i dreamed i was driving up and down a street looking for something and this one area full of dilapidated buildings kept catching my eye so i finally managed to... awkwardly maneuver my car onto the sidewalk slightly past it, where another car was just leaving

so i stopped my car here and got out to maybe either check out that building (i said buildings before but it looked like one big two story thing with tattered railings and many doors) or at least ask somebody for help? but was immediately assaulted by a pair of friendly yet unhelpful strange men

after some confusion i realized they weren't friendly after all and rushed to get back in my car while one of them (who funnily enough looked vaguely like a skinnier younger beardless uncle raj) actively tried to stop me, but i won!!

so this time i actually properly parked in the ruined area and went inside through one of the doorways that wasn't boarded up (none of the doorways actually had doors) and then it turned into a stealth adventure horror game because there were ghosts in here and i had to avoid them to get the treasures

i suddenly had merc from merc storia as a sidekick and she was chatting away until i said there were ghosts, at which point she became terrified and kept chatting away but in a whisper this time

the maze was like, i could see a light signifying which direction the ghosts were looking in, so i could weave around and dodge them, but if they caught sight of me they'd chase until i'd escaped their range, but by then i might've attracted two others

ultimately i managed to grab one item before hightailing it out the door, and it was only after leaving that i suddenly understood where the knife(??) was...i told merc and she was also frustrated because neither of us wanted to go back so we decided to just leave it for now

i don't remember what item i picked up...but i do remember the last leg of our escape actually had merc getting grabbed by a dragon ghost(?) who apparently looked like me(?) so she was happily talking to it until i casually purposely sauntered past her field of vision and she was like WAIT A MINUTE

there were maybe three of these ghosts in the lobby, all dressed in a brown hooded robe like a low-level ff14 mage, and there was also something about merch here...also i tried hiding behind a picture board thing but merc was like "i can totally see you" so i gave up

anyway so we regrouped outside the building (there may have been three of us when we regrouped) and then i went back upstairs to check out something that had my curiosity all this time, but there were actual people living in what appeared to be an abandoned furniture store so i left before the girl saw me

when i say girl i mean she looked to be in her mid-late twenties

anyway so we left this whole area through a weed-filled wooden-fenced path(?) where we once again felt like somebody was chasing us (i don't remember if anyone actually was) before ending up... somewhere

everything is sort of a blur here but my next solid memory is of being with the family walking around an area that was definitely not the entrance of knott's berry farm, knowing they'd cut off ties with disneyland years before

i feel like we entered a building at some point but the only thing i remember for sure is later on we all piled into a boat and i had no idea where we were going or what we were doing but my brother pushed the boat forward into deep water and the whole thing sank enough for me to get soaked to the shoulders

i was very annoyed with him for this, but managed to climb back up once the boat righted itself again...then it went down a mostly closed path until we reached the start of a line? the first guy we met laughed at me and said i looked funny (because i was wet), but i was still more annoyed at my brother for causing that

for some reason i was now wearing shorts in this part of the dream? also my sister said something about a ride that took her to she suspected arizona and my brother guessed vegas and i was like, an amusement park ride can't possibly take you that far that fast?

the actual ride turned out to be like a water slide? actually i only remember mama being with us when we got near the end of the line, at which point we all gave her our glasses for safekeeping because she had a zip-up purse (baba kept his on because he had a strap to keep them on)

baba in real life does not wear his glasses with a strap, as an aside

there was something about suikoden at some point in this dream but i don't remember when or where or what was even involved, just the vague memory that Suikoden Happened

anyway i woke up around when i was gonna get my turn on the ride so i'll never know what the ride actually was