Happiness will cost you

I have a checklist of “to dos” that must be accomplished before my hair loss becomes irreversible. Attend graduate school: Check. Have a regular humor column in the most widely read newspaper in the country: Check. Marry the woman of my dreams: Check. Spawn with the woman of my dreams: Check. Become a billionaire real estate matinee idol magazine publishing certified Ashtanga yoga instructor president of the Republic of the Philippines world conqueror with a complete comic book collection of all the Justice League of America issues: Almost check. 

While waiting for my final “to do” to reach fruition, I have crossed another item off my list before hair loss claims another quarter inch of my scalp: Earn enough moo-lah to take my wife and my baby daughter (and, of course, my yaya) to Disneyland Park in Anaheim, California. Reputed to be the happiest place on earth. And given all the hard-earned money that went into this vacation, I wanted to make sure that my family and I were going to maximize our happiness, at all costs.

You see, I come from the anal-retentive school of holiday merrymaking: I need to quantify my level of happiness. I want to squeeze in every bit of marginal enjoyment that willpower, human endurance and painkillers will allow until all that is left of enjoyment is a bloody pulp. For every vacation that I have taken with my wife, I drew up a checklist of must-see attractions that guarantee satisfaction. And, in the unlikely event that we are unable to muster the ebbing strength to visit all the attractions on the checklist, I will have to blame my wife’s lack of resistance training, throw a tantrum, wail about every hard-earned peso that was converted to dollars and not effectively spent, curl up into a fetal position and cry myself into a coma. And when I do that, my wife has the gall to call me immature! Can you imagine?

Thus, on our Disneyland Day (or, as I have thoughtfully tattooed onto my chest and my wife’s, “D-Day”), I spent the wee hours of the morning mapping out how we would spend the day and planning for unhappy contingencies: I pored over different websites that had customer reviews over which Disney rides would offer maximum amusement, wrote down the names of several hundred Disney mascots I wanted my baby daughter to have a picture with, checked out for possible inclement weather patterns, reviewed our individual horoscopes, watched the news editorials for any political developments (after all, you can never be too sure about your future in a state that is run by a man who used to play a killer robot, a pregnant scientist and a kindergarten cop) and offered up prayers, sang When You Wish Upon a Star and sacrificed five chickens dressed like Donald Duck to the soul of Walt Disney. I had laid the groundwork for happiness.

Right after I sacrificed the last chicken, I crept back into the bedroom, slid under the covers and nudged my wife. 

“Sweetheart?’ I whispered.

“I have a migraine,” she whined.

“No, no, not that. It’s our Disneyland day!” I squeaked. “I placed a Post-It note on your forehead before you went to bed last night, remember? It’s time to get up! I can hear Mickey Mouse calling out to me.”

“You can hear voices in your head again?” she grumbled as she turned to her other side. “Did you forget to take your medication?”

“Well, I took six Imodiums this morning, sweetheart.” I grinned. “I want to make sure we have no downtime in mouse country!”

She turned around and shushed me. “Don’t talk so loud, you might wake the baby!”

“The baby’s awake already, sweetheart!” I exclaimed. “I replaced her formula with Red Bull. She is crawling up the wall as we speak. Hurry! Wake up, floss, get dressed, put on your happy face and let’s get on the road before the caffeine wears off.”

Once I showered off my family with a garden hose, forced them to dress up like Disney princesses (Yaya looked particularly fetching in her Tinkerbell outfit) and had them much on coffee granules for breakfast, I excitedly zip-a-dee-doo-dahd into the driver’s seat of our rented compact. My wife stormed out of my sister-in-law’s house — all decked out in her Cinderella dress, fancy jewel tiara and disheveled hair — and growled at me: “Get oooouuut!” She feared that in my eagerness to get to Disneyland before the gates opened, I might have replaced the gas with rocket fuel (who among my three female readers ratted me out to her?). So after Yaya restrained me and the baby in our car seats, my wife shot me full of horse tranquilizer and assigned me to read the map instead.

While in the car, I struggled to stay conscious as I regaled all of them with my seemingly unending repertoire of Disney songs until their noses started to bleed. When the baby stabbed me with the serrated edges of a broken baby bottle, I knew it was time to lay down the ground rules for maximum enjoyment of our Disneyland visit.

Rule No. 1: No bathroom breaks. “If the baby can wear diapers,” I reminded them, “then so can we.”

Rule No. 2: Take simple carbohydrates for energy. I brought enough sugar packets in the trunk to put up my own coffee shop. “If it takes too long for you to chew the sugar, then just inhale it. It will get into your system faster.”  

“But I have djabetees,” Yaya said. 

“Excuses, excuses, Yaya.”

And finally, Rule No. 3: Abandon the slow.

“What!?” my wife roared. “But the baby is just learning to walk!”

“We can’t let her motor development get in the way of my — este, her — este, our enjoyment!”

I had to remind my wife for the 476th time that this was Disneyland — the happiest place on earth! This place practically guarantees warm, fuzzy childhood memories. Unlike those medieval castles in Europe or the pagodas in Thailand or the rice terraces in Banaue, this was a place of true culture! I have many fond memories of my dad taking our family to Disneyland from before my brother and I became juvenile delinquents. One of my earliest memories involved being lovingly dragged halfway across the park by my mom to take pictures with all the possible Disney characters who came into her line of sight. My siblings and I still have the pictures and the scars to show for it.

