Good-bye Mouse

I know this is late, but I'm sure you are all just waiting with bated breath to hear about the last few days. Friday was out last day in the Disney parks, and boy did we manage to pack a lot into our time there.  No one can say that we didn't get our money's worth, that's for sure.  We got there shortly after it opened, spent a number of hours in Disneyland and then hopped (ok walked) over to California Adventure and stayed until it closed at 10:30.  We even considered going back into Disneyland until it closed at midnight, but after some discussion about sore feet, and no rides they really needed to ride still, it was agreed (by them, not me) that we were done for the night.  Still, over twelve hours and two parks is pretty good. The highlight of my day, naturally, was finally getting to meet Mickey (which they actually stood in line to do for me, I guess that kinda makes up for the selfishness of not writing my blog).  There is no doubt that he is a giant mouse, especially compared to me.  Still he was very friendly, and I'm glad I got the chance to say hi.  Oh, speaking of which, a friend tagged my two escorts in an interesting post on Facebook about this very mouse which I thought I should share.  It was a picture of the castle, and said "A trap for humans, set by a mouse". Yup, but as Clare replied, "at least it's a fun trap". 

I think the best comment of the day came from a young cast member on our very first ride of the morning (Flight of Peter Pan).  We had got used to hearing "supervise your children" when boarding almost every ride, only this time he smiled at us and said "supervise your inner children".  For some reason this set both of them into a fit of giggles.  I'm not sure if that had to do with me or what, but I'm glad they thought it was funny.  The rest of the day was spent visiting parts of the Disneyland we hadn't seen yet, and then going back to rides we loved in both parks.  We went to Toontown and saw the homes of many favourite characters including Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, and Donald Duck.  We rode a very little rollercoaster there, which is probably fun for little kids, but after Space Mountain and California Screaming, well it seemed rather short and under-whelming.  We rode a circus train, flew over Neverland, raced through the Matterhorn on a bobsled again, and went back to the Pirates of the Caribbean.

We also managed to track down two characters that my escorts wanted to meet (besides my goal to meet Mickey).  Clare found out when Merida (from Brave) would be around, and then made sure she was first in line to meet her.  I'm not sure her Scottish accent was real, and I'm fairly certain her frizzy red hair wasn't either, but Clare didn't seem to mind.  Later we went back to Pixie Hollow and KayRena just might have been the first visitor they ever had to wait a few extra minutes to meet a fairy other than Tinkerbell.  When she finally went over to meet Iridessa, she was even introduced as "one who waited to meet you instead of Tinkerbell".  I think Iridessa was thrilled to hear that (must be hard to always be second to some more famous fairy).  So all character goals all met: Mater, Merida, Mickey and a fairy other than Tinkerbell.  Yay us! At about 3:30 we switched parks and immediately went back on California Screaming and the Cars Racers ride.  Still just as fun as the first time!  Then, with aching feet, and a goal to get a good seat at the "World of Colour" show at the end of the night, we went over to Ariel's Grotto for dinner (the only time we didn't eat food we brought with us).  They tell me it was delicious food, but I wouldn't know as I didn't get any.  That might be partly due to the cost.  You know it will be expensive when there are no prices on the menu! Still, the meal included "preferred seating" to the water/light show, which meant the first two levels closest to the water.  Oh yes!

After dinner we wandered the shops and jumped on a few more smaller rides that had very short lines, and then finally made our way down to the waterfront and found our preferred seats were as close to the water as we could get, in the "wet zone", and yes we got wet, well they did; I chose to hide out under the end of KayRena's rain poncho.  Clare didn't wear one of course.  She decided it was more important to protect her backpack and its treasures.  Besides, she's just weird that way. Our walk back to the hotel that night seemed the longest ever.  Again, I wasn't sure if it was because they were sad that it was all over, or if they really couldn't have walked faster if they'd tried (between you and me, I think it was the second one).  It was gone 11 when we finally reached the hotel, and neither hadn't the energy to write my blog for me.  Yet both seemed to have no problem talking in bed about their favourite rides, shows, moments and on and on.  Really?  What about me?  *sigh* The next morning we we're back on the road by 9am with the goal of driving the entire way in one day.  It was mostly uneventful really, just very long.  The best part of the drive came later in the day when we were all bored enough to listen to what I will now call the messed up fairy tales, which needs a bit of background info.  The day we were preparing to leave, KayRena's husband came home with a set of six CDs of princess tales he thought we would enjoy on the drive.  Problem is, the car doesn't have a CD player, just a USB port, so her husband kindly uploaded them onto a computer and then onto a USB drive.  Only iTunes didn't recognize the CDs so the tracks were all "track 1" and so on, AND all the track 1s got listed first, then all the track 2s and so on.  We had no time to fix it, so it played the way it was on the drive.  In other words, we heard part one of every story and then part two etc.  All were read by the same lady, and there was no pause between tracks.  Sometimes it was obvious within a few words that we had switched stories.  Other times it was a few sentences, which kept us on our toes and giggling. I tell all of that, to tell the best mixed up fairy tales line ever; a switch from Little Mermaid to a story we'd never heard before (and don't remember the title).  The narrator was describing Ariel watching the prince's ship sinking in quite a bit of detail, and then suddenly said "and it went on like that happily for some years."  Yup, that's what the last four hours of our drive was like: quite confusing and very entertaining. As I think I said last night, we got home to very excited children (and husband I think, although he was too cool to show it), who eagerly wanted to hear stories and get their gifts.  One even exclaimed it was better than Christmas.  Me, I was exhausted and kinda fell asleep where I landed. Whatever!