here you come again: my latest trip to disney
i didn’t love disney enough last year.
nope.
nyet.
so we went back again last week.
i made some brief notes to myself about the event. i suspect i will write in more length about it, but for now, here are some abbreviated, up-to-the-minute thoughts from a person who probably was under the influence of too much sugar, both literally and figuratively speaking.
1) i used to like people. then i came to disney. yes, mr. ripley. i am not by nature misanthropic. not until i hit the magic kingdom; then, all bets are off. people — grownups and kids alike — are on their worst behavior. i cut kids slack here — they’re kids, after all — but the grownups?
we were waiting on line for the animal safari in animal kingdom — a neat place and a neat ride, incidentally. i like to use lines as a teachable lesson for my kids. you know, an exercise in patience and fairness? a woman and her two kids continually tried to push ahead of us, the family ahead of us, and the older couple on the motorized scooter in front of them. eventually, they succeeded, hitting their trifecta of triumph. what we didn’t know: the woman’s friend and the friend’s young son did not push ahead and remained behind us. why are you so far behind? miss pushypushy asked her friend. why don’t you come up here and join us?
in one of the rarest moments ever, BS and i said in unison, NO! we had had it. for 20 minutes, this woman kept on pushing, nearly trampling over people. i added, if you’d like to join your friends, you can move back and join them.
i noticed that the friend behind us suddenly had a few words with BS. i didn’t hear them at first, so i asked BS what the woman left behind had said.
he replied: she told me “have a nice day! hope you get sent to iraq!”
yes. it’s a small world, after all.
2) don’t walk? don’t come. no, i don’t mean people who really need wheelchairs. but i continue to be shocked by the number of strollers housing children who are old enough to accomplish long division. conversely, if you aren’t old enough to walk, you probably are too young to remember the experience. i suspect if you’re child #3 and you’re being dragged along for the ride thanks to sibling #1 and sibling #2, i can cut some slack. but seriously? we went to the halloween party, where we walked in with two parents, two grandparents, and a baby girl who was maybe a wee bit over one. let’s see: an evening that costs $50 per person. you’re bringing a baby in at 7 pm. it’s going to be dark in five minutes. yep. a worthwhile expenditure.
BC started pumping my hand every time we passed a child in a stroller who was older than 4. (it’s almost a dead giveaway when you see them reading.) (yes, my daughter is becoming as snarky as her mom.) i tried to take the high road on this, but it’s awfully difficult when you see kids who are too damn lazy to move. which we saw. incessantly.
at one point, i ended up talking to a disney employee, who noted in amazement about the number of people who arrive, pick up wheelchairs (especially those zippy motorized ones), and zip around from ride to ride. they just don’t want to walk around the park. you know, she said with great candor, i understand if someone has a disability, a bad knee, that sort of thing. but these people just come here and pretend to have an issue when they’re just plain lazy.
whoa. i thought the employees were shiny and happy all the time.
3) freaky people. then, there are the scary people who live for disney. you know the ones, the folks with personalized disney plates? the ones who visit the place every month? they’ve gotten married here, they’ve given birth on the monorail, and they plan to have mickey mouse circumcise their baby boy? while waiting for dinner one night, we saw a couple there who made me hold tight to my children. (it didn’t help that the guy looked like charlie manson.) i suspect they each wore about 50 pounds of disney pins.
yes, i’m here to tell you that i am clearly deficient as a mother. we did not dress up in homemade, matching disney costumes like so many families did at the halloween party. i am not crafty enough to make one costume (unless you count taking a bedsheet, poking two holes in it, and calling it a “ghost suit.”) frankly, i was lucky that i remembered to pack the kids’ costumes.
speaking of matchy-matchy fun, when we were poor, starving newlyweds, BS and i bought matching polo shirts at montgomery wards to wear to the bahamas, an ill-fated trip which i spent in the bathroom, barfing my guts out for a full 24-hours before skeedaddling back to the US for medical treatment. thus, i am also not one of those chicks who makes my husband and kids wear the same shirt as i while we travel to walt’s world. too much bad karma.
besides: BS would look dorky if i made him wear a tinkerbell shirt.
anyway, there’s so much more to share, including the folks who brought their Ipods to watch shows while waiting on line rides. see, every. minute. must. be. filled. silly us, we talked to each other while we waited. (well, that, and we watched this young girl toss her cookies massively while we were on the Toy Story Mania ride line. most people were grossed out. several found a way to step around the sea of woof. they had waited a long time, and dammit, they were not going to be hindered by that!)
oh, the humanity.