...and tomorrow is just a dream away!
The picture at right is of Pamela at Fort DeSoto beach. We wanted to go to Pass-A-Grille, but the red tide stunk up the place, so we ended up at FdS, which was nice too. But I really wanted to talk about our fabulous day at Disney.
About fifteen years ago, the Holland family went to Disney World's Magic Kingdom. I don't have a lot of memories of that day, just some scattered images – the rainfall that we waited out in a gift shop selling overpriced Mickey Mouse ponchos, the interiors of some of the rides (in particular "It's a Small World" and the ghosts sitting between passengers in the Haunted Mansion), and a bumpity-bump-bump ride on Space Mountain made somewhat less realistic by the fact that they were diagnosing some problem and had all of the lights on.
And I remember the lines. Oy, the hideous lines. For as long as I can remember, the joy of theme parks has been muted by the long waits that precede each too-short ride. Always the debate: go on the lame rides with the short waits, or the great rides that will eat up an hour of your day waiting in line? Even at Islands of Adventure, Universal's new theme park, they have not eliminated the lines so much as made them more bearable by trying to entertain you as you are herded into the attraction.
This past weekend I returned to the Magic Kingdom with my sister, Pamela, who was two when we went the first time. (Why on earth did we have a two-year-old with us at Disney World? I can't remember.) There, we learned, the Disney geniuses have finally figured out how to kill the dreaded line beast.
I leave it to others to explain the FastPass system, but I can tell you this: we waited probably a total of 90 minutes in lines altogether. There was only one ride we wanted to do that we didn't (Splash Mountain, which had a FastPass return time of 3 hours!), and we saw a bunch of the park's "lesser" attractions that we would never have done in the old long-line system. We visited Space Mountain four times, blasted through Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin twice (I attained the level of Planetary Pilot -- woo hoo!), and even visited the Country Bear Jamboree, truly one of the world's strangest attractions. Even now, I can hear the theme song of the Carousel of Progress ("There's a great big beautiful tomorrow / Shining at the end of every day. . . ") and I can see the fake, warped little mouths of the artificial children inside "It's a Small World." (We rode that twice.)
We had a great time. We downloaded a guide to the park to my PDA, which helped a lot in deciding what to visit (Extra-Terrorestrial Encounter? No way!) and gave some great tips about having a better time while you're there. (If you decide to visit, ask me about Priority Seating – it's FastPass for the restaurants.)
That was the Magic Kingdom. I almost don't mind that they hoovered that much money out of my wallet. Did I mention we had plenty of time to hit the shops for cool Disney swag? Let me tell you about my Mickey Mouse ice cube tray.
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