The week before Disneyland went by entirely too fast. It was filled with such grand schemes as Do My Laundry and Vacuum My Room. All of these fell to the wayside due to Watching Ace of Cakes and Sleeping. I did, however, manage the most important task of creating an incredibly detailed packing list (Huzzah!).
On Friday night, everything got folded and creased and crammed into a duffel and a backpack and was put in the car, ready to go.
On Sunday afternoon (around 2:30), happy nerves were jangling as Arielle and I loaded everything into the van (including the 2 packs of bottled war I bought for the dehydrated chil'uns).
Just as we were about to pull out and head to the high school, Dad pulled in so we were all able to go over together.
In the parking lot it was mass hysteria. Piles of luggage and a Mongol-esque horde of beslippered, be-jammied, bespectacled band kids.
About a half hour later the kids were given the go-ahead to load their stuff onto the buses but were strictly told NOT to enter them (Arielle got a brief reprimand when I told her to get on the bus so I could take a picture). This order was promptly ignored by all those who wanted to claim the coveted back seats. Another half hour and we were finally on our way at 4pm.
Arielle saved me a seat in the back of the bus (away from the oh so uncool chaperones) and I filled out my first official chaperone duty by passing out schedules and phone numbers to all and sundry. I sat next to one of Arielle's friends, Chelsea, and Arielle sat across the aisle with Lisa (who we shared a room with).
Getting our room situated was a fiasco of its own. Way back in the early planning stages, Arielle and I made sure to request to be in a room together with her friends, as opposed to sending me off into the awkward and stuffy world of rooming with three chaperone strangers. Her choir teacher said that'd be fine and as time went by, I reminded Arielle to remind him. About a month before the trip, I got a call from a fellow chaperone (a lady I'd known from my parents' ward) saying that I'd be in a room with her.
"I thought I was going to be in a room with Arielle and her friends. We cleared it with her choir teacher."
"Adults can't be in rooms with students, he probably didn't know. If it was up to me, it'd be no problem. I'm not worried about you."
"Well, it was going to be me, Arielle, her friend Lisa, and your daughter Stephanie."
"I have no problem with that. Maybe if we could get a letter of permission from Lisa's mom? I'll ask the committee."
I had met Lisa's mom before at a joint birthday party held in December and didn't think that'd be an issue. So two permission notes and a committee meeting later and we were in. Chanel had been authorized. Now back to the bus.
The drive from Nampa, Idaho to Anaheim, California was very long and did not hold much sleep. Within the first half hour, the bus quieted down and everyone took a nap till about 6:15pm. Then they started playing the movies. First was "Ratatouille": No problems here, except for when the monitor directly over Arielle went on the fritz. Second was "College Road Trip": Ugh. An uber-stupid movie about a girl and her father growing closer together while checking out some colleges. Trust me, awful. There was a smart pig and a sing-a-long on a Japanese tour bus.
Sometime around here we stopped in McDermitt for a potty break and literally overwhelmed the one-clerk convenience store. I didn't stick around to see how panicked his expression was because I was getting claustrophobic. It was one massive wall of high school students from the $5.99 movie bin to the fluorescent energy drinks (which the students were NOT allowed to have on the bus). The more daring entered the Say When casino to use the bathroom where they were strictly monitored by the staff and emerged smelling of stale smoke.
After "College Road Trip", the real torture started with "Extreme Days". A movie about four college guys who travel across the story doing several EXTREME sports. Basically one bad action montage after another tied together VERY loosely with hardly a plot. It was worse than a Mary Kate and Ashely Olsen movie. Arielle made the comment, "This movie isn't changing at all, in fact it's getting more of the same." I suppose the guys felt they were getting their revenge on the girls for "College Road Trip", but I think basically everyone suffered for the 3 hours it took for both movies to finish. That was the last film of the night.
By this time, several people were already in the aisle sleeping. As it got darker it became one unending line of sleepers. People wishing to use the bathroom (obviously not in their right minds *shudder*) had to walk across the hand rests and use other creative acrobatics to reach it. Thankfully, even though there was one group of rather idiotic boys, we never had a problem with anyone being uber-loud while everyone else tried to sleep.
