Leila was here in spirit

Thursday was a holiday here, and although I worked on Friday I took off this weekend and headed to Disneyland in Hong Kong.

I really want Leila to be able to come here and do it, so I took this trip as a scouting adventure. If she can’t come, I wanted to do what she, Chip and Riley would have done.

So I spent today at the Happiest Place on Earth with a colleague, her husband and three kids. Well, two and a half kids. The youngest, who is 7 months old, pretty much slept in his stroller all day long.

The other two: a 6-year-old boy and a girl who’s 4.

For three children, three adults are necessary. Seriously, I have no idea how the parents could have done that without me, and I wouldn’t have had near as much fun had I gone alone. Especially when the boy asked to go on the Runaway Mine Cart roller coaster a second time – I thanked him, telling him I was glad he did because I did, too!

The general rule was that I and a parent would take the two older kids, but toward the end both parents sat out more and I took them alone – the dad had recently had knee surgery and was still recuperating and the mom gets motion sickness.

I did take a turn at sitting out, but it was on the second go-around of Mystic House, which was kind of a Haunted House redeaux that worked. Think, sort of, Haunted House crossed with the “furniture comes alive” part of “Beauty and the Beast” with a monkey. (Don’t think too hard – it worked, and it was fun.)

Despite this being a holiday weekend, there were virtually no lines.  The longest we waited was for Dumbo. Like 30 or 40 minutes; I have no idea why.

They had two kinds of rides: carnival-like ones and Disney ones. Dumbo was a carnival-like one. Those lasted only something like a minute, which was a lousy payoff for standing in line even if the lines were short.

The Tilt-a-Whirl-like ride (Slinky Dog from Toy Story; he chased his tail), I swear, only did the circle four times. They were amazingly short.

But the “real” Disney rides, like Winnie the Pooh (which, so far as I could tell, was almost the same as the Orlando one, but I never saw a Hidden Mickey) and It’s a Small World (also, as they say in Asia, same same but different) lasted longer. I introduced the family to FastPass, which went over well. We only had to FP Pooh, though. There were just no lines.

The teacup ride did not go over well with the family and we did that right before lunch. (I made it a point not to do it after) and we headed to Space Mountain after a fairly Cantonese meal of, for me, beef and rice.

Up until then, the dad and I had been taking the kids because the mom said she got motion sickness easily, but said she was good with speed. So she went with us.

The boy and I were in the front and the girl and her mom were behind us.

As I do in Orlando, I laughed maniacally throughout the ride, but as soon as it kicked in, I heard the mom scream something like, “What was I thinking?” The other two were completely silent. It terrified them. The mom said the girl (remember, she’s 4) had slunk down and would have gone into the fetal position if the seat bar thing would have allowed it.

No way should those kids have gone on that. It scared them to death. The rest of the day, when they misbehaved, the threat was "I'll make you go on Space Mountain again!" It worked pretty good, too!

However, the Thunder Mountain Railroad copy – Runaway Mine Carts or something like that – was fantastic. It went backwards more than the Expedition Everest. Mom and Daughter sat that one out but Son and I did it twice in a row.

Scarily, it had been shut down when we arrived at the Grizzly Gulch area and, after putzing around there, the tech people said it would be open in half an hour to an hour. We went looking for something else and had gone in the wrong direction, and when we circled back not five minutes later the roller coaster was going. So Son and I ran on and did it. Twenty-five minutes after being told half an hour to an hour, we’d done the thing twice.

Similar time estimation for this electric car thing. Thirty minute wait to get on the ride, we were told, but 20 minutes later we were stepping off the ride.

But when Mickey and Minnie were posing for pictures and took a break, the “they’ll be back in three minutes” turned into about 10. But I did get my photo taken with them, although it’s on the family’s camera.

Yeah, as an aside, if you go to Disney with the intent to document it for, say, Leila, be sure to charge your batteries. I got a few but not as much as I intended.

Toy Story land made me think of Leila, too! She’ll LOVE it. Fortunately for me, the Army Parachute Drop was closed (I am scared of it but would have gone had the kids wanted to), so I was quite relieved there was no temptation but we did Slinky Dog Ride and RC’s Race Car thing. THAT astounded me; not that it existed but that I went on it.

It was a U-shaped roller coaster, as it, that’s all it was. You got into this race car – it sat about 20 – and went up and down the U maybe four times total, building steam and really only hitting the *very* top once. So it was eight back-and-forths, and believe me, I verified that before I got on. That is just not my ride.

After being assured it was only 60 seconds, I got in. Would you believe it malfunctioned? We went our turn and I thought, gee, that was quick, but the realized they'd stopped us before we got to the highest go-around. We’d only done two passes, so about half the ride.

They brought us back to the bottom of the U and I thought we were done or it was broken so I tried to get out of the seat but the seat belt/bar was still locked. I looked over at the booth thing where the operator was to check for clues and he was trying to get OUT of the booth, but somehow he couldn’t get out. Locked in or something. I was like, you have got to be kidding me!

But they got the ride restarted and it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. Essentially I just closed my eyes on the upswing. I didn’t mind the going backward and up, but I didn’t like being able to see the rush to the sky. But in the end I went on the one that terrified me one and a half times.

Here is a YouTube of that ride, not done by me:

Toy Story land was a lot of fun and really, my favorite part of the park. I just liked how it was done – there were Tinker Toys as architecture, a building made out of Lincoln Logs and Andy’s Toy Box, the store.

What I didn’t understand, though, was that Slotted Pig – Ham, I mean – was nowhere to be found. I have no comprehension of that at all.

But it was fun. We were there from about 10 a.m. -- when it opened -- until 6 p.m. or so. You take the metro all the way, so it's convenient. It cost less than the "full sized" Disneys but I really think we did it thoroughly in one day. I mean, had I gone alone, I would have been done by 1 p.m. -- although I would have filled up the extra time to go on Space Mountain again and again.

Next time, the mom suggested that we go a bit later in the morning and stay later in the evening, for the fireworks. There is a Main Street USA and all that, so it would be nice to see.