my big, fat walt disney world vacation. part 1.
and you may ask yourself, why the hell isn’t that boring chick writing much? she usually spews about anything. we’ve had radio silence for days, and that’s simply just not like her to be that considerate by shutting her trap.
well, fear not. i’m not being considerate. my blathering self is back. we just spent a few days in the barmy balmy place known as westworld walt disney world. you know, the happiest place in the world? (dammit, at the rates i paid, you will be happy, and nothing will go wrong, or else!) sorry i didn’t let you know in advance, but i didn’t feel like announcing to potential doers-of-evil that i was vacating my premises for a bit. but we’re back. i suspect that there are several points to rant over, so this may take a few days to get out of my system.
(don’t say you weren’t warned.)
for a stunning twist, we decided to take the autotrain this year. you load your car onto the train, then you sleep through the carolinas and all of their kitschy roadside south of the border signage until VOILA! you’re in scenic sanford. (and when i say scenic, i mean scenic like being on the wrong side of scrub pines and railroad tracks.) this time of year, the autotrain is packed, and i mean packed, TO THE GILLS, with senior citizens on their way to flaaa-rida. dahling. i would say that this trip predominantly included most of the citizenry from the greater new york metropolitan area. our family probably lowered the median age a bit.
you know it’s going to be a fabulous ride when the dining attendants hide the hot cocoa packets because the seniors rip them off. (my kids, in a moment of sweetness i wish i had captured on film, smiled so nicely at the attendant that she gave them two additional packets for later. i guess she figured we weren’t a threat to the stash.) but we were off, and everyone was nice to us once we got past the whole boarding thing. (there were a few alta cockers who i feared might run over us with luggage carts should we have the temerity to attempt to walk before them.) but the older folks who were in our little slice of AMTRAK heaven were mostly nice and didn’t monopolize the bathrooms. one even gave BC a dollar in honor of her birthday, which was sweet (even after BC said no thank you and the lady insisted.) now i just have to train these people to not speak REALLY INCREDIBLY LOUDLY WHEN IT’S 10:00 AT NIGHT AND THEY ARE RIGHT OUTSIDE MY DOOR. myrtle, your hearing aid may blow up if you keep that shit up.
where am i going with this? to disney world, of course, silly.
anyway, once we arrived in sanford, the old folks rallied to the very front of the station, as if their personal sheer will would make their car come out before everyone else’s. all, apparently, except for one family, whose car actually came out first. 45 minutes later, the announcer on the PA was getting really snippy: Eber Family, Car # 405, EBER Family, You really need to get your big asses over here right now and take your car away before we sell it on Ebay for $1! okay, so that’s more what was going on in my little bear brain, but the PA Announcer was not far from me on that, you know.
BC asked an interesting question: mama, why do all of these grandparents drive big SUVs? i couldn’t imagine any of them stepping up so high without requiring surgical intervention, but apparently, they can and they do. i scratched my head. i really don’t know, sweetheart was all i could muster. BC decided that maybe they all have to drive their grandchildren around in carpools. yeah right, darling. in their dreams they are all driving that carpool. then, after two days of kids screaming and dropping cheerios in their formerly-clean interiors, they are begging for mercy.
we went on our honeymoon to disney nearly 18 years ago. we did not decide to have children until 8 years after that, probably because a trip to disney is the finest form of birth control around. that being said, i was now wondering whether i would find seniors scarier than children.