I've been to Disney World a lot. Like a lot, a lot. Enough times, at least, to be having a hard time coming up with an accurate count right now. Like, maybe five or six times? (Fuck you, I'm not good at math.)
The individual trips are all starting to blur together. I think that's less a commentary on my experiences at Disney World and more just a simple fact of aging. Not that I'm losing my mind (which is a separate and debatable point), but more that the sheer accumulation of personal history forces everything into compression. All the sharp corners and demarcation lines compound together and what's left is one single, protracted recollection, with no clear beginnings or endings. What's worse, I have a writer's mind - and not a journalist's mind, but a storyteller's mind, one prone to letting history lose all of its firmness so I reshape it into whatever the hell I want it to be.
So it's all pretty suspect.
But some things you remember. I'll always remember the feeling of walking out of the airport in Orlando - just the feeling of the air. Warm and heavy. The breeze in Orlando always felt so much more tangible than anywhere else. Especially at night, when the temperature started to drop and the air became saturated like an errant mist.
I remember the buses - the buses in the morning, that slow trickle, boys and girls with wide eyes and twitchy paws, parents in new shorts and stiff ballcaps; and the buses at night, the pressed crowd, the darkness, the slow exhale and the quiet...that satisfied quiet.
I remember churros, I remember Space Mountain, I even remember the lines at the corner of Snow White's strained smile...but mostly I remember my sister ralphing her brains out in the Magic Kingdom.
There are a lot of good reasons why this memory stands out to me.
Firstly, it was something of an anomaly. I have known my sister for as long as I have known anything and so of course I have seen her in various states of illness, but I have not often seen her engage in such a thorough archaeological exploration into the recent past of her intestinal tract. In fact, I suppose I've been lucky in that way. Outside of college, I've ridden shotgun on less than a handful of secondhand vomitings. So they still retain their magic to me.
Secondly, although it was horrifying at the time (in the way that any loved one suddenly hitting 9.5 on the Exorcist Scale would be), there was something oddly artistic about the event. I'm not sure what it was. It may have been the way the low sun cast orange streaks across the smooth cobblestones. It may have been the strange tableau of a beautiful young woman expunging the liquefied remains of a chicken sandwich in the midst of a cartoon wonderland. Part of it was surely her posture, because there is simply no reasonable way to throw up in a dignified manner, with no bucket and no cover, in the middle of a busy street, while a college intern in a giant chipmunk costume watches on. So she stood, feet planted square, legs straight, torso leaning forward at a 45 degree angle, arms straight out to the side like those of a scarecrow. After the fact I realized that she did this to avoid puking all over herself, but at the time I thought she looked rather like Christ on the cross...if, you know, Jesus had had that kind of flu that makes you blow chunks like a malfunctioning sausage grinder.
Thirdly, and maybe most importantly, Mickey just can't stand the sight of his children suffering.
You see, there are many, many employees working in Disney World. Most of them wear silly-ass costumes or sell taffy or both. But there are a few special polo-shirt and walkie-talkie types who roam the grounds, presumably looking for serial assholes and stray pukers.
A lady in a yellow coat came to the rescue. First, my sister was provided a place to finish throwing up that wasn't the middle of the street. Then THE MAGIC HAPPENED.
Because Disney World cares about the health of its guests (and also because there is a more than slight chance that my sister was poisoned by an $8 chicken sandwich at Disney World) we were escorted to the special first aid section of the Magic Kingdom, which required a golf cart ride through the COMPLETELY NON-MAGICAL BACKLOTS OF DISNEY WORLD.
Severed Goofy heads rolled across the road like polyester tumbleweeds. Cracked and faded log flumes from Splash Mountain sat in a ragged heap. Animatronic parrots gibbered senselessly to themselves. An armless pirate of the Caribbean here, a rigid, eye-less pile of puppets from It's a Small World there.
It was post-apocalyptic Disney World - and it WAS AWESOME. It was like the Disney Channel version of The Road Warrior. I loved it. I would have paid to just play in the wasteland with all the neat broken stuff.
Mostly it was just a reminder of how hard Disney works to hide those elements of reality - age and decay - from park visitors. Which is why, when you give yourself up to it, it's such an engaging experience.
And which is why, I think, we went back so often. Because ultimately there's a depth of experience there you can't get anywhere else.
That or the churros. God DAMN I love a good churro.