Still the Magic-Orlando by Catherine Shaffer

We set out from Battle Creek Michigan, the grandparents' home base, on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. We drove south through Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, and finally Florida in 44 hours spread out over two days. Brent's aunt in Tennessee provided lodging on Saturday night. The Boy passed the time watching DVD's and we listened to a couple of books on tape. Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi and Tom Clancy's Hunt for Red October.

We've driven south many times, but not that far south. There are some big differences between the south and the north. There's red clay everywhere, for one. And mountains. Southern accents. Pigs running loose in people's front yards. Really old pickup trucks with no rust. The dialect gets thicker and thicker until you get to southern Georgia and it might as well be a different language. Then, suddenly, you pass into Florida and it's like a tropical Indiana. The thing we noticed about Florida first, and it started in Georgia actually, was that a lot of people stop on the highway median. It was a big driving weekend, but it wasn't like there was snow or anything, so we couldn't really figure out why we saw all those cars on the median. Not at the right side of the road where most people ditch, but in the middle of it. Not long after, we starting seeing signs instructing people NOT to stop on the median. This is as sure a sign as anything that the practice was widespread, but we still didn't understand it. If you run out of gas and stop there, you have to cross two or more lanes of cars driving 70 mph to get anywhere on foot. It just didn't make sense.

So, okay, every state has its quirks. That was Florida. We got our hotel room through one of those vacation ownership promotions. I've gotten dozens of calls from those people, and I finally decided to try it and see if the thing was as good a deal as they want you to believe. In exchange for a cheap hotel room and some perks (in our case it was passes to Universal Studios), you let somebody pitch timeshares to you.

I have to admit it was a pretty good deal, but not unbeatable. We had a great room in a decent hotel, but I've seen similar deals on the internet with no strings. The Universal passes were neat to have, but it made for a really busy week in addition to everything else we did.

So the timeshare pitch was a really hard sell. We knew it was going to be by the way the salesman said, "I'm not going to give you a hard sell or anything. I don't have to." I sighed and waited him out as he first convinced us that we'd be crazy not to invest in one of their condos, and right that very minute before it was too late. Then we watched as the price they were offering dropped from $20000 to $7500. Another salesperson came over and the tag-teamed us for awhile. Apparently, we were "perfect" for their program, as if the other fifty couples in the room were being turned away for not being cute enough or something. Vacation ownership is an interesting investment, but it's not like buying groceries. It's real estate, and real estate involves taking time to think and shop and do research and preferably hire an agent that's going to look out for your best interests. I was appalled that they really expected us to get out our checkbooks, write them a check for $2000, and then borrow the rest at %16.9 apr. But according to them, 1 out of 3 families do just that.

When we'd had enough, we made a show of standing up and collecting our belongings, took possession of our universal passes, and left. We had half a day left.

First stop was Gatorland. It's Orlando's oldest theme park and it's all about alligators. We got in at half price because it was after three, and I think that's the best way to see Gatorland. They have a big pool of alligators and crocodiles. We saw one that had its leg bit off. I'm not sure why no one took a picture. Alligators are scary. In my opinion, it's better to deal with six months of snow than the lurking threat of a giant reptile living in a pond somewhere in your neighborhood. But that's just me.

Before we left, the Boy and I wrote a book together about this vacation. It really helped him understand exactly how long the trip was going to be, and what kind of expectations we'd have for his behavior when we got there. One of the "rules" we made together was that he was going to have the fabulous opportunity to choose a new toy or souvenir EVERY SINGLE DAY. Wow! However, it was to be only one. Not six. Not four. One. He made some rules of his own. We were not to let bats into the hotel under any circumstances nor were we to bring firewood into our hotel room. For the first day of our vacation, Glen chose a Gatorland T-shirt.

Driving around Orlando that day, we finally solved the mystery of parking on the median. We saw a sign on International Drive, in the middle of the boulevard, saying "Do Not Mow." The area around it was, in fact, freshly mown. It all came together. Those people parking on the median are snowbirds, come down from the frozen north to their winter retirement homes. They live in condos with armies of gardeners and never have to do their own lawn maintainance, but old habits die hard. When they can't take it any more, they load their lawn mowers into the trunks of their cars and head out for the freeway median or the boulevard for some soulful mowing. I started feeling angry that the state of Florida was impinging with their pursuit of happiness. Probably some sort of discrimination against people from the north. We noticed it was hard to head in a northerly direction around Orlando anyway. The streets all funnel you southward, and you can only turn north by making U-turns around the ends of boulevards.

Anyway...

