disneyland adventure – Deep Forest Outpost

“Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days.”

— Benjamin Franklin

At least once per vacation Amy and I snooze our alarms too often and have to rush to make a morning deadline. On day three of the trip, October 14th, my parents had made reservations for the entire group to enjoy “Minnie & Friends – Breakfast in the Park” at the Plaza Inn in Disneyland. True to form, we erupted out of bed like flushed grouse about forty-five minutes after the alarm started going off and started the day with manic action.

Sometimes it's a challenge just getting to the gates... — Sometimes it’s a challenge just getting to the gates…

So far, we had enjoyed an unhurried, high-calorie, high-carbohydrate breakfast at Mrs. Knott’s Chicken Dinner Restaurant. Today, we had another leisurely, gluttonous meal with Minnie Mouse and her friends at the Plaza Inn. Our phones were bleeping with text messages from my Mom as we flew out the door with minutes to the reservation deadline. She was making sure we were well on our way, and, fair to say, we were not.

The line we joined at the security checkpoint was at least 50 yards long, although it went faster than I expected. The line for the front gates was about the same, and it sped right along, as well. We only had the length of Main Street, USA between us and the Plaza Inn. Continue reading “The Long, Hot, Crowded Day – Disneyland October 2012 Day Three” →

“Expecting is the greatest impediment to living. In anticipation of tomorrow, it loses today.”

– Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Seneca Mouseketeer — “Can I be banished to Fantasyland, instead?”

Ten long months had passed since we had reserved a hotel room with a few excited clicks of a mouse. The formal opening of our Disneyland adventure was the morning of Friday, October 12, 2012, but as with almost all of our vacations, it had been long in anticipation. In this case, we began negotiating dates with our travel party the better part of a year before. October seemed a long ways off in the cold dark of January.

Dreary old Seneca thought that anticipating the future kept us from appreciating our present, but he never planned a trip to Disneyland – his travel opportunities included banishment to Corsica for sleeping with the emperor’s sister. In my experience, the gathering and staging phase can be every bit as engaging as the trip itself. Continue reading “On The Way There – Disneyland October 2012 Day One” →