“I’ve seen horrors. It’s impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror…horror has a face…and you must make a friend of horror. If not, it is an enemy to be feared.”
-Marlon Brando as Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now
-Me as a father with two kids at Disney
With all due respect to the brave men and women in the service I feel as if I have survived a tour of duty. Five days at Disney World have taught me one thing. Nothing goes as planned despite months of intense planning. Prior experience can’t prepare you for the horror that awaits at Disney. I’m not speaking of the corkscrew roller coaster rides at 60 miles an hour or the intense heat the melts you faster than Olaf “…in summer.”
It’s the constant battle against forces collectively known as EVERYONE ELSE. Your trip planning would likely include conversations with recent Disney survivors, sorry, travelers. Their well-intentioned advice and suggestions will seem like a beacon light. You will feel armed with supreme confidence as you dream of a magical experience that awaits you.
And then you arrive. You suddenly realize you are ill-prepared for anything. Waves upon waves of people appear out of nowhere and you find yourself drowning in arms, legs and strollers. You quickly lose all sense of direction.
It is mothers screaming at fathers and kids, kids screaming at mothers and fathers and fathers wondering “Why in the world isn’t alcohol sold in Magic Kingdom?” Often wondering out loud I might add.
Upon our arrival at Magic Kingdom on the first day of our trip it took all of, oh, say…two or three minutes for the six-year-old girl to exclaim, “It’s sooooo hot!” and shutdown after just a few steps onto Main Street. “But sweetheart, look, it’s Cinderella’s castle! Let’s get a picture.” Nope, she doesn’t care. “And there’s Goofy!” Not interested. Okay, we need to find food, water and shelter. It’s like you were dropped into a survival reality show. Tossed about by this sea of humans I notice, out of the corner of my eye, what appears to be a quick service restaurant. We join the masses looking for a shaded table. There is no room inside so my wife goes on that expedition as I stand in line with food orders. This place could serve anything and we’d take it at this point. And remember, we’ve been at Disney for only a few minutes. Oh, they serve hot dogs! At least the kids will be happy. As I quickly peruse the limited menu I see a footlong chili dog with cheese. Good gosh, who could survive that in this heat...with those rides? Scanning the sweaty crowd around me I realize many people are going to give it a shot. After a “regular” hot dog, a few fries and refill of soda, the six-year-old is smiling and wide-eyed. Phew! Maybe this trip will be a success after all.
I see our unit as a tightly organized outfit. Dad will be in charge of supplies. Mom will be the navigator. Grandmother will be the peacekeeper between the boy and girl. The 11-year-old boy is dealing with a summer cold, but being quite the trouper. Apparently the best medicine is picking on his sister. And it doesn't take long to realize you need to take a Mama Bear attitude to survive out there on the streets of Disney. All's fair in love, war and getting in line.
The girl is just tall enough for all of the rides, but we approach the scarier ones with a good amount of trepidation. What will we do if she loses it just before or during the ride? You don’t stand in line for hours just to back out at the last second. Thank goodness for FastPass. More on that in a minute. To our shocking delight Princess Diva couldn’t get enough of the death-defying, eye-clinching, bloodcurdling rollercoasters. “Let’s do it again!”, she exclaimed. “Well, sweetheart”, I cautiously tossed out, “we can’t. We had a FastPass for that ride. To do it again we’d have to go to the standby line that currently shows a wait of 130 minutes.”
Ahhhh, the FastPass. What a beautiful idea. It’s been around for a little more than 15 years and is a life saver. It allows you to bypass the standby line and basically get on a ride inside of five minutes as opposed to waiting for hours. You are only allowed three FastPasses a day. And while you can add one FastPass at a time after you go through the initial three there are rarely any available times left for the popular rides. Did I mention you can sign up for your FastPasses 60 days in advance of your trip? Or should I say you better sign up for those FastPasses in the very first minute on the first possible day because you are competing with THE REST OF THE WORLD for those. They go fast, if you will, but they are necessary. I woke up at 5:30am two months ago and spent two hours trying to beat the world’s population for quick access to Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, Splash Mountain and Rock ’n’ Roller Coaster just to name a few. I can’t describe the feeling when you have successfully completed that mission. I assume it’s like winning the lottery.
