Disneyland

After dancing, dinner and dancing to Rumble Kings in the Build-A-Bear Plaza of Downtown Disney, we headed inside to catch some more dancing (again we had the horrible choice between Rumble Kings, Gary Tole AND Scot Bruce…why does Disney hate us so?). As we headed through the bag check, I had an amusing conversation with a supervisor who was opening up a side gate in order to create a no-bag line, which I told her was brilliant. As we avoided firework traffic patterns by ducking through the Main Street boutiques, we happened to run into our friends Rebecca and Charley who had impulsively heeded Disneyland’s call and driven up from San Diego. Not to say we didn’t know they were there, we just had…trouble communicating…yeah…that’s it. We chatted with them for a while and then left them to shop and head back to their hotel room (they were tired earlier so they checked into the Holiday Inn). On our way, we planned a rendezvous with friends at Carnation Plaza in order to go see Scot Bruce, which was an excellent choice. After his last set at 10pm, we decided to raid Fantasyland for it’s whimsical flights of fancy! First stop: Storybook Canal. We filled an entire boat and entertained our guide Ginger with our energy and enthusiasm (she also informed us that Cast Members aren’t supposed to call the finale of Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride what most people assume it to be: hell). After losing our sea legs, we hopped, skipped and jumped over to King Arthur’s Carousel. As we exited the carousel, we impulsively decided to have some photographic fun with the motor car outside of Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. Laughter-filled moments later, we decided to take a wild mine train ride through the cavern’s of Big Thunder Mountain. After that we headed back into Fantasyland to have some more fun with photography and King Arthur’s sword in the stone and the commemorative tea cup. With much merriment, we retired to Main Street for our closing ritual: sweet treats in the now vacant Carnation Café.  Surprisingly, Market House was still open (it has traditionally shut it’s doors around 12:15 AM despite the announcement that Main Street will remain open for an additional hour for our convenience), so Laura and I snagged some zebra hot chocolate (a blend of white and milk hot chocolate). Finally it was time to go. But as we arrived at the parking structure with the hope of relieving ourselves, we found the bathrooms mysteriously coned off with signs announcing that the restrooms were “Closed for cleaning”. Nervously approaching a janitor, he assured us that we could still go inside: they were required to wait until the park was closed before they could actually clean…it just didn’t stop them from getting ready. With the personal bubble already pierced by his assurance of safe passage to a toilet, I talked with Anthony about his two name tags while I waited for Laura (his janitor costume had a stitched on name tag, but he also had the traditional Cast Member name tag). He told me that he usually wears his Cast Member tag on his jacket when it’s colder. His name tag had a bronzed pin attached to it which was a reward for having remained employed on the third shift for 1 year. As our conversation continued, we chatted about the mysterious third shift Cast Members of the Disneyland Resort…how with great health benefits and entire outfits (minus shoes) aided them in their quest to clean the park before it’s opening the next day. Anthony really liked working there because he was already a night person and it was a fun and easy job. Laura returned mid-conversation and besides our exhaustion, we slowly and politely finished our conversation with Anthony and thanked him for all the hard work he does. Walking back to our car, we commented to each other how nice it was to meet Cast Members who actually gave a damn about the park.

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