Chapter 13
Never Had a Friend Like Me

We used our time for Mr. Toad next.

And we followed that up by getting a time for the Matterhorn.

While we waited, we walked over to Jolly Holiday Bakery to get another treat we’d yet to try—the Raspberry Mickey Macaron.

I feel like macarons are usually pretty standard, but this one really stood out. The filling was delicious and it was surrounded on all sides with actual raspberries.

Eating the snack took almost enough time for our ride on the Matterhorn to be ready, but we decided to ride the train back around to Fantasyland rather than walking. En route, we stopped by the Town Square windows and noticed that heroin-addict Ariel had been turned off.

Now she just sits there looking creepy instead of rocking back and forth looking creepy.

We boarded the front-facing train, but Tracy still sat facing sideways and used her tail as a cushion.

After making it around to Fantasyland, we rode the Matterhorn before hopping over to DCA. We’d pulled Fastpasses for World of Color early in the day and were hoping to get over to watch the show for the first time in forever.

As you know, World of Color is probably the most difficult show at Disneyland for me because of all the standing, so we always have to hope that there will still be benches available in the handicapped section. Lucking out, I think I got one of the last spots and was able to sit.

They weren’t doing the Fun Wheel Challenge this evening—which was a bummer because we’d wanted to try it out—but the time until the show went by relatively quickly.

Soon enough, the fountains had come to life with (what else?) COLOR!

I’m embarrassed to say that I think this was our first time seeing the show since Winter Dreams last December, so we hadn’t gotten to see the new projection system before. We also, honestly, didn’t see it enough times with the old system to really notice a difference, but the projections did look great!

Since this was mid-August, Robin Williams had just tragically died a week or two prior to our visit, and when the Genie came on the screen to start doing “Friend Like Me,” the entire crowd erupted in cheers and applause. I thought it was an extremely touching tribute from so many fans, and I know a few tears sprang to my eyes.

My World of Color pictures never exactly come out spectacularly, but here are a few more, just for fun.

FIRE!

And the finale.

I just love the song “The Wonderful World of Color,” and especially the lovely arrangement they use at the beginning and end of the show. Such a pretty, almost haunting melody.

And before long (okay, maybe it was after about 30 minutes), the show was over.

We’d gotten a DAS time for Luigi’s Flying Tires, but we were honestly exhausted at this point, so we decided not to use it. We still had to check in to our new hotel, after all.

As we walked back, we checked our FitBits and realized that both of us had broken 25,000 steps on the day—making this the farthest either of us had walked in a single day since we started tracking more than a year earlier. No wonder our feet were hurting!

It felt like it took forever to walk back to hotel row on Harbor (even though our new residence was actually closer than the old one). We checked in at the Camelot Inn and Suites and were given the key to our room on the third floor. When we booked, the cheapest available rooms were the wheelchair-accessible ones, which is usually a bummer at hotels. At the Camelot, however, apparently wheelchair-accessible means that you get one of the rooms along the front of the property—which have little balconies that actually look out toward the parks.

Here was our view of the Matterhorn from our room.

And looking left, you can see the top of the Fun Wheel and California Screamin’.

As for the room itself, it was definitely fine. Nothing too special, but we’d literally be there for less than 12 hours before checking out, so we didn’t care at all.

The Internet didn’t work, which made me a little wary about staying there on work trips in the future because I work from the room so often. But luckily, it was the weekend, so that fact didn’t really matter.

We also thought it was a little crazy that the room had a traditional tub shower in spite of supposedly being accessible. Obviously, this wouldn’t be an issue for us normally, but Tracy found out the hard way that the bath mat inside the shower wasn’t secured to the ground very well. It slipped as she was trying to step out, and she got a lump on her shin that’s still sort of there more than two months later. Yikes!

Luckily, the bed was plenty comfortable and we fell asleep almost as soon as our heads hit the pillows. We still had almost a full parks day ahead of us before going home.

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