Nobody Knows Anything

Welcome to Diane Patterson's eclectic blog about what strikes her fancy

Spring break at the Magic Kingdom

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When we got invited up to Tahoe for winter break, Darin ended up not being able to take the time off, so I took the kids up alone. I sent him a message: “Spring break is April 12 through April 16. Take the days off now.” He immediately filed for vacation, and we talked about perhaps going to Disney World. Extravagant, yes, but we haven’t taken a long vacation for a while. So our plans was: We would leave on the weekend, spend the week in Orlando, fly home the following weekend, using two days for travel.

Then Darin said, “Oh, um, there’s a WebKit conference on Monday and Tuesday of that week.”

Anaheim it is, then.

We decided to drive down late Tuesday night (after Darin’s conference let out) and then spend several days puttering around Disneyland and California Adventure. We took the kids here two years ago, and we figured they’d enjoy it even more this time. I really think they did. They still enjoy being there (some of their friends are already bored with it), and they were willing to try new stuff now.

Some random observations from this visit, in no particular order:

Disneyland

  • My 10-year-old daughter enjoys going on rollercoaster rides as much as or more than my 10-year-old self did. Of course, one problem is: I am no longer 10-years-old, and they are not nearly as much fun. I still go on them with her though.
  • Sophia would go on Space Mountain non-stop, if given the choice and the ability. I’m assuming that on our next visit to a Magic Kingdom she will have both, as she will be old enough to skedaddle and do whatever the hell she likes, parents or no parents.
  • My 7-almost-8-year-old son would like all rollercoasters to cease existence as of right now, thankyouverymuch. So I don’t think his older sister will be dragging him along with her in the future.
  • Captain EO is hilarious, and not in a good way. It is SO Eighties that at one point a monster morphs into a dancer with a gelled-up pouf and the audience laughed. We finally see the evil queen morph into Anjelica Huston…and immediately Michael Jackson’s head fills the frame, as though we can’t possibly focus on someone else for even a second. And the song redefines forgettable.
  • Sophia said, “I couldn’t tell if Captain EO was a boy or a girl.” So many things I left unsaid at that point.
  • Darin managed to deduce that the voice of the pilot for Star Tours is Paul Reubens, and the Internet backs him up. Therefore this information is TRUE.
  • The kids cannot get enough of Pirates of the Caribbean and the Haunted Mansion. Some things never change. It is still funny to hear the voice of Tony the Tiger in both places.
  • My kids have no idea who Tony the Tiger is. Go me!
  • Two years ago, at the Haunted Mansion, Simon looked at the paintings in the spooky hallway (the ones that change from things like a beautiful lady to a cat lady when the lighting flashes) and said, “Projection.” In his 5-year-old voice, with a little boy lisp, it came out, “Pwojeckshun,” and it was hilarious. He is, of course, right. Which is kind of amazing for a 5-year-old in the first place.
  • The part of the Haunted Mansion that features married couples where apparently the wives murdered the husbands: guys, violence isn’t any funnier directed toward men. In fact, it’s DISTURBING. (Oh, I see from Wikipedia I was right: I didn’t remember this bit from my childhood, and I guess I wasn’t paying attention two years ago, and it is in fact new.)
  • Also a big fave: It’s a Small World! The classics, they never stop. Kind of hilarious that a bunch of dolls singing the same song over and over again would be so attractive, but it really is.

California Adventure

  • Soarin’ Over California at California Adventure should be titled, “Stuff you will never have in Kansas, no matter how much Amazon Prime you have.” If you’re visiting California Adventure run, do not walk, to this attraction first.
  • The Aladdin stage show is really good. I was expecting some kind of halfassed song and dance thing with a fog machine, and it’s practically a Broadway musical with special effects.
  • The “Turtle Talk with Crush!” animation show is hilarious. There’s a large screen, and Crush from “Finding Nemo” swims by to talk to everyone. Then he picks out people in the audience to talk to and ask questions of. The animation is seamless—I have no idea how Crush moves and appears to be looking at various people—and the actor doing it was very talented.
  • Lots of vegetarian options for meals here, btw. (Dunno about vegan, but vegetarian definitely.) Also: lots of places to get an alcoholic drink, in case you can’t get through your day without a cocktail. So if you’re finishing your day at Disneyland, bummed that for another year running you haven’t gotten into Club 33 and you really need to tie one on, hie thee across the plaza to California Adventure and drink up.

Other

  • I know it’s beaten into them. I know they’re trained to do this and it’s a manipulation technique and I’m being played. But oh my GOD was every single staff member I dealt with at our hotel wonderful and cheerful. Before the trip I called to tell them that we were going to be arriving hella late, and the young man I talked to was just so happy to answer my questions and put lots of notes about my requests in my file! And every time I called the front desk the operators were so thrilled to be helping me! The technique seriously works: I felt really good about staying there! I can think of so many businesses that could take a fucking page from the Disney indoctrination technique.
  • The Grand Californian (where we stayed) is really a good hotel. (Well, except for the toilet in our room, which kept malfunctioning. But I assume that wasn’t a feature.) The design is great, the distance to the parks and to Downtown Disney is excellent, and the way that so many rooms have a queen plus bunk beds just screams, “We know who our clientele are and what they want!”
  • We were in the park early one morning and I saw a Disney cast member (not “employee”! that’s “cast member” to you!) walking by in costume holding a Starbucks cup. If she’d been texting on an iPhone she could have hit the Corporate Hegemony Trifecta.
  • If you live in Southern California and are like, “WTF? Darin and Diane didn’t let us know they were coming?” please to take comfort in the fact that we didn’t tell anyone. We spent the entire time just as a foursome, and it worked out really, really well (better than I expected, if I may be so honest). We spent all day every day together, except for when one of us took the kids to the pool and the other one stayed in the room.
  • The Napa Rose restaurant is really good. Ate there twice. I recommend the starters over the entrees, but then again, I was completely full on two starters.
  • The Steakhouse 55 restaurant at the Disneyland Hotel is okay. I think the praise it’s gotten is a little overblown, or maybe people are just so happy to find a place that’s halfway decent around here.
  • The Blue Bayou at Pirates was pretty good, though expensive. You have to ask to sit by the bayou though! Epic fail on our part.
  • Man, has the Disneyland Hotel changed since the first time I stayed there. The first time, when I flew out from the East Coast with my family (I was probably…8?), there was one hotel. The second time, when I was 10 or 11, there were two hotels and a big lagoon where we had paddle boats. Now it’s a gigantic conference center with three towers and no paddle boats. Plus all of these other hotels (including the Grand Californian, where we stayed.) And Downtown Disney. And…well, it’s just quite impressive what they’ve done with the place.

