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08/15/2004 Archived Entry: "Duck hunting"

We went to Disneyland today "for a few hours" we said this morning. Hah! We get there and after 15 minutes, Tabitha wanted to go to the Home on the Range petting zoo. Then she wanted to do a quick coloring project in the little cabin they have set up there. At this point, time slowed to a crawl. Tabitha spent 45 minutes coloring her picture and talking up the two hosts over-seeing everything. In the course of the chatter, one of the hosts mentioned that Launch Pad McQuack from Duck Tales had been spotted that morning. That got our attention. Apparently this was a once in a lifetime thing and he probably wasn't going to be back anytime soon. Chris went off to find out where he would be and when, while Tabitha continued coloring, only to find out that he was on his own with no schedule at all. We were advised to simply wander around and look. Once Tabitha *finally* finished her picture, we joined Chris and happened to run into Alice. She took Tabitha for a walk and they chatted then I asked if she had seen Launch Pad. She had that morning but didn't know where he was at the moment. Then she found a host who kind of oversees certain characters if he had any idea where Launch Pad was. He tried to find out and couldn't and told us to meet him a half hour later and he'd try to do a search. We met him at the right time and he hadn't had any luck. We decided to take another look around the park and then leave because we were all pretty hungry. We took 2 steps into Tomorrowland and there he was! But he was on his way out! We managed to catch him and he very nicely signed Tabitha's autograph book and posed for the picture. Victory was ours! The pic can be seen over at the updated Disney Character site.

Now that we had accomplished our mission we thought we'd head out. But then we thought we should perhaps see Alice again and thank her for her help and let her know that we had found Launch Pad. So we went to wait. But it wasn't an ordinary meet and greet, no siree. Alice, Tweedle-Dee, Tweedle-Dum, Mad Hatter, Queen of Hearts and White Rabbit decided to play charades and of course Tabitha wanted to play. After that game was over, Mad Hatter was teaching the girls ballet, then Alice and Mad Hatter read a story, then they said good-bye but invited Tabitha to play musical chairs with them in half an hour. At this point, we're all starving, so we took a candy and soda break while waiting to play musical chairs. After musical chairs they all played I Spy and finally Duck, Duck, Goose. After this, Tabitha still wanted to stick around but we told her we very much needed to go. So the next time we saw Alice, it was simply to say thank you and good-bye. By the time we got home and I had the food ready, we had an early dinner and lunch was essentially candy. *sigh* But the child has a hundred new wonderful memories to add to her collection :)

Now, we're all settled in to watch the Olympics.