One Disneyland Ride I Didn't Pay For.

We got home really late last Sunday night from our Disneyland vacation!

I will be writing a separate post with photos and all the happy, fun memories, but right now, I'm going to talk about the scariest part of our trip!

I'm going to give you a little bit of a background story here, so you fully understand the extent of my fear here...

I had the WORST 5th grade teacher on the planet. And her favorite hobby was making my life a living nightmare. My mom tried so hard to get me transferred out of her class, and we ended up in a meeting with the principal who told us I couldn't leave her class because too many students had already requested to be taken out. 

Now, this teacher LOVED to scare the pants off of her students. She constantly talked about earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, and all other types of natural disasters. She would show us videos, read us news articles, and go on and on about how devastating nature could be. And this wasn't just a unit we were studying for a couple of weeks, this was almost DAILY for the entire school year! I went home several times crying because I was so scared that there was going to be an earthquake. Earthquakes have been my biggest fear since the 5th grade. Only taking 2nd place after I had my kids (something happening to them is now my #1 fear).

Throughout the last 15 years of my life, anytime a big truck passes my house and my windows shake a bit, I freeze in fear and my heart races. Any time Bryant rolls over in bed, I wake up panicked that the ground is shaking. It's constantly on my mind.When my family took a vacation to Universal Studios, I couldn't even go on the "earthquake" ride.

Because I worry so much about earthquakes, anytime I'm in Southern California, I'm especially anxious. The morning of our 2nd day at the parks, I fell asleep with my phone under my pillow, and when my alarm went off, my phone vibrated and I woke up shaking, thinking there had been an earthquake. Little did I know I'd be experiencing one in just a few hours...

That evening, Bryant, my brother Colter and I had some fastpasses to ride the Radiator Springs Racers over in California Adventure. We left the kids with my family at Disneyland and ran over. While waiting in line, Bryant was teasing me about my fear of roller coasters (fear #3 on my list...) and was trying to convince me that I should ride Screamin' with him. When I protested, he said "Why are you so scared of rollercoasters? Nothing can happen while you are on it!" and I said "Well, what if there is an earthquake while I'm on it!"

We hopped onto Radiator Springs Racers and when we got off, they closed it down. 

When we got back to Disneyland and met up with my family, we walked over to Space Mountain and saw that it was closed. My Mom said "Did you guys feel the earthquake? They closed down Space Mountain because there was a 3.4 earthquake." 

I immediately started to panic. I sat down on a bench and asked Bryant if he felt anything. He said he didn't, but as soon as we got off the Racers, he heard people talking about it. But he said he didn't want to say anything to me so I wouldn't worry. Which means the earthquake happened while we were on the ride! Just like I had said might happen!

Bryant told me to sit and take a minute to calm down while he ran and got some pizza for dinner. The kids were asleep in the stroller, so I just hung out with them, while the rest of my family went to ride Buzz Lightyear. Bryant came back with dinner and we sat and ate for a few minutes. I asked him if he thought there would be an aftershock, or if maybe that was a forshock to a bigger quake. He said "I don't think so, at least not large enough that we would feel it."

Right that second, while I was mid-bite in a pizza, my legs went one direction, and my body went the other, then both went the other way and the ground started rolling, like it was made of large noodles floating on water. I looked at Bryant, who calmly said "You're alright, lets get up and move".

I don't know what happened to my pizza, I don't know if I dropped it, set it down or threw it, but I grabbed the stroller, and Bryant held onto it and steered us out from where we were sitting. We had been sitting under the roof of the exit of Space Mountain, which has large glass windows in front of us. My instinct kicked in and all I could think was "I need to move the kids out into the open". Bryant steered us out and to the side, away from anything tall and away from people. I was trying to run, but he kept saying "You're alright, lets just move here and stay put, don't move, lets just ride it out."

He was so amazingly calm! I was not. As we were walking out from under the roof, we could hear what sounded like something was crashing, and like plastic was cracking and snapping. Then everyone was screaming and running out and pointing up. It looked like a godzilla movie. Lots of shaking, people running and screaming and pointing. The rocket at the entrance of Space Mountain was swaying. 

