2/5 - Traditional Disneyland

Whether it was jetlag, accumulated worries or over fatigue, that night was an emotional low point for me. Awake from 1.30am I (needlessly?) worried over the possible scenario of 5+ weeks in the US with a credit card that didn't work, no key cards and aparently inaccessible cash in an Australian account; and how they might be achieved. It was a very dark night for me, but as always, Maria grounded me when I needed it most.

The kids awoke excited at the prospect of a day at Disneyland but financial concerns took first prescedence. Without going into boring details, the creditcard failed yet again and lengthy phonecalls ensued with both Mastercard Intl and the Commonwealth Bank. Little was resolved. To cut a tedious story short we changed our Euros into US dollars, crossed our fingers, and decided to have a good day at Disneyland regardless.

After a small hiccup with the tickets, we were finally in 'the happiest pace on Earth" (cough...splutter!). Consulting the map we immediately headed for Adventureland and found the Indiana Jones ride with a wait of '10 minutes' posted. So in we went and before you could say 'I don't like snakes' we were hopping onto the ride. Grant was extremely nervous - the atmospherics were great.

I won't try and describe the ride, but when we hopped of some 5 (?) minutes later, both Grant and Zoe were stumbling over their words and babbling in excitement (just think of Dash from The Incredibles in the car ride near the end of the movie). Neither of us can recall seeing the kids that excited.

That set the scene for the rest of the day - crowds were almost non-existent and we could almost always walk on to a major ride in around 10 minutes. And that's exactly what we did. We did The Matterhorn, Space Mountain, Starwars, Buzz Lightyear, Wilderness Ride, River Cruise, Pirates of the Carribean, Haunted Mansion, Autopia, and, for good measure, Indiana Jones another time or two.

One highlight of the day was that Zoe got to become a Jedi in their Starwars stage show. She was taught the moves and ended up taking on a very fierce (a couple of other kids ran off in tears) Darth Maul.

Family favourites were Indiana Jones (Grant), Pirates of the Carribean (both Maria and Zoe) and The Haunted Mansion (Spike - I loved the holographs). The kids also met and got signatures from a number of characters including Mickey, Mini amd Pluto.

We stayed the whole day including seeing the 'obligatory' parade at the end of the day. Getting back to the hotel, we had the wonderful surprise that the 'care package' from Australia (our key cards and licences) had arrived. We can't thank Jane and Frank enough for seeing this matter through for us.

By this time everyone had "hit the wall" energy-wise (particularly as in Europe - which our bodies were synched with after 4 weeks there - it was something like 3am) so we sucuumbed to that evil lure awaiting all travellers - we (for the first time on the trip) purchased dinner at McDonalds (which was right next door). While everyone crashed I again spent a round of phone calls talking to Commonwealth and Matsercard International operators (making somethin like 6 different that day) and eventually ordered another card. I was glad to finally climb into bed.