The Den

A little less than two weeks ago I flew out of Oakland Airport headed for one of the few places on earth I've really never wanted to go in my adult life. Now that I've been back for five days, I'm happy to report that Walt Disney World in Florida was not nearly as unpleasant for me as I'd feared. Its gonna take me a while to get my impressions all written down, so I'll do it in chunks. I already have the photos online , but I haven't added labels or captions to them yet, so I'll work on that soon too.  

If you have Google Earth here's a KML file with several landmarks so you can get an idea how the place is laid out. Just download the file, and if it doesn't automatically open Google Earth, double-clicking it should do it. If you don't have Google Earth go get it , or you can go to the Google Maps website  using these links and coordinates:

- Our room: 28.38977906224337, -81.5373422938582
- The Castle in the Magic Kingdom: 28.41937584025702, -81.58129262237632
- The Spaceship Earth ball at Epcot: 28.37825384681142, -81.55240606114376
- The Animal Kingdom Safari ride through the African Savannah:  28.36329221709204, -81.59379331531412   
- Downtown Disney: 28.36938333115802, -81.51986616628994  

I knew all along that there would be plenty of enjoyable things while I was at Disney Word, as well as plenty of things that would make me cringe and want to run away to be alone on a mountaintop somewhere. Both were true, but the balance was much more towards the pleasant than I expected.   As I figured, the *best* part of it was being with my wonderful 5 year-old niece Bethany, who I love dearly and miss greatly since she lives in Vermont and I only see her a couple times a year at most. Being with her as she experienced the "Wonderful World of Disney" in person and was one of the happiest children on earth - that was spectacular.

For those who don't know the backstory, this trip was a family outing, planned by my mom and her boyfriend for over a year. I originally agreed to go as a gift to my mom, since she was putting so much into this. I knew my presence there would mean a lot to her, even though my initial thought was not all that optimistic. She'd arranged some package deals for us all, staying in one of the hotels in the resort with passes to the theme parks and several events through the week. "All of us" was thirteen people: mom and Wayne (her boyfriend), Wayne's son & daughter-in-law, Wayne's daughter & son-in-law & their 3 kids (16, 12, & 10), my sister & brother-in-law & niece, and myself.

My fears of unpleasantness were mostly related to two things: firstly, proximity to, and immersion in a very glitzy, commercial, consumerist, plasticy-fake environment full of flashy mainstream WOW with little connection to reality or things or real value. (Oh, and Florida itself as a destination has never really appealed much to me either.) Secondly, the inevitable annoyance & frustration of herding around, organizing, & coordinating a group of 13 people of varying ages, backgrounds, and interests in such an environment. Neither of these things turned out to be as intense as I expected.

I arrived in Orlando five hours later than originally planned, at about 9pm EST. The delay was due to my volunteering to get bumped from my overbooked flight from Denver to Orlando, and my final journey taking from Denver to Chicago before going on to Orlando. The upside of that was a decent chunk of change towards future flights on Southwest Airlines. The well-oiled Disney-package-plan machine kicks in as soon as you get to the Airport. Just go to the Disney Magical Express counter and you'll be shown to a bus that will take you to your resort room. Weeks before, they sent you special luggage tags, so your checked bags will be retrieved from the airport for you and delivered to your room a couple hours later. Since my one checked bag arrived on the original flight I was bumped from, it was already in the room when I got there.

I shared a room in the Port Orleans Resort - Riverside with my sister, her husband, and my niece. The rest of the group was in the two adjacent rooms. The next morning when we got up, I realized part of why my first fear was not as big a problem as it could have been.  I had drastically underestimated the size of the Disney World property and the distances between "the resort" and the theme parks. The place is HUGE - 47 sq. miles, bigger than the city of San Francisco. Much of it is semi-protected wetland and forested. There isn't "a" resort, there are something like 20 resorts, and ours was about 5 miles away from the Magic Kingdom, and 3 miles away from Epcot. So the place really was quite separate from the noise and bustle of the parks, it was pretty well shaded by lots of trees, and had a "river" and some swampy areas.

Of course, Disney wants you to have easy access to all the parks from all the resorts. So naturally they have their own bus system that connects everything, as well as various kinds of boating transport when there are waterways available, and there are many. And don't forget the monorail system that connects two of the resorts to the Magic Kingdom and Epcot. Getting around wasn't horribly difficult, and the bus service was no worse than that in most cities, in fact it was better than many!

Fortunately the herding of our 13 people was not much of an issue - there was only one event all week that we were all booked into as a group: a "luau" on the second night at the Polynesian Resort across the lake from the Magic Kingdom. The rest of the time everyone was free to be on their own and do whatever. I spent the whole week with my sister, niece, and brother in law, and most of the time my mom & Wayne were hanging out with us too. I rarely saw much of the rest of the group.

Thats all I have time for writing at the moment, I'll pick it up again soon (within a week, I promise) to let you know how the week unfolded.