Katie's dad, Reed, leads us into the breach at the Magic Kingdom. I visited Florida once before with Mom, Granny, Auntie Mic, Sarah, and my cousins Colin and Claire. I was always sad that I hadn't been able to go on Space Mountain.
Cinderella's Castle, with some rodent-shaped topiary in the foreground. If you've ever read The Shining, then you'll remember the fantastic scene where the guy gets chased by the hedge-creatures, a scene that didn't make it into Kubrick's film adaptation.
Tomorrowland. Sweet.
So, Walt Disney World is actually comprised of four separate theme parks: the Magic Kingdom (which is what most people mean when they say DisneyWorld), Epcot, Animal Kingdom, and Hollywood Studios. This is the character photo-op for Ariel.
Well, not actually _this_. This is a statue of the Little Mermaid that was set up outside in a little water-park play area for the kids to romp in while they waited for their chance to get a picture with...
Ariel. To her credit, she never broke kayfabe, even when taking pictures with adults.
Fantasyland is another part of the Magic Kingdom (Tomorrowland, Frontierland, Adventureland, Main Street, USA, Liberty Square and Mickey's Toontown Fair are the other, increasingly-wordier neighbourhoods).
One of the rare photos I was able to get of Reed facing the camera. He was usually sprinting off in the direction of the next attraction or ride. That's his wife, Sandy, there on the right in the green.
Snaaaaake! Snaaaaaaake! (This caption is only funny if you've either 1) played Metal Gear Solid and died or 2) seen the little internet video called "The Badger Song.")
This is on the Adventureland Jungle Cruise, in which we puttered along a 'river' and saw lots of animatronic animals and natives, while our host regaled us with some of the most relentless puns I've ever heard in my life. Literally everything he pointed out was a setup for a play-on-words groaner. The elephant was something about packing his trunk.
"Oh, no, he's going to spray us! Oh, it's okay, he forgot to pack his trunk." Or something. Whatever.
"Oh, look, that zebra is having a nap with his friends the lions." Bloodthirsty.
The rhino actually had his horn going in and out of the guy's ripped pants. Sick.
Some killer crocs.
Hippopotami. I hate it when people try to tell me it's 'hippopotamuses' (which incidentally, my spell-check is telling me is the correct way to spell it; screw you, computer).
Ooga booga.
This is the part where the guy started in on how we were entering some Khmer ruins in Cambodia.
Happy elephants frolicking in the water.
Katie liked them.
So fun.
This guy was a voodoo headshrinker.
We went on Pirates of the Caribbean, but it was too dimly lit to get any good photos. So we had to settle for Katie doing a pirate impersonation in the gift shop afterwards.
For some reason, one of my clearest memories of my first trip to Florida, two decades ago, was the Swiss Family Robinson treehouse. It's pretty much exactly the same.
Lots of stairs. Up, around, and down.
Katie was taking the pictures.
The Robinsons had it pretty sweet, I must say.
There's Tomorrowland off in the distance.
Oh, so I finally got to go on Space Mountain. I have to say, it totally lived up to my (quite unreasonable) expectations, even after they'd acquired the glittering patina of long-held blind belief. Space Mountain was fucking awesome.
Oh, yes, we're still in the treehouse. This is where Mr. and Mrs. Robinson did it.
You have to actually work to remember that most of this is plastic and concrete.
Here's where Hans, Ernst and Jurgen used to sleep.
Katie went a little nuts with the treehouse pictures.
The 'library', I believe.
The kitchen.
More kitchen.
The treehouse. I'm getting a little sick of captioning these photos.
Ah, here we go. There was a parade.
There he is.
There's Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, the other main roller coaster attraction in the Magic Kingdom. It was pretty fun, too.
Zoom.
We were on a big paddleboat (on rails, of course), that took us around to all this ridiculous stuff, like old Uncle Mose here. The loudspeakers kept blaring "Maaaaaaaark twaaaaaaaain."
"Here we see the Native Americans in their wigwams. They don't quite know what to make of us, I'd imagine."
There's the Haunted Mansion. That was pretty cool, too.
So spooky. I can remember the Haunted Mansion from my first visit, too. I remember being totally blown away by the ghosts. This time I figured out how they did it (mostly glass and reflections).
Cinderelly's Castle. The castle, like the buildings on Main Street, is designed to look bigger than it is by using what's called 'forced perspective'. Each successive storey is shorter than the one beneath it, so the windows at the top are actually less than a foot tall, tricking the eye into switching size for distance.
The front of the castle.
