...ever get tired of disneyland posts? The ones from me? Well we've had a break for a while since our passes expired in March, and there have been a lot of block-out days since then. We (I) have been waiting to buy a new one because, why not? Beckett's free for one more year, and I want to take advantage of this time since he looooooves it and he's free! Some people don't like to take their kids this young, but to be honest there is a lot there that can entertain him, and has entertained him since he was about 14 or 15 months old and started talking a lot and recognizing characters from shows and movies. It looks like we will be making a few trips in July with friends and family, and I cannot wait!
So, now I'm going to tell you something that you may want to laugh at, and/or judge me for. I won't lie, I did before I knew. The first time we met up with Abby's future in-laws at the happiest place on earth, I watched in confusion as they spent the majority of their time walking around and finding "cast members" to trade pins with. What was up with these lanyards they wore? Why would someone spend their time doing that? What about the rides? the joy? the everything else? Talk about nerdy right? Well, a few months later my mom thought of a Christmas present idea for Abby and Jesse...to secretly make a bunch of trips to disneyland with me and Beckett to trade pins and get ones they collected while they were at school that fall semester. My mom did the frugal thing of course...ordered 100 pins on ebay from China (where they are made) for a ridiculously small fraction of the price that they sell for at the parks. And we started trading.
Of course, from the China batch there were some good ones that we kept right off the bat, and some that I thought Beckett would love. It was all downhill from there. Beckett got his "starter lanyard", and loved wearing his pins! Oh my, it was addicting, and an excellent thing to walk around and do when he would fall asleep for his nap(s) in the stroller for an hour or so.
If you don't know, here's the skinny on pin trading:
You buy one lanyard from the dozens sold at the park to wear. Some come with an initial set of pins on them. There is a store just for pins in frontierland, and a kiosk at California adventure. Certain employees in the park wear the lanyards. These employees get special pins from the park to wear each day that are not sold to the public. If you walk up to an employee, see a pin (or max, 2 pins) you want, they have to trade that pin for any one on your lanyard that you want to get rid of...no questions asked.
(image from Disney)
Some of the employees wear a special turquoise lanyard, which means that they are only allowed to trade with kids who are 3-12 years old. They also wear different pins in the morning, even different from the other employees, that you can't buy at the stores. Even though he's not 3, some of the kid lanyard employees have let Beckett trade with them. There are even some crazy trading booths by the frontierland store where, at a certain hour on Tuesdays (I think), two employees come out with massive books filled with hundreds of pins. People line up and wait their turn to trade for 2 pins from each book.
So now you probably know more than you want to about a hobby that you may be less-than-interested in. I just got an order of pins in the mail from ebay, and have loaded up our lanyards with the ones we don't want to keep so that we can trade on our next trip!
