Do You Think He'll Remember This?

Star Tours officially opened last week at Disneyland. It's been closed for quite a while for renovations. Before that, Collin was too short to ride. He measured himself at the little stick outside pretty regularly, to make sure that when it did re-open, he'd be allowed on. When he officially reached 40-inches, and was allowed on Space Mountain, he knew he'd be allowed on Star Tours, and didn't quite understand why it had to be closed still when he was now allowed to ride.

Being the Star Wars family that we are, we simply had to head to Disneyland the official opening day, right? I had planned on getting there early to try to at least avoid some crowd. Well, we didn't get there until 11 am. The line was 3 hours when we got there. 3 hours. 3 hours! We decided not to wait. I felt terrible. He was a little disappointed but got over it pretty quickly and we passed a lovely afternoon at the rest of the park.

On our way back through that area to exercise our fast pass option to hop onto Space Mountain, I noticed the line looked distinctly shorter than it did that morning and asked a worker who told me that it was indeed only 1.5 hours. So, I made the executive decision to hop into line and we started our long wait. It moved relatively quickly and my boy was so patient. By the time we got to the lobby, he was so excited to see the spaceships on the wall and hear the music playing that he could literally, barely breathe. He was panting. It was a sight to see. I wish I had videoed it. It was worth the wait just to have that memory.

I asked someone in line to take this picture of us by the sign so we'd be able to say that yeah, we were there on opening day. It's not great, but whatever. It was dark in there and it's on the phone with no flash on.

And, then there's this. These are the greatest 3D glasses ever, I think.

When we got to the front of the line, they decided to re-measure the boy, which had me a little ready to fight. I didn't say anything, but my heart-rate went through the roof. After our one experience where they turned him away from Space Mountain at the last minute, I'm always on edge when they measure him. I was afraid I'd just waited 1.5 hours, plus over a year of this kid getting excited, for him to be turned away. I was ready to get Walt Disney out of cryogenic freeze to remedy the situation. He's 40-inches in stocking feet, and I wasn't about to let someone in a polyester vest and a plastered smile tell him no. They didn't.

He had a blast. He says it's his favorite ride now. He immediately wanted to ride again. He said it would be okay if we even had to wait in the long line again. I said no, especially since when we got out, it was up to 3 hours again. Seriously. But, I did get him a t-shirt that said he rode the ride on opening day. That kid is so spoiled sometimes. After that, he wanted a t-shirt that said he rode EVERY ride. He didn't quite understand the t-shirt thing, I think.

The best part of the line though, may have been seeing a woman nurse her pre-school aged child. The kid was about three inches shorter than Collin, so I'm pretty sure he'd have gotten turned away at the front of the line, but he was certainly at least 3 1/2 or maybe even older. It was bizarre to say the least. Maybe in third world countries, maybe in extreme cases, maybe?? The kid was so big, it was an obvious physical strain for her to support him while she did it. His legs wrapped all the way around her back. Imagine picking up your large child and putting him to your breast now, in a standing position, and how you would support him. This is what it looked like. And oh, he did not easily fit under that wrap. It was very, very, very weird. I almost never care what other people do with their kids but that just struck me as totally weird. I saw them a little earlier getting into the Space Mountain line too. Apparently, they think their kid is old enough to ride Space Mountain but not old enough to stop nursing. Huh?