We switched drivers in Lovelock around 9pm.
At one point during the night, Arielle decided to try her hand at sleeping on the floor.
The bus remained quiet pretty much the whole night, but that didn't mean that we got sleep. Come on, we were on a BUS. Though both Arielle and I agree that the best sleep we got was when our seatmates both moved onto the floor and we could stretch out a bit.
Around 8:30am we arrived in Norco and everyone piled off to find some breakfast.
Arielle, Lisa, me, and our other roomie Stephanie stayed together as we headed in. I don't think Arielle could've stopped smiling if her life depended on it. Entering the gates was just as fabulous and magical as I remember. Nothing beats your first day.
Here's a little information. Most Disney rides have what's called a Fast Pass lane. Basically, you go to a Fast Pass kiosk and print off a ticket. This gives you a time to return to the ride and lets you into a separate line which moves much faster than the regular. You can't pick up a Fast Pass to another ride for about an hour or two, so the lines stay pretty short. Arielle and I were unaware of this. We stood in the regular line at Thunder Mtn for a while and then noticed that one line was shorter and cut into it. About halfway to the ride, there was an employee standing. Arielle and Lisa walked past him. Two girls that had gotten between us then walked past and were promptly stopped and asked for their Fast Pass tickets. While he was doing this, Stephanie and I continued past. We soon began to notice that we were skipping ahead of dozens of people and before we knew it we were at the ride. Our first ride at Disneyland and we were already breaking rules.
From there we went to The Pirates of the Caribbean, The Haunted Mansion, and the Indiana Jones ride (our longest line of the day). Speaking of Indiana Jones, we heard a funny story about a friend of one of the students. Apparently, he had been on the Indiana Jones ride so many times that he had memorized all the twists and turns. He managed to get on with a bunch of foreign tourists and grab the driver's seat. Then he spent the whole ride pretending like he was the one driving. When they got to the end wear the car stalls and the ball is coming down, he pretended like he was trying to start the car again and apparently all of the tourists were yelling and trying to help since they thought he was actually driving! Hee hee. That'd be so awesome, but hard to orchestrate perfectly.
Next was the Jungle Cruise. We made it safely past the tiger, hippos, and piranha, but it was the baby elephant at the end who finally did me in.
They gave us 3 hours to check in and have a bit of a rest. Everyone took showers and got all dolled up.
Teresa picked us up with Grandma, Tali, and Jared and we headed over to an italian restaurant called Buca de Beppo. There we met up with Grandpa, Nathan, Solomon, and Gracie. It was so awesome to get to see everybody. Especially when they told us that Sarah, Hannah, her boyfriend Chris, Sarah K., Emma, and Isaac would also be joining us. Inside the restuarant, the walls were absolutely covered with pictures and every horizontal surface had some sort of statue on it; all very Italy. The wait staff first led us to a room with a large round table with a rather creepy bust of the Pope as a centerpiece.
All of the students were to stay in the park till close (11pm) and get back to the hotel by 11:30pm. Since we still had an hour left before closing and Arielle was a student, we had no choice but to go on into Disneyland. We were dropped off in Downtown Disney (the opposite side from where we entered) and hiked our way past all the shops. By this time, my feet were already hurting. I hated to admit this after getting on Arielle's case all the past week for planning on spending the whole time in her moccasins, but nevertheless it was so. A curse upon my shoes for looking athletic and turning out to be no such thing! An hour gave us just enough to time to walk through all the shops, get on Thunder Mountain Railroad again, and then head back to the hotel.
I stayed in the lobby with the rest of the chaperones for the first of our nightly meetings.
We all finally got to bed, some of us realizing we should probably look for sunscreen the next day. I got up to turn off the bathroom light and by the time it was off, Lisa and Stephanie were out. I got into bed with Arielle and we argued briefly about the blanket, but by the time I rolled over she was humming in her sleep. It didn't take me long to follow. I wore a nose strip the first night to prevent myself from snoring but never did after because I was too tired to get one. No one ever bothered to wake up and be annoyed by me.
