I Love Adventureland

You have to have a favorite "Land" in the Magic Kingdom, right? While I love them all and could really make a great argument for any one of them being the "best," my favorite is Adventureland. It always has been my favorite, and that's the way Disney should work, I think. The same things that made me love it when I was 5 still appeal to me today. First off, it's home to Pirates of the Caribbean, the bestest ride in Walt Disney World. And the Jungle Cruise. And the Tiki Room. Gotta love that.

I'm a traveler, physically as much as time and circumstances allow, but in my imagination I am a real vagabond. Adventureland feeds that aspect of my soul very well. In one small part of the Magic Kingdom you can visit the Caribbean, Arabia, Polynesia, darkest Africa and the Mekong Delta. You can be spit on by magical tiki drums and a camel without having to walk more than a few feet. You can buy a Hawaiian frozen treat and carry it up into a tree house with a view of a castle. You can leave one boat under attack by cannon fire only to enter another that must navigate hippos and tigers. Animatronic birds shower you with bad jokes across the walkway from the worst pun-spouting boat captains in the world.

Adventureland combines real world and fantasy, present day and history, in a way that just strikes my fancy and makes me feel like an adventurer myself. On our last trip, we walked into Adventureland through the castle hub during the Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween party and heard AC/DC's Back In Black pumping through the speakers. We all looked at each other and couldn't even talk for the pure fun and perfectness of the moment. Finally, we laughed and agreed we were truly in the best place ever.

Check out my album of Adventureland pics at Poohsticks on Facebook :)

Getting It

We saw more "bad behavior" on this Disney trip than any before. We saw a physical fight over parade watching spots narrowly averted by a cast member our first night in the park. The next day we witnessed a man jump off the Walt Disney World Railroad train while it was going regular speed between two stops. He'd apparently dropped his cell phone. He was almost thrown from the park, saved, we assume, by his pre-school daughter wearing a princess costume. Groups of foreign tourists speaking loudly over the narration of attractions was the norm rather than the exception. We noticed an unusual number of parents screaming at kids, and often kids who seemed to be doing nothing wrong. We saw 8, 10, maybe even 12-year-olds attached to dads with leashes. I don't know if we were just more sensitive to this stuff because we ourselves were so relaxed and happy and paying a lot of attention to everything going on around us, but on this trip all three of us picked up on many people who just weren't getting it. It made us feel really lucky to not be one of "those families," and coming home, I've become very happy to be surrounded by people who really do "get it."

We are a Disney Geek family. We all three see the Disney Magic as something real and valuable and important. I'm not shy about my love for Disney, as evidenced by this blog and it's accompanying Facebook page, and neither is the lovely Miss Lisa. This has led us to some good natured ribbing, of course, but also to discover some other Disney Geeks in our daily lives. I've found that others in the salesman community are as enthusiastic about Disney as myself. We can go on for hours in the back room of a grocery store discussing the latest discounts, the pros and cons of renting Disney Vacation Club points, character meals, crowd levels and all other aspects of trip planning. We use so many acronyms, I doubt anyone else can understand what we're saying. Lisa works for our town government and has found a cadre of dedicated Disney Geeks in charge of our police force. One officer sent us down with pins to trade and when we brought him back a Mickey sheriff's badge pin, he went to brag to the Chief, who already had one of his own of course. They proceeded to try one-upping each other with Disney collectibles they owned. The pastor of our church is another Disney-phile who made a point to tell me how much joy he gets out of the pictures I post and assured me that the experience our son gets on a family trip to Disney World is worth much more than any money we spent. Disney Geekery is everywhere.

