And now a word about Disney World/Land or that Euro-version Thing. I was going to include this in the family vacation chapter, but it’s too big and important to be lumped in with all that. This is different.
They call it the happiest place on earth. And I have to ask you, dear reader, “For whom?”
I like the idea that Mr. Disney wanted to create a place where families could go and their children could let their imaginations wander and everyone would feel safe in this horrible world. What he couldn’t foresee, when he was designing the place in the 1950s, was the type of people it was going to attract in the United States of America, in 2017.
They didn’t make these kinds of people back then. There weren’t dinosaur-size people marching around the park with their elephant children attached to their tails, roaming through the parks, pushing the biggest strollers I have ever seen. I had no idea that John Deere made strollers.
There are some people who come to the park who don’t have any children at all, but they want to be a princess. They want to dress up like Cinderella, but they don’t make a Cinderella dress for someone forty-five years old, six five, and three fifty. They never had a meeting at Mouse Headquarters where Goofy stood up and said, “Let’s make more of those.”
Does that stop these giant princesses? No, it does not. They buy that dress, stuff everything they’ve got into it and not all of it fits. There’s a lot of extra hanging over the sides. This doesn’t bother them; they have their wand in one hand and their autograph book in the other, and they chase down the poor girl playing Snow White, and they’re happy there.
There are some people who have a baby just so they can go to Disney. They come straight from the maternity ward, with the kid still covered in goo, and the umbilical cord waving behind in the parking lot. Now, that’s fine, I’m not going to judge you. I don’t know what kind of emotional hole you’re trying to fill, but what’s not cool is breastfeeding in line at the Minnie Mouse house in front of my hungry children. Now my kids are eyeballing my wife and I have a problem I have to deal with.
I really didn’t think we were going to go. I thought we’d avoid the seductive allure of Disney. But once you make your own people, the ads just find you. Every time you open the laptop, turn on the TV, glance at your phone, there’s Disney selling you familial perfection. The mom is beautiful, the dad is handsome, and they’re looking back at the kids, who are holding Mickey’s hand, saying, “Thanks, Mom and Dad, for not being stupid and poor.”
I’ll admit it. I wanted to be that family. I wanted us to be perfect. But we were not that family. We weren’t close to perfect. We were hot, sticky, fighting, and cursing in front of the children.
“This whole thing is your damn fault.”
“My fault? If your mother didn’t raise you like an animal we would have gotten on the road earlier.…”
And yet the kids don’t hear us because they were slapping each other in the face. And we hadn’t even parked yet. We’re still in the van and we’re angry because we didn’t get to park in Mickey and Minnie parking, they sent us to the ass end of Chip ’n’ Dale parking. That’s another three tram rides and an extra thirty minutes that we didn’t plan for.
I know it’s a cliché, but when you finally get to the front gate, you open your wallet and they take everything you’ve got. Every dollar, every coin, credit cards, gym memberships, pictures of your family. That mouse rapes you at the turnstile in front of your family. You’re seeing the college fund go up in smoke, but you do your best to keep a smile on your face because you don’t want to ruin the Happiest Place on Earth.
Once you get inside, everyone is excited; they’re ready for the good time and it comes to a screeching halt. It’s just line after line. I thought I was going to beat it. I had the app on my phone, I was ready for them. But you can’t beat Disney.
I thought, Let’s go on the Peter Pan ride, that’s a lame ride from 1912; look, the line only goes back and forth two times.
Yeah, up top, but then it snakes around in the basement for a couple miles, shoots out the back, and goes around the Matterhorn five times. All this and it’s a bad ride. There are old cardboard cutouts, blinking Christmas lights that don’t work anymore, and the voices are all jumbled.
Tinker Bell sounds like an old, bar-soaked truck driver. “Come with me, I’m Tinker Bell. Let’s get some Jack Daniel’s and shoot some cans.”
This ordeal took two and a half hours. Was it worth it? No. What would be worth it? Nothing. I could get to the end of that line, there could be naked supermodels with bags of money and all-you-can-eat nachos, and I’d still be angry.
Here’s the one important thing I learned. If you have to go to Disney—and if you make your own people, eventually you’ll have to go—you only want to go once. So you have to go big. Blow it out. Make it all about the children. Give them your money.
“Here’s $300 cash, kids. It’s your day, spend it the way you want to spend it.”
Halfway up Main Street they’ll be broke, because they’re little, stupid, and gullible. Without thinking, they’ll buy a bunch of blinking stuff that won’t work by the time they get outside. Now they’re sitting in the gutter of Main Street like little Disney hobos, with broken toys, just yelling at the characters, “Get over here, duck. I got nothing left. Come over here and shake your ass.”
You also have to let them eat whatever they want. Make sure it has artificial flavor, artificial color, and a ton of sugar.
“You don’t even have to wear sunblock, kids. You don’t want it, I don’t want to put it on you, don’t wear it. I bet you don’t even burn at Disney.”
But they do burn, especially when they’re little. They turn purple and they start to blister. Now they’re burned, crashing on sugar, with broken toys and this is when you walk them. Walk the hell out of them.
Let them be in charge of the map. “Here you go, kids. Lead the way. Anywhere you want to go. Oh, you want to go from the Cars ride to It’s a Small World? Sure, they’re twenty miles apart, let’s start walking.”
By the time midnight rolls around, they’re exhausted, confused, and have only been on two rides. We’ll never go back again. When my kids see that mouse on TV, they shake like they went to war with it.
The best part is, your children will learn a valuable lesson: the happiest place on earth is home.