Once it was all over, we headed out to find my family. We found them after a couple of minutes and we all moved to a corner where there weren't a lot of people. There was a "cast member" who was working at an information podium thing, standing next to us. He told us that he was watching the "people mover" track when it happened and that it was moving side to side. He had an ipad with the news pulled up, and informed us that the quake registered as a 5.1 at the epicenter in La Habra, and a 5.4 where we were. (Fun fact, earthquakes ripple like a pebble in water, they get bigger the further out, then start to diminish. I think I saw somewhere that we were 15 miles from the epicenter)

He was really awesome, he kept us updated on everything for the next 2 hours, while everything was closed down. He even handed us 2 fastpasses that would allow up to 6 people each onto any ride. When things started to open back up, everyone went to ride Space Mountain (I refused. I was still shaken up pretty badly, and I didn't want to leave my kids, who had slept through everything peacefully in the stroller.) And he gave me a free voucher for 2 ice creams (which I actually forgot to use, dang it!)

It took me a while to calm completely down. At one point, I had to use the bathroom, and I was too scared to go by myself, so I made Bryant wait out by the door for me. As soon as I walked in, I felt like the ground was shaking and ran as fast as I could back out. He assured me that nothing had happened and that I was ok. Needless to say, I don't think anyone in the history of the world used the bathroom as quickly as I did that day. 

At one point, another lady came out and told all of us that we had to leave Tomorrowland and head towards Main Street because it was the safest place to be. When we started packing up and walking away, the guy we had been talking to asked where we were going. When we told him we were told to leave, he said "I'm going to tell you to stay here. There are on average 50,000 people in the park at a time, not including about 30-40,000 in California Adventure, and they are all on Main Street right now. You're probably safer right here." We were relieved that we were ok to stay, away from the large crowds. The last thing I wanted was another earthquake to cause a stampede of 50,000 people, and little old me trying to wrangle a double stroller through them all. Not to mention our phones weren't working very well. I could finally text after about an hour and a half.

The best part of this whole situation was that while we were waiting around, Bryant's parents came and surprised us!!! We had absolutely NO IDEA that they were coming! It was such an awesome surprise! I was sitting on the wall texting my brother-in-law, when Robyn jumped in front of me. I saw her shoes and was confused as to what random person would jump that close to me, and when I looked up, it was Robyn! I started screaming so loud in excitement that I woke up Deagan! They had come to the park after the earthquake to buy their tickets for the next day and asked if there was anyway they could come into the park to look for us. They gave them free complimentary tickets for that evening! They were able to find us because my brother-in-law had texted me asking how everything was going and what we were doing, and I had told him everyone had gone to ride Space Mountain. I had no idea they were there! It was awesome that they had all flown down to spend Saturday and part of Sunday with us!

I was grateful that I was so exhausted by the end of the night that I fell right to sleep when we got back to the house we were staying at. If I wasn't so tired, I probably would have been up all night worrying about more earthquakes.

The next day, My parents, sister, Ed, Robyn and I took the kids to watch "Micky and the Magical Map" which is a cute, short musical show. Right as the show started, it felt like someone started to jump on the bench we were sitting on, and the show immediately shut down. It was another earthquake! This time, it was a 4.1 (just some earthquake FYI: each number that the earthquake registers at is x100. So a 5.1 is 100x stronger than a 4.1.) I called Bryant, who was with everyone else waiting to go on another ride. He said he didn't even feel it and that none of the rides were shut down.

We didn't feel anything else the rest of the trip, but according to the news, there were over 100 aftershocks ranging up to 3.4's.

I guess I can now say that I've lived through one of my biggest fears, and I handled it a bit better than I imagined I would. I always thought that I would be so scared that I would just pass out. So not passing out is considered a win in my opinion! And I was proud that my instincts kicked in to get somewhere safe, and I didn't just stand there panicking. And I'm even more proud that my first thoughts were making sure my kids were safe, and my seconds thoughts were making sure the rest of my family was safe.

Let's hope I never have to deal with that again though, ok?