A magic day, by any standards.
The alarm clock system worked exactly as planned, and though the coach was a few minutes late, we were on the road by 0610, heading west out of Fort Lauderdale in order to pick up the Florida Turnpike, a toll road running almost straight from Lauderdale to Orlando, the nearest town to Disneyworld. In the early part of the journey there was very little to see, as it was still dark. Though Florida doesn’t suffer the same winter rigours as some other parts of the world, it does have a fairly short day at this time of year.
While waiting for the sun to come up, in a metaphorical sense, some further thoughts of a general nature occurred to me. First of all, talking about the length of the day, here the dawn and dusk periods are extremely short, dusk in particular, as the sun seems to literally fall out of the sky in a matter of moments, and you go from a bright day to darkness in considerably under thirty minutes.
While shopping yesterday with Archie, we had quite a long chat about various subjects, including house prices – there are a lot of very expensive places in Fort Lauderdale, but he said that you could still buy a place of your own there for as little as £25,000, and a very reasonable house, with three bedrooms but no swimming pool, would only cost about £50,000, which isn’t all that bad.
Archie drives a ’72 Caddy, which he has dubbed the ‘White Whale’ because it’s so huge and wallowy. He bought it as a banger for about $600 (£350) a while ago, then realised that it was in fact the newest car he had ever owned! It has power everything, but it really is no beauty, though it is fairly quiet and comfortable, with one or two nice features. One thing I do like about American cars is that the parking brake you apply with the left foot – it’s just like another pedal on the floor, though higher than the others, so that you can’t apply it by accident – and release by pulling a small lever under the dash. On the Caddy, putting the car into gear automatically releases the parking brake – a neat idea. Archie reckons to get about 12 mpg out of it, with the air conditioning working (it uses a lot of fuel just to keep the occupants cool), and that it therefore costs him about the same to run as his Volvo in Britain, due to the great difference in petrol prices.
Costs over here are generally a good bit lower than in Britain. Archie is taking flying lessons, at a good deal less than half the cost of the same series of lessons in England. In fact, there are several American flying schools offering to fly pupils out from Europe, accommodate them, and get them a PPL (Private Pilot’s Licence) all for about £1,700, and that is less than you would expect to pay just for the lessons in Britain. Worth thinking about, for an interesting holiday.
Cheque cashing over here is rather different to Britain as well, due mainly to the large number of independent banks, and while cheques issued by a Florida bank can be cashed in Florida, you’d better make other arrangements if you’re going out of the state, as cashing them there would be very difficult, if not impossible, even with ID (usually a driving licence). Talking of money, Wells Fargo (of ‘Stagecoach’ fame) still run, though now with very tough-looking armoured cars.
One rather nice touch is that American restaurants are not just restaurants. Most call themselves ‘Restaurant and lounge’, and have a sort of sitting-room area with a bar for you to retire to before and/or after the meal. All eating establishments, too, will provide you with a ‘doggy bag’ to take the remains of your meal home with you if you can’t finish it.
In America, you can pass on either side when overtaking, which is a lot more sensible than it sounds, provided you keep a fairly close eye on the mirror before trying to change lanes.
Talking to the owner of the gun shop yesterday morning, I discovered one or two interesting facts about the gun world over here. First of all, you have to be a Florida resident before he can sell a weapon to you, and that means having a Florida address and being able to produce Florida ID – the inevitable driving licence. As long as you can do that, he can sell you any weapon and as much ammunition as you can carry – he just registers the fact that such a transaction has taken place, and to whom the weapon was sold.
He told me that Florida was one of the most lenient states from the point of view of weapon sales, and that several other states have much more rigid rules, some requiring a police permit before purchase was allowed. The odd thing about the system is that once the weapon has been sold, there is no further check on it – in other words, if a Florida resident wanted to sell me a gun, there is legally nothing to stop him from doing so – no proof of residential status is needed. I think, therefore, that if we do come back over here, I will have to try to organise something like that, providing the prices are rather more competitive in the future. After all, it doesn’t matter from whom I buy a gun – it will be registered in my name upon arrival in the UK.
