The happiest, jazziest place on earth

The Whore of Disneyland

In March the husband and I escaped Ohio, our two houses, our obligations and decided that we needed to go someplace mindless – someplace warm where people would take care of us. After looking at the possibilities, it came down to either a sanatorium or Walt Disney World.

We chose Walt Disney World.


Actually it was my brother in law and my sister in law who came up with the idea of going to Orlando because they wanted to know if we wanted to go see the Harry Potter attraction at Universal, and my husband – who is a kid at heart – wanted to go, so we went. We also knew that going would mean I could see my uncle and aunt who live in Florida.  And we haven't had a caprice that didn't involve a trip to stay with family is a long, long time, so we were due.

Well, we wanted to stay on campus because we didn’t want to deal with rental cars. And we used Disney’s Magical Express, which due to an error with Disney was neither magical, nor express, but it got us and our luggage to where it needed to be when we needed it.

We also bought a park hopper ticket because we wanted to come and go to and from the parks as we pleased, which was a good idea because that was exactly what we did. And every Disney park was immaculate and every employee was amazing.

And can you believe it – I wasn’t even annoyed by the children, who for the most part were too busy being children to be pests.

Our biggest disappointment was the food – and it’s one thing that Disney doesn’t do very well. And they don’t do it well because they are so good at moving people through an event or a ride that the restaurants are just like the attractions – standardized, with minimal room for error. Each restaurant has four or five choices, period. One beef, one chicken, one seafood, one pork and one vegetarian option, period. And getting into the decent places to eat is difficult – you have to make reservations well in advance of your visit or you are turned away, even if tables are empty. We had the reservations, but we really would have liked better food. But no one got sick and no one went hungry and no one had a bad meal, it was just "meh".

My only complaint about the whole damn trip are the senior citizens riding around in Jazzy Chairs because it was easier than walking.

I’m not talking about grandma who is on oxygen, or grandpa with a leg and a half, and just happy to be at Disney making memories with the grandkids Jazzy Chairs. I’m talking about granny and gramps who have discovered that they can zip about the parks in Florida using a Jazzy Chair because it saves them the everyday effort of walking. You can tell who these folks are because they travel without family, and they are in a hurry to see and do as much as they can, all others be damned.

These are the people who know how fast they can run their Jazzy Chairs. These are the people who have attached bike bells and bike horns to the handle bars of their Jazzy Chairs lest anyone get in their way. There are the people who LOUDLY bark their Jazzy Chair needs to everyone by saying things like “Well I HAVE TO BE IN A GOOD SEAT to see the show BECAUSE I USE A MOBILITY DEVICE,” and “HEY, GET OUT OF THE WAY – I’m in a MOBILITY DEVICE and I need to get through this crowd.”

Just once I wanted to turn around and say “We ALL need to get through this fucking crowd – so pipe down!”

What annoyed me about these people is that behaved like they were entitled to something that we all wanted (to be treated as if we had the run of the place), but that they were somehow more special than everyone else, especially the people who were really ill or disabled.  And it really annoyed me that they were FAST and they were always in the way.

All that said, the trip achieved what we needed it to do – warm our Midwest selves at the end of a rough winter, free our minds of our cares and our woe and give us something and someplace to go where riding Dumbo, or going on rollercoasters was an option.

Would I do it again? Well I think that our next trip is going to involve Europe – we need to get away to a place where we can get our rough edges smoothed down a bit. I don’t think we’re ready for a country where English isn’t the primary language, but just the same, I think it needs to be a place that others usually don’t go.

And we need to take this trip sooner rather than later because I want to do it before the husband and I need those Jazzy Chairs ourselves.