We woke up early the next day for the main event. Disney's Magic Kingdom. I was really excited because I'd always wanted to go there as a child, and never did. The Disney experience starts with a trip down a six lane highway that's exclusively Disney. There are exits for Disney resorts and various parks. The Magic Kingdom is the farthest one out. We were there for the slowest week of the year, so there wasn't much traffic or competition for parking. After you park, you ride a tram to a gate. The tram was too cramped for our stroller, so we had to leave it in the car and rent one inside the park. As we approached the gate, we could see Cinderella's castle rising up across a small lake. The gate leads not into the park, but to a second kind of Disney transportation. You can choose the ferry or the monorail for the second leg of the journey. We went by ferry. It was a very nice boat ride across an immense man-made lake. Then we finally arrived at the front gate, went through the turnstiles, and we were finally there.

When I was a girl, I had a very idealized vision of Disney world. I imagined that I would see For Real all the people and places that I had enjoyed in Disney movies. However, my family never visited there. It was too expensive, and as I got older I realized that Walt Disney did not exist primarily to bring joy to children, but to make money, and that everything associated with Disney was an embarrassing grasp for money. Their primary strategy was to take advantage of parents' love for their children and their sad desperation to remedy the wrongs of their own upbringing. When you're selling the right to call yourself a good parent, you can charge anything you want. This cooled my desire to make a pilgrimage there myself. It was all fake anyway. The characters are just guys dressed in mouse suits. The sets are painted plywood. The rides are nothing more than you'd find in any county fair midway.

And yet, somehow I still wanted to go. Becoming a parent finally gave me my excuse. I was there.

Disney's Magic Kingdom blew me away. It was much closer to my childhood expectations than I could ever have dreamed. The colors, the landscaping, the shops, the rides, the castle--oh my! No detail is overlooked. Loving care is lavished on everything. Windows polished. Sidewalks clean clean clean. Flower beds perfect. I looked for weeds all day and never saw one! If a good Disney movie is like getting high on cocaine, then Disney's Magic Kingdom is a lethal overdose. It was over-the-top fantasy ecstasy. I have to admit I really liked it.

We saw a good portion of the park through the course of the day. Because it was the slow season, the lines were very light. We never waited more than ten minutes for anything. We did many attractions twice in a row. We even rode Splash Mountain twice without getting off, because there was no one waiting in line behind us. Buzz Lightyear was the best ride in the park. The Indy Speedway was my choice for lamest. The Boy discovered that he loves thrill rides, and the great tragedy is that he's a shrimp and too small to experience the more exciting rides. (I know people who have taken three-year-olds on Space Mountain, but the Boy was too small.)

For his souvenir of the day, the Boy chose a pirate ensemble with a felt hat, saber, hook, eye patch and earring. One of the shops at Main Street USA stitched his name onto the hat for free. We agreed we didn't feel as ripped off there as we expected. Some of the things were pretty expensive, but no more so than any other carnival or fair or even museum or zoo that we've been to.

The park closed at 6, which is early because it's the off season. As we left, we fought streams of people coming in for the evening christmas party. I might be wrong, but I think we could have gotten away with staying for the party, sitting out the one-hour closure. I didn't see any way for them to enforce the purchasing of the extra evening tickets (which cost nearly as much as a full day's admission). However, it's possible they check your passes for the rides in the evening. I wouldn't put it past Disney to do so.

You might rightly question the ethics of staying for an even which we had not paid for. Instead of justifying that action, I'd present a different ethical problem. If admission costs the same in the summer as the winter, but in summer you get 18 hours of access to the park and in winter you only get 9 hours access, how is it okay to charge people extra for something they'd have gotten for free in July? The only justification I can see is to keep the cash flowing in the slow season. So, says I, if you have the stamina, test my theory and try getting into Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party for free. Let me know how it goes. As for us, we were whipped, and we headed back to our hotel gratefully. Waiting on the dock for the ferry, I never saw so many exhausted little children in my life. They slept in their parents' arms, lolled in strollers, and occasionally threw tantrums. But I must say, of all the places in the world where I've encountered lots of parents and children, WDW was the most civilized. I was pleased with the good manners and happy demeanor of the crowd that day, and it's hard for me to imagine that you could go wrong by taking your kids to Disney world. It's really hard not to have a great time there. It took us over two hours to get from deep inside the Magic Kingdom (The Haunted Mansion) to our hotel room about seven miles away.