There is at the moment a good deal of anti-gun feeling in America at the moment, but they don’t seem to be getting very far, as ‘the right to keep and bear arms’ is written into the American constitution, and in some places a kind of counter-action is gathering weight, with one or two cities actually insisting that all heads of household are armed at all times. In fact, in these cities, if a man who is a head of household is stopped by the police, and cannot produce a weapon, he is liable to arrest! The result of this odd-sounding piece of legislation, interestingly enough, is that crime figures have taken quite a dive. I suppose that this fact is not all that surprising, as the edge that a criminal usually has over his victims is that he is armed and they are not, but if just about every male over 25 is carrying a gun, the criminal’s edge is reduced to almost nothing, and they have presumably gone elsewhere to seek easier pickings.
Among the weapons I looked at in the gun shop was an absolutely beautiful Smith and Wesson Model 29 revolver, double action, in .44 Magnum, with a six and a half inch barrel – the original ‘Dirty Harry’ gun. This is still made, but only in a six inch barrel, and the proprietor said that the new ones were nothing like as good as the older models. The one I was handling was straight out of the factory in appearance, but was in fact ten years old, and was on offer for $500 (£300). Quite beautiful, with superb balance, a faultless operating mechanism and a general feeling of competence about it. I would have loved it.
He also told me quite an interesting story about a guy who appeared in the shop one day, wearing, as he put it, ‘a sharp suit with bulges and reflective sunglasses – he smelt of Fed’. It turned out that he was a CIA man, just having a look at the shop’s stock, and not interested in buying, but in the course of the conversation he showed his full CIA ID, and a special pass which he called the ‘get out of jail free’ card, as it instructed all US authorities that the holder of the credentials was not, under any circumstances, to be stopped, arrested, questioned, harassed or in any way interfered with. It also stated that he was empowered to request any assistance, of any sort, and that this request was to take priority over all other requests of whatever sort, and further that all Federal and State regulations concerning the purchase of weapons and/or ammunition were to be waived, and that no payment would be made at the time of purchase, but would be made from Federal sources within forty eight hours of such purchase. Quite amazing.
He also said that the CIA man had actually been arrested one day by a police officer in some hick town in New York State – it only had a four-man police department, embarrassingly enough – and the CIA man had been pulled for speeding and reckless driving. The officer had been shown the magic card, but had refused to believe what it said, so he’d taken Mr CIA back to the jail, slammed him in, after frisking him (which had failed to reveal the presence of a Semmerling LM4 – a five-shot .45 pistol which will fit very comfortably into your palm – in a crotch holster), and showed his Chief of Police, who’d also refused to believe him about the card. The upshot was that Mr CIA had been forced to use the one ‘phone call he was legally entitled to make, calling his boss at Langley to get some high-powered assistance to lever him out of the slammer. The card, he said, was one of only about three hundred in the whole of the US, which was probably just as well, and he also said that there were very heavy penalties in store for him if he misused it in any way.
Anyway, on with the Disneyworld trip. As the dawn broke, we were able to see rather more of Florida than I had done on any previous occasion, and I was able to confirm that it is a bit like the fens – very flat and rather boring – though a hell of a lot hotter, and vaster, and swampy. The swamps, called the Everglades in the south of Florida, are still largely untamed, and are full of alligators. As a point of interest, all the alligators that Jerry and I had seen at Marine World or Ocean World or whatever it was called had actually been captured within the Fort Lauderdale city limits.
Our route was along the Florida Turnpike as far as St Cloud, where we branched off onto US 192 through Kissimmee and then into Disneyworld. The Turnpike is a toll road, where you take a ticket at the start of your journey, and then pay as you leave the road, based upon the distance you’ve travelled. Tolls are not too high, as far as I can tell, though I don’t know what exactly it cost for the trip we did.
The bus, or rather coach, was very comfortable, being designed for long-distance touring, with plenty of leg-room, very comfortable and adjustable seats, air-conditioning, and even a loo at the back. In fact, the air-conditioning was almost too good, and it really was quite cold inside, in complete contrast to the very high temperatures outside the vehicle – it was turning into a very hot and sunny day. We saw quite a lot of wildlife, or birds anyway, that would be considered mildly exotic in most places, including egrets (white stork-like birds) and a lot of hawks various.
We certainly didn’t hang about, either. Despite the universal United States speed limit of 55 mph, I calculated our speed at in excess of 70 mph for most of the time (using my watch/calculator and the mile markers that are a feature of the road system over here), and we were overtaken quite often. We also saw a lot of big rigs on the road, and a lot of them travelling very quickly indeed, and in convoy. Jerry had said that when he and Ian Georgeson had done the Disneyworld trip by car they had ‘hitch-hiked’ for a good part of it – pottering along at about 55 mph until a group of trucks swept past, then tagging on the end – and he said that the trucks seemed to hold about 80mph for most of the time, until one of them detected a police radar (they all have radar detectors, it seems), when the whole lot would wind it down to 55, then ‘put the pedal to the metal’ again and speed up.