And now the question I’ll leave you with: after you visit all of the continents (including Antartica) in It’s A Small World, you visit an area where we get a repeat of a number of the dolls…only this time, everyone’s wearing all white. Does the last section represent the Afterlife?

Thar she goes!

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Sophia has been an official two-wheeler since Tuesday—except she was riding the little toy bike she’s had since she was two (Darin calls it “the clown bike”), which didn’t exactly count. We kept encouraging her to try her “big” bike, the bike she got for her sixth birthday, but every time she got on it, she cried and said she was scared.

Yesterday she was riding on the clown bike and I once again idly asked, “Want to try your big bike?” “Okay!” she said, the way she has many, many times before. So I reluctantly dug it out of the shed (which is currently filled with varnish fumes, so being in there was unpleasant) and gave it to her. She walked it down to the street.

And took off.

She didn’t even need to start on the hill, which is how she got started on the clown bike. She just gave herself a push forward and started pedaling.

Now that she was using her big bike, she did not want to get off of it. After two hours I said she had to come in, because I was too tired to play traffic cop any more. (For a tiny street that could not serve as a thoroughfare by any remote stretch of the imagination, damn we get a lot of traffic.) She went out after dinner too.

First thing this morning she asked if she could bike after camp.

Now that she has her own wheels, we’re never going to see her again.

And now we are six

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The big highlight of the past few days has been the Endless Sixth Birthday Celebration of someone who can’t possibly be 6, because didn’t I just take her home from the hospital?

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(I could not get her to smile for a photo. I took lots of solo pictures of her, and in every one she looks more solemn than this. Most of the time she has a smile as bright as the sun on her, but apparently not for pictures Mommy takes.)

Sophia is 6 now, as she will be happy to tell you. In fact, her birthday has been the main subject of her conversation for the past two weeks. (Didn’t I used to have a little girl who’d run away at the sound of “Happy Birthday” being sung? Those days: over.) She’s wearing one of her new dresses to school today (“So that everyone can see how pretty I am”).

We had Birthday Week around here, because Sophia had last week off from school (and for some reason I hadn’t written Winter Break down on my calendar…errrrgggg), so we hung out together and did lots of things, including lots of things she wanted to do. On Friday, her actual birthday, I asked what she wanted for dinner, provided it wasn’t Chicken Dinosaurs, because that’s not a food for a family dinner. She announced she wanted roasted chicken legs, baked potatoes, and asparagus. She didn’t eat much of it, but I was happy that she knows enough about our dinner requirements to ask for those things. She didn’t even seem to mind that I didn’t have cake for her for after dinner.

Which was fine, because on Saturday we had her birthday party at Bamboola (an indoor playground place, with an arcade, a kid-habitrail, dress-up area, make-up area, water play area) with friends from Kindergarten and friends from preschool, and she seemed to have a complete blast. Periodically one of the kids would stop by me and ask, “Where’s Sophia?” I’d shrug and say, “I think she went thataway.” We had pizza and ice cream cake and everyone seemed to go home very happy.

Today is her party at school, so in preparation I made cupcakes — yes, from scratch. Sophia helped me. Well, she helped me a) taste the cupcakes, b) frost the cupcakes, and, oh yes, c) taste the frosting. In pretty much that order too.

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I wanted to try out my new cake decorating kit, which is why the chocolate frosting is in a swirl, whereas the pink frosting has been ladled on. I made pink, purple, and blue frosting for her to decorate with, and before I let her loose with the cupcakes I wrapped her in my cooking apron. I expected she’d slather each cupcake with tons of frosting (see “frosting: tasting of,” above), but instead she’d put a reasonable amount on a cupcake and pronounce it done. She was so excited that her friends were going to get to have her cupcakes at school.

She’s writing (a lot — I gave her her own journal and she writes sentences in it), she’s painting, she can’t wait for us to assemble her birthday bike so she can ride around. (The front fork of the bike we bought at Target is too narrow, so I couldn’t put it together. We have to take the whole thing back. I said, “Hon, can we go to REI and buy one that’s already made?”) Most of the time she’s a great friend and playmate to her little brother, who thinks the world of her. Her kindergarten teacher says that not only is she very bright, but she’s one of the nicest kids in the class, friends with everyone. In fact, the teacher often pairs her with one of the kids who’s the most difficult to get along with, because Sophia deals with him just fine.

Currently, when she grows up, she wants to be a teacher and a mommy, and if you don’t think I’m seriously flattered by that, boy, do you have a lot to learn.

Six! My little girl is six! The years are so short. There are definitely times I wish my kids had a dial, so I could dial them back to when they were just little babies, to experience that once again, but since I can’t, I’m extraordinarily happy with the kids I have today. Even if one of them won’t smile for the camera.