On hidden treasure

I wrote this post over a week ago, and it's been hanging out as a draft, waiting for the addition of pictures.  Apparently that's not happening.  Sorry, but try to enjoy anyway.

Halloween time is a hidden treasure at Disneyland.  Blake and I went yesterday, partly for fun and partly to commemorate our getting engaged there a year ago this weekend.  The decorations are delightful and detailed in Disney style.  The Haunted Mansion is transformed into The Nightmare Before Christmas, and it's wonderful.  There are pumpkins and candy corns all over the place.  The characters come out dressed in skeleton, witch, and scarecrow costumes.  I don't really know how "hidden" this time of year is at Disneyland, but I just discovered it last year.

The ToyStory ride in California Adventure is another treasure Blake and I have discovered in the last year.  You wear 3D glasses and play carnival games on screens throughout the game.  In your car each rider has a gun to pay the games with; you shoot by pulling on a ball at the end of a short cord.  The ride keeps score between you and the person sitting next to you. Naturally, I always try to beat Blake.  We played very intensely, it was neck-in-neck.  He'd pull ahead, and then I'd close the gap on the next game.  I'm happy to report that I pulled of the win: 140200 to 139000!  It wasn't until the end of the ride/game that I realized I had pulled on the little ball on the cord so intensely that I rubbed several layers of skin off the inside of my middle finger.  It's the kind of wound where it didn't bleed but the stinging was ridiculously painful.

This little accident brought me to another hidden treasure: Disneyland First Aid.  The nurse there could not have been sweeter.  She got some information from me, cleaned up my finger, and dressed my wound with a princess bandaid.  She gave me another princess bandaid just in case I needed to change it later in the day. 

A brand new "hidden treasure" (which turned out to be not so much of a treasure) for Halloween time at Disneyland is the Space Mountain Ghost Galaxy.  The outside of the ride has these awesome lights moving across it that look like ghosts and decay and slash marks.  From the outside, it seems like the ride is going to be like a haunted house or slasher movie.  By the time we made it over there to get on the ride, Fastpasses were completely gone for the rest of the day and the wait was 100 minutes.  I said there was no way we were waiting that long--Space Mountain is not my favorite--and we decided to try back near closing time.  Blake LOVES Halloween and haunted houses and bad horror flicks.  He was seriously disappointed.  When we made it back at 10:45 the wait was up to 130 minutes.  That's right, over 2 hours!  I agreed to wait for Blake's sake.  I had to try really hard not to show my despair when I realized it would be 1 am before we even got on the ride, making it 2 am before we could leave the park and get home.  We waited for about 15 minutes and were discussing whether we should leave or not when a hidden treasure found us.  A young guy, maybe 18 or 19, approached us in line and said that he and his two friends had a handicapped pass that allowed 6 people onto the ride.  He asked if we would like to join them and skip the line with their pass.  Did we?  Of course we did!  The 20 minutes we waited for the ride was worth it, but if we had waited 2 hours it would have been a let down.

I saved the best hidden treasure for last: hidden treasure!  I had a small package of gold foil wrapped chocolate candy coins that I brought with us to Disneyland (how I got them is another story).  We went over to Pirate Island, formerly Tom Sawyer's Island, and hid the coins in different places in the caves.  Then, we'd wait out of site for some kids to find them.  I loved hearing "Hey!  I think I found something"  and "Jackpot!"  We saw two girls come running out of the cave holding the coins in the air and three other kids eating them on the ferry ride back.  Seeing the kids find the hidden treasure (and they weren't even kids I know!) absolutely made my day.