Disneyland

 We spent a couple of days at Disneyland at the beginning of mid-winter break.   Jack and I both felt some trepidation about the long days waiting in line with kids and in the end we had more fun than we expected.   D went with Jack's parents, just before he turned four and retained a few memories.   I hadn't been since I was about 17 on my high school band trip and Jack had stayed away even longer than that.   

The kids also hadn't been on an airplane since our Azores+Boston trip in February 2019, so the actual travel part was fun for them too.   We left home Friday morning and spent Friday morning at Downtown Disney, which didn't exist list time I went.   It's basically a sparkly outdoor mall where you go through Disney security but don't need a ticket to enter.   We picked up some dinner by our hotel, brought it in and enjoyed eating it outside, followed by dessert, a Lego store visit and some live music.   It was a nice low-key start to the trip.  Jack and D walked out in front of our hotel to see the Friday night fireworks while Dd and I slept.

Saturday morning, we went to California Adventure and stayed about 11 hours.   I expected to get Dd a stroller part-way through the day, but then I learned you can't bring them with you while you're in line, so it didn't seem as helpful.   Thankfully Jack can still carry Dd on his shoulders without suffering too much, so that's what we did.   We paid extra for Genie which allows you to get in a fast line for most rides, about once every two hours.  It was well worth the price.   

Prior to this trip, poor pandemic-raised Dd had never been on any kind of ride at all.   He's not generally a fearful kid, but he'd never been tested in this way before.   Our first ride was the Mator tractor ride, which is like the teacups.   Fortunately, he liked it.   He and I waited about 70 minutes in line for a Toy Story arcade-type ride, that was not exciting enough to merit the wait, but that was the only really long wait we had on Saturday.   We split up a few times into pairs.   D rode the The Incredicoaster , which accelerates quite fast and loops upside down, two times, once with each of us.   Goofy's sky school was a good smaller roller coaster, with a relatively short line.   All four of us rode once and D and I went back for a second ride.   We ended the night on the big Ferris wheel, in the dark.    Later that night Jack and I got to go down to the hotel hot tub while D watched TV and Dd slept, an exciting parenting milestone for us.

Sunday, we visited Disneyland itself.  There are quite a few Star Wars things, which made me quite glad D has watched several of the movies with Jack.   For my part, I had trouble retaining the names of all the similar sounding Space-thingy rides.....  We started out on the Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run , which was definitely too much for Dd.   D was screaming "pull up! steer up!" at him while the spaceship looked and felt like it was crashing repeatedly.   Dd didn't have nightmares or anything, but he said a few things about not wanting to drive a rocket again.