Okay, I’ll be upfront about it, it isn’t cool, my daughter wrinkles her nose at the very idea (she is a Brooklyn snob), but I love Disney World and I want to go there. I had a dream last night about Disney World (no codeine), I was on a bus and the driver was wishing me a “magical day” and Maria and I had gotten up early to drive through this dreary stretch of dysfunctional weather to get to the airport to fly straight to Orlando where it is 81 degrees.
At most points in my life, I could have just gone. Put it on the credit card, call a travel agent. Not with two farms.
Not at this point, and I admit to some bitterness about it, I want to go to the Polynesian Village on the mono-rail, ride the steamship across that lake to the Magic Kingdom, ride on Splash Mountain, go on the Pirates of the Caribbean, take Maria on “It’s A Small, Small World,” sit by the pool, thaw out my frozen body. Then on to Animal Kingdom, the Jungle Safari, dinner at Fulton’s Steamboat (Stone Crabs), walk around Epcot and obsess on how the greedy people destroyed Walt’s dream of a city of the future and replaced it with the world’s biggest Corporate Mall. We might walk over to the Chinese Pavilion and eat some dumplings, take that little balloon ride, it is the first place I ever took Maria, we were both cold and desolate in our first winter together, the storms never stopped raging, we escaped to Disney World, hokey as it can be, they take good care of you there and it is warm and there is good food to eat everywhere.
I know the place inside and out, I’ve gone a dozen times, gave speeches there, taken my family, spent three months there when I was writing for Rolling Stone on the “tragedy of technology” and Walt Disney’s vision of the world, I can still beat the lines on almost any ride.
They also have good pretzels there, and fresh popcorn, and beautiful birds flying around, and fireworks at night, and palm trees rustling in the wind, it is fun to see kids having so much fun, even as their parents melt down from the heat and the money flowing like a faucet that is never turned off. I took my daughter there when she was 18 months old, and then again when she was 8 and 15 and one more time, I can’t remember. She doesn’t care for it, of course, kids are like that, I think I loved it too much. She likes to hike in the Grand Tetons.
Dreams do come true there, just like Mickey said, Maria and I proved it. Maria didn’t really want to go there, but I think I won her over, she loves seeing the animals at the Animal Kingdom. The spiritualists say if you wish for something and imagine it, it will happen. I don’t believe it, but it’s worth a shot.
In this gloomy week of rain, ice and mud, Disney World calls out to me, I want to take Maria there and go, but I can’t go. I need to dream of something else. This sounds like a whine to me, I admit it, but perhaps there is some long lost royalty check on the way, the way there used to be every couple of months. Or maybe if it came, I’d have to save it for a new camera, mine is getting a little wobbly.