Monday, 3 February 2014

First visit to Disneyland! Day One, Post No. 5

Recognize this place? Haunted Mansion! Look at the short line. Hooray! It turned out to be a lot of fun! And afterwards, we happened by the nearby souvenir stand where the lady working turned out to be the scariest "human" we came across. When she turned around to answer a question from me, I don't know how I managed to get my mouth to shut 'cause her harridan-like countenance shocked me! All I could think of was: She's perfect to be selling the Haunted Mansion souvenirs! Surely this is her real face, wrinkles and all, and not something Disney did! I mean, we'd already seen a whole lot of senior citizens working at various jobs and we'd only been at Disneyland for about four hours, so it made since to me that a senior citizen would be working the stand. Sharon thought the same thing, too. I didn't sneak a photo, although I was tempted to try to get one. No real reason to invade her privacy. Love the wrought iron and the moss-like cedars growing on the grounds. I know the Haunted Mansion ride had to be scary and had to manage to move gobs of people quickly, but I surely would have enjoyed a few moments on the upper level of this mansion's porch. Inside the first part of the Haunted Mansion. Scary sounds and darkness and motion, then more standing in line until time to get into the ride compartment and travel here, there and everywhere, going forward, going backward, being frightened. A whole lotta fun! I read in more than one place online that the stretching room is actually an elevator which goes down and that we in line had to be moved from this building, under the railroad tracks which are raised up from the street level of the park on a berm that rings the entire park, and into a large show building nearby where the ride takes place. Then at the exit, once we've stepped off our doom-buggies, we make our way back out of the mansion in the photo and back out into the real world.  I believe that to be true, because I've looked at the Google Map image of Disneyland and can see the large show building just behind the Haunted Mansion and on the opposite side of the tracks. Neat-o! Also, I read that at Disney World since there is so much acreage, there is no need to transport ride-goers to another building, so the stretching room actually has a ceiling that rises instead of an elevator that does down! One last view of the Haunted Mansion, and then we were off! I hope seeing my photos will help me remember what we did next, ha, ha!