The next day, our third in Orlando, we saw Sea World. I had been to the Sea World in Ohio a couple times as a child and have a deep affection for the place. (The Ohio Sea World has been bought and is something else now.) I actually had tears in my eyes at the opening of the shamu show, it was such a happy nostalgic experience. The Boy insisted that we sit in the splash zone, and it really wasn't all that bad. Come on, people. Are you made of cotton candy or something? It's seventy-fricking-five degrees out and sunny. Live a little! I got the unique and somewhat creepy experience of hand-feeding a stingray. (willies--okay, I'm really not a wimp about animals. I almost became a vet, but stingrays and alligators are very new creatures to me.) We missed dolphin feeding, but I got lucky and got to pet one anyway who came over to see if I had anything. Dolphins are great. We had our best meal of the week at Shark's Underwater Grill. We feasted on red snapper and ahi tuna while all kinds of sharks swam in front of gigantic panes of glass. The food was as good or better than anything I've eaten at some of the finest restaurants in Ann Arbor, such as the Moveable Feast and the Gandy Dancer. And the portions, in contrast, were Hungry Man sized. Another exceptional thing about Sharks' was that the kids' menu featured smaller portions of items on the main menu. I have a very adventurous eater, and I'm always frustrated when we go to a nice restaurant with exotic and very tasty food, and the choices for the kids' menu are the same old Kraft Macaroni and Cheese (which they'll gladly cook straight from the box and charge $5 for), chicken nuggets, hamburger, and pizza. That day, the Boy enjoyed a lovely small portion of grilled salmon with fries on the side.

We had some heartbreak over the 42 inch height requirement for Journey to Atlantis and I went on a fruitless search for thicker-soled shoes. The Boy was somewhat ruined for Sea World's delights by Disney World, but I enjoyed it greatly. Did I mention there's free beer at Sea World?

On day four, we dragged ourselves to Universal Studios. I'm not going to say it wasn't fun. It was. We had a good time and I'm glad we went. But I'm not going back. First of all, it was LOUD. They had christmas carols, rock music, movie sound tracks and everything else blaring from speakers all over the park so that OUTSIDE it was like being inside Chuck E. Cheese's or something. The attractions at Universal all followed this pattern: wait in line (not long for us), watch a movie that prepares you for the plot, sit in a theater or mount a conveyance, experience the story either by flying through it or watching it. The best of these were Shrek 4D and Terminator 3D. These two alone were worth the price of admission for us. The effects were amazing and there are some really interesting surprises. It was an improvement over Disney's Magic Kingdom where you simply observe various animatronic creatures in story tableaus which you may or may not remember. But comparing Universal Orlando and Magic Kingdom is apples to oranges. It may be that Disney's MGM Studios has more of the story quality with live actors and such that we saw at Universal.

The Boy proved out his new reputation as a fearless thrill seeker by surviving Jaws and asking to go again. We didn't get to do Men in Black because the Boy was too short. (They do offer the option of "baby swapping" but we didn't have the heart to go on the ride when the Boy had been turned away.) We got really sick on Back to the Future. All of us except, of course, The Boy.

We actually left the park a bit early because we'd done all the rides and were tired and bored. We got smart this time and fed the Boy and put him in his jammies before we got in the car. Thus, the Boy actually slept fourteen hours that night.

Friday was our last day, and we had planned to see Kennedy Space Center that day. We were tempted to cancel it, and just hang around, or use our second day privileges at Universal or Sea World. In the end, we couldn't bear to miss it and we headed out to Cape Canaveral. (I saw a couple of big alligators in a roadside canal. Yikes!) I'm really glad we did. Next time we'll go there first and limit theme parks to two days at the most. We got to see a lot of rockets, a couple of short films (but not their headliner IMAX films--drat), go on a bus tour to view the shuttle launch pads, and see the Apollo/Saturn V visitor's center, which was very impressive. I got pictures of the ACTUAL firing room used to launch the Apollo missions. Too cool.

I fantasized a little that day about being an astronaut, or at least working for NASA. It seemed like stepping into the future. I searched my memory to see if maybe I had taken a PhD in astrophysics or aeronautical engineering. Nope. Then I spent another few minutes fantasizing about the Boy being an astronaut. He certainly has the Right Stuff. Brave, adventurous, strong stomach, sharp vision, and small stature is not a disadvantage for a pilot or an astronaut. Then I gave that up. Living through one's children is ultimately unsatisfying, at least it is when they're four years old.

We explored the inside of a model of the Explorer space shuttle then headed over to the monument to astronauts who died in the line of duty. The monument itself is a flat pane of approximately eighty polished black granite slabs. It looked to be around fifty feet tall. The names were carved through the slabs and lit from behind. My first impression and my husband's were the same--they really left a lot of room on that monument! It was both hopeful and sinister at the same time. The Boy pointed at it and demanded that I read it to him. I was going to just tell him it was a lot of names of people who had died, then I thought, "Why not?" and read each one aloud as the sun began to slowly set. I surprised myself by getting all choked up. Brent and I agreed it was a fine way to end our visit. There were separate monuments for the Challenger, the Columbia, etc. but the main monument was the most impressive, and, in the end, there's not much stronger that you can say than to read the names of all those brave men and women.

