Disneyland / Halloween

Disneyland day! Apparently Disneyland is Kaley and Stephanie's favourite place on earth and they had already planned to take Halloween off and go there for the day. I was super stoked cos instead of having to go and wander around a park by myself I had Minnie and Pocahontas to keep me company. Also, As it is their favourite place on earth they also know it like the back of their hand so it was like having my own personal Disney character guides for the day. An extra complicating (slash hilarious) factor was that Stephanie had been maliciously attacked in the ankle but some punk on a skateboard (I think he ran into her by accident) so she decided to hire a wheelchair for the day. I think she instantly regretted the decision when me and Kaley started pushing her round. It was pretty funny. She got so fed up with it that Kaley and I had to have turns in it as well. Which introduced another element to the day as we stealthily switched who was in the wheelchair and we had to remember who was in the wheelchair when we went back to a ride for the second time. It was a crack up. We went on Space mountain (which was themed for Halloween), Big Thunder Mountain, Peter pan, Star Tours, Haunted Mansion, Pirates of the Carribbean and the trippy Winnie the pooh ride. Unfortunately the Indiana Jones was closed. The night before I was having a yarn to Ma and Pa and they were telling me how they went on Thanksgiving at there were no crowds. Well I can confirm that Halloween was pretty similar. There is a special Halloween event in the evening so most people that would go to Disneyland on Halloween would pay the extra to go to that. Plus it was a Wednesday so I guess that helped. All this added up to the fact that the longest we ever waited for a ride was about 15min! For some weird reason Stephanie and Kaley were disappointed with this as I didn't receive the "full Disneyland experience" with the express passes and the strategic ride lining up. I was pretty happy though not to waste half a day in lines though. For lunch we had nuggey and the mythical funnel cake. Funnel cake is a weird but quite tasty. Before we left we had Churo snacks to tide us over till dinner.

When we got home the girls were a bit knackered so they went to beddy bise while I went for a run down to the sea and back. Then we got a bit organised for going out. I was severely lacking a costume so put my All Blacks Jersey on and took a Jason mask. I also thought about telling people I was from LA and I was a NZ rugby player. With a flawless accent of course! For dinner we went to Swingers which is more like a restaurant and less like a dodgy bar than it sounds. Then we headed for the infamous "WeHo" (West Hollywood). I found out at a very late stage that the area has a strong gay culture but everyone else would probably be there for Halloween as there is a parade and shit. I also found out that there was supposed to be about 400'000 people going! Holy Shit. We drove over there and found about 200'000 of those people driving around looking for parking. Along the way we got to have a look at the masses of walking costumes all over the place which was cool. We spent about 30min looking for a park and then decided to cut our losses and head back to Santa Monica to go to Bugsys pub. It was not very busy but we stayed and had a few. Everyone was dressed up in all sorts of crazy shit. When Grant lived in LA I remember him telling me that I have to experience a U.S. Halloween and I have to say that I was definitely not disappointed! I hope I can get back next year for it.