Vacation 1999: Day Five

GenePool Humor

Vacation 1999

Day Five: Divide and Conquer

8:00 A.M.

We've been talking about doing this all week, and now that we've fulfilled the minimum requirement of having visited each of the parks at least once (they don't let you leave unless you've done this) it's time for us to split up. Another one of the reasons we're doing this is that Marissa and Dawn are leaving tomorrow, and before they go they want to see Magic Kingdom once more. We don't have any powerful need to revisit Magic Kingdom right now, so instead, we're planning to hit MGM. But first, we have to have breakfast, but not at Magic Kingdom or MGM. Epcot is approximately halfway between both parks, so this is where we head.

9:00 A.M.

We run into the Scapegoat Visitors again. They've given up on any chance to try Test Track and are instead on their way to Animal Kingdom, as are a great number of other people who are also gathered at the bus stop. It's been a long wait for the Animal Kingdom bus.

9:10 A.M.

The Animal Kingdom bus comes, but apparently the driver spots the Scapegoat family at the last second, as he immediately floors it and shoots right past the stop. Twenty people swear simultaneously in more than one language. My children learn some new words.

9:20 A.M.

Our Epcot bus arrives, so we miss part of the entertaining show being put on by the mother of the Scapegoat family as she rants into the hotel phone in the bus kiosk. I was actually learning some new words myself.

10:10 A.M.

Our breakfast appointment is at the Garden Grille. This is inside the building ironically called The Land. We'd been told that this is a sought-after dining location, and were happily surprised to have landed a reservation for nine with so little difficulty, especially since this is the only character-hosted breakfast at Epcot. So we're even more surprised when we get there to find so many tables available. Then we notice the tables are moving.

More precisely, the entire restaurant is moving. It turns slowly along a track that is, fortunately, circular. I'm not sure about this.

10:15 A.M.

Mamom loses it. My mother is rather susceptible to motion sickness. She can't even read in moving vehicles without getting headaches. She can usually read street signs without too much difficulty provided they're not too long, but that's about it. It takes her only five minutes to conclude that she has to get out of the restaurant immediately or risk tasting last night's dinner a second time.

The Land fortunately also has fast-food counters, which is where she and dad go to eat while we continue our rotational experience.

10:30 A.M.

This is a great place to spend a lot of time with people in stuffed suits. Mickey, ChipDale, and Pluto have NOTHING to do, because most of the guests are too busy coping with nausea to stick around. At one point we get a photo with ALL of them, and that NEVER happens. I actually now have conclusive photographic evidence that Chip and Dale really are two different chipmunks.

10:45 A.M.

I'm developing a strong dislike for the rotational aspect of this dining experience. This is a mild surprise because frankly, I'm world-reknowned for my iron stomach and dashing good looks. (Okay, I had to try.) I do have very good peripheral vision, so while I'm doing my best to concentrate on my food, my visual cortex is shouting "We're moving! We're moving! AAAAAHHHHHH!" at my brain, and my brain can't seem to tell my visual cortex to shut the hell up.

11:00 A.M.

It takes about fifty minutes for us to go through one revolution. The journey takes us past a number of dioramas representing different parts of the world (the desert, the rainforest, bug-filled swamps, etc.) and all this is very interesting except I can't look at them because they're stationary and I'm trying to convince myself I'm not actually moving. I can fortunately now convince Deb that three courses is plenty, and we should get off now. Deb is completely unbothered by any of this, and yet, when one of the kids vomits in our household she makes me clean it up because she can't without gagging. I think I'm getting scammed.

11:20 A.M.

We reunite with Mamom and Papop, who are still speaking to us, and then we say our goodbyes to Dawn, Marissa and Bobo. They're on their way to the monorail for their day at Magic Kingdom. We, however, are on our way to World Showcase which, strangely enough, is how we're getting to MGM.

11:30 A.M.

We reach the International Gateway. This is a boat dock halfway between England and France. One actually exits the park when one walks here.

