AAARRRGGG!!! Mrs. Bluepony’s announcement for next year’s grand vacation. Yup, you guessed it-- the envelope please, it’s freakin’ Disneyworld!! Oh God, please stake me out on a fuckin’ anthill and sew my eyelids open to the noonday sun!! This is one of the drawbacks of living in Florida. Killer hurricanes are a distant second compared with Disney Hell.
I know the kid will love it at his age. I do this for the children. We are so bombarded with Disney, from the mall Disney stores to the endless mind-numbing Disney Channel. I really liked the Disney characters as a kid. As a parent, I am starting to loathe this crap.
I hate the Disney stores the most. My wife and kid are drawn to that store like moths to a flame. I spend the next hour in there watching other slack-jawed, mesmerized Disney-zombie parents oohing and ahhing over the latest overpriced stuffed toys and trinkets. If I hear the theme song from Alladin one more time, I’m going postal.
Well, my kid loves it and it puts my wife in a real good mood when all’s well with the kid, so I guess Disney serves its purpose in that regard. I can’t wait to go there now!! Drive seven hours to Orlando (yay!); pay inflated Disney parking prices (Minnie 1054, remember where we parked!!); enjoy the fantastic lines with screaming kids (mine, one of them) and imagine, blissfully, how utterly peaceful it was during the Gulf War when I sat in a chemical shelter trench in 100+ degree heat.
Sometime in April of next year, if you happen to go by Disney Hell and see a poor guy with a hand-written “Shoot Me” sign around his neck, please be merciful and end it quickly. Or at least buy me a beer.
It’sgoing to blow my cover as a curmudgeon, but my vacation to the Disney Empire was the best one I’ve had since I had kids.
You didn’t say how long you’ll be there, but since you’re driving 7 hours, I’m assuming it will be a few days. Go to the park when it first opens and the lines aren’t so bad. Ride the rides for a few hours. Go back to the hotel, eat lunch, swim, take a nap and go back to the park in the evening for the fireworks.
Spend a day at Universal Studios for a (slight) change of pace. If you have another free day, drive the 40 miles to Space Center and take the tour. Don’t hit any gift shops until the last day, then sit outside with a book and let your wife and kid have their fun.
Frankly, the thing I liked best about the trip was that once we got inside the gate, the Disney Empire is the most hassle-free vacation possible. They will take care of your every need. Simply relax and submit.
I understand all the words, they just don’t make sense together like that.
“I am Mickey of Borg. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.”
Even though I’m a Slave of the Mouse, I’m seemingly immune to the effects of Pixie Dust™. For a refreshingly jaundiced view of the Disney Juggernaut, you might want to check out “Team Rodent: How Disney Devours The World,” by Carl Hiaasen, a long time Disney watcher and Florida resident who views with alarm the efforts of my Evil Corporate Overlords to turn everything into sanitized mush.
Of course, having said that, I do enjoy the parks. Sometimes you just gotta go with the flow and allow yourself to be seduced by the sheer niceness of it all.
Uh-oh, gotta run. There’s these two bad-ass dudes in black jumpsuits and mouse ears coming my way with an enormous syringe…
I despise the marketing that Disney does when they sell tie-ins for all their products. That said though, I think some of the Disney films are pretty good and Disneyland and Disneyworld are pretty interesting things to visit. What parents who take their kids to Disney films and Disney theme parks really need to do is to acquire the backbone to tell their kids that they’re not going to get them all the product tie-ins associated with the films and the parks.
Here’s a fun game to play. Enter any Disney store. The bigger the better. The Disney in Times Square is the hardest. Walk calmly to the wall farthest from the door, (it’s OK to stay on the same floor, but extra points if you climb stairs.) smack the wall with your hand and walk out of the store without being stopped by any store employee to find out if they can help you. It’s terribly difficult, but something that I think will keep you entertained, Bluepony.
I share your sentiment about Disney entirely, They are a source of evil in America.
I know animators who worked for Big D back when they were cranking out “Ducktails” and “Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers”. The friendly smiling mouse company demanded huge amounts of work done in an impossibly short amount of time, no overtime, and there were penalties for not meeting these unatainable goals. The pay was good, but there were rules prohibiting long hair and beards (I mean, really, these are ANIMATORS for chrissake!). In animator circles Disney is collectivly known as “Mouswitz” after the nazi concentration camp.
I’m afraid that I have to agree with kunilou - the two times we took the kids to Disneyworld were the greatest family vacations we’ve ever had.
Some hints from one of the happy disney vacationers:
Spend money if you can in any way afford it and stay at one of the Disneyworld hotels. This is especially true if you’re visiting during one of the busy weeks, as guests at a Disney hotel can get into the park an hour before everyone else.
