and back up, and loop around and music is blasting and running and after all the adrenaline is pumped out of wherever adrenaline comes from, the ride slams on the brakes and your body crashes forwards and it’s over. Just like that. Dez loved it. I loved it. We ended up riding this one twice as well.
We went to a few other things, Muppets 3D, Tower of Terror (which was a lot more fun than I remembered it being), and some other exhibit type things. By the way, it turns out my personality is most like the Disney character “Jiminy Cricket,” according to the little Disney computer that is. Just a little nod to all you Myers-Briggs fans out there.
We ate dinner somewhere in Adventureland, and upon leaving the park we stopped in Downtown Disney, a free admission shopping mall just outside of the park. We stopped in at the LEGO store. This is a bad metaphor, of course, but if one could die in heaven and proceed to another heaven after that, such a thing would sum up my experience that day in the LEGO store. I bought some more LEGO’s to use at work (as a visualization tool—I seriously have pretty much the greatest job a guy like me could have), and just had a grand ole time looking over everything. The store wasn’t as cool as the LEGO store in the Mall of America, however, so if you can only go to one, of those two, I’d recommend Minnesota.
Our friends car was parked the largest parking structure I’ve ever seen. Rightly so, as I was told it was the second (or so) largest parking structure in the world. It had a 5-story escalator. We decided it would be fun to travel up and then back down the 5-story escalator. That was a ride. I’d title it “The Escalator to Heaven”, not that there was anything up there at the top, but it took so long getting there that it promoted an akin experience. If nothing else, it was fun to be zany. There’s not enough zaniness in the world these days. Gosh, I talk like I’m old enough to have seen the world and then see it change. How zany an assumption is that? (Speaking of zany...why didn't I take a picture of a 5-story escalator? The view was interesting, but getting vertigo on an escalator was something else entirely. You could fall forever and keep going up.)
Well, I guess that about sums up the adventure. I suppose some of you may be still wondering about some of my allusions--about just what exactly a Christian can and can't say, or what my true feelings on Disney really are. If you remain unclear, I guess I expressed my own befuddlement on such subjects well enough. So to both conclude and change the subject, if you would be so kind as to hum the Indiana Jones theme to yourself, I'm going to go relish in some more boyhood memories of manhood.
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