You will find, if you ever plan a trip to Disney World, that there are some resorts that are identified as "Epcot resorts." They are also called the "much more expensive resorts." There is boat service from docks at each of the Epcot resorts that can take you to Epcot directly. There are other boats from these same resorts that can take you directly to MGM. What we are doing is hopping aboard one boat, heading to the Swan and the Dolphin (one of the resorts,) getting off at the dock, then getting on the MGM boat. This is not as complicated as it may sound. It also gives us a great opportunity to look at all the pretty resort complexes we can't afford to stay at. The names of these places even sound expensive. The Yacht Club, for example.

12:00 P.M.

I think there's something wrong with my son.

In January of this year we, as a family, received unfortunate news in the form of my sister's announcement that she had miscarried. We had to deliver this news to Becky and Tim with the requisite gravity, which we did. In January. It is now August. Tim, after getting off of the boat at MGM, at DISNEY WORLD no less, takes time out from his busy schedule of having an insane amount of fun to pull aside his Mamom and discuss the miscarriage. Either his brain really takes this long to deliver bad news, or he's training for the new world record in Male Emotional Bottling.

12:30 P.M.

Our plan is to get through the Tower of Terror and the Rock 'N Roller Coaster, this time with Papop and Becky along, and hopefully before Timmy decides to discuss the trauma of his own birth.

I'm very glad to have Becky go on these rides with us. On our first two visits she acted very nearly as fearless as her brother. This year, she's been very tentative. A lot of this has to do with the confusion of influences. Marissa didn't want to go on some of the rides, and Mamom wasn't going on ANY of the rides, and so Becky concluded fairly early on that going on the rides must be a bad thing to do. She's the conformist. Tim, the rebel, wants to go on rides specifically because nobody else does. So while Becky's personality is, in the long run, much much easier to deal with as a parent, (or as a drill sargeant, for that matter) sometimes Tim gets to have all the fun. Having her admit to wanting to go on these rides means she's stepping up a bit and doing something for herself.

Or, if you're my mother, we're making her do something utterly insane. Take your pick.

1:30 P.M.

Becky loves both rides. She'd done Tower of Terror before, but the coaster was as new to her as it had been to us. She even liked the Aerosmith music.

1:40 P.M.

From a payphone, I make reservations at the Sci-Fi Dine-In for our lunch. It's on the other side of the very park we're currently in, but for some reason it makes more sense to me to call first and then walk over. I blame the heat.

1:45 P.M.

On our way to lunch, we stop off in the Villains Store. This is pretty much the only place in Disney were the villains are featured, and since the villains are the only cool characters in the movies, as far as Deb and I are concerned, this is the store for us. It's not a great selection, but on the bright side, nothing there is cute and none of the animated creatures are smiling.

I make a mistake here. I find another picture of Scar autographed by Jeremy Irons. I stupidly assume that because there's no price tag on it that it's just for show, not for sale. So I show it to Deb. The problem is, it IS for sale, and worse, it's a better picture of Scar than the one we already bought, the one that is currently being shipped to our home. I manage to convince Deb that we cannot afford to buy the second one, (it would cost less to pay Jeremy Irons to sleep with my wife than it costs to buy his signature) and trying to return the first picture when it is already en route is going to be nearly impossible. Deb weeps openly.

2:00 P.M.

We dine. One does not sit at a table at the Sci-Fi Dine-In. One sits in a fake convertible and watches trailers for classically bad films on a large screen. The film loop has clearly driven the wait-staff completely insane. This is good to know in case you ever plan to eat here.

But we all like the food. My parents lodge a minor complaint regarding the lighting, or rather, the lack thereof. They've always been a bit picky about wanting to see their food clearly for some reason. I'm guessing it's a generational thing. Maybe there was a better chance a bug would crawl onto the plate when they were kids.

3:00 P.M.

It's now fairly late, and time for me and Deb to make our escape.

My parents were convinced pretty much from the moment we first invited them that their purpose for being here was to babysit so we could go out every night. Just to prove them wrong we've gone out of our way to not go anywhere in the evenings. Well, plus we were really too tired. Eventually they actually offered to care for the kids for the night so we could go out on our own.

So once we leave the Sci-Fi Dine-In, Mamom, Papop, Becky and Tim head off for the exit. Deb and I intend to go there too, but first we decide to drift about MGM for a bit.

3:20 P.M.

