Our Trip to Disneyland, part one

Our daughter, Bella, loves Disneyland. She’s three and she talks about it all the time. She talks about the rides she can go on and the rides she is too little for.
“Can I go on Splash Mountain?”
“No , you’re too little.”
“How about now?”
“No.”
“Now?”
“No! You have to grow three more inches and that will take at least two weeks. Plus, the movie it’s based on is in moratorium and will never be released because the Disney executives think it is too racist.”
“… ”
“Honey, don’t confuse our daughter.”

She just loves rides and Disneyland. You’d think if she loves it that much, what could possibly go wrong? Cut to:

We get there and the guy at the booth waves us in for free parking. Cool! Off to a good start. It’s not too crowded and we get our tickets for the Magic Kingdom.

We try to avoid Disney’s California Adventure because let’s face it: It’s simply an abomination. A California Theme Park in the middle of California. That’s like building a moon themed park… on the moon. There is only one ride that is worth going on, and that’s called a “dark” ride where you get in a car and slowly circle a brightly colored coffin. That’s right you just ride around and listen to Walt Disney turn over in his grave. Let’s see in a few years if Pixar can save that, too.

My wife was pregnant so that left me to take Bella on most of the rides. Which was fine, because, well, I like rides. Dumbo was first, the slowest moving line ever. Still, Bella was being good already and I only had to chase her like three times during the entire wait.

She was now tall enough to go on the Matterhorn and we went on. Halfway though I hear “I want it to stop.” We made it through without a cryburst (mixture of crying and an outburst of screaming) so I knew she wasn’t that freaked out. Then after we got off she wanted to go on it again. But we had other things to go on.

So the day progressed wonderfully. We went on Tom Sawyer Island that is now pirate Island and she saw some pirates. There was a huge line to take pictures with a guy dressed like Jack Sparrow. And there weren’t any kids in it. We then went on the Jungle Cruise, Buzz Lightyear, and Alice in Wonderland. We were all having a blast. But it was getting late. Maybe we should start heading home.

Home? Not yet. Oh, no. There was one more ride I wanted to go on. So it’s getting late but I REALLY wanted to go on the finding Nemo submarine ride. The 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea ride in Florida was my favorite as a kid, and it was incredibly nostalgic for me to get to go on it again. We asked Bella if she wanted to go and she said yes. Tick Tick Tick… We waited in line. Bella was being really good. Tick tick tick tick….

We got in the submarine and she really seemed to like it. We floated around and looked through the porthole. Halfway through the ride there is a really loud noise and the lights go out. I knew this was going to be trouble, but Bella was OK. Then My wife leaned over and said, ”she just peed all over herself.” I couldn’t believe it.
“Are you sure?” I said it like I thought she was lying, which wasn’t appreciated.
“Of course I am! She’s soaked!” Our little one was indeed soaked. And the ride seemed like it had a lot more to go. So now I couldn’t really concentrate on the rest of the ride. I’m sure that’s exactly what my wife was thinking too.

As the ride finally ended, after another 4 minutes that felt a lot like 2 hours, we were wondering if we could just wipe the seat with a baby wipe and get out of there. No deal. The lights came on and revealed a rather large puddle right under Bella’s seat. Okay so now we had to tell someone. Great. We got out of the sub and I said to the girl, “My daughter just peed all over your nice new submarine.” The girl, or “cast member” as they are called looked at me like she was not surprised, but not really happy either. She called someone to clean the sub, and the three of us skulked away to lose ourselves in the crowd. Luckily, at Disneyland, there is always a crowd so it wasn’t hard. Hey, how many fathers get to say, ”My daughter peed all over a submarine.” But it didn’t end there. Oh, no the best was yet to come. Stay tuned for part 2 of “The happiest place on earth made me cry. My daughter too.”