Spend a week at Disney World and you learn a few things. Some of them good, some of them bad, and some of them that legally can't be shared due to oppressive copyright laws that would have a flock of Walt's finest legal minds descending on you like a pack of hyenas if you so much as mentioned them.
With that in mind, I'd like to share a few thoughts with you about my week.
First of all, they should change the name of the joint to It's a Fat World After All. I can't believe they don't have to replace the sidewalks every few weeks. America has really let itself go. You don't even have to listen to the cacophony of goofy languages being spoken; you can pick out the local folks by the way they waddle their asses down Main Street. That is to say, the ones who are actually waddling under their own power.
In a dramatic example of "No good deed goes unpunished," Disney allowed a few people who had difficulty walking to drive scooters and now the streets are clogged with people who have no right to be sitting in scooters. The fat. The old. The lazy. They’re all there... and usually about to board the same bus as I am. Once a fat person gets fat enough where they no longer even try to walk, you know they’re never getting any thinner. It's over for them, mouse ears or not. At Disney, you can see the morbidly obese waving their own white flags as they power to the front of every line.
The only people giving them any resistance are the couples who feel that their one-year-old can only enjoy the sights and sounds of an amusement park when being pushed at speeds of over ten miles an hour. They use their offspring as battering rams as they crash through both pedestrians and food carts alike. If I had a dollar for every fat person on a scooter/high speed stroller pile-up, I'd have hundreds of dollars, which is just enough to buy a churro and a soft drink.
At Animal Kingdom, I learned that every animal alive runs faster than I do. There wasn't a single animal pointed out during the safari that didn't run at least forty miles an hour. Alligators. Hippos. Rhinos. Manatees. They all can haul ass compared to us puny humans.
The other thing they all have in common? The number one threat to their continued existence is, you guessed it, humans... despite the fact that we’re apparently unable to outrun any of them. Watch any of the numerous presentations on the planet and you’ll hear the narrator get all somber when it comes time to mention how people are ass-fucking every animal on the planet. For every picture they show of a happy baboon playing with a stick, they show a human jamming that stick right in the baboon's anus.
One unexpected wrinkle in my plans was the fact that there was some sort of cheerleading competition going on in the park. Everywhere I went, there were cheerleaders. You'd be standing in line for some ride and there would be unprovoked outbursts of clapping and shrieking. Everyone biting their lips and hoping these empty-headed whore-wannabes wouldn't find enough room to form a pyramid. All of them seemingly delirious with joy with their placing 83rd in whatever region they came from in tumbling or some other nonsense.
The worst part about Disney was the fact that although they claim the park isn't just for children, when I ended up in Fantasyland with my mind racing, search as I did, I could find nowhere to snort coke off the naked breasts of one of the whore-wannabes. Don't call a place Fantasyland and then expect me to sit and spin in a fucking teacup, ok? Maybe if I got to sit in the teacup and snort coke off the naked tits of a cheerleader... but I guess that's not exactly what ol' Walt had in mind.
Easily the best thing about Disney?
No poor people.
If you go to any other amusement park in the country, it’s riddled with loud, annoying, shirtless poor youth who got in using some discount coupon or other. Heaven forbid you bring an even remotely attractive girl to the park; you’d spend the day listening to crude comments from these hooligans and poorly worded explanations as to why she decided to leave with one of them.
No such problem at Disney. The pricing makes it such that only middle-class people and above can afford to make the trip to the most magic of kingdoms.
If you're waiting for me to talk about the rides, you'll have to keep waiting. Nothing interesting goes on in a metal cart designed to reach G-forces that would make a mountain gorilla sterile. The only remotely interesting thing would be the picture they take of you and your fellow riders as you’re starting your plunge into the murky depths. The look you get on your face makes it imperative that everyone else in the picture be killed in case they decide to reveal the photo to the world. Luckily, Disney has a solution for this. The Murder Package is expensive but worth every penny.
If you want interesting, go to the Disney gym in the morning. Not only do they have every machine known to mankind, you'll also get an old woman who shows up every day to do some sort of demented dance routine for a solid hour. There’s no reason she needs to drag her carcass to the gym; clearly, she could do this in her room, but somehow you get the idea that it's important to her. Her hair is so jet black, it would be hysterical if it wasn’t so sad. As soon as you see it, you wonder if the beat-up carpet matches the curtains. She seemed limber enough to throw a leg up on the counter and dye whatever remains of her aging bush, so I didn't count it out.
As I watched her, I could see the young version of her doing the same moves and getting a much different response from any man taking it in. It seemed almost like a vaudeville routine and after a few mornings, I could tell she did it exactly the same way. Lots of bending and hip shaking and I felt the presence of a thousand boner ghosts from days gone by.
If you want to be creeped out, imagine a thousand boner ghosts. Detached and floating at eye level.
Top that, Haunted Mansion.
It's at this point I should warn those of you who expect me to continue to poop on the Disney experience that you might be in for a shock.
I know I was when I thought this next thought.
Ironically, I'd had the same feeling a week earlier when I saw The Lion King on Broadway. During a weepy song when Simba talks to his dead father in the stars, of all things.
I got the same rush of emotions watching the fireworks at the end of my day at Magic Kingdom.
What emotions, you ask?
It's complicated, but let me try to explain.
During both incidences, I realized that somewhere there were people whose only task in life is to bring joy and wonder to other people. I know, I know. I was sitting at ground zero of crass commercialism having this epiphany, but it's true. There are, of course, bankers and businessmen on Broadway and Disney watching our every buying habit and exploiting them, but they don't sing the songs or shoot off the fireworks.
Those people exist. The people who write the songs and dance the dances and light the fuses and the only thing in the world that motivates them is trying to make me happy.
I almost got choked up when it hit me.
In a planet choked with horrible people, there are still people who want to provide others with transcendent moments. And yes, I count myself among the horrible people - make no mistake. As they rehearse and scour the globe for new and more wonderful fireworks, I sit here and pollute the page with observations about fat people and cheerleaders and naked mole rats that have been clocked at speeds over fifty miles an hour.
I didn't belong at Disney. In the end, I didn't enjoy it. So much of the simple things about it were simply lost on me. I spent the whole time there looking for things to make fun of. I've always hated the stupid mouse and loathed the people who choose to wear a set of his ears on their head. Rollercoasters make me nauseous.
I looked up into the sky and knew that I was unworthy of the pyrotechnics going off over my head.
“The more you like yourself, the less you are like anyone else, which makes you unique.”
Walt Disney
“No matter who you are or where you are, instinct tells you to go home.”
Laura Marney, “No Wonder I Take A Drink”
So, I came home.
And wrote about fat people on scooters.