Notes from Fantasyland

©2018 John P Hewitt

Recently I spent a week at Walt Disney World in Florida, so you don’t have to, and it behooves me to report the results of my researches there. The thousands of people who swarm into the World each day may not be a microcosm of contemporary society, but they are nevertheless species worthy of investigation. Besides, it’s fun to make fun of Disney and the people who spend their hard-earned dollars and ill-gotten gains on a costly trip to visit The Mouse, notwithstanding the fact that I am one of them and will be again in the near future.

You don’t walk very far along Walt Disney’s charming “Main Street” in The Magic Kingdom before you notice there are a lot of smiles. Almost everybody, it seems, is smiling, because this is, after all, the East-coast iteration of Disneyland, “the happiest place on earth.” The characters – Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Pluto, and their gang – are smiling, and perhaps even the underpaid humans who inhabit the costumes are smiling behind the character masks they wear. The barbershop quartet deployed along the street to regulate the flow of humanity so that it more resembles an Easter parade than a mob are smiling. So are the clerks – excuse me, “cast members” – in the merchandise emporia that line both sides of the street. So are those who pick up garbage, take your picture with Cinderella’s castle as a backdrop, and mark out the lines and direct traffic in advance of one of the Kingdom’s many parades. All are proud honors graduates of the same “smile school” that trained the zygomaticus major muscles of flight attendants in the days before airline deregulation made flying enjoyment an oxymoron. Either that, or the penalties for not smiling are really severe.

Most of the disagreeable faces you see in the Magic Kingdom are worn by the guests, not all of whom seem to be in a happy place. Some people are frowning, others crying, and still others complaining. They are tired, disappointed, hungry, and irritated, and they show it without guile, having found no time to prepare a face to meet the cheerful faces that they meet. There are plenty of reasons to be grumping, whining, complaining, bellyaching, and, in short, unhappy: diapers that haven’t been changed to the satisfaction of babies, ice cream cones that melt in the oven of central Florida’s summertime heat, and lines that stretch to an hour and a half for a ride that lasts two minutes.

Still, most of the guests most of the time seem to display happiness. Some of them are no doubt genuinely so – they are happy, and they know it, and they really want to show it. Others perhaps feel waspish or short-fused, but nevertheless adopt a cheerful face, lest their family and friends who are following via Facebook and Instagram be disappointed in their vicarious experience. And some guests are deceived by their own performances, which is to say that by acting happy, as they feel they should, they become happy in fact. All in all, then, even if this isn’t the happiest place on earth, there does seem to be a lot of happiness being pursued and occasionally found.

A higher-than-expected percentage of those happy Disney guests are obese. I don’t know if more of them are obese than in the American population as a whole. But I do know that I observed more excess pounds there than anyplace else I have been. And when I say obese I don’t mean merely overweight. Plenty of people weigh more than medical authorities say they should weigh. No, I mean very obese and sometimes morbidly obese. There are some very large people wandering around the Magic Kingdom, and one can’t help noticing them and even feeling a bit uncertain about how to write about them. Indeed, in order to avoid the use of politically incorrect or insensitive language I will refer to “large” people, eschewing the contemporary euphemism, “person-of-size” along with its hurtful synonym, “fat.”

Large people come in a variety of sizes and interpersonal configurations. Jack Sprat and his wife, for example, make frequent appearances – a thin, which is not necessarily to say anorexic, male partner walking happily alongside his large female companion. Sometimes large and very large people are accompanied by their large and very large children, and I find myself wondering where those children came from. Yes, I do know where babies come from. I understand these babies weren’t delivered by a champion weight-lifting stork with the aid of an industrial crane. They came into the world in the usual way, which is what perplexes me. Some of the people I have seen at Disney are so large that I can’t imagine how they managed the reproductive act. Presumably they know what goes where, but how they get the “what” in proximity to the “where” is hard for me to fathom. Obviously, they can and did, and I congratulate them for it. Perhaps I should get out more.

