A HOT Disneyland Day

Normally it's pretty great to go to Disneyland with my kids and my parents.  We have such a great time, and we each have 1 kid per adult, which works out perfectly for rides.  Yesterday was supposed to be another perfect day, but almost went really bad as we struggled with the heat index all day.

As soon as we got there, we were all sweating.  Normally I carry my umbrella for some shade protection, but I had relied on a bad source for my weather forecast.  My precious portable shade stayed in the car while we walked around all day.  We all wilted under the searing sun, but none more than my mom.

After a couple hours at Disneyland, she was feeling what she described as "motion sickness".  She was sweating profusely, feeling dizzy and in general, not feeling good at all.  She was having trouble just following us around from ride to ride.  We had been on the Captain E-O ride, which moves around, so I didn't think much else about it.  This lasted several hours.  We fought the heat by escaping to air-conditioned cafes and rides, but it was a long hard day.  How bad was it?  My 9 year old daughter drank a bottle of water, a pouch of juice, numerous water fountains and shared a jumbo lemonade.  At the end of the day I asked her to visit the restroom before we left...she said she didn't have to go.  In fact, she hadn't gone in over 9 hours.

Once we were home, cooled off and had more liquid to drink, we all realized that we had been very lucky not to have suffered a more dangerous heat experience.  What seems so obvious now, was incredibly not obvious to me at the time.  I can only attribute this to my own heat sickness and trying to tough it out for the kids.

We are blessed that nothing worse happened, and will be even more careful to stay away from Disneyland on high heat index days and be aware of heat-related illness symptoms.  Here is a summary Heat Related-Illness Symmptoms

How does this Stormtrooper stay hydrated in that thing?