The parade was still going on, with the prince/princess couples bringing up the rear. Here's Ariel and Eric.
Here we are.
Then we went to Epcot. This is all still the first day. That ball is called Spaceship Earth. I always presumed that it was actually called the Epcot Center (because that's what the park was called 20 years ago). I don't think we actually got to Epcot Center the first time.
Here I'm getting all ahh-tistic.
This was actually a ride called Mission: Space. And it was awesome. They strapped you into a box that I can only presume spun around to create g-force while they launched us to Mars. It was pretty sweet.
Epcot is comprised of two parts. The first is Future World a bunch of rides and stuff, and the second is the World Showcase, which is a series of pavilions set up for 11 countries: Mexico, Norway, China, Germany, Italy, the "American Adventure", Japan, Morocco, France, the UK, and Canada. Here we are in Canada, where this band (the creatively named Off-Kilter) butchered "The Wild Rover" and played Metallica's version of "Whiskey in the Jar." Well, whatever helps the Americans learn that it's not all snow and ice up there, I guess.
I should point out that our timetables typically began with waking up at 7 to be out the door shortly after 8. The first day we were at the Magic Kingdom by 9. The second day, we were at Hollywood Studios by 9. The third day, Animal Kingdom by 9. I continue to be punished for my stubborn requests that vacations be restful and relaxing. That said, here we begin our second day of FUN.
The first thing we did was go on Rock 'n' Roller Coaster Starring: Aerosmith. It was fast. Very fast.
Oh, I miswrote. The first thing we did was get Fast Passes for the Tower of Terror. They didn't have this thing when I was there in 1988. For some of the very popular rides (like Space Mountain, Thunder Mountain, and Rock 'n' Roller Coaster Starring: Aerosmith), you can put your ticket into a machine and get a little ticket that lets you get in a faster line for the ride, but in a couple of hours; it basically lets you reserve a seat for yourself if you're willing to wait a little while. It seemed to work fairly well, especially when you're following in the wake of a pro like Reed. I think the longest we waited in any line was like 20 or 25 minutes. Anyway, the Tower of Terror was a Twilight Zone-branded drop ride. They flicked us around like rag dolls. It was not as scary as I had thought it would be.
There was also a Star Wars ride that gave me a headache. It was one of those lock-you-in-a-box-and-swing-you-around-while-showing-you-a-video rides. This the outside, with an AT-AT and an Ewok village.
IT'S A TRAP!
I couldn't figure out why C-3PO had one grey leg. I can only presume it was laziness or lack of gold spray paint.
There's an R5-D4. I had one of these action figures when I was a kid. R5-D4 was the droid that Luke's uncle was going to buy, but it shorted out, and he bought R2-D2 instead. There'll be a test later.
We also went to see a stunt show. It was set in a tranquil French town (proudly pointing out the attraction's origin at Euro Disney), but my super-nerd-sense started going off like crazy.
There's an anachronism for ya. That's a snowspeeder, kids. Good for taking down AT-ATs.
So, like many things at Walt Disney World, the stunt show was a nucleus of cool wrapped up in a wet blanket of suck. There were cars and bikes and guys firing blanks and shit blowing up and one guy who caught on fire, which was all completely awesome. But they had to wrap it all up in this big pile of bullshit about how it was a "real film shoot" with directors and playbacks and a bunch of time-filler crap. That's the "director" in the red shirt, riding around on the back of the camera truck.
Oh, yeah, then Herbie the Love Bug came out and honked his horn at the "assistant director."
The guy in black with the white stuff on his shoulder did a full-body burn, but I didn't get a picture of it. Sorry. There was also a totally awesome end sequence where the red car zoomed all over the place and jumped a big ramp and there were big explosions and stuff. I thought I was recording it as a video, but fuck me, I guess I forgot to hit record. Oh, well. It was still cool.
New York. Ish.
We bought new sneakers. See?
It was a big painted backdrop. Looks pretty good, though.
Mickey, all dressed up in his Fantasia outfit.
Oooh. Magical.
Ah, then we went to see Voyage of the Little Mermaid, which was sort of a 20-minute condensed version of the movie, with live actors, puppets and bits of the cartoon projected on a screen. The squeaky-voiced guy who herded us into the theatre took a few minutes to introduce (I shit you not) Miss Teen Florida and her friends. Jesus.
Day 3: Animal Kingdom. I'll admit that I was most skeptical of this park. I'm not big on zoos, and thoroughly opposed to circuses that have animal performers, so I was already scowling at the notion of Disney parading a bunch of ostensibly wild animals in front of us and another few hundred thousand people.