My account is drifting in a scatological and stereotypical direction, but of course I don’t consider myself prejudiced against large people. On the whole I like them as much or little as I like small or medium people, skinny people, endomorphs, ectomorphs, and other assorted types in the human zoo. Falstaffian couples display a typical human range of dispositions, taste in clothing, and social intelligence. I have seen large and very large people eating the Brobdinagian smoked turkey legs that Disney sells at an outrageous price and that are disgusting to smell or even look at. But I have also seen small and medium people eating them, so large people clearly have no monopoly on bad taste. “We are all as God made us,” the narrator in the 1963 movie Tom Jones intoned, “and many of us much worse.”

Very large and extra-very large people have a need that the market, may its name be praised, has cheerfully met. Such people understandably find their capacity for bipedal locomotion severely challenged by the many miles of walking a Disney visit requires. The same is true of guests whose walking is limited by heart, respiratory, or other medical issues. Such guests can obtain four-wheeled scooters with electric motors to take them where they want to go. For a mere $41 dollars a day, Buena Vista Rentals, which their web site informs us is a “Disney Featured ECV Provider, will rent you a “Maxima” ECV (Electrical Conveyance Vehicle, if you are wondering) that will hold your 500 pounds and whisk you around The World at six miles per hour. There are a couple of smaller models with lesser weight capacity and slower speeds. The Maxima has a well-cushioned large seat that looks capable of supporting the equally well-cushioned behind of an extra-very large occupant. The scooters are delivered to your Disney resort, where you can drive them in the corridors or paths to your room, to the miniature golf course or swimming pool, onto the Disney busses, and around the theme park of your choice.

One desires, of course, to be supportive of medically challenged and large and extra-large people, and if it takes a large motorized scooter to level the playing field, so be it. That said, the scooters sometimes put to the test one’s wish to be tolerant and kind. When a bus is to be loaded with its maximum of two scooters, pedestrians must wait at the front until the ramp at the rear is lowered, the scooter is driven aboard and secured, and the scooter driver and accompanying sixteen family members are seated. This takes time, of course, and two scooters eat up four of the seats on the bus. Not all scooter drivers are equally adept, so occasionally loading them is a slow process. The other passengers usually wear patient faces while this is going on, which is to say their blank faces overtly inform the world that all is well when they are inwardly pretty pissed-off because they are going to be late for their Fast Pass entry time for Thunder Mountain Railroad.

Once at the theme park, scooters are the bane of pedestrians. They are ahead, behind, and on either side of you, cutting across your path, or backing up into you as you try to make your way up Main Street in the Magic Kingdom or around the World Showcase in Epcot. At least they “beep” when backing up, just like the backhoe that is mysteriously digging a big hole at the end of my street. There is a Dutch theory that the best way to regulate urban traffic is to allow motorized vehicles and people to negotiate their passage with a minimum of signs, pavement markings, and regulations. The premise is that such mixing encourages people to be more alert to their surroundings and to other vehicles and pedestrians than they would otherwise be. Despite the fact that 99.9% of the guests at Disney World are not Dutch, scooter/pedestrian accidents are not very common. There are occasions that might provoke “road rage,” but little of it seems to be exhibited. On the whole, real or feigned kindness is the order of the day, even when a 400 pound sixty-year-old comes bearing down on you at a full speed. The benefit of the doubt is given less willingly to the woman driving a scooter whom you previously saw sauntering down the hall in your hotel and who, you are sure, is feigning disability in order to gain access to the shorter lines at handicapped entrances to attractions.

Another form of personal transportation at Disney does not evoke tolerant feelings in me. I am speaking, of course, of strollers that carry one or two toddlers whose parents have brought them on a joyous trip to Disney World. Their precious little ones are given to melting down and, understandably, tend to do so more quickly and more often if they are obliged to walk what must to them seem like the several hundred miles from the entrance to the Magic Kingdom to Frontierland. Strollers, the bigger the better, to the rescue.

When my children were toddlers we carted them around with strollers the like of which I have seen only a few times in recent years. Ours were flimsy constructions of metal and cloth or vinyl that could be folded down nearly to the size of a large umbrella when not in use. Perhaps that’s why they were called umbrella strollers. We must have been awful parents, unconcerned with our children’s comfort or safety, to force them into vehicles that lacked cushioned seats, sunshades, cup-holders, and other such accoutrements. The wheels were small and amplified every bump, and there were no springs, shock absorbers, or multi-link suspensions. There was no energy-absorbing enclosure to protect our delicate offspring against the risk of collision with an out-of-control motorized scooter. Thankfully, the statute of limitations on charges of child abuse has probably expired and we are safe from prosecution. On the other hand, children themselves have been known to possess elephantine memories when it comes to psychic injuries.