We also saw one or two ‘U-Haul’ vans taking families about the place. A good idea, these, for moving house. What you do is hire a large truck, load your goods and chattels into the back, load the family and animals into the large cab area at the front, and then attach the family car with a rigid tow bar at the rear. You drive to your new home, unlatch the car, unload the truck, and then deliver it to the nearest U-Haul office. Neat, eh?
One other neat idea is that the Turnpike had its rest areas/service areas between the carriageways rather than at either side. Only a small difference to the British system, but just ponder on the advantages. First of all, because you can gain access to the area from either carriageway, you only need one restaurant, one garage, one set of toilets, and so on, rather than duplicating everything as we do in Britain. And, of course, there’s no need to build bridges over the road either – a much better idea all round.
That does, of course, require you to do away with rigid overtaking rules, as in Britain, as otherwise you would never be able to get in or out, as the ‘overtaking’ lane would always be the one to take you into the rest area, but that wouldn’t be a bad idea anyway, in view of the number of mindless idiots you find hogging the centre lane of British motorways with not another car in sight.
We stopped for a rapid breakfast at one of these service areas, and as never before I realised that America and Britain really are two countries separated by a common language. We could read what the menu (self-service, of course) said, but we didn’t know what it meant. What exactly were ‘grits’, ‘hash browns’ or ‘eggs over easy’? I finally settled for eggs (scrambled), sausage (which was a very spicy sausage, served in rounds like mini-beefburgers) and hash browns (potatoes fried in batter, almost like fish in appearance, but very tasty). That lot, together with toast and apple jelly, and coffee (all included in the price) was a very reasonable $3-95 (£2-30). The service was very rapid (MacDonalds over here say that if you order breakfast and it isn’t ready in less than one minute, they will give you your next breakfast free) and the place was clean and tidy – very impressive.
We pulled off the Turnpike and paid the toll (or rather the driver did), and headed towards Orlando. Talking briefly of money, this is really quite a cheap trip, as the coach ride is only costing $25 (£15) return, and the entrance fee is only $12 (£7), though that is because we are military – normally it is $15 which is still very reasonable, bearing in mind that is all you have to pay as all rides, attractions and so on are free from then on. And the really neat part about the whole deal is that I will be able to claim a convertible warrant for the trip, and I will actually make a profit of around $35 on the whole deal, which really can’t be bad.
The road surface improved noticeably as we neared Disneyworld, and it was interesting to see the way that they were even taking care of the appearance of things this far out (we were still about ten miles away), by trimming the verges neatly and so on. Disneyworld even has its own radio station, and those people with AM radios were asked to dial 1030 AM for up to date information about the place as they approached. We started seeing the signs for the newly-opened Epcot Centre (which we weren’t going to) and for the Magic Kingdom, which we were. We saw a vast parking area (which can accommodate in excess of a million cars, we were told, as well as thousands of coaches), which just dwarfed anything else I’ve ever seen before, though due to the proper landscaping it was by no means ugly. As we entered the coach parking area, we were given a ticket which told us where the coach would be parked when we came out, giving us the spot number, and also providing an early indication of just how efficient everything is at Disneyworld – there are rarely any queues for most things, and they really are used to taking care of tens or hundreds of thousands of people at a time.
We climbed out of the coach and headed for the long line of ticket offices, only a few of which were in use, as there are much smaller crowds here mid-week, and bought our tickets on production of ID cards. After a further short walk, and the stamping of our tickets as we went through the turnstiles, we headed for the monorail. This makes anything that British Rail has look like a refugee from the age of steam – it’s sleek, beautiful and comfortable, and very efficient. The platform is designed so that you enter on one side of the train and leave on the other, so that people arriving are never in the way of people leaving, and this is a common feature all over Disneyworld. There are no rides where you enter and leave by the same entrance/exit.
