You've Got A Friend In Me

Welcome back! Or, should I say, thanks for having me back. The Man Street Gazette is again up and running. I had a wonderful wedding, and a terrific honeymoon. The honeymoon itself was filled with wild adventures, both of the Disney variety and the world variety, a lot of history, and some good wine thrown in for taste. The piece that probably concerns more people here, is the time I spent in Disneyland. And we will talk about all the magical corners and histories I found in my brief time there, don’t you worry, from feeling the presence of Walt Disney himself, to my new found love of Toontown (my West Coast Muppets as I have taken to calling it), and a few things that surprised even me, we’ll cover it all. As for Walt Disney World, well, she is never far from mine mind or the pages written here, and I shall never neglect her. But today I want to talk about a magical moment, a dream of the Million Dreams if you will.

No, my new wife and I didn’t receive any special dream while at Disneyland. There were no stays in the Mickey Mouse Penthouse, no ears, and no Dream Fastpasses. In fact, the most magical experience we had was due to a normal family, much like yours I’d assume, and not any theme park pixie dust. I shudder now to realize that I cannot give you the parents actual names, but it is lost in the fog of the dizzying memories of the past two weeks. I believe the family was from Oregon, and their children, Alexis and “Yoshi,” were truly sights for sore eyes.

To understand what they did for us, you must understand that there are no Extra Magic Hours at Disneyland. Instead, on given tickets, you are eligible for Early Entries. On our 4-Day Park Hopper tickets we were entitled to one Early Entry into Disneyland. It was on the second day of our trip, my first full day in Disneyland, that we met “Yoshi,” the identity he had adopted from his favorite video game, his sister Alexis, the Girl Scout, and their parents while waiting to enter the park. They congratulated us on our marriage, we talked about basics of where we were all from, what we do, what we couldn’t wait to do once inside the park, and the difficulties of jet lag. Then the gates opened and it was a lovely stroll up Main Street for my wife and I, while the family headed off for Peter Pan’s Flight. All throughout the next two days I kept saying, “I wonder how Yoshi is doing?”

Well, the last morning of our visit, I got my answer. We were in the regular entrance line, as we had used our only Early Entry earlier in the week We were only heading in to Disneyland to pick up a few souvenirs on Main Street, take a picture near and dear to my heart, and then head out, as we had a long drive ahead of us, when I looked over and see the Yoshi family waving at us from the Early Entry line. We told them we didn’t have another Early Entry, but apparently they had a pass to give Early Entry to every member of their party, and they asked if we wanted to join them. We rushed over, and headed into the park. We told them thank you, that it had meant a lot, especially to me, as they headed away to their magical day, and we headed for a last few attractions I didn’t think I’d get to ride again before I left.

This, at the very end of our trip, was the most magical event that had happened to us. It wasn’t just getting in early and riding a few rides, it was in finding that the bond between all of us isn’t really as stretched as we might think. That we aren’t all just passing through the same spaces in our own bubbles, but that we do affect one another, and that we do care about our fellow human beings. So, since I don’t think I expressed it nearly well enough in person, if you are out there Yoshi’s family, Thank You for making my trip a little more magical!