Be at the park when it opens up. Do whatever you have to do to accomplish this one. You’ll get more fun and rides in during the first hour or two than you’d be able to get in during the entire rest of the day. Forget about eating a good breakfast before gettiing to the park. In fact…
Forget about eating right, period - just grab something out of the vendor carts whenever you get hungry. There’s plenty of time for vegetables and vitamins during the rest of the year. You’re on vacation!!!
If you have small kids, watch your kids carefully and at the very first sign of crankiness suggest that you all take a break and go back to the hotel pool for a swim. Your kids will get a chance to rest, recharge, maybe take a needed nap, and will have a grand time in the pool. (Several of the guide books we purchased said that when asked what was the best part of Disneyworld many smaller kids mentioned the hotel pools.)
Head back to the park in late afternoon. Don’t expect to get on a lot of rides, because the lines will be long. Don’t worry about it - just have a good time.
Head back to the hotel early and go to sleep early. When we went when our kids were four and six, the kids were always asleep for the night by 7PM. They were good and refreshed by 7AM the next day, though - that’s when we always got up so that we could be back in the park by 8.
We used to go when my little sister was still little. I really didn’t care about the parades or fireworks (that’s what the Fourth of July is for,) so I’d just go on the rides. I could usually get 3 or 4 Space Mountains in before the lines started up again. So take your kiddo to the parade the first night, go on the rides the other nights. You’ve seen one light up float, you’ve seen them all.
Hey, thanks all, for your suggestions and/or offers of mutual suicide (GLWasteful)! I will follow Cowboy Greg’s suggestion of peaceful, mindless, assimilation into the Collective. Fortunately they serve beer at the Epcot Center.
Also, WillGolf, brought up a great idea on the Disney hotel. Being retired military, I found out they have a Disney hotel called Shades of Green for military personnel on leave. It’ll cut out the parking hassle and give us that one hour head start on the wolfpack. The extra expense will be worth it, and will probably be the crucial factor in enjoying the park or climbing up on the Fairyland Castle with a laser-aimed assault rifle and maniacal grin.
I guess you guys are right-- resistance is futile.
Sucker.
All kidding aside, if you want to know anything about avoiding as many lines and seeing as many good things as possible, it is quite likely I am the greatest storehouse of knowledge among the dopers (not bragging, read my posts on Orlando and realize how happy I am to not live there now.)
Feel free to email me and ask questions. I can probably make your trip a whole lot less painful.
We went right out there and refused to do accoustical versions of the electrical songs that we had refused to record in the first place.
Has anybody been to Disneyland in France? Sounds the mouse may have met his match-snotty Frenchmen barking at the tourists-and horror of horrors-vin ordinaire served with you crappy fried something or other lunch. What the heck to the french know about frontierland?
To the euros report the same mouse-exhaustion that yopu get in Orlando?
One last piece of advice - read “the Unofficial guide to Disneyworld” before you go. The folks who write it are not associated with the Disney folks at all, it’s updated regularly, and it contains tons of useful tips on how to get the maximum amount of enjoyment out of the place with the m,inimum amount of hassle.
It also includes ride-by-ride ratings, complete with typical wait times.
There’s just something about that place that makes me get all giggly & stuff. You know the commercials where they show grown-ups having a wonderful time without the kids at DisneyWorld? Well, that’s me. I’ve been there as a kid, and as an adult. I think I liked it better as an adult, because there was no adult telling me where I had to go next, no one telling me I needed a nap, and no one telling me “For the zillionth time, NO you cannot get mouse ears for all of your friends!”
I can’t wait to go back. But I’m having trouble deciding whether or not to take my kids.
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They also have a couple of exorbitantly priced daycare/babysitting centers if you want to dump the kid for an early evening dinner alone with the wife. (The babysitting place we hit closed at about the time the park did; I suspect you can find in-room babysitting that goes later.)
Another often-missed thing to see is the island that they considered making into “Treasure Island” but wound up turning into a bird refuge. It’s a fun boat ride out. They have covered about 30% of the island in fine netting to keep certain non-native species from escaping, but you walk into the enclosure to see the birds and miniature deer outside of cages. Galapagos tortoises, too.
Epcot has a number of kid-oriented exhibits, of course. If we went back, I’d only give Magic Kingdom one day, then wander around the other sites (including non-Disney stuff as mentioned, above).
[QUOTE]
Originally posted by Cristi:
**Hi! My name is Cristi, and I like DisneyWorld.
I didn’t know the Magic Kingdom had the Naked Hot Tub Jello Ride!
One key thing that will make your stay at Disney much more pleasant.
Fastpass. Use it every chance you get. lines go from 40 minutes to 10 minutes. And, as a bonus, my friend was one of the people that helped first implement it in Animal Kingdom.