Another memorable park visit was when they almost didn’t let me in because I was wore a Winnie the Pooh costume. I know, a violation of my freedom of expression, right? I mean, if Pooh can get away with just wearing a red shirt, then why can’t I? But — as mandated by my mom — our best memory of Disneyland is the one that is enshrined and garishly lit on our family altar. It is a picture of all of us standing at the end of a fake caboose all decked out in costumes reminiscent of America’s Wild West days, with my then six-month-old brother wrapped in a blanket in my dad’s arms, my three-year-old sister blissfully picking away at her nose, and my six-year-old self smiling as if hair loss would never be a problem. Those are the memories that I wanted to recreate with my own family.

Playing The Waiting Game

Between my navigational prowess and my wife’s mutant driving skills, we took the wrong exit, lost our way three times, and made six bladder breaks (I told them I brought adult diapers, but did my wife and my yaya listen to me?). We arrived at Disneyland three hours later than I had scheduled. We had to play catch-up if we wanted to ensure maximum enjoyment. We were already off my carefully mapped out schedule. We would just have to forego lunch to ensure maximum enjoyment. “Hey,” I reminded them, “if the baby can live on milk formula alone, then so could we.”

When we finally arrived at the Disneyland parkway, I was so flushed with excitement that I had to change my adult diaper. But once we had parked, I bolted out of the car, force-fed all of them with several packets of sugar (don’t worry, I gave yaya some Splenda) and ran like we had an irritable bowel syndrome towards the entrance gate.

But once we left the parking lot and rode down the escalator to towards the park, we saw it. Oh, dear Lord, we saw it. But we never saw it coming. There were no caveats. There were no disclaimers. They never even talked about it on the Disney Channel. The deep, dark, despicable secret of the Magic Kingdom. No, it isn’t that their most popular characters do not wear underwear because they have been neutered. No, it isn’t that a Mickey Mouse mascot will poke you in the ribs with a Mickey-eared gun once you enter the park and threaten you in falsetto, “What is your credit limit?” No, it isn’t even that they play the soundtrack to High School Musical on an endless loop throughout the park (I know, it’s too much to even imagine). The secret that Disney doesn’t want potential park goers to know is that you spend most of the time in the happiest place on earth waiting in a freaking line.

I know that Disneyland is the happiest place for millions of people on earth; but why did those millions of people have to show up on the day that my family and I decided to pay a visit?

Walt, didn’t I offer up enough chickens for you this morning!? I mean, there was even a line just to get into the line at the park! And once you get into the park, you are greeted with more lines (after you are greeted by the Mickey Mouse mascot with the Mickey-eared gun) at each and every freaking ride! Some of the lines were so long and winding that I needed a Global Positioning System (GPS) to make sure I knew where I was going. Arrgh. Days like these help bolster the argument for population control.

When you encounter a roadblock to your happiness such as this, there are only two ways you can address this situation: You can find a way to entertain yourself or you can mow people down with a submachine gun. But since the security team confiscated my submachine gun at the entrance gate, all we could do was think of were the redeeming qualities of waiting in line. Such as how it builds character, or how it builds emotional intelligence, or how it builds gangrene in your lower extremities. And there are many productive things that you can do in line, like read War and Peace or pick the lint out of your stomach or watch you daughter grow to puberty. Sigh. I wish I still had my submachine gun.

After a two-hour queue that gave me ample time to grow a moustache, my family and I were finally strapped into our first ride of the day. Finally. I broke into a wide-eyed grin as my pulse quickened and my adult diaper filled up. Ah, so this was what it felt like to be a kid again.

The ride was over in 30 seconds. Thirty seconds! 

That was it!? A two-hour wait for a &*(&%)*$# 30-second thrill? Allow me to correct myself: This is not what it feels like to be a kid. This is what it feels like to be a teenager again. 

And practically every ride that we went on had a two-hour-long line and a 30-second (give or take 15 seconds) long thrill. Yes, this was exactly what it felt like to be a teenager again.

By the end of the day, my family and I had enjoyed all of five rides, one of which included the tram ride that took us from the parking lot to the entrance of the park. So, after much computation, I concluded that our visit to the happiest place on earth involved five minutes of pure happiness and eight hours of waiting in line.

Zip. A. Dee. Doo. Dah.

But again, again, let me try to put things into perspective without having to resort to violence: This visit wasn’t about the overly short rides. It wasn’t about overly kilometric lines. It wasn’t even about the horribly overpriced yet hypnotically attractive merchandise that greets you at the exit of every ride (yes, Mickey, yes, I am approaching my credit limit). 

This day was about bringing my own family to the happiest place on earth the same way my dad brought out family to the happiest place on earth when I was a child. And seeing my baby daughter screech and giggle at the Animatronic figures in the Small World ride as she bounced up and down on my wife’s lap made this visit all worth it. Along with the $15 Disney-sanctioned picture of all us in the Small World ride. And the $27 dollar Small World memorabilia doll at the ride’s exit. 

But you know what would have made this day truly happy? If I had found my wife before we left Disneyland. Hey, she knew the rules. Abandon the slow.

(Postscript: My mom left me with a post-hypnotic suggestion to have my family’s picture taken dressed in American period costumes because she had already cleared space on her family altar for it. Unfortunately, I learned that Disneyland had discontinued this service several years ago. Disneyland is now facing a class suit from my mom.)

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For comments, suggestions, or if you want to wait in line, please text me at PM POGI <text message> to 2948 for Globe, Smart and Sun subscribers. Or you can email ledesma.rj@gmail.com or visit www.rjledesma.net. You can also subscribe to twitter.com/rjled610.