In The Parking Lot

My wife and I made a recent sentimental journey to Disneyland to stroll down those romantic memory lanes of our youth, when the streets of the Magic Kingdom led us from fantasy to tomorrow. This trip was a unique experience – we were going to the park with no kids in tow. Our two children are grown up and moved out now. This time we were going to be the kids.

I understand that you can never cross the same stream twice, and you can never go back “home” again. But I have always relied on Disneyland to be the one constant in my life. And to a certain extent it is. While the park has undergone numerous makeovers and cosmetic surgeries, it generally looks the feels that same as it did when I was a boy. The castle is the one unchangeable of the park, Main Street is a constant comfort, and the Matterhorn continues to nod and wink at us, with its old familiar slouch.

But one aspect of the park is horribly different from the days of my youth – the parking lot! That lovely 100-acre asphalt meadow is gone. In its place sits the inexplicable California Adventure, a hodge podge of Hollywood store fronts and back lots, thrill rides, and midway attractions. But my lovely parking lot – my beautiful Disneyland parking lot is gone.
When Becky and I got off the freeway last week and followed the directional signs, I knew at once it was wrong – so very wrong. Disneyland used to have one main park entrance, accessed from Harbor Boulevard, with an overriding arch that welcomed us. Not anymore. In addition to the main multi-storied parking garage, overflow parking lots are scattered in various remote locations. Last week we were funneled down Disney Way to a remote satellite parking lot known as the Pumba Lot, and I paid $12.00 for the privilege. It sure costs a lot to park a car these days in Southern California - a far cry from the meager $.50 I paid in the 1960’s.

The Pumba Lot is a secured open lot, partitioned with cyclone fencing draped with a mesh screen. Unmarked chartered buses idled nearby, waited to whisk us to the Disneyland drop-off. Our bus didn’t even have the name “Disneyland” on it. I had to check with the driver to be sure we weren’t being diverted to the downtown Greyhound bus terminal.

“Is this bus going to Disneyland?” I asked. The driver looked at me like I was a royal smart-ass.

“No, we are going to Knotts Berry Farm. They’re short on visitors today and sent me over here to kidnap you,” she sneered.

I got on the bus. I could not tell you where we were in relation to the park. I think we were a mile or two away. I was completely disoriented. I couldn’t see the Matterhorn, my usual homing beacon. I sat in my bus seat, looked out the window and sighed.

When I was a kid Disneyland was pretty much a straight shot down the Santa Ana Freeway. It was not such a long drive, but my siblings and I still invented games to occupy ourselves along the way. One of our standard games was to see who could spot the Matterhorn first (a game that could only be devised by kids who had been to Disneyland too many times). The Matterhorn is about 150 feet tall and stands out rather prominently on a smogless day. Still, the clutter of office towers and freeway overpasses makes a clear view of the Matterhorn from the Santa Ana freeway nearly impossible until you are almost underneath it. Once we could see the Matterhorn we squealed with delight, because we knew that the fun was about to begin.

But not quite. First we had to park our car in Disneyland’s gigantic parking lot. That is where the excitement began for me. I had never seen a parking lot as big as Disneyland. The original park itself was 60 acres in size, while the original parking lot was over 100 acres large. In other words, the parking lot was almost twice as big as the park, making it officially the biggest parking lot I had ever seen. The immense scope of the parking lot always reminded me that I was about to embark on a grand and sweeping adventure.
Nowadays gigantic parking lots are pretty common. Shopping malls, football stadiums, and major airports all have parking lots that dwarf Disneyland by comparison, but when I was a kid the biggest parking lot I had ever seen was in front of our local supermarket, where the outer fringes amounted to a mere trot to the front door. Disneyland was the Grand Canyon of parking lots. Today I have to meditate on the cosmos to feel insignificant. As a kid, the Disneyland parking lot made me feel just as small.

No matter how far away we parked, we could always see the majestic Matterhorn in the distance to set our bearings and remind us that we were in striking range. But first, the day’s adventures began with the parking lot tram. I always considered the tram the first ride of the day – and it didn’t even require a ticket.

It did require a parking fee of $.50, and I was intrigued by the parking fee concept – no, I was obsessed by it. I thought about it all the time. As I looked at the sea of cars pouring into the lot, I tried to imagine how much money the park was making just in parking fees. Actually, it comes to about $2 million a year at fifty cents per car. Even at my tender age, my mind boggled at this deliciously simple, relatively painless way to make a ton of money – well, that and the beauty of compound interest.

