E-Mail This Article to a Friend Park it Think you’ve grown up? See how you handle rides, wonder, and snot at the Happiest Place on Earth. BY ALAN OLIFSON

In the movies, people usually come of age in the great outdoors. You know, the coming-of-age stories that involve summer camp or baseball or a week on your crotchety-but-ultimately-lovable uncle’s farm. Movies with trailers that begin like, "When Billy left to spend the summer shelling crawfish on his stepfather’s boat, the last thing he expected to learn about was himself." Cue song by Toad the Wet Sprocket.

I never had a coming-of-age experience, per se, but I do remember the moment I realized I was an adult. It didn’t involve a farm or the woods or a vacation in the Catskills, though. No, I came of age at Disneyland.

Relax, this story doesn’t involve a man dressed as Donald Duck, a bag of candy, and a tinted van. No, I was 19, living in Los Angeles, and entertaining a friend visiting from out of town. As tourists often do, she insisted on going to Disneyland. So we fought the traffic out to Anaheim, parked in the Pluto lot, hopped onto the red-striped tram, and passed through the tunnels — which I remembered once filled me with such incalculable excitement as they emptied out in front of the giant floral welcome message. This time, though, I just looked around and thought, "Well, this sucks. Happiest Place on Earth, my ass." For a moment I paused and tried to recapture the childhood naiveté that once allowed me to include in my personal pantheon of happiness teenagers from Orange County dressed up as cartoon characters parading down fake streets lined with saloons that don’t serve beer. No luck.

It was 90 degrees in the shade, the place was packed with screaming kids, and I thought, for the first time in my life, "I am too old for this shit."

We spent the day searching for rides with the shortest lines, hoping we’d find the cool, alternative rides that the mainstream Disneyland audience couldn’t appreciate. Instead we learned the hard way that, if there’s no line, it’s not because other Disneyland patrons aren’t hip enough to appreciate the ride’s subversive, cutting-edge, avant-garde qualities. It’s because the ride sucks. Country Bear Jamboree sucks. Five life-size animatronic bears playing banjo music. Seriously. I think we can all agree, the only thing worth paying to see five life-size animatronic bears do is maul anyone who’d want to watch them play banjo music.

We eventually made our way to It’s a Small World — which, after spending a few hours at Disneyland, yeah, you better believe it is. Behind us in line was some type of day camp for the terminally excited. These kids were bouncing on the line’s railings like it was a jungle gym and, more disturbingly, leaving ungodly trails of snot in their wake. In fact, Disneyland seemed to contain more snot per square inch than any place I’d ever seen, including the inside of a tissue. My friend and I were lucky enough to get in the same little Disney-fied raft with these kids, where they promptly ignored all postings regarding keeping your arms, legs, and mucus in the boat. As we made our way through the various geographic zones of It’s a Small World, they relentlessly sang along with the song — "It’s a small world after all, it’s a small world after all ..." — until I finally and uncharacteristically snapped, turned around, and yelled, "Hey, fuck the world, it’s a small boat, shut your pie hole!"

As it turns out, they actually have a jail at Disneyland. Happiest Jail on Earth.

Sitting there, explaining to the Disney authorities how I didn’t mean to make the kids cry, there was no escaping the fact that my innocence was lost. Especially unsettling for some reason was my choice of the term "pie hole."

Fourteen years later, my girlfriend, Jess, asked me to go to Disneyland with her visiting family, including her one-year-old niece, Caroline, and three-year-old nephew, Jonah. And I mean "asked" in the "Hey, could you please leave the toilet seat down next time?" sense of the word. I explained to her that, following my last ill-fated visit, I swore I’d never go back to Disneyland unless hallucinogens were involved. After patiently explaining the myriad reasons drug-assistance was not an option, she got me to acquiesce.

While the process of entering the Magic Kingdom has changed a lot in 14 years — most notably the appearance of an entirely separate theme park and shopping center on what was once a parking lot — something unmistakably old crept over me as we passed through the tunnels toward the floral welcome sign. It was excitement.

I never would have believed it in college, but apparently kids are a lot like hallucinogens.

As we walked through Fantasyland to meet Jess’s family, I had an irresistible urge to show her niece and nephew Storybook Land. As luck would have it, that’s exactly where we found them. Great minds think alike, mine and the three-year-old’s. Cruising through the neighborhoods of make-believe, Jonah was beyond excitement — his eyes and head engaged in a constant battle for where to focus his awe. I tried directing his attention, but he was just as apt to stare slack-jawed (and, to be honest, snot-dripping) at the passing boat from another ride as he was to notice a perfectly realized scale replica of Aladdin’s Arabian city.

After the train ride, my head filled with options for our next move: the Jungle Cruise, Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, Cinderella’s Castle. A whole world of short-line rides was our oyster. Country Bear Jamboree? Okay, my Disney renaissance had its limits. Mercifully, Jonah and I seemed to be on the same page in regard to banjo-wielding bears — he passed the entrance without a glimmer of interest.

Inevitably, we made our way toward It’s a Small World. Waiting in line for the mother of all kids’ rides, Jonah began singing along with his parents, "It’s a small world after all, it’s a small world after all ..." I looked down just in time to see one of the biggest bubbles of snot I have ever seen come out of the child’s nostril.

And I began to sing along.

Unless you’re Mickey Mouse, you can reach Alan Olifson at alan@olifson.com.