The Happiest Place on Earth

Today someone at work said something about the Tiki Room. And it reminded me. I've been to Disneyland hundreds of times and so I have a lot of good memories of the place (and some bad: grad night was a total nightmare). But today I was reminded of probably the most fun time I ever had at The Land.

I was eighteen and in the middle of my first year of college when my friend Tim and I decided to spend a day at Disneyland. It was the middle of the week, so it was pretty deserted there anyway, and the overcast January skies weren't attracting any crowds, either. This was in the days before California Adventure so we could still park close to the gates and walk in instead of waiting for a tram for 15 minutes. Once inside, we began making all the rounds to the best rides, waiting 5 minutes at the most. Somewhere in the middle of the morning it began to rain, and then it began to rain pretty hard, but we didn't care. We found a forgotten umbrella on Space Tours and used it for a while, then ditched it when we realized we were getting just as wet as we would be without it. At Space Mountain we discovered that the flooring in line was slippery when wet. The lines were totally clear, and with a good running start we could slide all the way down the ramps. Line surfing!

We took refuge in the afternoon inside the Tiki Room. I hadn't been in since I was about four. We were two of only about six people in there, and I couldn't understand half of what the animatronic birds were saying. At about four o'clock Tomorrow Land closed due to flooding and the whole park was under about a foot of water. Then at six they finally gave up and closed the park altogether. Tim and I had long since given up any pretense of trying to be dry and were happily jumping into the deepest pools of water. We slogged arm in arm down Main Street toward the exit in water up to our knees, waving at all the people who were riding out on the trolley. They were laughing at us and snapping pictures, and I'm sure they now all tell their friends about the "crazy Americans" they saw acting like lunatics in the rain!

Back at the car Tim dug out an Army blanket for us to wrap up in, and we stopped at a Taco Bell on the way home for food. They treated us like we were refugees! The workers turned up the heat for us and were very concerned for our health. We couldn't stop laughing.

Happiest place on Earth? Maybe that day it was.