But then something terrible happened. Something that all pin buyers hope happens AFTER they have already collected all of their pins for the series; the greedy Ebay hounds caught onto the scent of the potential gold mine that lay in these pins. If you search Ebay for my Snow White pin now, you will see it going for upwards of $350. But I'm not in it for the money; I simply loved the series for myself. Before the hounds were all over these pins, Kris had a friend in Anaheim that would go to the parks for us and pick us up some pins: that is now no longer possible, and we found out why. We got there at opening and were the 10th people in line at The Little Green Men store in Tomorrowland. They ran out at the 9th person. We ran over to Frontierland where the line stretched outside, almost to Main St. I figured it was hopeless, so I went to the pin shop in New Orleans Square where I waited in a line for half an hour, as Kris ran to the Emporium where he had caught wind that there were a few pins there as well. I luckily was able to get two from the shop in New Orleans, while Kris got one in the Emporium. The most upsetting thing about this whole ordeal was the fact that the reason that they were selling out so fast was because the people buying them were store hopping (since the limit is 2 per store), and bring along tons of friends to buy pins for them so they could turn around and sell it on Ebay. People in front of us in line literally had bags completely full of these pins, and we were sweating and struggling to get one for each of us! It was really disheartening and I was just so upset. We were true collectors, when all of these people were here for the money. It sucks that people have to ruin a good thing. Made me kind of hate Disney fans... crazy pin traders, at least.
Since then, we visited Disneyland for Destination D, which pretty much was a panel of people who worked in the company over the years. There was a lot of cool things that we got to see, like performances by Dick Van Dyke and his barbershop quartet (may I say, for an 86 year old man, holy crap! He still dances and sings like his old self. VERY impressive), along with a very rare performance by Alan Menken, the composer for the new era of Disney films like Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, etc. Those two performances were definitely worth the price of the ticket. They also had the body model and face model for Tinkerbell there, along with the model for Snow White. Snow freaking White!!! The movie came out in 1937, and this lady was 14 when she was the model, so she was now 93 years old. I REALLY hope I am as articulate and healthy as she is! I was floored when they were interviewing her and she answered every question without missing a beat. She was incredible.
And for those of you wondering how I can possibly survive my vegan diet at a theme park full of churros, turkey legs and ice cream bars: all I can say is thank you Disney for catering to the vegans! In Downtown Disney, the Taqueria at Tortilla Joes has an awesome veggie burrito with black beans and green sauce. The vegan chili at Boudin Bakery in DCA was pretty alright with some Tabasco, and the mother of all vegan dishes was the vegan gumbo in New Orleans Square. The chili left me missing my old clam chowder, but the gumbo was good enough to rival the chowder any day. Oh. My. Goodness. is all I can say about it.
Kris and I made a trip up to Heber to escape the heat in the valley. It was a lot of fun, and we even got to go hiking with our little Phoebe! Now granted Phoebe is a little 13 year old Boston Terrier, so we had to cut the hike a little short of what I would've liked, but we had a great time getting away for a little while. Here are a couple picture of that day!
