California Adventure: The Disney Version

Day 8

“I don’t hate Disneyland … for long. It takes me an hour or two to get used to it,” AJ said to B as they were waiting in the first line of the day at the gates of California Adventure along with thousands of other fun-seekers. Coming from the relative peace and subdued attractions of the national park trails to the rush, rush, “get all the fun you can” of Disney jarred her obnoxiously the moment they set out from their hotel that morning.

B was trying to instruct her, using football play-like words, the strategy for getting on the first and most popular ride of the day, Radiator Springs Racers. “We’ll execute the wide right strategy. You follow the crowds to the left, but stay to the right of the crowd, and I’ll go get a FastPass* so we can ride again without waiting,” he said. But when OneSon and TwoSon were debriefed, TwoSon chimed in to say that he wouldn’t want to go on the ride again, so the FastPass ticket option was dropped. 

The ride consisted of cars based on vehicles from the movie Cars zooming around a track in a make-believe race. In the end, the ride was a little disappointing compared to the many winding car rides they had been on through Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks. 

Toy Story’s Midway Mania ride was next. After a pleasant, fun-filled ride and game where passengers shot lights at targets, but before the family got out, the ride stopped. And it didn’t start again. They were stuck, prisoners in their seats for twenty minutes until the apologetic staff came and unlocked the lap bars. In exchange for their unamusement, they were compensated with Fast Passes to any ride they wanted. 

B, OneSon and TwoSon rode Luigi’s Flying Tires next. They were bumper cars that looked like giant wheels. AJ watched from a thin slice of shade on the sidelines. 

Next, they roamed through air-conditioned gift shops hiding from the ever-oppressive heat. AJ and TwoSon boarded The Golden Zephyr, suspended rockets, and twirled in the scorching sun.  Then Goofy’s Sky School, a roller coaster, then Churros. 

For lunch the family sat in the cool of an Italian restaurant where AJ ate a dry salad, then another dry salad, this one with cannelloni beans, then a bowl of blackberries for dessert.  

After getting splashed and cooled on the water ride, Grizzly River Run, they sought refuge from the heat in a theater and watched a theatrical rendering of Aladdin.

Grizzly River Run

TwoSon enjoyed being splashed so much that they headed for the water ride again, but it had broken down. 

The heat and fun had secretly been sapping their energy all day, and when they sat down to rest, it pounced outright. At this comma in the day, B went off to take pictures and AJ and the boys stopped at a cool little food shop for dessert. The family met up with B on a deck like structure by the lake and waited for the sun to disappear for the nightly World of Color show.   

Throughout the water and light show all AJ could a think of was sinking her teeth into a slab of meat. Her noon-day salads hadn't lasted. The light show was amusing and colorful. Scenes of movies were projected on screens of water, with colored lights and fountains. But AJ wanted protein. 

As AJ watched the show, trying not to bump into the people breathing down her neck, a sense of numbness came over her, and it wasn’t because of the lack of protein. She started weighing and measuring the differences between the last seven days of real California adventure and the one Disney reconstructed for her. 

She experienced more wonder, awe and pure joy in walking among the real giant redwoods than in wandering in the sweltering heat over pavement, through pleasure-seeking mobs to be bombarded by amusement dosed in short-lived flashing lights, colors and sounds. It was as if it were all partitioned displays of fun, like capsules; pills of amusement set before your eyes, ears and senses. 

If you look closely, you can see that even the dust on this
 wire is artificial. 

In her more cynical musings, it seemed as if Disney set traps for one’s sensibilities and leashed them, directing them what to do: when to be happy, when to be scared, when to be amused. None of it was authentic, all of it ‘pretend.’ It seemed artificial and manipulative, because … it was. And it was a big business. People wanted their sensibilities to be manipulated. To her, that seemed not necessarily wrong, but inferior in light of the days the family had spent roaming Muir Woods, Yosemite and Sequoia National Park.  

At the end of the day, after getting OneSon and TwoSon safely to the hotel that night, AJ went out to a nearby restaurant for roast beef and broccoli, and ate some of it for an evening snack, the other half for breakfast the next day. 

*A FastPass is a ticket that assigns the park-goer a specific time to come back to a ride and “skip the line” to the front, with no appreciable wait time.