I wrote before we left for our trip about how much fun I expected to have sharing our memories upon our return. What makes that sharing fun, and rewarding, is having people who "get it" to share with. Going through the Disney parks with Lisa and John is pure heaven for me because we all three appreciate it, nothing is forced, no one is just going along to see the others have fun. When Walt spoke in the movie shown at the end of "One Man's Dream" about wanting to build a park where parents and children could enjoy a place completely together because that's what he wanted for himself and his daughters, Lisa teared up. She understands what makes the magic. It's love, pure and simple. Behind all the corporatism and licensing and money, is the love one man had for his family and the world at large. That's why Disney works, why it's different. It's enough to move anyone to tears, anyone who get's it anyway.

Lisa's doorknob pic

my doorknob pic

My family is lucky to have another family who sees Disney in exactly the same way. Adrian and Jen and their boys Max and Milo are exactly the same kind of Disney Family as we are. They recently returned from a trip to Disneyland and the sharing of our two experiences has been a true joy. The similarities in the way we take in the parks is uncanny. We all try to capture the magic on camera, we have several thousand pictures between us, but I was amazed at how we all saw the same things as interesting or noteworthy. I've gotten used to pretty much sharing a brain with Lisa, so when we found we'd taken pictures of the same doorknob we weren't the least bit surprised. We shot lots of "detail" picture, ones we laughed about no one seeing us knowing what the heck we could be taking a picture of. Well, Jen would have known. While I took a picture of the light fixture on the ceiling of the WDW Railroad passenger car, Jen took one of the light in her room. Lisa took tons of door pictures, Jen has several of the inside of an elevator. Jen and I both took pictures of the entrance to Adventureland that aside from being from opposite ends of the country, could be the same shot. It's just really funny to me, and heartwarming. It's nice to have kindred spirits out there.

light on the train

A door in Norway

Elevator in the Disneyland Hotel

A faucet in Disneyland Hotel

Disneyland Hotel light

 It's not just the pictures, though. I mean how many people take the time to set down in a blog the joys of waiting in line? Back in February, I did, and here's a part of it:

"We aren't opposed to waiting in line, though, for something we all really want to do. Two hours is a bit much, but even for an hour and a half we have been known to suck it up and wait. It's really not the end of the world. There's lots to do in line. Disney has spent a tremendous amount of time and imagination and money making even the queuing areas of its attractions interesting. That's not even to mention the people watching opportunities. I pity the people who never wait in line and as a result miss out on mocking the other Disney guests' dress, hairstyle, accent, mannerisms and child-rearing skills. What do you people talk about at dinner? Even if you are sickeningly nice and don't get snarky and mean about strangers, you could spend time in line talking to your family. Imagine that! You are on vacation and the children, if not the adults, are probably close to sensory over-load. Talking about what you've done and seen and what adventures are yet to come make passing the time in line rather enjoyable."

Jen wrote on her personal blog yesterday all about waiting in the Radiator Springs Racers queue in Cars Land at Disneyland for two hours while they got the ride working again. She wasn't complaining, she was celebrating one of the best parts of her trip. Not only did she and Max take the time together to just be together, she experienced the joy of seeing her son get it while he pointed out Imagineering details to her. I couldn't have expressed it better myself, though I did express the  very same experience from our trip. Here's a bit from Jen's blog:

 "It didn't really matter....because even though, all told, Max and I stood on that queue for almost two hours, it was so very enjoyable.  At no point did he whine or complain (that would have made me get out of the line immediately, and he probably knew that!), and he tried his best to entertain the people in line around us (yeah, you know he did).  Even better, HE kept pointing out all these amazing Imagineered details to ME, and I loved how observant and interested he was.  We talked and we laughed and we shared an overpriced water bottle that a costumed cast member wisely started hawking to his captive audience, and we giggled over the texted photos of Milo enjoying A Bug's Land, and we imagined and we planned and we enjoyed each other.  There was no laundry to be done, there were no emails distracting me, there was no need to do school work, there was no Milo hanging on me....just two hours of Max and Mom time, doing something purely for fun."

That's what I mean by "getting it." It's what made Lisa get emotional at a movie. It's what makes me write this blog. It's magic, the real thing.

