Some Reflections on Disney

 

Disney seems to be an irony free zone. There is an immediacy to the experience here, a lack of reflection, doubtless derived from the novelty of childhood, the newness of sensations.

 

Most of our meals at Disney World so far have begun with a perky costumed waiter or waitress asking us if we’ve had fun and what we’ve done that day. Which is fine. Connecting with customers – guests – makes people feel valued, and gives them the sense that our hosts are really interested in our lives. It probably increases tips, too.

 

However, coming from a metropolitan area with its crowded anonymities, and as I’m often preoccupied with where we are and what I’m about to order, it sometimes surprises me. And now that it’s happened a few times, I find myself ready to crack wise.

 

After we went to the Magic Kingdom’s Crystal Court (where the buffet really is delicious, by the way) and Mrs. Ombud enjoyed all the Winnie the Pooh characters working the floor, I wanted to answer the next solicitation by saying, “I was interrupted during my lunch by Piglet today, and I shook his hand so hard I brought that furry pink mascot to his knees.”

 

Mrs. Ombud is appalled by this.

 

But I maintain that, if I were a waiter who had to ask dozens and dozens of people, shift after shift, about what they did that day, I’d bust up laughing if someone answered that way.

 

Mrs. O is not convinced.

 

*   *   *   *   *

 

I got incredibly lost on my way back from the Twins/Pirates game at Bradenton last Thursday. This, after successfully navigating the freeways and a highway to a small ballpark in a town I’d never visited before with only minimal directions. Afterward, to escape post-game traffic I took a totally different route in a new direction and got lost again, but within a recognizable city-grid system, and thus easily found my freeway again and made it back to Disney World, hundreds of miles away – only to get completely, utterly, infuriatingly lost here.

 

A whole new league of getting lost. I once got so turned around in Florence, Italy I ended up back where I began. Which crushed my young man’s navigatory confidence, as I looked at the map and figured out how I’d done it, but never mind that, except to point out that that time I had a map.  With all my preparations, after the robbery, I’d handled it all but neglected any kind of map of Disney for my return.

 

I simply assumed there would be novelties like signs, and a cognizable road system.

 

I was very, very wrong. I knew to look for Port Orleans or Riverside, but saw nothing. I ended up going all the way into the belly of the Disney beast, to The Magic Kingdom itself, where the traffic flag guy in bright clothes had me go ask a smartly costumed tour caravan guide, who directed me in a wide sweeping array of turns around the parking lot and involving dodging across a service road behind a toll plaza (she warned me thrice, “be careful, the oncoming cars do not have to stop!”) which got me to Frontierland, where the park ranger-bedecked security guard told me I was close and gave me some more directions that ended in a service area for “cast” members (every employee is a cast member here) and led me to some bustling rush hour district (Downtown Disney?) and a very sincere, friendly girl in some sort of 19th century outfit, who thought she knew where my resort was, did her best and I ended up in the fire station. Talking to a visiting cop from Orange County (in a genuine uniform!), who said she thought I should look for Bonnet Creek Road. And she was right! Forty to fifty minutes after arriving at Disney, I found a few discreet road signs directing me to Port Orleans and then Riverside.

 

I could have driven most of the way back to Tampa in that time.

 

My eyeballs and brain were rattling pretty good by then, but never mind. In my quest for a sign, any kind of a sign (was Moses on his Mount any more eager for a sign? With a glimmer of personal meaning?) I did pass a sign along a busy boulevard which read “No Jogging Beyond This Point.”

 

Which got me thinking about the topic of this very post.

 

Have you ever seen the Non Sequitur comic of a guy standing in a crosswalk reading the sign: “No juggling chainsaws in the crosswalk” who says, “You know, if they hadn’t told me I couldn’t do it, I wouldn’t want to”?

 

At that point in my Disney experience, I had a strong desire to get out and jog, especially if jogging beyond that very sign would get me to my room, although I haven’t gone for a run in years.

 

It was then, through my red-rimmed confusion, I dimly began to sense either a great lack of irony or an immensely sophisticated irony we are only beginning to gauge the extent of. To wit:

 

We did the Pirates of the Caribbean ride last Saturday. It’s clever, and cute in its own robotic way, if you feel drunken pirates carousing with crazed women can be cute. Many barrels and casks of rum, much spillage and animatronic debauched revelry, much wanton excess. And not a drop of it to drink.

 

Afterward, we ducked our heads into the “Liberty Tavern” and Mrs. O asked if they served beer. The colonially costumed young man answered, “There’s no beer in the Magic Kingdom.”

 

It lost some of the magic for me, there.

 

And then it occurred to me that Disney might have a far more developed sense of irony than I had ever suspected.

 

 

Advertisement