Another common feature is that they have sort of ‘stalls’: sets of bars arranged on the platform in diagonal lines. These will accommodate eight people, and are positioned to be opposite the doors when the train stops, and, of course, each compartment has seats for exactly eight people, so there is no jostling for a seat. If you’re not given a position in one of the stalls (the whole thing is very closely supervised), you won’t be on that train. The sequence of events therefore is as follows: the train arrives in the station. As it stops, the doors on the exit side are opened automatically, and everyone gets out. As the last leave, the doors the entrance side are opened automatically, and everyone gets in. Both sets of doors are then shut manually, as a safety check, and the train leaves. By this method, about one hundred and fifty people (one train-load) can leave, and another one hundred and fifty board, and the train can get under way again in rather less than thirty seconds. That is what I call real efficiency. The ride in is interesting, too, as the entrance station is about two or three miles from the Magic Kingdom, and takes you over Bay Hake, and actually through the Contemporary Resort Hotel (a fairly unique experience), before depositing you at Main Street, USA. Even at that stage, it was quite obvious that the whole operation was so slick and professional that it made me feel very sorry indeed for the fumbling amateurs who try to run amusement areas in Britain. This really is the proverbial it!
I was with John Griffin, one of the fighter controllers on board, and we had decided to head straight for Space Mountain, in Tomorrowland (the Magic Kingdom is divided up into Tomorrowland; Main Street, USA; Fantasyland; Liberty Square; Frontierland and Adventureland, each reflecting a different kind of attraction). Space Mountain is a roller coaster ride, which doesn’t sound all that exciting said like that. However, the whole, huge building contains the ride, and it takes place in almost total darkness, with you strapped very firmly into the seats of the cars – it is not recommended for people who suffer from motion sickness, who have heart trouble, or anything else of a major nature.
Having ridden it, I could see why. All the way into the building are little signs (yet another example of the thoroughness of the operation) telling you how long you will have to wait from that point, assuming you are in a queue. We weren’t, and went through a very long series of tunnels up into the heart of the building, where we had a delay of perhaps a minute before we were able to get into the cars.
The theme of the ride is a trip into space, and at times it really felt like it! The car starts off fairly slowly, pausing at intervals, with illuminated signs giving you ‘information’ – like ‘60 seconds to lift-off’, ‘Ignition sequence started’ and so on, then goes through a tunnel of lights, very reminiscent of the ‘time-warp’ sequence in ‘2001 – A Space Odyssey’, before climbing fairly slowly upwards, as part of the ‘launch’. That is the last time you go slowly on the whole ride, as you cruise through a final patch of light, are plunged into almost total darkness, and the car hammers downwards.
Jesus, does it move! I reckon it pulls more than 4G in some places (more than I can recall from my flying days), and twists and turns and climbs and swoops and plunges – all this against a background of twinkling stars (once your eyes get accustomed to the darkness, and assuming that you haven’t closed them in fright!) and whirling galaxies projected around you by hologram. Really amazing, and I would have loved to do it again straight away, but there were so many other rides waiting that we moved on, but I honestly think it was worth the whole trip just for Space Mountain.
In a rather more gentle vein, we then continued our entertainment with a trip back, and then forwards in time, on the Carousel of Progress. This was a series of four cameos, showing the increasing benefits of the use of electricity in the home, which sounds quite remarkably boring, but in fact was no such thing. The building was entirely circular, and the whole outer ring of it rotated about a central circular section, upon which were four stages, where the action took part. Viewers sit in the rotating bit, and each time the outer ring came to a stop, the stage was set for another scene. It started in 1920, when electricity was very much a ‘new-fangled’ device, moved up through 1940, 1960 and finally to 1980, each scene being basically the same, and each one showing an entire family of dummies. The really impressive thing about it was, in fact, the dummies, as they were the most realistic I have ever seen. They blink, breathe and talk and move just like real people. Even the dog on the hearth looks like a real dog on the hearth. Most impressive.
We then visited a 360 cinema: easy to describe, but it really has to be experienced to be fully appreciated. The room is again circular, and holds probably 1500 people. Around the walls are nine cinema screens, and there are no seats as such – you lean on rails instead. The screen at the ‘front’ starts the action, with a shot of clouds, taken from an aircraft flying above them, and then, one by one, each screen around the room lights up, so that by the time they are all working, you are in an aircraft, and able to look all around you – ahead of you the clouds approach – they pass you by on both sides and they recede behind you. You are then taken on a trip around the world, and being in a circular cinema really does make a big difference, as you are right in the centre of all the action. In the centre, for example, of a group of temple dancers in New Delhi; in the Taj Mahal; driving round the Arc de Triomphe in Paris – speeded up about three times – and that is bloody frightening, with cars coming at you from quite literally all directions. In Britain, too, you fly over London, and then find yourself actually in the Changing of the Guard – not watching, but actually in it. Quite magical.
