My Experience as Youth Pastor

I should be putting up one of my fiction posts but I really want to get through the vacation, talk about King's Fest, and get back on my regular schedual. The last time I walked about my vacation I was in Northern CA and my wife was in Southern CA. Of course it wouldn't be a vacation if I didn't get back to my wife so late Tuesday morning my FIL finished the project he had to work on for his non-ministry job and we headed to Southern CA. With stops it was over a 12 hour trip. We left about 11am and arrived to our location at 1am the next day. I drove most of the trip because my FIL has a bad habit of getting very drowsy behind the wheel but not saying anything. When he starts looking tired and drifting I ask if he is ok, but he always says he is fine. Makes me very nervous so I'd rather just drive.

After arriving at 1am we had to wake up at 6am to head in for the first day of Disney Land. It was a bit overcast but that was actually kinda nice. At some point I sent a tweet via my phone stating MILs shouldn't be at Disney with you. At another point I sent a tweet out asking why emos would be at Disney Land since it must be against their code or something. I didn't see many but there were a few.

We had a great first day. Unlike many theme parks, my kids could ride most of the rides. There were a couple they couldn't, like the Indiana Jones ride, but over all we could take them on far more rides than they weren't allowed to go on. My oldest son enjoyed most of them, but my youngest daughter was scared of a lot of them. We tried to decide if she would like the ride before we took her on, but she didn't want to be left out and pitched a fit anytime we didn't take her. If it was marginal we would give in to the fit and inevitably she would be scared and scream.

Honestly I'm not sure if she insisted on going on the rides because she didn't want to miss out or if maybe she likes being scared. The way she screamed I would think it wasn't something she enjoyed, but she kept going back for more. At one point she went on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride and was terrified. I thought this one would be ok but she hates getting splashed with water. There are a couple of small drops and she got a tiny bit wet. Later there is a wall of fog that the project a waterfall onto so as we went under she started screaming, "no, no no, not again." I tried to get her to touch it just before we went under but she wouldn't. She did pretty good through much of the ride.

My oldest daughter wanted to ride everything. I mean everything. Even the rides she wasn't quite big enough to ride she begged to ride. Her favorite ride that she asked to ride over and over was the Tower of Terror. This is an elevator ride themed after the Twilight zone. It is all very creepy on the wait and when u get on the ride you sit in a seat with just a lap belt. Then the elevator goes up in the dark and you watch a couple of segments. One is a "mirror" that shows everyone on the ride then it gets weird and distorted. The next shows people getting into the elevator and disappearing into lightening. Then you rise to the top and the elevator doors open overlooking the park. After a short wait you drop then rise and drop and bounce up and down then go all the way up and back down. My 5 year old daughter couldn't get enough of this ride. My oldest son didn't care for it and my wife didn't either, so I had to take my daughter on the ride a couple of times.

Next I'll share about meeting characters on our last day at Disney.