Happy Place!
Day 3 started out a bit rough.
Jared got several calls from work before we ever left the hotel. He ended up having to drop us off at Disneyland and going back to fix some problems for over an hour. It was lame…but we tried to make the best of it.
I’m texting Jared like crazy trying to find out how close he is to getting to us and thankfully he saves the day! He grabs Alayna and runs to take care of business. I watch the other 4 kids ride Dumbo from in line ( I wasn’t about to lose my spot in line after 45min!!) Jared returns her to me over the fence and we proceed as if nothing happened. 😛As Alayna and I are waiting for the gate to open we see the CM’s (Cast Members) turn the ride off. The water fall stops and the music ends. I’m thinking great..the ride broke down. Only to see the girl CM grab a pair of those long arm gripper things and retrieves a small camera bag out of the water under Dumbo. Everyone claps and cheers, the ride returns to normal operation, Alayna and I have a blast, we exit the ride to find…..
Eli is sobbing and Jared is upset. I ask what happened and you guessed it!!! The camera that was retrieved from the water belonged to Eli. The very same camera he bought not more than a month before we left on our trip. He had saved all his report card money, birthday money etc. for almost a year to buy it specifically for our summer vacation. He was heart broken. 🙁
Luckily I had purchased the 2 year warranty with the camera so it will be replaced, but he wasn’t able to use it for the rest of the trip which was a tough pill to swallow.We tried to help him cheer up so he got to choose the next ride. He chose Autopia..it’s his fave!
I had taken the kids to ride The Haunted Mansion and Jared took Alayna to ride Winnie the Pooh. After they got off the ride they had Winnie the Pooh, Eeyore, and Tigger taking pictures with guests. Just before Alayna’s turn, Jared accidentally dropped the video camera and busted it. Not a great day for cameras for us. The camera was 5+ yrs. old and we had discussed replacing it..but we weren’t ready to replace it quite so soon! 😛
After mourning the loss of the video camera, we went over to Space Mountain to redeem our Fast Passes.
Alayna “JUST” made the height requirement. She really didn’t want to ride but we talked her into seeing the stars!! LOL!!She did great!! The last few turns I started to wonder if I made a bad choice cuz it was really whipping us around but she was OK. When we got off I asked her if she liked it, she said yes. As we walked further to where they post your ride pictures she said, “I was only whining a little bit Mommy cuz it was tooo fast. But I liked the stars!!” What a trooper!
What blows my mind is not every 40″ measuring marker at Disneyland is the same. She was tall enough for Space Mountain which is sort of crazy..but she wasn’t tall enough to ride Star Tours which is waaay more her speed!
So the group rode Star Tours and us girls rode Astroblaster! 🙂