The ride was a repeat example of interesting content wrapped up in an idiotically tacked-on "story." We all piled into trucks for a 'two-week' safari through "Harambe Wildlife Reserve."
There were plenty of animals, and to be fair, they didn't look overly-stressed or sick. I'm still suspicious as to how they managed to have the animals rest or come out so close to our vehicle, which was not quiet. I'll try to refrain from editorializing too much. From what I've read, animal-rights groups like PETA aren't too pleased with Animal Kingdom, but Disney is careful to meet all the USDA animal welfare regs.
Here's an okapi. Their bums look like zebras.
A black rhino.
Storks.
More storks, I think.
Hippos.
Crocodiles.
More crocodiles.
Katie liked the crocodiles.
A baobab tree, which I can only assume is artificial, since the tour guide said it was something like 1700 years old.
Antelopes.
Termite mound.
Ankole-Watusi cattle.
Wildebeest.
Little Thomson's gazelles.
A giraffe.
Another totally real baobab tree.
Elephants.
Elephant.
Flamingos and ducks.
White rhinos.
Warthogs.
Scimitar-horned oryxes. These guys are extinct in the wild. Which is not good.
Ostrich.
Black-and-white Colobus monkeys. Their tails aren't prehensile, which the other monkeys always give them a hard time about.
Another okapi.
Sick. Naked mole rats. I've gone on about these guys before on my website. Sick. They look like penises with teeth. Look at that son of a bitch on the left.
They were a lot smaller than I thought they'd be. I thought they'd be like, six inches long, but they're only 2-3 inches long. Still. Sick.
He's digging, the horrible, freakish little monster.
They had some gorillas.
This one was sleeping.
There was a woman dressed up like plants. This is her. She was on stilts. If you use the zoom button there on the top right, you can find her face in the middle. Pretty slick.
The Tree of Life at the center of the park.
Psst. Not a real tree.
Expedition Everest: Legend of the Forbidden Mountain. Good god, Disney people, could you make the names of these things any more tortuously long? The entire walk to this ride was the most bizarrely sanitized version of Southeast Asia. Like, it all _looked_ like Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand, except there were no begging children, and all the dust and dirt was glued into place. Just... bizarre.
That said, the actual ride was pretty fun, with the train going both forwards and backwards all through the mountain. There was a big yeti at one point that was pretty awesome.
This is the part where the ride gets steep and fast, and everyone outside laughs at the people screaming.
Here we are with the Tree of Life.
After we were done at Animal Kingdom, we went back to Epcot to meet Katie's aunt and uncle for lunch. This is what Canada looks like. Copper-roofed government buildings, mountains and Haida-style totem poles.
Reed seems to like it. One of the best things about Epcot (and something I probably wouldn't have appreciated as a child) is the fact that you can buy booze there. I went and got a couple of Moosehead in Canada, and I noticed that all the people there were Ontarians. I playfully asked if it was only Ontarians that worked there, and I got the canned, "Well, we have employees from all ten provinces, sir." Uh-huh. I saw people from Ontario and B.C. We also saw the "O Canada" film, hosted by Martin Short. Another Ontarian. Sigh.
Mike, Karen, Katie and me. Mike's retired but substitute teaches. Karen works part-time backstage at Epcot. Nice people.
Spaceship Earth. I think it is so cool.
Close-up.
The Mexico pavilion, all lit up in the setting sun.
Germany.
Italy.
Us in Italy.
The British Invasion, a Beatles cover band in the UK.
Us on the way out of Epcot.
With the flash off.
Looks pretty cool at night.
We went to an Irish bar/restaurant called Raglan Road. They had a duo up on the stage singing some lovely Irish songs, and a girl who kept stomping up onto this teeny stage to do some step-dancing.
This is Reed's condo in Celebration. More on that in a second.
It was a pretty nice place. About 23 times bigger than our apartment in New York.
Hell, the kitchen was nearly as big as our apartment.
So, this is Celebration, FL. Disney created it and own it. It is the most head-scratchingly interesting town I've ever been in. Planned communities are weird.
Lots of wide open space. Flags. And shitloads of white folk.
Retirees with dogs. People zipping around on Segways. Skin tones ranging from pasty-white to sunburned-white. Ahhh, America.
The Celebration city hall and post office. Thus endeth the trip to Florida. I had a great time, but next time I'm going to submit a written request for one day sitting on my ass next to a pool or on a beach somewhere.
