The Happiest Place on Earth

For a while now, Gigi and I have been trying to figure out how to get away. Every weekend we think about turning off cell phones, piling into the car and driving away for a couple of days. We talk about it every week it seems, then the weekend comes and goes and we haven’t gone farther than Irvine. When Thanksgiving came and we had an extra day we decided that we weren’t going to go anywhere. We would just stay home, but we would do something fun to make it an a-typical weekend. We decided we would go to Disneyland! Lately Gigi had been telling me how “magical” Disneyland had sounded so it was a perfect thing to do. A good friend of ours (Hi Jim!) works for the park and graciously took time on his day off to lend a hand with the admission costs and warned us that the day after the holiday would likely be CROWDED. We were up to the challenge though and braved our way into California Adventure.

Gigi and I have always had different thoughts about Disneyland. She goes for the roller coasters (of which Disneyland has few of), and I go for the experience the park has to offer. This trip I was determined to show her the experience side of things. Especially since she is pregnant and there really aren’t too many rides we could even go on. We had about an hour before our dinner reservations so we took a little stroll through the Bugs Life area of California Adventure. I mentioned to Gigi that I loved the details like that the building that housed the restrooms was made to look like an upside down box of tissues and the signs for the rides were discarded plastic spoons. She gave me a weird look and said, “I don’t get it.” I gave her a weird look back and said, “Honey we are bugs in a bug world.” She looked around a bit and as she did her eyes got bigger and bigger, then her smile got bigger and bigger. “OH MY GOSH! You’re right!” Her eyes had been opened and from that point in the night she started realizing that Disneyland wasn’t all about the rides.

Thanks to our friend Jim, I know my way around the parks pretty well, and I dragged Gigi all over the park that night. Much to our surprise the park was EMPTY. The longest wait we had was for the Toy Story ride and that was only about 45 min. The rest of the rides we went on, we practically walked right to the front of the line. One of our favorite areas was in California Adventure. It had a netted suspension bridge, a rock-climbing wall, tire swing races (we didn’t do that, but it looked like a TON of fun), and a nature trail. We will definitely have to go back there when we are a bit more free to behave a little more recklessly.

As the night progressed, we realized exactly why the parks were empty; it was about 40 degrees out! Luckily, we dressed warm, but we never imagined it would get that cold. By 11 pm we were cold to the bone and ready to head home. As we walked back to the car we talked about how much fun the whole night was and how much we want to go back… soon! I had so much fun showing Gigi all the little things that make Disneyland fun for me and she had a ton of fun enjoying the park in a whole new way. Together we just enjoyed a night of goofing off together getting away from the same old thing. It was a much needed and much loved night out.