A Disneyland Tease (or A Mini High School Reunion Steps Away From The Happiest Place On Earth)

On Easter Sunday, I had absolutely no plans. I was going to do some cleaning in my house and get ready for my work week, but it was a pretty unscheduled day.

I had an errand that I had to do in Anaheim and was planning on putting that off for another day until I saw that a friend from high school was at Disneyland that day.

My friends Ali (who co-hosts The Super Fantastic Nerd Hour podcast) and Nhu-An (both of whom I went to high school with and are now engaged) were at Wonder Con in Anaheim and decided to take their day off to do a Disneyland adventure. I totally wanted to join them, but my pass was blacked out for the day. And I didn’t want to spend a lot of extra money on a blackout day ticket. I really wanted to go into the parks, but I knew that spending that money wasn’t the right choice.

I had messaged them both to see if they would be spending any time outside of the parks on Sunday so I could meet up with them and say hello. Even though it seems like I keep in touch with a ton of people from high school, I had not seen Ali nor Nhu-An since we graduated high school in 2001.

When they messaged me back, they said that they planned to spend the entire day at the parks. So I suggested that maybe we meet up for a drink or something in Downtown Disney toward the end of their day. We agreed to meet up around 9:15pm between the parks so we could have a quick catchup.

I did my errand in Anaheim and then hung out with a friend until it was time to go over to Disneyland. You can actually park for free at Downtown Disney for 3 hours, so at least I didn’t have to pay the $16 to park at the parks. I walked over to where we were supposed to meet when I got another message.

They were at dinner and running late. But they could still meet me when they were done. So I hung out between the two parks for a while. It’s actually not bad there. I was able to see the fireworks (even though I couldn’t hear the soundtrack that went along with it).

While I waited, I did some work on my phone and played a couple of rounds of Words With Friends. And then Ali and Nhu-An came out and we had a mini reunion outside the gates of the parks.

It was actually pretty fun. We chatted about some random stuff from high school and Ali and I discussed podcasting. I’m trying to hook him up with a fun guest (and if it happens I’ll totally share it on here) for his podcast and he is having some technical issues that the hosts of the podcast that I work for can probably help him with.

We only hung out for about an hour before they were both ready to head back to their hotel (they had just had a full day at both Disney parks). Before we said goodbye, we got a quick picture together to prove that we had a (almost) 13 year mini reunion.

While I haven’t really stayed in touch with a lot of people from high school in real life, I love that since we all stay in touch virtually it’s not awkward at all when we get together even when it has been a long time since we saw each other face to face. I also like how all the high school cliques that used to exist are pretty much gone now and everyone I stay in touch with over Facebook is very supportive of each other. I sometimes wonder if high school had been like this if I would have still felt like such an outsider.

Either way, this was a great way to spend a Sunday that was completely open for me! And in less than a week, I’ll be spending 2 days at Disneyland with my parents!

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