Chapter 137
Travel Woes

Previous Post | Next Post
Table of Contents

(Originally posted January 27, 2014)

Next, we headed over to check out the Haunted Mansion because we knew that the exterior decorations had just been put up.

It was hard to see over the wall, but what we could see was all very familiar. Haunted Mansion Holiday is actually one of Tracy’s very favorite attractions, and we were a little bummed that we would be missing the opening of the attraction (and the Villains Party) the next Friday because we were going to be in CO.

We thought about riding Splash Mountain next, but the line was incredibly long (not surprising considering the temperature outside). Instead, we made our way out through New Orleans Square and Frontierland. We stopped at the Pioneer Mercantile, and Tracy was browsing through all the bracelets and other leather goods you could have engraved outside.

She gave in to temptation and decided to pick up this zebra-print bracelet.

We were already almost ready for dinner, which meant more park hopping next. On the way toward the exit from Disneyland, we saw these awesome Dapper Dans pumpkins in one of the Town Square windows.

It was one of those days when we were craving a Hot Link Corn Dog, so we went back to Corn Dog Castle right away. It was, of course, delicious. One of these days I should start counting how many of these we’ve eaten since moving…

The Pixar Play Parade happened to be starting up right as we got our food, and the vantage point from our table outside the Castle actually provided a decent view. We ended up watching the whole parade while we ate and then headed over to Hollywoodland.

I wanted to do Animation Academy (it sounded like a nice, cool experience on a hot day). We got in line next to a couple girls who were playing the Heads Up! game on their iPhones. We thought it looked like fun—though they were absolutely awful at it—so we downloaded it ourselves to play a little later. When the doors to the Animation Academy swung open, we got to draw Sulley.

I don’t really know how I feel about drawing computer animated characters in 2D because they never really look quite right…

As night fell, the crowds began to invade the parks. We hopped again and went to Indiana Jones as our last ride of the night. Right as we got near the front of the line, of course the attraction broke down for about 10 minutes. We were tempted to leave several times, but in the end we waited it out and got to ride. The experience was extra “plussed” today because Mara finally had the old voice back (thank goodness) AND they had replaced the projections in the rat room with HD. You could finally actually tell they were rats instead of just looking like blobs.

The heat had taken its toll on us and we were definitely ready to go after the ride, but we were glad that we had braved the parks because it ended up being the last time we went before going to CO at the beginning of the next week.

September 8-10, 2013

On Sunday, we decided to escape the heat by going to the beach again. This time, we opted for the same stretch of Huntington State Beach that had been so good to us a couple times before. Luckily, it still wasn’t crowded even though I feel like everyone smart was heading to the coast from cities further inland.

We brought our beach chairs out into the sand and sat for at least an hour just soaking up the sun. It was a very pleasant trip on the whole, and it was nice to have a relaxing day before a week that would turn out to be quite the opposite of “relaxing.”

On Tuesday, our flight to Colorado was scheduled for early afternoon, but it kept getting delayed. Apparently there were really bad storms right in the area of the Denver airport, so we watched as our flight that was supposed to get in at around 6:00pm suddenly was scheduled to arrive after 10:00. We got to know John Wayne Airport pretty well as we sat there for about five hours in total, and several times we jokingly said we should just call it all off and go home. If only we could have known how good an idea that would have been!

When our plane finally DID arrive in Denver, it was so late that most of the rental car places had already closed for the night—ours included. Apparently Enterprise has a deal with one of the other companies where they will honor your reservation if you arrive when Enterprise is closed, but we had to wait in line for over an hour as everyone around us was in the exact same situation. By the time we reached the front of the line, we’d heard through the grapevine that they were basically out of cars out in the lot. Indeed, when we went out to get a car, the one employee who was in charge of the whole place was having to clean cars that had just been returned so that they could be rented out to us. In the end, we got a giant Chrysler boat of a car. We jokingly named it the Titanic and hoped that it would be able to steer us through the rain that had been falling steadily since we landed. In the end, we pulled up to Tracy’s parents’ house at about 1:30am and quickly fell into bed, exhausted.

We hoped that things would start looking up now that we had finally arrived, but little did we know that the events of the next few days would make our flight delays look like child’s play.

Previous Post | Next Post
Table of Contents