I spent a wonderful day today visiting both Disneyland and Disney’s California Adventure, in spite of the (for this thin-blooded Californian) chilly weather. Within minutes of arriving home my next-door neighbor dropped by to borrow something and noticed the Disney bag sitting on my hall table. We chatted about the parks for a few minutes, as he told me his oldest son (age 5) has begun asking about a trip to Disneyland.

“Do you think he and his three-year-old brother are old enough to enjoy the park?” he asked.

“Of course!” I replied. “There’s the Peter Pan ride, Mr. Toad, the teacups, the new Finding Nemo submarine ride...”

“Okay. You’ve sold me.”

Naturally, I emailed him a link to Mousesavers.com right away. But I also began to think about my very first trip to Disneyland. Like my neighbor’s son, I was five years old. For me the long trip to Anaheim was a great adventure. I vividly remember “driving” on the Autopia in a yellow car. And I remember watching a skilled artisan creating glass sculptures. That first big downhill whoosh on Pirates of the Caribbean! E-tickets and A-tickets. And, of course, those mouse-ear balloon-within-a-balloons. I got one! (Mary tells me she always wanted one, but never got it.) Those balloons were gone for a very long time, but now they’re back, and I’m sure the boys next door will want one too.

Everyone remembers their first trip to Disneyland. It’s a rite of passage of sorts. And every subsequent visit, no matter how many years later, will be compared with it. My first visit was also the first for the entire family, and our family’s very first trip together. We stayed at the Disneyland Hotel and rode the monorail from the hotel to the park. For me is was like landing a rocket ship on a new, uncharted planet.

My next trip would not come until seventh grade. Somehow by then the park had grown smaller, and the colorful buildings along Main Street had been shrunk so that they hardly seemed real. The mouse-ear balloons were gone. But the spinning teacups and the pirate boats were just as I remembered them. Oh, there were new discoveries like the Skyfari (my mother was terribly afraid of heights; even the monorail was a bit much for her) and the flying Dumbo elephants, but the jaded thirteen-year-old me saw that those glowing lights did, indeed, come from light bulbs.

Five is a perfect age to visit Tom Sawyer Island. Remember when you got there by paddling a canoe? And who but a five-year-old dreams of getting behind the wheel in a simulation of Los Angeles freeway driving?

The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that Tom, my neighbor, should take those boys to Disneyland right away. Let them experience all the magic and lights and excitement before they notice the light bulbs. Now is the best time to give them the Disneyland that their father and I remember from our own childhoods.

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