OCT 2003 my wife and I quit smoking and began saving the money we would have spent on cigarettes. For 2 years we saved and in 2005 we took the family to Disneyland California. We stayed in the Disney land hotel, eat breakfast with the Disneyland charters and spent 3 full days at the park going on all the rides. I remembered the park as a kid only this time we had a 7, 11, 13 year-old daughters with us who had never been to Disneyland.
We started the first ride on the monorail taking us from the hotel to the park skipping all the hazel at the main gate, going straight to Lincoln on the main street not many people even know that he exist, fabulous animatronics, I had forgotten how lifelike he is. When I first saw him as a kid with my parents all I wanted to do was run to the fast rides, overlooking the slow boring rides and shows. As an adult bringing my kids I remembered those rides and made my kids go to all of them as my parents did me and my brother. My youngest at age 7 was more fun to watch then the some of the shows. Disney had a ride called “Honey I shrunk the audience” it was 5D, and you put on 3D glasses and all of us were placed in like a movie theater. The professor had a duplication machine on the stage along with the shrinking ray.
The show started with him accidentally pointing the ray at the audience and shrinking us all to the size of mice, then a mouse got into the duplication machine and a huge wave of mice jumped into the audience my daughter screamed and with the puffs of air and little pokes from the seats she was crying and took off the glasses just long enough to wipe off her eyes and get the glasses back on so she didn’t miss any of the action, that is fastest I have ever seen her move. Then we went to the live play of Aladdin to get her back into the fun and we all enjoyed the live play.
Next we went “It’s a bugs life” a 5D show and when they gave her the 3D glasses she said “oh no” but she really liked that show as it was not as believable with the animated characters. but she having never seen or felt that before she should fondly remember that forever. We did ride the classics The “Haunted house”, “Indiana Jones”, the “Jungle cruise”, “It’s a Small world”, the “Matterhorn” and my favorite the “Pirates of the Caribbean”. As an adult I can fully understand my parents taking us to all of the slow entertainment, as the lines are shorter and you get to sit down for a while and relax. We paid for this whole trip with the cigarette money saved for 2 years.
P.S. I wonder what you could with the money saved at today’s prices.
