Holiday Disney

Disneyland was wonderful. Great weather, fairly small crowd, fast lines - perfect. Whoever thought up the 'free on your birthday' promotion is a genius; we probably would not have gone had it not been for that. And there were literally hundreds of people all over the park sporting 'birthday' buttons.

The longest line we were in all day was the one into the parking garage. An RV got stuck trying to get around the entrance booth - and of course that was the line we were in. Dick stood outside the car for awhile, watching the (eventually successful) maneuvering. Mildly entertaining but I was ready to be inside, having fun.

There were more people than we expected for a Tuesday but we were able to walk right on to most rides, including Indiana Jones - which promptly broke down. It had been closed for repair when we first walked by; apparently they didn't get it fixed on the first try.

'Behind the scenes' on Indiana Jones. Sounds better than 'broken', right?

We sat for 6-7 minutes while the engineers worked, but it was fun to see 'behind the scenes'. And the bonus? We got to go around again rather than get off at the end of the interrupted ride.The park was decked out in holiday finery, especially the castle, and there were new jokes on the Jungle Cruise (one of my favorite rides.)We got to see two new attractions - the revamped riverboat with its Princess and the Frog theme - and the Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters. We'd never heard of that one before but the line was short so we went in. And it was a blast, literally. You fire laser guns at targets along the ride's path, with each person's score showing in front of them on the car. I'm happy to report that Dick's years of SWAT training finally paid off; he had about 1,000,000 more points than I did.

Dick's score was 1,468,900 - about 1,000,000 points more than mine.

After the parking snafu, the rest of the day went in our favor. We got a parking spot right by the escalators; boarded the tram - coming and going - without having to wait; got taken out of the looooong ticket line and lead to a newly opened ticket window; twice had ride lines divided just ahead of us so we got a shorter wait; had no one in line ahead of us at the restaurants and stores we visited; and got to the Golden Horseshoe - Dick's favorite - just as the show was about to start and there were seats still available - that never happens. It was like it was my birthday or something. All in all, a perfectly magical Disney day.