Disneyland
Saturday, July 28th, 2007The Most Expensive Happiest Place on Earth
After 50 weeks and 21000 miles on the road we returned to the in-laws last Saturday July 21st at 5 minutes before midnight. 2 weeks sooner than expected.
First however I need to talk about the leading up to our return.
A couple of months ago Allison’s parents told us that they wanted to invite us to Disneyland. All we had to do was pick a day. We chose Julian’s birthday and used the time to get the kids excited abut it, since they didn’t know what Disneyland was. It turns out that Dan (Allison’s dad) and I weren’t all that excited, because we were both very skeptical how much we would enjoy it. I was mainly worried about the culture shock for us, not being able to drink and drive, have to buckle up (even the kids), not being allowed to ride in the back of pickup trucks, but also a lot of stupid rules and regulations out of fear of lawsuits. For example, Julian wasn’t allowed to go one of the safest slides I have seen in the last 11 month, because he wasn’t able to swim from 1 end of the pool to the other. With a waiting parent and at least 3 lifeguards this slide wouldn’t propose any hazard, especially since he has been on slides 3 times the height and speed. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against rules. After all I am German and I think we are the inventers of rules and regulations, but there is also a thing called common sense and another thing called law suites. So yes, I was a little disturbed at first, mainly because I had to keep telling the boys: “Oh no, we are back in America, you can’t do that here!” I must say however that the people enforcing all of those rules did it in a very friendly way.
