This is the second part of the story of three people who went to Disney World in an effort to keep one four year old happy…

So, the first day we went to main Mickeyville.  We walked around the joint, played a few “not so scary so children won’t fear the mouse-type games” and that seems to be all I remember about that day.  That night there was a Halloween Parade kicked off by the headless horseman runnin’ by on Black Beauty with a head-like sphere under his arm, followed by all the brightly-dressed Disney characters.  I also remember hearing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” at one point – so upon further review, it may have actually been a GLADD parade.

Unlike most parades that I remember, there was no throwing of the candy.  It was all contained in feedbags by the float followers, who seemed to ration them out based on whether you were a Disney character or not.  My son, dressed as King Peter from the Chronic of Narnia, got about 5 jolly-rancher looking things and small amounts of other assorted candies.  Now the fat little kid standing next to us dressed up as Tigger – all the while sliming us with sweaty, fake tiger hair – got enough candy to fill the horn of plenty at any Thanksgiving spread.  I don’t dig on this side of the ditch, because parade candy wasn’t just a sugary sweet gift when I was growing up - it was also a threat to your ocular nerve, teeth, and an overall dent-free appearance on your forehead.  I guess that’s because all the parades I went to were for lame reasons, and had celebrity-like people riding on the tops of cheap cars.  They probably wanted vengeance of some sort, and braining little cold, snotty nosed children was a way to get back at the local community.  They slung that shit out there like they were tryin’ to feed all the chickens at a Grade A, Jumbo, or Extra large farm.  Some of them would go to the complete overhand throw, like the sunroof had just tightened on their ass cheeks.  There were also the side-armers who made you think an angry Dennis Eckersley with a hand full of rock hard caramels was chasing you.

The second day we went to the part of the park that is allegedly Universal in nature.  I expected aliens, old satellites, pieces of the Challenger - but no – it’s all phony movie sets and some games ripped off from movies.  There was one beverage tender who had swill, but I had to go Pizza Planet for some out of this world priced pie; when I returned, he had apparently wandered off to peddle his sweet liquid of Mouseville Sanity in 12 oz plastic bottles elsewhere.  On the third day, we went to EPCOT and stared at that weirdly-shaped ball for a little while - which made me think I was looking at RoboCop’s nut.  After a while, per the last two days, our son had a meltdown and wanted to go back to the hotel because the pool had a slide.  Luckily, it also had a bar with Mango Mojitos and shots of Patron. 

Of course, I got hornswoggled on some methods of paying for stuff.  Usually when my wife and I parlay to some destination, it is one of those joints where you can pay for stuff with your room key.  It makes you feel like your playin’ with Daddy Warbuck’s credit card, and this is all being financed with Monopoly money.  This time we took cash, so we could keep our residuals residuated.  Well, on two separate occasions I gave the maitre de the cash to cover said purchase.  He then returned with a slip like the ones you get when you use your credit cards.  So, I signed it.  I thought this meant we had paid for our dinner with cash. and had not used a dinner off of our meal plan.  In actuality, these mousketeers were takin’ the cash and turnin’ into their own cheese.  My meal plan was to pay for it all in cash, so as to keep myself from ordering the Cristal or the $200 bottles of wine I like to order – which usually happens when my ability to think clearly has been totally thrown out the window due to the effects of the $20 bottle of wine I drank before we got there.

All in all, I found getting mouseketeered to be a somewhat enjoyable experience.  For whatever reason, the day we were wondering around the part at EPCOT that has all the ways to get drunk in different foreign countries, my better half wanted no part of it.  Seeing as I couldn’t make her stop and watch me drink a pint every six feet, I gave up on that dream.  Our son had a good time, however, so I guess that’s all that really matters.

This is the story of how three people went to Disney World in an effort to keep one four year-old happy.  This was done by employing the services of made-up children’s book characters, a group of big-horned fancy cows, 2 giraffes, rides ripped off from movies, and the mystical $8.00 hot dog. These are the sights as I saw them, and the calls I made after calling them.

First off, if you’re turning yourself in for a full week of mouse-related activities, you apparently don’t have to go down with the poor folk and claim any baggage that is yours after arriving – or take any paternity tests to unclaim them.  Your sacks of vacation wares (or wears) are automatically thrown onto a Mickey-related relay, which sends them directly your hotel.  Watching the bags being thrown from the airport thing onto Mickey’s specialized gear is like watching Cano and Jeter turn a luggage double play.  We hired a dude who rolled in Lincoln Town Cares to affiliate us with our Mouseville destination, because it was cheaper and less time consuming than lettin’ Mickey’s handle roll dirty.  Plus, you get to make a 30 minute stop off at Publix - which is a beautiful, yet tragically named grocery store chain in Florida and the South.  You can get actual food there, but more importantly, wine, liquor and swill.  If you’re ever in Florida and going to be marooned on any theme park-like property, I suggest you head to Publix.  To remember the name, just think of what you have to pull out of your teefes every time you return from South of the border.

As for our accommodations, we chose to pimp ourselves out at the Animal Kingdom for the week.  When we arrived, this dude who was all Africaned out rolled one of those baggage carrier things up to car, and started loadin’ up.  Unbeknownst to me, that cat didn’t end up following me into the reception area.  Instead, he just took our bags to Luggage Gitmo.  When you’re doing anything mouse related, they always deal with getting your luggage to you.  So, I just assumed they would show up at our door like usual.  Nope, not this time.  Since I didn’t give the overly helpful gent with the cart anything, he didn’t bother to put any name on the luggage.  When I called the front desk to request the release of our bags, they had none for Smith (what are the chances of that?).  I about blew an African horn, and started thinking that maybe we were on some hotel reality game show called “Idiots and What They Will Do With Their Luggage”.  When I arrived at Luggage Gitmo, I could see that our bags were clearly being held without probable cause.  They had never caused any problems, and should’ve been released from custody for the betterment of US-African relations if nothing else.  These bags were not lodged under the names Nelson Mandela or Smith either.  It turns out the guy who drove us from the airport told them to use his company’s name, which was Quicksilver.  So either a terrible Kevin Bacon movie, or a goddamn Marvel hero had been keeping our necessities out of reach. 

The un-pissed off 4th time back down, we got the luggage, and I actually got a full flavor scenic view of some big-assed horse looking thing with zebra stripes.  Then we all headed off to the luxurious African-themed suite, equipped with a warning to close our shades – due to all the photography being in use.  So, it was kind of like being stalked by rhinos and giraffes.  It was a very nice accomodation though; and to set the record straight, no Coke bottles ever came flyin out of the sky, and we never prayed to any Coke-like receptacle (?).  My wife did seem like she was imbibing quite a bit of Royal Crown’s answer to low calorie holy water - Diet Sundrop – but nothing else cult-related went down, for the most part.

As we settled into our room, Dr. Griswold stopped by to give us our Mouse World itinerary.  Each of was given yellow legal paper with some sort of Sanskrit written on it; this note told us what park we were going to each day, what rides we wanted to ride, the rides we could take our son on if he wore his boots, and when we could have some free time.  Look kids, Splash Mountain…EPCOT!