Chapter 55
Ups and Downs

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(Originally posted August 12, 2013)

First, we went past the castle on our way over toward Mickey’s Toontown.

This was actually our first time in Toontown since we had gotten our passes, so we were excited to revisit the place.

Unfortunately, like the rest of the park, it was SO crowded in there. We’ve been to Disneyland many times on crowded days since this day, but I think this was one of the most crowded times we ever saw the park. It seemed like a wall of people everywhere you turned because so many people had arrived for Dapper Day with no intention of riding anything, but they were still clogging up all the walkways.

We did a quick loop around Toontown, but we didn’t want to stay in there for too long.

On the way out, we grabbed Fastpasses for Roger Rabbit’s Car Toon Spin, which we had never actually ridden before. It was one of the few rides that we totally forgot about on our last trip to Disneyland and realized we had missed once we got home.

Exiting back out into Fantasyland, we saw some ducks milling about across from the Matterhorn.

We’re always big fans of ducks, and Disneyland ducks are always interesting.

Now it was time for our Autopia Fastpasses, so we headed back over to Tomorrowland.

I should mention that it was already starting to get hotter this afternoon than it had been in the last few months. Granted, it was only in the mid-70s, but we had dressed the same way we had been dressing for low-60s, so we were feeling overdressed. Unfortunately, the Autopia queue is also in the beating sun, and even the Fastpass queue often takes quite a while depending on how quickly the cast members are loading/unloading the cars. This happened to be one of those days when it was taking a really long time, and the longer we had to stand still, the worse I started to feel.

Temperature regulation is something that my body isn’t great at these days (another thing you can thank your autonomic nervous system for controlling), so when I started feeling too hot, it only added to my feeling bad. Top it off with the queasy feeling I always get when breathing in the Autopia fumes, and we got into our car not a moment too soon.

Once we had taken our seats and were on the road, I started feeling a little better. Tracy took the wheel (as she usually does on this ride).

Always the crazy Autopia driver, she was having plenty of trouble getting our car to steer straight.

We enjoyed the scenery while we drove (I’m still a big fan of the path the Autopia track takes here with all of its varied terrain).

Our car actually stalled a few times on the track, which had surprisingly never happened to us before. Luckily, it always restarted eventually, and we were able to finish our drive.

Getting up from Autopia, we began to head back toward Toontown. I wasn’t feeling very good at all once I stood up again, and I really wanted some water to counteract how hot I was feeling. Making it to Toontown, I stood in line at one of the restaurants there for water cups (which seemed to take forever). Finally, I was able to get it and bring it back to a bench. By now, however, I was feeling very dizzy and just needed to sit for a while. It wasn’t seeming like I was going to get better any time soon, so I told Tracy to just go ahead and ride Roger Rabbit while I tried to recover.

She went off toward the Fastpass line while I closed my eyes, drank my water, and tried not to let this negative experience sully my good time too much.

The time ticked by and I waited for Tracy on my bench. I wasn’t feeling any better, so I knew I probably needed to eat something, but unfortunately my Goldfish were just sticking to the roof of my dry mouth. After almost a half-hour had passed, and Tracy still hadn’t emerged from Roger Rabbit, I started feeling the oncoming rush of anxiety that often accompanies my feeling of dizziness/faintness. Sometimes when I start to feel this bad, I just need to make a quick escape and go home, but I had no idea how long Tracy would be. Brain fog fully impacting my good decision-making skills, I had stumbled over toward Roger Rabbit, hoping that Tracy would appear and we could make an exit. This turned out to be a pretty awful idea as standing up had just made me feel more faint. Finally, I gave in and called Tracy to see if she happened to still be in line. She answered and quickly told me she was on the ride and would be out soon. Within a few minutes, she appeared, and we were able to start toward the exit. Still feeling weak, I got to the exit and we sat down on a bus back to the Toy Story Lot. We had avoided any actual Disneyland disasters, but it never feels good to have a day of fun ruined by medical issues. We were realizing that some things would inherently have to be different about how we toured these parks in the long run, though we didn’t really know what we needed to change just yet.

On a side note, Tracy absolutely hated Roger Rabbit’s Car Toon Spin. Never a fan of the film, she didn’t like how “zany” and crazy the ride was. It was also way to jerky for her and did a number on her back and neck. I still hadn’t ridden it, but after that glowing endorsement, you can imagine how excited I was to do it. We also found ourselves cursing Dapper Day more than a little bit. I love the idea, and I think it was very fun seeing people all dressed up, but it made Disneyland crowded to the point of misery, so I don’t foresee us going back for it next year.

February 25, 2013

Never ones to let a bad day keep us down, we went back to Disneyland the next day after I finished working so we could try to have a better day than the one before.

As we passed by the Refreshment Corner, Alice and the Mad Hatter were doing their daily show outside.

Obviously, we had failed the previous day to go on Space Mountain despite having Fastpasses, since I had to leave before they were good. Now we returned to Tomorrowland to try again and found that Space was closed.

We just were not having luck blasting off into the galaxy since we had gotten our passes! Changing paths, Tracy decided to do the single rider line on the Matterhorn.

While the previous time she rode, she had gone on the tamer right-hand track, this time she was sent to the left-hand track, and she said it really threw her around. She decided that side of the ride would be a no-no going forward.

We followed up the Matterhorn with a ride through the crazy world of Pinocchio.

I liked all the images of Figaro and Cleo on our ride vehicle.

Next, we trekked over to Adventureland.

We wanted to ride the Jungle Cruise, but the queue was too crazy-long (and we weren’t about to test my standing in another long line today). Instead, we went over to New Orleans Square.