Into the Jaws of a Mouse

To put our Disney World trip into perspective I'd like to tell you about a book that we borrowed from a local friend called 'The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World 2005'. I both loved and hated this book. It's structured in a similar way to many Lonely Planet guides for various countries of the world. In fact the Disney guide has 800+ pages, only about 80 less than my Lonely Planet guide for Canada. How can a set of theme parks warrant a similar number of words as a whole country? I think that there are several reasons...

Firstly these aren't just any theme parks, Jo and I have dreamed of going to Disneyland since we were kids and Disney World is Disneyland times four (there are four theme parks not just one). Our expectations were pretty high as Disney is the original and has the reputation, quality, attention to detail, wonderous and pure kids magic. Certainly Disney is still marketed in this way, more so now that there is lots of competion in the forms of Universal Studios, Wonderland, Busch Gardens etc. Funnily enough I don't think the kids had the same expectations that we did... they weren't as 'in awe' of Disney as we'd grown up being.

Secondly, from what we've heard and seen lots of people plan their Disney holidays to an incredible level of detail, so the more info you have up front the easier it is to do this. Some restaurants in Disney need to be booked 12 months in advance if you go in peak season. Imagine having to book every meal and every move you'll make on a holiday one year in advance...

And finally, Disney is a freakishly popular place and it gets busier than you can imagine. The guide lists all sorts of tips and tricks for beating the crowds and saving cash (cash being something that Disney is phenomonally good at extracting from its guests). The book has numerous touring guides for every park (one for singles and couples, one for parents with young children, one for those with 2 days to spend per park) designed to keep you ahead of the crushing crowds and walking onto rides and into attractions with minimal waiting in line.

So I started reading the guide book about 3 months before we left and frankly it scared the shit out of me. The number of things the book told us to consider in making our choices boggled my mind in ways it had not been boggled before (and I've worked for the government before so that takes doing). Just choosing a hotel became a task of monumental proportions and rather than giving me comfort in my choice the book gave me so many things to consider that I had no idea whether I'd done the right thing... All this sounds pretty stupid on reflection, Jo and I are pretty mellow when it comes to planning stuff, we're more go-with-the-flow people (as anyone who has expected us to arrive on time will atest to). But against my normal instincts I wanted to make sure that this would be a perfect Disney experience, let's face it we're unlikely to go back for a long time if ever. In the end I booked three restaurants (effectively locking us into going to those parks on those days) and left the rest to chance.

On Wednesday Jo and I kicked the kids off the school while we finished packing. Just after lunch we dropped into school, picked the kids up early and set off for Buffalo, New York state. It's much cheaper to fly within the US than it is to depart from Toronto so we've previously driven over the border to Buffalo, stayed overnight in a hotel and then flown out from there. Works nicely and saves us about $1000 in airfares. Not realising that we'd left Cam's stuffed toys (including the ever-present Bunny) in the hotel room we made our flight to Orlando, Florida and cruised south for two and a half hours into warmer weather.

We picked up the rental car, a Chevy HHR much like the PT-Cruiser, and headed to the Port Orleans Riverside hotel inside 'the World'. Now our original plan had been to hit a water park on our arrival day (like Wet'n'Wild on the Gold Coast), but I had checked the NASA website and saw that a rocket launch was now confirmed for today so we switched our plan and immediately after checking in took the one hour drive out to Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Centre. Almost straight after we arrived the power went out (something to do with some construction of a new Shuttle simulator ride) and we lost lights, air-con, IMAX cinema's and the snack bars couldn't prepare any more food (with the kids staving!). Nice start. The Centre was pretty packed given the launch and we had to wait 40 minutes in the heat for a bus to the Apollo/Saturn5 exhibit where we planned to view the blast off. All in all the kids were pretty awesome, with only minor complaining (or maybe my memory is fading already).

The Cape is pretty wicked. It's a swamp and it's full of alligators. On top of that our guide told us that it's monitored by over 3000 remote camera's, presumably so security can watch you being eaten in air-conditioned comfort. Many roads have water on both sides (reclaimed land I guess) and signs telling you not to stop or you risk becoming a snack. We saw plenty of gators in the water from the safety of our car and then on the bus tour. If I blew a tire out there I'd run on the rim and bugger the sparks. The bus tour took us around the VAB (the huge building where they assemble the rockets) and we saw the crawler that takes the shuttle out to the pad. At the Apollo/Saturn centre we finished the Apollo 8 launch recreation tour (first manned flight around the moon) and had 7 minutes to make it to the bleachers for the launch, finally some good timing and luck! We watched the Atlas5 rocket blast off from the grandstand where VIP's watch the shuttle launches, cool. The pad was about 4-5 k's away so the sound of the blast off took a while to reach us, the ultimate in time-delay, and while the rocket was pretty small compared to the shuttle it was still pretty cool to see. Imagine the sound of cloth being torn, turn up the volume to 11 and you have an idea of the noise. We figured that we'd had enough and after some time and cash spent in the NASA shop we headed back to the hotel, hitting our pillows after a very long day.

Disneys Blizzard Beach is a themed water park where the idea is that although it's hot there's snow everywhere. Everything is themed around snow and ice (all made out of unmeltable fibreglass and plastic of course) and looks really cool. There's about 20 water slides from tame ones for the kids to the Summit Plummit which sents your almost vertically straight down 120 feet and hit almost 100kph (that changed my hair style I can tell ya). Family favourite was Teamboat Springs where we all piled into a big raft and headed down a huge, wide water slide with lots of twists, turns and drops. All in all a great mellow out day, and while it was fairly busy we were able to get on most slides fairly quickly which was great.

More to come, that’s only the first two days... sheesh!