A fine way to end our visit to the Kennedy Space Center it was, and a fine way to close a trip report. Here are the names. Read them aloud. Let me know how far you get before your voice gets all funny.

Theodore C. Freeman
Francis "Dick" Scobee
Michael J. Smith
Judith A. Resnik
Charles A. Bassett, II
Ellison S. Onizuka
Elliot M. See, Jr.
Ronald E. McNair
Gregory B. Jarvis
S. Christa McAuliffe
Clifton C. Williams, Jr.  
Manley L. "Sonny" Carter, Jr.
Virgil "Gus" Grissom
Edward H. White, II  
Roger B. Chaffee
Rick D. Husband
William C. McCool
Michael P. Anderson
Michael J. Adams
Kalpana Chawla
David Brown
Laurel Clark
Ilan Ramon
Robert H. Lawrence Jr.
   

Comments

[Catherine]

That's *24* hours in two days, or 44 hours round trip (four days driving--ugh).

[Steven Harper Piziks]

You realize, of course, that the visit to the Cape makes the entire vacation a tax deduction . . .

--Steven

[Catherine]

Hey, looks like our fairy god-accountant was watching out for us!

[Siam]

DISNEY CUTS Disney is obviously stiemalrning its Magical Express program to keep it in line with many airlines current non-carry on no-free baggage policies. If consumers ares not clear in their demand for free space for all items, it's a sure bet that corporate will start levying fees for additional tags after the first. This is not acceptable. Put DVC on notice that those other tags are wanted then decide or not you need them as you pack when it is a problem. Disney advertising promos need to be more than just extended. With this nation in a deep recession (take a look at the U. S. dollar value worldwide), if course it wants to drum up business and keep cash flowing in. Most people don't realize that half of projected items come from in park sales of merchandise and food. Perhaps, if Disney cut its ticket prices or extended park hopping as a courtesy it might generate more revenue. Many evenings I would love to dine in Epcot but don't have the desire to put out extra money for the multiple-park feature so I go instead to local restaurants outside the World. There are a lot of places out there with great selections and bargain prices. Furthermore, with the whole resort complex merchandising so many pricey tee shirts to the exclusion of many items it formerly stocked, I check out nearby discount department stores for my memorabilia. I think companies get back as much as they give, don't you? I'm surprised that Disney did not implement this strategy and promote the DVC in major cities earlier. After all, the biggest share of DVC owners live in the metropolitan area surrounding New York. Disney is big in NYC right now. Check out and see how many plays it has running. It's Time Square Disney Store is thriving and it has plans to expand its interests in the area. People on vacation don't always want to give up time to check out a timeshare which, no matter what Disney chooses to call itself, is exactly what it is. Every American knows just how tight money is. Necessities like food, shelter, clothing, and transportation come before discretionary items like any vacation or even day trip. Of course it has to balance its budget. Of course it has to red line non-essential spending. Nevertheless it must deliver a product that the public perceives is worth putting dollars out for.Personally when it cuts hours I understand BUT I then change my spending to come into line with the changes. One way is by going into parks less frequently, eating meals there, and spending less time and, accordingly, money in the stores. If I spent a day in each park before, I bulk up now and do a couple. After closing, I go outside Disney and eat there. It's a no-brainer compare McDonald Disney to the greater Orlando area. That is the cheap end. It's the same relative price comparison as the kind of food service improves. I also stop locally on the way in and figure out what souvenirs if any I'm getting, put that money aside, then get it before going home. That strategy keeps things out of the and helps my wallet too.

[Ranx]

No, the theater shows are not bokoed in advance. You see the shows based on your dining assignment. There are many shows to choose from, depending on your cruise and which shows you mean. There are shows in the Walt Disney Theatre and the Buena Vista Theatre some Broadway style shows, variety shows, and movies. Typically, each night you have a single featured show in the Disney Theatre.

[Luis]

@winnie - like you, I am absolutely conecnivd it's a boy. I have felt that way since the day we got the BFP. I'm only 7 weeks now so there is obviously no way we could know, and we want to be surprised at birth, but I am just conecnivd it's a boy. Funny enough though, all of my family and friends who know seem to be conecnivd I'm having a girl. We don't really care either way but I just find it funny/strange that I have such a strong feeling about the gender!