I don't really know why we're wandering about in MGM at all, because our plans for the evening don't involve this park, they involve Downtown Disney. Instead, we're looking around in the Magic of Disney Animation building. There is a tour there that we've never been on, and I think we initially came here to do that tour, but instead we're examining things we can't afford. The shop here has cels on display. A cel is one purportedly original frame of an animated film. Needless to say there are lots of frames in a complete film, resulting in tons of cels, each of which is on sale for lots of money. I imagine if Disney ever got tired of owning JUST ABC and ESPN, they could probably buy the other networks by putting up for sale a five minute scene from Tarzan.

We do actually buy something here, and it is actually a good thing. A friend of mine from work is getting married in a couple of weeks and she's got a huge Pooh fetish. (As in "Winnie the Pooh," not "oh look what the dog did on the floor.") Since there aren't any Pooh costumes for her fiance to wear on their wedding night (I looked) instead I get her a nice framed piece of Pooh artwork. I can now officially say I bought framed Pooh. Sounds Dadaistic, doesn't it?

5:00 P.M.

Deb and I return to the room to shower, change, relax in the air conditioning, almost fall asleep, rouse ourselves just at the last minute, call the movie theater at Downtown Disney, get the show times, and get out the door again to catch the bus. Just like we planned.

We do not run into my parents, despite them having the adjoining room. By design, they have taken the children to the Fantasia mini-golf course. We've driven by this course about ten times in the last three years, and it looks like a simply wonderful place to play mini-golf. I almost regret not being able to go.

6:30 P.M.

Downtown Disney is divided into three areas. The first place we're intimately familiar with: the Marketplace. It has the largest Disney store known to man, a big Lego store, and ESPN store, and lots of chick stores to boot. (You don't know what a chick store is? Think "white sale.") The second area is Pleasure Island. This is where you go when you're sick of Disney and want to get really really drunk. I plan to visit here at least once before I leave. The third location is West Side, which is where we're headed.

West side is a combination of stores, restaurants, and entertainment facilities. It has the largest movie theater I've ever seen (24 screens,) as well as Cirque de Soleil, Planet Hollywood, House of Blues, and something called DisneyQuest.

We COULD spend our evening going to one of the above clubs, but the thing is, we have not been to a movie in a LONG time. In an ideal world we would find the South Park movie here, because we're big South Park fans, (like you couldn't have guessed that) but it is unfortunately no longer being shown. Our second choice is: The Blair Witch Project.

The irony, of course, is we'll be sitting in quite possibly the most comfortable theater we've ever encountered, with the most advanced sound system and screen size around, and we're here to watch a film shot mostly in black and white with poor sound quality and jittery camera work.

9:15 P.M.

Okay, The Blair Witch Project is just about the most disturbing movie I've ever experienced. I have a good friend who happens to be a lawyer, and he told me after seeing it he had nightmares for weeks, will never even consider going camping again, and has developed an unnatural fear of trees and camcorders. You would think that being a member of the legal profession and spending a lot of your free time going into prisons and speaking frankly to large, angry mobsters would mitigate against the possibility of him being genuinely freaked by something as benign as a movie. I certainly assumed as much, which is why I wanted to see this. I understand now what he means.

And, of course, this is a debatable subject, as I've heard as many people say they DIDN'T like it, especially a number of film reviewers whose opinions I didn't really respect in the first place. Here's my pocket explanation. Please clip here and save.

Just about every thriller I've ever seen has some degree of closure to it; the bad guys are caught, the mysteries are explained, whatever. What we as a spoonfed audience generally want is for there to be a restoration of order, so where the central conflict of the film is a representation of chaos, the resolution of that conflict is a return to the status quo. This is true even for movies that don't have happy endings. The Blair Witch Project does not have any such restoration of order. It takes you along on a first-person view with three people who you already know are going to die by the end of the film. Not only do you have no control over it, but there is no killer being brought to justice, and worse, there's not enough information given to even call it a mystery that can be solved. It's not MEANT to be solved. It's only meant to be scary.

Okay, I'm done now. Bet you didn't know I could be serious for a whole paragraph, huh?