There is no break from the oppressive heat at Disney. Caps, spray fans and water bottles are no match. There are few areas of shade to stand in and those usually resemble clowns trying to cram into a Volkswagen. You quickly find yourself standing in line for a ride you never would’ve considered for a FastPass just for the chance to sit down in a cool space for a few minutes. “It’s A Small World” will be stuck in your head forever, but you’ll love the three minutes of air conditioning while sitting down for a slow, lazy river ride.
I must say it’s impressive the way Disney runs like a well-oiled machine with the tens of thousands of people it deals with on a daily basis. Disney employees do try to make it “the happiest place on Earth.” And they do this while wearing character uniforms to match the attraction. I’m not sure why workers at The Mad Tea Party ride need to wear long sleeves and pants in 99 degree temperatures, but they do…and with smiles on. I swear they must be animatronics. Fortunately Disney’s other parks sell adult beverages. To see a woman almost collapse to her knees in gratitude at Hollywood Studios is a sight to behold. She and my wife discussed this glorious revelation for a good ten minutes while waiting on margaritas. Now it's the happiest place on Earth.
Wednesday is the mid-point of our undertaking. As a pick-me-up, and photo op, we have scheduled a Princess breakfast at Cinderella’s Royal Table where our Princess Diva could mingle with fellow royalty over bacon. The boy is more interested in making goofy, not Goofy, faces and asking for their phone numbers. Son, this is not a strategy that will serve you well later in life. The breakfast goes off without a hitch and with plenty of pictures. And we get earlier access into the park that day before the gates open. A full day leads us to a nice dinner at California Grill that offers a balcony view of the nightly fireworks show. I assume it was quite a sight. We crashed before the 10pm start to the sparks. Our objective is starting to take its toll on us.
Nothing prepared us for Day Four. Our mission was to conquer two parks in one day. Animal Kingdom in the morning. Epcot in the afternoon. The kids can barely get out of bed. The adults are running out of bandages for their wounds. The smell of ointment and gels has dulled our senses. It’s hard to remember what bacon smells like. But this is Disney, a once-in-a-lifetime trip for many. So you drag your limbs through shirts and shorts and push on.
What seduces you at Disney are the sudden, surprisingly short wait times on rides you don’t have a FastPass for. For example, Expedition Everest in Animal Kingdom is a popular, but scary ride. Our FastPasses that day were for Epcot. We arrived at Animal Kingdom as the gates opened and crossed our fingers. As we heard terrifying screams coming from the top of Everest we turned the corner to see a wait time of only five minutes! Well, you just can’t pass that up. After somehow emerging unscathed we exited to see the wait time was now just ten minutes. Well, you just can’t pass that up. As you might imagine, the wait quickly got longer so it was on to other adventures.
Our original strategy had us returning to the hotel for a quick break before tackling Epcot. This did not happen with our unit being detained at Animal Kingdom by those seductive, shorter than expected wait times. With FastPasses waiting at Epcot we had to trudge straight through. But two big surprises were waiting there. This was the pinnacle of our trip. The new FROZEN ride recently opened and I had been able to change the girls’ FastPasses to FROZEN (a three-hour process that day). Princess Diva loved it and even got an Olaf doll afterwards.
One more surprise and our mission would be a complete success…a FastPass for pictures with Mickey and Minnie. Isn’t that what Disney trips are all about? Lasting images with the iconic, signature characters. But the journey was depleting our energy, our patience. As we moved closer to our turn Princess Diva leaned on the velvet rope, pulling it off the stanchion. Cue the tears in 3…2…1. It didn’t matter that the Disney employee quickly reconnected the rope to the stanchion and told Diva it was okay. The shutdown was underway and could not be stopped. It’s like trying to bring a rocket ship back after blast off. It just can’t happen. Are you kidding me? She would embrace stomach-turning roller coasters with hands raised, but shutdown at the drop of a rope? Nothing worked. There would be no hugs or pictures with Mickey and Minnie. Diva sulked against the wall as her older brother stood in for her and tried to high five the mascot mice.
I realize this reads as “Hey kids, get out of my yard”, but that is not my intent. It’s just a natural reaction for any Dad trying to survive Disney. There were more than enough smiles, laughs and collections of breath to make the Disney experience most of what it’s cracked up to be. This could very well be our last trip to Disney. Who knows? To really do Disney right you need to do it fairly often and that’s practically impossible. But if we do re-enlist for another tour I sure hope I can find these notes.
No comments:
Post a Comment