Our final ride before lunch was It’s A Small World, which we got into more or less by accident. It’s a boat ride (Disneyworld uses a lot of water in its attractions) through a series of tableaux of model children, wearing traditional dress and doing traditional dances from all over the world. Great if you like kids, I suppose.
I couldn’t help noticing how clean the place is. There are huge, but unobtrusive, litter bins almost everywhere, and these are backed up by a veritable army of men who just walk about picking up cigarette packets and so on. No smoking, eating or drinking is allowed in any of the rides, in fact. John and I had lunch in the shadow of Cinderella’s Castle, in the Pinocchio Village Haus, where I had a ‘double-burger and French fries, with pecan pie and a medium Coke’, which, translated into English was two beefburgers in a toasted bun effort with chips; pecan pie is like a very thick treacle tart, and a ‘medium’ is, predictably enough, the mid-size Coke. The way you order is slightly odd, too, though not unusual in America. You pay the cashier after deciding what you want, and by the time you reach the serving counter, your meal is ready for you. Obviously the items rung up on the till are also indicated in the kitchen. A very efficient system. Tasty food, too.
The next item was Mr Toad’s Wild Ride, which was a gentle sort of ride through an enchanted English countryside, but cleverly done, with all sorts of odd things jumping out at you at intervals.
We then sampled the aquatic delights of 20,000 leagues under the sea in a real live Nautilus, which was in fact a kind of boat, but which looked just like the ‘real thing’ from above. You sit on fold-down seats, each equipped with its own viewing port, and with the aid of suitable sound effects and an imaginative commentary, you travel around the undersea world, meeting sharks and other assorted fish, seeing divers in action, and even travelling beneath the polar ice-cap and narrowly escaping from the clutches of a giant squid. Great stuff, I thought.
Snow White’s Adventures came next, which was rather along the lines of ‘Mr Toad’, but rather better, with wicked witches and so on which leapt out at you, and which was not really intended for children. Quite entertaining.
We then went on a Mission To Mars, which took place in a large circular room, fitted with a screen on the ceiling, one on the floor, and others on the walls. The floor screen showed what was behind the ‘spacecraft’, while the one in the ceiling showed what was ahead. The wall screens were for relaying flight information, and also for viewing what was ‘seen’ by the remote probes later in the flight. As lift-off commenced, the whole room seemed to shake, and great clouds of steam and smoke filled the floor screen. As this happened, the seats sank under us, just as if we were actually accelerating away from the Earth – very realistic. We then saw the first-stage separation, as the exhausted first stage of the propellant rocket was detached, and we reached orbit. Some beautiful pictures of Earth from space were seen, and then we whipped through a hyper-drive warp to Mars acquisition space, showing pictures of the Red Planet. Remote probes were then launched to the planet’s surface, where they showed some of the features in more detail, and, incidentally, we learned a good deal about the planet. The ship was supposed to be landing on the surface, but in fact encountered a ‘problem’, which meant that the ship had to belt back through hyper-space and land back on Earth. A good trip, though, and very imaginative.
We then headed over to the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, which was basically a runaway train, dating from the old mining days of the Wild West, and that really was exciting, particularly as we could see all the very sharp bends coming up, and you knew that there was no way in the world that the train could possibly get round them, but it always did, of course. Most enjoyable, and another ride I could happily have done again straight away.
We then took a step or two backwards in time to the days of the Pirates Of The Caribbean, which was excellent. This was another ‘sea trip’, in which you went from a very realistic battle scene to dividing up the spoils to selling off the ‘prizes’ – the women who had been captured. Superb modelling, as ever, and very convincing in every way.
Our final trip was through the Haunted Mansion, which was also excellently done, very cleverly indeed, making imaginative use of holograms and so you were able to see marble statues ‘talking’, and see people dancing, but see right through them. Excellent, and not frightening, I would think, even for kids, but very entertaining.
Time was getting on by this stage, so we decided that we ought to start making our way back to the monorail station (particularly as Disneyworld closed at 1800, and we expected large queues). We started walking over, buying odd bits and pieces as we went, and were lucky enough to have beaten most of the crowds to the station, so after a very short wait we got into a train and were very soon back in the coach park. The coach was waiting, and after a brief stop for food on the way back, we reached the ship at about 2300, after what I can only describe as one of the most entertaining days of my entire life.
I really think that everyone should visit Disneyworld, at least once.