ARRESTED AT DISNEYLAND!

BY COREY LEVITAN

Daily Breeze, Oct. 1995

The Happiest Place On Earth arrested me. On September 21 I was apprehended and detained by Disneyland police.

My crime? Attempting to exit.

I can think of a lot happier places on earth at 10 p.m. on a Saturday. That's when crowds gather to watch the Main Street Electrical Parade and block the one-and-only exit to the park. Try as you may to squeeze past the hundreds of tourists with baby strollers, your efforts are met with increasing resistance until they end in a bone-crushing, baby-screaming halt.

Back up to ask a guard how to get out, and he'll explain that it could take 30 minutes.

"Why don't you just enjoy the parade?" he'll suggest.

There are few prospects less enjoyable to me than standing shoulder-to-shoulder with tourists watching an endless line of lightbulb-encased failed thespians when I could be back on the Sunset Strip living my own alcohol-induced weekend fantasyland.

Oh, yeah, there's also that little issue that IMPEDING A SAFE EXIT FROM A PUBLIC PLACE VIOLATES THE LAW.

Never having gone to law school like my grandparents wanted me to, I can't cite which law specifically. But what if there were a fire? Or an elderly man needed to retrieve heart medication from his car? What if some little girl lay bleeding to death after being stabbed by a rogue cartoon character?

"Why don't you just enjoy the parade?" she would be told.

My guest suggested finding the back door to one of the retail stores on Main Street. Know that this was not the suggestion of some rebellious kid. Julie is a 30-year-old record executive.

With God on our side, Julie and I entered an overpriced china shop, bolted for the back and busted out!

Well, not exactly OUT. We found ourselves in a staging area with dozens of Electrical Parade characters strutting about like this was Shakespeare at the Kennedy Center. We were in enemy territory.

Julie and I sauntered past the glowing caravan toward our valhalla, the parking lot off in the distance. But our cover was soon blown.

"This is a restricted area," said a guard politely. "Are you cast members?"

"Yes," Julie said. My unfortunate inclination was to go with a simultaneous "No."

"Can I see your badges?" asked the guard.

"Uh..." I responded brilliantly.

When the guard motioned for us to follow him back to the sardine cannery that was Main Street, my next move was clear.

"RUN!" I yelled. Suddenly I was Harrison Ford sprinting toward freedom in "The Fugitive."

Screw Space Mountain, this was the thrill ride of the evening. Although it didn't take long to outrun a polite fat guy with a toupee, there was always the hope that he had a gun and would try to shoot us in the back.

Celebrating our escape, I high-fived Julie at the parking lot entrance. Just then, three of the guard's less polite and thinner friends surrounded me.

"Sit down, sir!" screamed the leader at the top of his lungs. "Now!"

Accepting my fate, I squatted on the cold concrete and let the Goofy Patrol have its way with me.

"Why were you running?" they asked, as though I had absconded with the thawing head of Walt himself.

"Are you police officers? Am I under arrest?" I responded, drawing on the legal knowledge gathered from 10 years of watching "Baretta."

Julie managed to elude capture. I overheard reports of her whereabouts on one of the guards' walkie-talkies: "Suspect is in the parking lot, leaving Grumpy and entering Minnie. Do not use excessive force to apprehend!"

A guard whose badge read "Rick" said I was being held for trespassing.

What was to become of me? Would a Mickey Mouse court give me the chair?

And wouldn't that dim the lights of the Electrical Parade?

Later I learned that our predicament was more precarious than I realized. Several Disneyland visitors recently filed suit for being beaten up by security. Others say they were accused of shoplifting and ordered to pay damages on the spot.

Unfortunately for the sake of this article, my captors were on their best behavior -- even with fugitive Julie, who later told me she was able to hold three more goons at bay in the parking lot by pretending to use her cell phone. (Apparently, microwave radiation interferes with the brainwaves of theme-park security guards.)

After caving in to requests to produce my driver's license, I was given a lecture on running from authorities and let go.

Porky Pig had nothing on me.

As I walked toward Julie's car, one of the guards asked me never to return to the Magic Kingdom.

I don't anticipate any trouble complying.