Today’s twenty-and-thirty-something parents seem determined to avoid intervention by the state, not to mention the alarmed looks of their peers. They armor their little ones in massive conveyances constructed of aircraft-quality reinforced carbon fibers and high-strength steel. Their wheels have diameters of a foot or more, and they are equipped with all manner of storage compartments, canopies, and baskets, the better to provide comfort for the little ones and their devoted parents. My austerely Teutonic 1991 Volvo 240 didn’t have a single cup holder, but these contraptions rival the most outrageously outfitted contemporary Honda Odyssey or Lexus SUV with built-in surround-sound theatres for every passenger. I haven’t yet detected disk brakes on a stroller, but it is only a matter of time. These strollers are probably not street legal, but I have seen them on streets, pushed by parents in full jogging regalia, intimidating pedestrians and busses alike.

Some of these behemoths are approximately the size of a Mazda Miata, though not as maneuverable, and are equipped to carry two children. The side-by-side variety could easily fill the width of an urban sidewalk, and the tandem versions resemble a shrunken 18-wheeler barreling down the highway. One device I saw was so large that it couldn’t be folded but had to be disassembled into at least three parts before the owner could lug it onto the bus. Whether propped precariously in the aisle of a Disney bus or driven with determination on a theme park walkway by a couple anxious to get their kiddies on a ride and out of their hair for a few minutes, these contraptions are dangerous. It’s the lucky visitor who jumps out of the way at the last moment before being mowed down.

There are now so many strollers at Disney that designated parking areas have been set aside for some of the most popular rides that draw toddlers and their parents to them like scrap metal to a powerful magnet. Row upon row of strollers are assembled, attended by cast members whose job it is to oversee their parking and retrieval. Parents must remember the row in which their conveyance is parked – the red row, green row, etc. – and retrieve it from a cast member. The scene resembles the bicycle parking lot of a Dutch railroad station, although in the latter there is probably a significant risk that your bike won’t be there when you return from your day in Amsterdam. I haven’t heard of strollers being stolen at Disney – misplaced, perhaps, or taken by mistake, but not stolen. It’s a small world, after all, and everybody happily loves everybody else and would never even think of theft.

Finally, no report on Disney would be complete without a discussion of clothing. Guests hoofing it from place to place, or pushing their descendants in humungous devices, or terrorizing the masses with their motorized scooters are dressed in whichever style fashion has decreed is de rigueur. People from frigid climes often wear shorts even on days that would cause Floridians to don their sweaters and long underwear. Apparently, the underlying theory is that “sun and warmth follow the donning of shorts,” which resembles the 19^th century belief that on the American great plains, “rain follows the plow.” In my experience, the sun does not respond to the outfits people choose, mother nature does not smile warmly merely because people wish her to do so, and it doesn’t rain just because farmers till the soil.

Most people at Disney dress appropriately to the season. Presently there is a particular mode of female dress, and not just at Disney, that deserves comment. I refer, of course, to what my elderly mind thinks of as “tights” but is apparently known to the cognoscenti as “leggings.” At Disney, as here on the streets of Columbus, Ohio and, I presume, other places, women are cladding their bottoms and legs in cloth that craves intimacy with skin. Except on the thinnest of legs, where the fit might be a bit looser, leggings cling tightly to their wearers, and the ampler the wearer the more tenuous the cling. Some women rampaging on their scooters or plowing the crowds with their strollers are clad as if they plan to jump ship at the first yoga studio they encounter. Rarely do tights get their wearers into camel-toe territory, but often they just barely avoid it. An observer disposed to the comparative evaluation of hips, thighs, calves, and plumber butts would find abundant research opportunities. Perhaps the best one can say of the fashion for leggings is that they afford the observer an aesthetic experience superior to that of sweat pants or pajamas. I have seen both of these at Disney World, and I am no better for the experience.

Reader, that’s the last of the Disney intelligence I have to offer on this round. Stay tuned for the results of another visit.

Send me an email!