A Visit to the Land of Neveragain

I sat there in my Chevy, unable to move. Two Mercedeses were at my back. A stout Jeep blocked my front view. I had either died and gone to hell or was caught in a traffic jam outside Disneyland.

A sign provided the answer: “Disneyland, the Happiest Place on Earth.”

The miracle of it all was that before the day was over I’d be rushing to get back into the evening commute traffic. Anything. Anything. Just get me away from the Happiest Place on Earth.

Many years ago, when I renounced my American citizenship and became a Californian, I knew it was only a matter of time before I hit the Big Mickey. Perhaps the final push was my friend Jack Mingo saying that one should go to Disneyland for “the cultural experience.”

Hey, I’m cultured.

Or maybe I was fed up with my kids implying that a “good” mother took her kids to Disneyland. And that’s how the Worst Mommy in the World ended up in a traffic jam at the Happiest Place on Earth.

Inside, nobody was smiling. They were planning strategies. How to wait in as many lines for as little time and as much money as possible. This was the weirdest part. Lines of cars. Lines for a one-day “Passport.” Lines for rides. (Unlimited rides; unlimited lines.) Lines for shows. Lines for bathrooms. Even lines for the triple-hit: hamburger-fries-and-a-Coke.

I was having a quintessentially American experience. So why did I feel like I was spending the day in Eastern Europe?

While we were in the line for “Captain EO,” the TV monitors entertained us with a video on the making of “Captain EO,” a 3-D movie that combines the talents of Coppola, Lucas, Michael Jackson and “the Disney Imagineers.” I decided we’d better see it after my daughter Hannah said, “If we can’t see ‘Captain EO,’ can I get a Captain EO button and just say that I went?”

“Captain EO” was worth the wait. Although we had Michael Jackson in his usual role of hero defeating the forces of evil by singin’ and dancin’, his bionic face fit in perfectly with the other special effects. The effects were dazzling. Creatures, lasers and those million-dollar Jacksonian nostrils so close you could touch them! So what if we were herded into the amphitheater like zonked-out sheep in 3-D glasses.

Later, we passed on a 45-minute wait for Star Tours, currently the main attraction at the Happiest Place. It was a move I would come to regret.

Star Tours is a 4 1/2-minute simulated space journey. “Forty-five minutes’ wait is nothing for Star Tours,” my daughter Emma insisted. Eventually she proved to be right, which is all one really cares about in a family disagreement.

We had barely left Tomorrowland when it started to pour all over Fantasyland. It never rains in Southern California, so at first I thought it was a simulation. But when they closed down the Giant Teacups, I knew we were in big trouble. The crowds rushed to the few indoor places. It was lunch time, and we joined the mob in the Enchanted Fast Foods Joint. Every table was packed and surrounded by people lined up with their cold burgers waiting for a space. In the background was a cacophony of coughing and screaming youngsters. A mother with three babies was changing Ultra Pampers on a table in the middle of the crowded Bavarian-style snack shop.

Lucky us. We found a garbage can in a corner and ate our meal on its top even as contented customers shoveled their catsup-smeared plates beneath us.

Enough of Fantasyland. When the rain stopped, we went back to Tomorrowland and dutifully took our places in the lineup that snaked around the Star Tours space depot. The wait was now 90 minutes and growing.

After about 45 minutes, it not only started to rain again, there was a freak hailstorm. (Ever see a non-freak hailstorm?) Some of us opened the umbrellas and ponchos we had fought for at the gift shop. Others stood there in the downpour. One man placed his leather jacket around his young son and shivered in his soaked undershirt. I can’t speak for the entire crowd, but some of us had already needed to use the bathroom for at least 30 minutes.

Yet no one moved. No one surrendered. The people united will never be defeated.

“Why are we doing this, Emma?” I asked my daughter.

“Because if we didn’t, I’d remind you for the rest of my life of how it was your fault I missed it,” she answered with absolute certainty.

Our simulated ride to the planet Endor was OK but not nearly as pleasant as my trip to the planet Toilet afterward.

Around this time I became obsessed by the need to escape. It was like a raging case of Mall Syndrome. I had to get out of the Land immediately or I might lose it--even under the watchful eyes of Goofy and Mickey and most holy, holy Huey, Dewey and Louie.

And that is how my seat in a souped-down Chevy on the Santa Ana Freeway heading into downtown Los Angeles at rush hour came to seem the Really Happiest Place on Earth.