Anyway, depending on where we parked our car we could decide whether to walk or ride to the ticket booths. To me, the monorail marked the dividing line between the inner circle and the outer limits. If we parked inside the monorail towers, I felt pretty lucky, and we usually chose to walk. Parking at Disneyland taught me never to complain about how far away I have to park anywhere else. Today, when I am moved to self-pity over parking half-way back in the Wal-Mart lot, I just remind myself how delighted I would be if I could have parked this close to the front door of Disneyland. I even applied the “Disneyland” perspective with my kids when they griped about parking at the mall. I would say, “Don’t you wish we could have parked this close at Disneyland?” End of discussion.

As we made the trek to the entrance, I looked at all of the out-of-state license plates in amazement. You mean people drove all the way from Nebraska to get here, I thought? Good grief! I had trouble grasping that concept. What time did they have to get up? The closer we got to the ticket booths the more jealous I was over the cars who got to park up front, because I knew at the end of the day they could reach their car in no time. I never got a space so close. How early do you have to get here to qualify? Who do you have to know?

Riding the tram is a world all its own. Like I said, I considered the parking lot tram a full fledged Disneyland ride, and one not to be missed. Like the Jungle Cruise, it was one of the few attractions where the ride operator was expected to accompany the guests and entertain them during the ride. Sure, some of the speech was canned orientation, but some of it was pure improvisation allowed by management. Whether out of boredom or just practicing for their future stand-up career, some tram operators offered up very funny stuff:

Please stand back until the tram has come to a complete stop. For those of you from California – that is when the wheels stop moving.

We are coming to the next parking section – “V” as in “Victor”, “W” as in “Why”, and “Y” because we like you!

For everyone standing at the front of the line, please turn around now and start pushing and shoving the people behind you, because when the tram arrives, they will be doing the very same thing to you.

You get the idea. When he was old enough, my brother Bill took a job at Disneyland, and his first assignment was working the parking lot. He actually liked it. Where else can you get paid for riding around a parking lot all day, getting your sun tan and telling people what to do:

We are coming to Section “D” as in “Dopey”. If you are parking in this section, don’t be dopey enough to get off the tram before it stops. If you do, we urge you to tuck and roll.

A lot of the routine instructions were pre-recorded and passed along to passengers over the tram’s loud speaker. The tram workers heard the same message so often, they eventually grabbed the microphone and lip synced the message as though they were actually saying the words live. When the Spanish version of the spiel came over the speaker, they did the same, making it appear they were bilingual. The jig was up when Latino guests came up to them afterwards asking questions in Spanish.

The parking lot for me was where the excitement began in the morning and ended that night. And I have to admit, it was occasionally my lunch-stop as well. With a family of my own, and the price of Disneyland going up, I was always looking for a way to save money. So occasionally mid-day at the Magic Kingdom my wife and two kids had our own lunchtime tailgate party in the parking lot - kind of like bringing your own snacks to the movie theater. With home made sandwiches and a cooler full of soft drinks, we avoided the high cost of meals in the park, and joined our fellow penny-pinchers in the parking lot.

Last stop before entering through the gates and onto Main Street was the all-important ticket booth. And they were such cute little miniature Bavarian ginger bread houses, all lined up in a row. As we stood in line and Mom dickered with the ticket booth person, I examined the posted list of the rides closed for “refurbishment” - to me just a fancy word for “broken.” It seemed the Columbia sailing ship was always in dry dock, and who cared anyway. But, please not the Matterhorn, and oh, please not the Jungle Cruise ride, I thought. I hated when those rides were closed. If the Storybook Canal Boats closed permanently for repairs, I would be fine, and even if Alice in Wonderland was out half the year I could survive – but some rides just should never be closed.

Then I would stare out at the mobs closing in on us from behind. It’s going to be another crowded day, I thought. Then I imagined the money Disneyland must be taking in right here at the ticket booths. When I was a kid most everybody paid with cash, and with the sea of people queuing up right here, there must be piles of money inside those little booths. What a tempting target for robbers. Each ticket booth was like a tiny little bank full of cash. I wondered, has Disneyland ever been robbed? Then I breathed a sigh of relief. No, that could never happen, because the crooks could only escape by getting out of the parking lot – and that would take forever!