Woman in the Middle

Up above the ticket gates at the entrance to the park giant “pumpkin” characters greet guests as they enter the park.   

We thoroughly enjoyed Mickey’s Halloween Party at Disneyland. But, before I go into the details, I just want to point out some things to anyone who is thinking of going and has stumbled across this blog post.

1. We live an hour from Disneyland and have gone many, many times. If we miss something, we know we will go again.

2. We have a Disney credit card that rewards us with Disney “dollars” so it doesn’t cost us anything to go.

3. If this is your first time going to Disneyland, I suggest you go during normal business hours.

Mickey’s Halloween Party at Disneyland is held Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays this year. We missed getting a ticket to one of the Friday nights, so we decided on Monday. Lucky for us, the weather decided to cool down and the predicted rain fell somewhere other than Anaheim. Our tickets, which were $69 per person (as opposed to the regular price of $99 a person for a normal day), allowed us to go into the park up to three hours early, giving us a total of eight hours at Disneyland, more than enough for my tired feet!. Each ticket also came with free parking. That three-hour “overlap” period is the busiest of the day because all the day time folk were still there and all the Halloween party folk were arriving early.

We took advantage of the early entrance by getting a late lunch/early dinner at Big Thunder Ranch. Unfortunately this restaurant will be going away in January when they close off that area to create the new Star Wars land. Since it is our favorite place to eat at Disneyland, we took advantage of one last opportunity to enjoy the ribs, chicken, beans, coleslaw, and cornbread. Yum, yum!

Normally, Disneyland only lets children under the age of nine wear costumes. The exception is the Halloween party. Anyone can wear a costume, with some rules, which I recommend you look up and read if you are planning on going. Youngest Daughter thought we should wear themed costumes. We came up with “California’s Four Seasons.” What are those? Instead of spring, summer, fall, and winter, here in California we have smog, fire, flood, and earthquake seasons! We went for simple and comfortable, with an emphasis on headware.

Disneyland was decked out in lots of Halloween decorations. Once the sun set and it was dark, and Disneyland is darker than you might think at night, many of the buildings such as Cinderella’s Castle, It’s a Small World, and all the shops on Main Street, had fun, moving Halloween pictures projected on them. We enjoyed just looking at those when we walked around. Below is Its a Small World decked out in Halloween projections. My photo looks a lot better when it is bigger.  Hope you can get a sense of what it looked like.

There were Halloween themed goodies you could buy such as the “Day of the Dead” decorated caramel apple that Youngest Daughter bought to bring home. It was $9.99, but it easily feeds three to four people and was absolutely delicious! It was coated in caramel and then dipped in white chocolate.

A highlight for many people are the trick or treat trails where you can get candy and/or snacks. I didn’t understand quite how these worked until I actually went through the trails.   There were nine of them set up all over the park.  I actually saw some people waiting in line a half hour before they opened. You do not have to do that. There is plenty of candy and once they open the lines go really fast, even if they look dauntingly long.

They give you at least three pieces of candy per cart and each trail has between three and seven candy carts. So, just one trail nets you a lot of candy. We went to five or six trails and between the four of us we had in the neighborhood of 500 – 600 pieces of candy. Really. I am not kidding. The next day we divided it up into a small stash for each one of us, a bag to hand out to the trick or treaters on Halloween night, and I still have a ton to donate to a local Halloween party our Parks District is having.  On top of that, each cart has healthy snacks. These included apple slices, carrots, several types of goldfish crackers, chocolate or yogurt covered craisens, and Pirate’s Booty. They automatically give you candy, but if you ask they will also give you a healthy snack, too. Oh, the candy is all name brand and mostly chocolate, although there were some Skittles and Star Bursts scattered in.  Here is our haul, snacks included.

Disneyland has a Starbucks now, because Starbucks are everywhere, right? We could help ourselves and we stopped by the shop, which is located on Main Street.  The girls got coffee drinks and I got a delicious brownie, which I shared with everyone.  Even better, there was a table by the window and the Electric Parade was going down Main Street. Starbucks and a parade, what more could we ask?

Later that night was the fire works show. We chose to watch it from a spot in Fantasyland, over by Its a Small World. You can’t see what is going on by  Cinderella’s Castle from there but it isn’t as crowded. We had a great view of all the fireworks that were being shot into the sky and could here all the voices and spooky music. Disneyland does an amazing fireworks show!

Some people go the Mickey’s Halloween Party every year. I don’t plan on going every year, but I will definitely go again. It was fun to see the park dressed up differently, to enjoy the fun party atmosphere, and to see all the people dressed up in costume. The candy was a happy added bonus.

Since it is Halloween, I thought it was a good time to tell a true story of such unimaginable horror you better be sitting down.  Are you ready? It is the story of television before VCRs, DVDs, Netflix, streaming video, and other fun things like that. It is the story of television in the 1960s and 70s.

Back in the 1960s and 70s, you watched what was on television right then. If you were out of the house you made sure you got home before you favorite show came on or you would miss it. If you were invited out or were trying to schedule a meeting, you not only looked at your calendar for other appointments, you also checked to see when your favorite shows were on so you could schedule your life around them. If you, god forbid, missed an episode of your favorite show, you searched around at school or work the next day  until you found someone who had watched it and then you made them tell you about the whole episode, scene by scene, because that was the only way you were ever going to know what happened, unless, if you were lucky, that  particular episode ran as a repeat in the summer.

This brings us to another horrifying aspect of television in the 1960s and 70s, repeats. During the day and on local television stations both day and night, there was this thing called repeats. That is why, for you youngsters out there, your parents know every episode of I Love Lucy, Gilligan’s Island, and the Beverly Hillbillies. Old shows would run over and over again, day after day, and at times were the only thing on!

During the day, the only new programing on television was game shows and soap operas. Again, you had to watch whatever was on TV at that moment.  Watching game shows helped several generations of children learn useless trivia from annoying hosts and B and C level Hollywood actors and actresses. It is the memories of those game shows that make people of a certain age get all misty when reminded that Paul Lynde was the center square. Don’t know what that means?   Ask someone who is over 50.

Did I mention that you could only watch what was on TV right then? In the summer of 1973 that was the Watergate hearings. Every major TV channel televised the Watergate hearings day after day, kind of like the OJ trial but with no glove and no murder.  While the adults went to a workplace with no computers and no internet, us kids stayed at home and, to escape the sweltering heat, watched the Watergate hearings, because it was the only thing on TV.

I will stop now. I am sure by now you are sweating and your heart is beating frantically from this scary tale. Go watch some TV, whatever you want. And fast forward through the commercials. You will feel better soon.