Disney Magic

In the spirit of 'The American Way,' we went to Disney World. We stayed at a Disney Resort, had Disney 'magic bands,' and visited a different park each day. We saw it during the day and at night and we got see the transition between Halloween and Christmas (actually there was no transition, it was simply Halloween one day and Christmas the next). We ate the food, drank the water and stood in the lines. We wore Disney shirts and traded Disney pins with 'cast members' (anyone who works at Disney is a 'cast member.') We rode the Magic Express Bus to and from the airport and the Disney Transit System bus from park to park. Everything went off without a hitch! My sister and her family (she and her husband have two girls, just stair-stepped down from mine) had the adjoining room and the door stayed open all week, one big, happy family of 8 for 6 days! It was a vacation to remember! As it was November, the parks were all relatively empty. We drove through acres and acres of empty parking lots and walked through mile after mile of roped off lines with no one standing there. It was the ideal Florida vacation. Every day was 84 degrees and sunny. Shaun had spent hours and hours making sure we knew what we were doing and when. The entire experience was exactly perfect. But everyone keeps asking me if it was 'magical.' It wasn't magical, it was perfect. Our family has never been obsessed with Disney in any form, Mickey & Minnie or any of the movies. Sure, the girls loved to sing the songs from Frozen for longer than I'd wished, but they only watched the movie a handful of times. We had to show them The Lion King the week before we visited as we had tickets to see the show at Animal Kingdom and they still haven't seen Aladdin. There were no squeals of delight as we saw Pooh & Tigger run across the park, or Chip & Dale bound around the corner. There is no connection from our girls to any of the princesses, so maybe that's a big part of the 'magic' that was missing. Or maybe it was just me. Magic to me comes from the unexpected. Magic, to me, was looking at the Ponte Veccio bridge in Florence, Italy and seeing it the same way it had been seen 500 years ago. Magic was hearing a guide in northern Mexico talk about the altar in front of me being used for Aztec human sacrifice 700 years ago. Magic is looking down from the top of Longs Peak and seeing all the way to Kansas. Magic is watching the fog roll in and take away a view from the Royal Arch, above Boulder. Magic is watching the snow fall, the sun rise and the rivers run. To call Disney 'Magical,' is to cheapen magic somehow.

Disney was fun, it was a week of sights and sounds that I won't soon forget. It was an experience that will last a lifetime for the four girls who walked, hand in hand around the park and screamed their lungs out as we hurtled around curves and left our stomachs at the top of roller coaster hills. Now, this makes it sound like it didn't live up to some expectation or it wasn't that great. That's not it at all! It was exactly what I expected! Every nook and cranny of each line has something to look at. Disney thinks of each and every detail in their parks and makes sure it is perfect. We saw a hose, coiled in the three circle shape of Mickey's head and ears. The shampoo and conditioner in our bathroom had ears, and any latte ordered anywhere within the walls has foam art in the shape of ears as well (and even though the lid is put on before it sees the customer, it's there.) Disney thinks of everything. Despite the hoards of people walking through the park at any given moment, there is not a single scrap of trash outside of a trashcan. Nothing is broken (if something does break, it is walled off with an appropriately colorful barrier so that you don't even look at the offending brokenness. There are plenty of places to sit, just enough shade and water fountains and bathrooms around every corner. It was perfect. The mom of two young children part of me thinks this perfection is incredible, rather impossible really, that they could think of everything! I can see why families of little ones flock down there and return again and again. We had our own Disney travel agent to make sure we knew what we were doing before hand and the handy Disney app to answer any questions while we were there. And yet, 'The Happiest Place on Earth,' wasn't really that happy. Of course there were loads of people smiling and some kids genuinely beaming at watching the characters bounce around, but the overwhelming majority of these kids were either asleep in the stroller or begging to be. Red eyes and sullen faces, dragging themselves (or having their parents drag them) through the streets. Screaming babies, tantrum throwing toddlers, whiny preschoolers and their very frustrated parents dominate the landscape, but since there's always a kiosk selling Mickey key chains, Donald Duck t-shirts and Snow White's magic mirror, no one has to notice all of the unhappiness for more than a moment.  The fire hose of stimulation blasts from every angle, every moment of the day. They're smart, those Disney folks, they have taken care of everything and when I stop to think about it, it is truly an amazing feat. We walked about 7 miles every day and not once did any of those four girls complain. They too were distracted by the little depictions of Brer Rabbit stories or picking out all of the animal shapes carved into the Tree of Life.  They were always tired on the bus back to the hotel, but had no qualms about changing and jumping into the pool immediately and swimming for the next 2-3 hours! All of us adults headed for a beer and put our feet up, because yes, there is a bar at the pool (and more lifeguards than I've ever seen.) I'm telling you, they've thought of everything.

Maybe it's that I don't like to think my needs are that easily predicted. Maybe it's that I like adventure more than excitement. Maybe it's simply because I've never felt a special connection to anything Disney related, or maybe I'm just cynical and un-american. But wait, I'd recommend it to anyone! Disney was perfect and loads of fun and a trip I'll never forget, but for whatever reason, I'm quite satisfied in the knowledge that I never have to go back.

On to something new!