Just now I mentioned to my girlfriend "I thought of a great idea for a reddit AMA."
"Oh?" she said, clearly disinterested.
"Yeah, about the time I visited Neverland Ranch."
She turned to me, her eyes wide, and gripped my arm. "Oh my god, you're right! Submit that right now." So here I am.
This is a story that I've told plenty of people, so it's not a secret or anything. At first I expected people to be very skeptical about this story, but in practice it's never come up. I don't really have a reason to lie about it, I guess. Anyway, it really happened.
My mom was a personal fitness trainer in Los Angeles. I called her the fitness trainer to the stars, although really her clients were more rich than famous. Two of these clients were Priscilla Presley and Lisa Marie Presley, the wife and daughter of the late Elvis, respectively. I knew Lisa as a client of my mom's since the time I was pretty young (I'm 32 now). I remember attending a few of her birthday parties. She'd do stuff like rent out the Six Flags theme park (Magic Mountain in Valencia) and we'd get to ride Collossus or the Batman ride as much as we wanted. It was pretty big news in general when Lisa married Michael Jackson, more so to us because we knew her. Mom even claimed that Lisa asked her to come and serve as her fitness trainer during Lisa and Michael's honeymoon. Mom says she declined. So anyway, after Lisa and Michael were married, she invited my mom and us kids to visit her and Michael at Neverland Ranch around Christmas. We ended up staying for a few days.
My mom didn't tell us at first where we were going. Obviously she wanted it to be a surprise, but I remember being on to her somehow. I guess because the news about Lisa and Michael was well known, we were in a position to suspect this. I was 16 at the time. My little half-brother and half-sister were there too, all mom's kids. Let's see, my brother would have been 10, and my sister would have been 8. Now is a good time to mention that I've been a Michael Jackson fan since memory, pretty much. I mean, the man is a pop music monk. I was very excited to meet Michael.
The cat was out of the bag shortly after we arrived at the front gate. I remember mom having to sign some kind of release saying that she wouldn't blab, or something. Since all us kids were under 18 we didn't have to sign anything.
Apparently Lisa had told Michael we were coming, and he was anxious about meeting a 16 year old kid. "He's going to think I'm hokey!" was reportedly his complaint, as relayed from Lisa to mom. I was mortified at the thought but resolved to make my moment with Michael count. I didn't have to wait long. Shortly after we arrived, we'd met Michael and he was showing us around the carnival rides. We were walking between two of them, and I saw an opportunity. I went up to Michael and got his attention and caught my breath and said something like:
"Hi so I heard that maybe you thought I thought you were hokey or something and I just had to tell you that I think you're amazing and one of my favorite people ever. I don't think you're hokey at all." I was a little panicked. He immediately smiled and warmly thanked me. I like to think we both felt much better after that, I certainly did. That was one of the coolest moments of my life.
Neverland Ranch itself was like... my shorthand for it is: If you gave an 8 year old boy a blank check and a ranch and told him to go nuts, that's pretty much what it was. There were candy and treats (with an attendant to hand them to you) all over the place. There was a zoo and a carnival area with rides. There was a real steam engine train that went around the grounds. There was a movie theater. Oh man, we were watching the movie Richie Rich in the theater, and there's a line when the mom in the movie says "Oh god I look like Michael Jackson!" I was seriously sitting next to Michael when we heard that joke. I don't remember there being much reaction. Probably everyone was thinking "OMG I was sitting next to Michael when I heard this joke."
There were a few kids around besides my siblings and me, all boys. Lisa's girls were around too but they didn't hang out with us much. The boys were identified as cousins and friends of cousins, in my memory. I recollect at one point one of them had to call his mom or something to make sure he could stay the night. My brother and I stayed outside the main house in a really cool guest house. I remember waking up in the morning, looking out the window and seeing them walking the elephants.
Michael and the kids all got around the grounds on these electric go-carts. Michael's was the only one with a closed canopy. I remember someone showing me the spot where Macaulay Culkin bit it on his cart. I also think at one point there weren't enough carts or something and the garage dude offered me a tiny little motorbike. It was rad.
We played hide and seek in the house one night. I remember it because of something Michael did: when my sister caught one of the boys Michael exclaimed "You got beaten by a girl!" It was weird because it was so genuine. It was such an immature, childlike thing to do.
We stayed for a few days. Lisa left after only a day or so but invited us to hang out since we were having so much fun. When we left we each hugged Michael goodbye (actually I'm not sure my sister did) and he gave us Christmas gifts. He gave me a portable CD player, which I used for probably ten years after that. I listened to Green Day's Dookie on it on the way home.
AMA.
tl;dr My siblings and I hung out with Michael. Nobody was molested.
