Disneyland Day 209

Arrive 8.30ish in the evening of the 20th January. The boys travel remarkably well now, making friends easily - this time with a man and his puppy dog, and cope amazingly with the general boredom and tedium of air travel.

This part of Los Angeles is completely dominated by Disneyland it seems. The streets on the way to the entrance are lined with hotels (one of which is ours) and restaurants. I was told later by an American (in Tahiti actually) that she had dubbed these chain restaurants as "fat restaurants" as the servings are enormously humoungously gigantic - a meal for one is enough to feed our entire family quite easily (they do however frown on this kind of practice so we didn't do it - much). This American woman assured me that there are normal restaurants in America - obviously just not around here!

Disneyland - the Mecca of children's entertainment - is actually one extended lesson in queueing interspersed with momentary rushes of adrenaline so extreme you need the next queue to steady your heart beat and recover some dignity after screaming so protractedly on the last ride. Zac was completely in his element and demanded a repeat of each ride as soon as it was over. I had wondered how Maxi would take the whole thing but after the first ride he too screamed for more so he is obviously fits the family mold. When not on rides Maxi pretended he was a roller coaster so we could never quite get away it all! Martin and I secretly (well not so secretly now) love the whole experience - I like the rides that go upsidedown or very fast and Martin likes the scary ones so we are well suited for accompanying Zac on everything - can't wait for the day when Maxi reaches full height of 102 cm and we can all go on everything!

In between rushing to the next ride the kids were under the influence of full on child-targetted advertising, so we had to put up with constant "I want...I want..." from both of them which was quite wearing on the nerves. Many Americans obviously cannot say no and their weight is testiment to that. We were amazed at the levels of obesity that was so prevalent - frightening indeed. On the plus side we did not meet one American who admitted to voting for Bush (so who were they?) and many freely acknowledged that the world hates America (is this progress?)

Three days however was more than sufficient for all of us - the third morning was spent frantically rushing to the big rides for one last whirl and Maxi reached a peak of three consecutive laps on Heilmichs Chew Chew Train ( A ride on an overgrown caterpillar with a strong German accent and a trip through a giant garden complete with watermelon spray!) and Zac totalled 7 rides on Thunder Mountain over the whole time.

With a sigh of relief we packed (again) and left in the dead of night for tropical Tahiti paradise...