A Magical Place

On December 26th family Gilbert made the journey to Disneyland, Anaheim. As can often be expected with these things it was eventful. I will start by running down each family members take on roller-coasters.

Dad - Hates them. Would rather watch the Disney parade.

Mum - Despite a bad back is always game.

Me - I'll always go but can be easily dissuaded into chickening out.

Claire - Loves them and will ride anything.

Elizabeth - Is scared of the teacups.

So with this in mind we all made a pact to do everything and anything. We raced into the park and made sure we had our fast pass tickets to Space Mountain so we wouldn't have to que later. In order to pass the time we decided to jump on a couple of other rides. First up was the Buzz Lightyear ride. A slow moving, slightly spinning ride in the dark. It was full of fun and merriment.... but no for Elizabeth who felt sick afterwards.

A fact you need to know for this tale is that Claire suffers from Vertigo. Basically if things move fast she becomes dizzy. After the Buzz ride she said she felt a little dizzy but would carry on. Next up was the relatively tame rollercoaster 'The Matterhorn.' Elizabeth spent the whole time before we went on crapping her pants with Dad slowly turning whiter at the prospect of moving fast. We made it to the front of the line and all jumped aboard. 30 seconds later the tame ride finished. Elizabeth had survived. Dad had survived. Claire had not. An attack of the dizzies had struck her and she had to be helped out of the children's ride and onto a bench.

She then made the executive decision that she couldn't ride anything that moved. Fun. So the family had been beaten by Buzz Lightyears's ride and The Matterhorn. The problem was it was 11am at this point and we still had plenty of time in the park. We were then reduced to riding the Winnie the Pooh ride which crawled along whilst robotic characters ate honey. Claire felt a little dizzy after that but maintained that was the level of rides she could cope with. Elizabeth was pleased.

Elizabeth was even more pleased when we stopped off to wolf down hot-dogs for lunch. Lets not beat around the bush here, the food at Disney isn't exactly gourmet! The hot-dogs were disgusting, like a dog had just curled out a crap and it had been placed between a bun. Even fouler than the hot dogs were the abomination that was 'Meat on a Stick.' The world 'Ronseal' hasn't ever been more appropriate, it does what it says on the tin. 'Meat on a Stick' was a lump of meat on a stick. Even better than seeing the foul processed food was watching my pescaparian mother gag at the sight of fat Americans and camera happy Japanese chowing down on the meat.It was the closest anyone came to throwing up all day.

So a day of crap food and crap rides as the family all left the park feeling queazy because of Matterhorn's, Toys and meat. Still at the end of the day it's all about spending time with family.