One thing I do recommend if you have an opportunity to see this on a large screen is to avoid attending the film with the same people who were in the theater with us. We had two couples there, one on each side, who could NOT stop talking. And we were just about the only people in there, so we could hear every word. Deb and I eventually moved ten rows away just to enjoy the rest of the movie.

9:25 P.M.

Deb and I decide to stroll along Disney West Side for a while. There are a bunch of little non-Disney shops there, and it's such a rare thing to find non-Disney products, I'm actually fairly excited about this until I see the actual merchandise.

Our first store is a place that sells nothing but magnets. I personally see no point in magnets, no matter how cute the little sayings are, so I stay outside for a cigarette. This turns out to be a mistake, because my head is still in the middle of the Blair Witch Project. This is the real effect of seing a film that has no closure to it. So a man comes up to me while I'm smoking and asks if he can bum a smoke, and I'm COMPLETELY freaked out by this. Midway through the exchange I'm sure he's casing me out in order to sneak up behind me later and do horrible things to me just off-camera.

10:15 P.M.

Deb, naturally, HAS to read every magnet, and she also HAS to purchase at least one. Magnet shopping is a gender-specific condition. Then we examine some of the other stores. I find myself in a store that sells nothing but designer eyeglasses. I briefly consider making a purchase except first, I don't need a new pair of glasses, and second, laser eye surgery costs less than one pair of the frames they are selling here. We also find a store that sells western apparel. I skim through the store and then skim my way right back out again when I discover the clothing is almost exclusively for women. The only mens' clothes there look like they're designed entirely for rodeo clowns and Village People.

10:30 P.M.

We consider entering Disney Quest, but decide to save it for another year on the basis of the warning on the door that says it will take over three hours to see everything inside.

Disney Quest is an interactive simulated version of every ride in every Disney park, basically. It's the way things would be if Space Mountain, Tower of Terror, ad infinitum, were motion oddysey movie rides. It sounds pretty cool, and our park passes could get us in without us having to pay anything extra. But it's late, and we're getting hungry.

10:40 P.M.

The fastest way to get to the Marketplace is to walk through Pleasure Island. But Deb doesn't want to walk through Pleasure Island even though I do, so instead we take a path that goes under and around it in order to get to where we want to go, which is the Lego store.

I don't actually want to go to the Lego store. I don't particularly care enough about Legos to walk into a store that sells Legos. Deb does not share this particular opinion, even though we currently own enough legos to build a new home for ourselves. In a genuine attempt at being frugal, she only buys three kits. (I will admit that the prices here are better than they are at home. But my personal opinion is that we were not planning to buy any of these products at home anyhow, so what difference does it make? Deb has her own side to this argument that I'm not going to present here because it's my account. Nyah nyah.)

11:20 P.M.

Now desperately hungry-- having eaten nothing but popcorn in the last ten hours-- we head to Cap'n Jack's. This is a cute little restaurant that is actually over the water of the Downtown Disney Lagoon. It's not even a little bit crowded, either (the restaurant, not the lagoon. Although the lagoon is also not crowded.) We go right for the margaritas and crabcakes. If you ever find yourself in Downtown Disney and in desperate need of a drink, these are some VERY good margaritas.

11:45 P.M.

We take a quick trip through the Giant Disney Store to confirm that American consumerism is way out of control. Then we try and find a bus to get us back to the hotel.

11:50 P.M.

It's late. I see a cab. Forget the bus.

11:55 P.M.

I don't understand this at all. When we took the bus earlier from the Caribbean Beach to Downtown Disney it took that bus twenty minutes to make the trip. The cab takes exactly five minutes to get us to the front of Port Royale. What the hell kind of side roads do those buses take? I personally think they deliberately take weird, non-direct ways to get from place to place in order to confuse the guests into thinking the entire road system is so convoluted there is no way they can figure it out on their own. Or, our cabbie has supernatural powers.

The reason the cab driver drops us off at Port Royale instead of Jamaica is that we want to get another drink before going back to our room, and the pool bar closes at Midnight. I give him an extra-large tip for being so efficient.

12:00 A.M.

Drinks in hand, we get back to our room. Astonishingly, the children are actually asleep. So we finish our drinks, and then do something I certainly can't describe here. Disney might sue.