Just after we got home from Disney and a day or so before they left for their trip, I was dropping something off at Jen and Adrian's house. As I was leaving, Max came over to give me a hug and said, "I can't wait to get back so we can get together and share our stories!"  A seven year old looking forward to getting home so he could relive his experience with his friends. He gets it. That's what keeps the Disney Magic alive.

Walt Disney World's Adventureland entrance

Disneyland's Adventureland entrance

Imagineering Oversight....or is it?

Before our trip to Disney, I bought an Imagineering Field Guide for each of the four Florida parks. I love these books, they are small, but packed with really interesting information about the thought processes that went into building the Disney theme parks. The books are written by Walt Disney Imagineering (it gives author credit to "The Imagineers" right on the cover) and are full of drawings and photos and inside info on the little details they work into everything they do. For a Disney Geek, these things are Nirvana.

One of the central themes of these books is the continuity they try to keep in place within and even between the parks. They work hard to make sure you aren't jarred by something "out of place." They went so far as to make the top of the Tower of Terror ride's architecture look vaguely Middle Eastern because it was visible from Morroco in Epcot's World Showcase. They even do things that I'm convinced are for their own amusement, such as locating all the bathrooms in Columbia Harbour House, which straddles Fantasyland and Liberty Square, in the Fantasyland half because there was no indoor plumbing in the time period represented by Liberty Square. Their efforts aren't always so grand or so obscure, mostly they just use architecture and landscaping to obscure views of things that don't fit in with the story they are trying to tell in a particular place.

I think I found a pretty good example of where they failed to hide the bleed-over from over stories with this picture.

This is a view of Space Mountain and the entrance to Tomorrowland as seen from the Swiss Family Treehouse, complete with old-timey gas light. I thought at first I had "caught" the Imagineers falling down on the job, how hard would it be to have a wall here and face the opening a different direction? But after thinking about it, I think I've underestimated the Disney crew.

Walt Disney's spirit is alive and well among the Imagineers; just look at the whole of Walt DisneyWorld, built entirely after Walt's death, for proof. Walt Disney was a man of seeming contradiction, but in actuality he was very wise. He was nostalgic to an amazing degree, recreating the world as it was in his time and before in his theme parks. He loved the past and studied history and longed to see the world hold onto the best parts of our heritage. He was also one of the world's greatest all-time Futurists. Walt believed in that "Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow" and he worked hard to see mankind progress as far and as fast as possible. He was the best kind of idealist, the kind of man who sees a wonderful future as possible and tries to make it so. He had one foot in the past and one in the future, but he lived in the now, taking the best of history to inform his attempts to build a great tomorrow. In order to think and act like this, Walt Disney needed to be always ready to act today, to "carpe diem," to make the most of the moment no matter what the naysayers said or what was generally assumed to be possible. But he also had to have an appreciation of the fact that the future would always be there, that what we do today never stays as it is, but changes over time. He understood that he needed to not only prepare for this fact, but take advantage of it. When Walt built Disneyland, he commented that the park would never be the same, that it would grow and change and become more beautiful as the trees he planted before opening day grew over time.

It's this spirit that I think the Imagineers understood and I at first did not when they built the Swiss Family Treehouse with a view of Tomorrowland. To face the view away from the park would give guests a sight "behind the scenes" and into an area of concrete and parking lots and warehouses and sheds. Not very magical. To face the room towards the park in another direction would guarantee that some sort of "intrusion" into the story would always be there. Look again at that picture and I think you'll see the Imagineers took the best possible route. The view of Space Mountain is partially hidden by trees. I bet that when this treehouse was first constructed, much more of the park was visible. I also bet that within about ten years, as those trees grow even taller, that view of Tomorrowland will no longer exist. I think that was the idea all along. It took me a while, but I finally did step outside the box and look with eyes to the past, present and future. That's what Walt did all the time, as a matter of course. I want to get to the point where I do that as well.