The Magic Kingdom

Take heed: Disney World, is not the happiest place on Earth – unless you sit on the board at Disney. Currently, I am on vacation, which is why you haven’t seen any posts in a while (Not sure what everyone else’s excuses are, but I digress). The vacation is going great, we’re parked on a great beach in Florida with almost the entire beach to ourselves and some nice weather to boot. While here, we got the brainstorm to take the rugrat to Disney World and let him have some fun. Since I’m half drunk on tequila, Dos Equis and rum, I’m going to make this short by listing my observations in a tried and true favorite of using an (sort of) outline format. Feel free to eat a dick if you don’t like it.

1. Before we ever even set foot in the “Magic Kingdom” we spent $189.00. Seriously. $189 for two tickets and a parking spot. Really, Walt? 14 bucks to park the car? Dick.

2. Five minutes later, there was another fee – $15 bucks for a stroller – that didn’t even have a place to put a bag. Granted – we could have brought a stroller – in retrospect, that may have been the smart move, but when you are traveling cross country in a European sedan with enough gear to last a week, strollers don’t usually make the cut. For $82 bucks a head, the fucking stroller should be complimentary.

3. It’d be nice if you could manage to at least act like you were using some ingenuity in the ride selection. I counted three variants of “It’s a Small World – which was down for some reason or other – and about 3 variants of the Dumbo ride. Of course, they were all just different enough to elicit squeals of glee from Jr as we passed them by so that we felt obligated to wait in line for 20 minutes or more so he could ride the thing for all of 1.5 minutes.

4. At some point, you are going to break down and require sustenance. Luckily, Walt has arranged to have multiple food stations throughout the park and they all follow the same formula: roughly 8′ish bucks for a combo meal of some manner. Now – when you order a combo meal, typically you can expect a main course, a side, and a drink. Oh ho ho! Not here – For 8 bucks, you get a shitty, tasteless main course and a few leaves of lettuce in a bowl (they call this a “salad”). Eating the scrap food off the dirt ground of a Juarez taco stand would be more appetizing. If you want something to drink, well – that’ll cost ya an extra $2.50 – and you don’t get a refill. No, really – you don’t get a refill.

5. Does there really need to be a gift shop at the exit point of every fucking ride? How many opportunities does one really need to buy some mouse ear hats? Literally, there is a gift shop every 25-50 yards in this place. Luckily, we bought Jr a Mickey shirt before we even went, and I was able to exit the place at the end of the day without giving a nickel to any of them.

In short, the only thing magical about the “Magic Kingdom” is how it magically removes cash from the wallet. However, I will say Jr was happy at the end of it and enjoyed himself – but when I asked him today about Disney World, all he could muster up was: “Go to beach”.

Atta boy.