Chapter 170
Jingle (Cruise) All the Way

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King Arthur Carrousel had just reopened after a pretty lengthy refurbishment, so we decided to ride.

Tracy stuck her tongue out like her horse was doing.

While we were stalled for a minute as they checked all the children’s seatbelts, I took this photo of the lighted castle shining from behind.

After riding, we walked over through the castle en route to our next destination.

Even though it had been Holiday Time for several days, they still hadn’t hung the icicles on the castle yet because they hadn’t filmed the Christmas Day Parade yet (and they don’t want them to be ugly in the broadcast). Not that they’re ugly once they’re lit, but during the day, they’re a bit of an eyesore.

We walked through Fantasy Faire and Frontierland on the way to Adventureland.

Here is a terribly washed out picture of where we were heading.

That’s right. It was time for our first ride on the Jingle Cruise.

Our bote was named the Ganges Garland.

Now, if you’ve already been on the Jingle Cruise in 2014, you’ll know that they made way more changes to the actual attraction this year. Last year, however, it was mostly just new decorations in the queue and a few holiday-themed jokes in the script. Our skipper was pretty good, though you could tell he hadn’t eased into the new version of the attraction yet. At one point, our bote had to stall near the attacking natives (I’m guessing there was some sort of unforeseen delay at the dock that trickled back to us), and the skipper totally went off script while we waited. He pointed out the deer that usually go unseen and started giving them weird voices. The natives also reached the end of their movement and then froze while we waited, which was odd too. All in all, it was bizarre. We got off wondering how closely this experience resembled what the Jingle Cruise was actually supposed to be, and we realized we’d need to ride again soon to find out.

Ready for dessert, we headed to Candy Palace and picked up a Christmas themed cake pop. We were even able to score the bench on our porch to eat it.

We sat and people-watched for a while while we ate.

We were just so excited that the holiday season had arrived at Disneyland and we were getting to enjoy it, and we were amazed at everything we’d gotten done this evening.

We tried to take our time as we started to make our way down Main Street toward the exit.

We stopped into the Market House to see their Christmas trees.

I also liked several of the window displays.

After walking to Town Square, we made our way through the entire Emporium and all the way back to the Fortuosity Shop—which had some great decorations itself.

We stopped for another photo shoot by the big tree.

Artsy-ish.

We also walked up onto the platform at Main Street Station to look at all the decorations from a different angle.

By now, the park had closed and everyone was starting to head out. We remarked that we wished it would snow one more time at park closing. I think that would be a magnificent way to end the night as you made your way toward the exit. So if anyone from Imagineering is reading this, go ahead and pitch the idea as your own.

On the way out, we took photos of the new posters that had gone up in the tunnels.

And before long, we’d made it back to Downtown Disney where we hopped the tram home.

It had certainly been one of our very favorite nights in Disneyland ever, as this was the first time either of us had seen the park during Holiday Time. We’d immediately fallen in love with the park at Christmas, and we couldn’t wait to go back again.

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