Dizzyworld Diaries, Part 2

dr. elsewhere here

It’s always hard to leave family, especially the kiddies. These three are not only really good children (they have their moments, but who doesn’t?), but they are adorably affectionate and personable and exceptionally bright.

So leaving them was really really hard.

But not so hard to leave Dizzyworld.

Feeling veritably saturated with consumer enticements and imperatives, I am. Not only should I now feel compelled to return to the Magic of Disney, but I should join the Vacation Club! Better yet, sign up for a Magic Cruise! Sail to the Bahamas and Beyond! Return fully bronzed and bilked, ready to face my tired and oh-so normal workaday world refreshed and reprogrammed, comforted in the knowledge that life can always be temporarily traded in for that regular dose of delusion and deception. Courtesy of the Maestro of Magic himself!

It seems fitting that Walt so eagerly produced propaganda for the US during WWII, or that Nazi propagandist Goebbels fashioned his craft after American advertising.

So, without one pang of regret – for either having so much fun or for having no qualms to leave it behind – I headed toward Orlando’s airport and home. Courtesy of Dizzyworld, of course.
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Several things struck me on this trip, as it gave me ample opportunities to people-watch. Some of these observations I would never have guessed, but most of them were as predictable as sunrise.

As would be expected, the service folk were almost invariably of color. The lower the job visibility or pleasantness, the more likely this was true. There were so many folks serving our needs, my niece referred to them as our “servants.” And everyone was extremely nice and very very helpful. This was, after all, Happiness central. So much so, that it quickly gave me the silent creeps, like you get when you know something is just too good to be true, yet it’s sooo good.

The first image that came to mind was of the film Pleasantville, that provocative little put-down of the very Fifties American dream that Disney and his fantasies represent. The second image, though, is decidedly more menacing, as it comes from a segment of Twilight Zone. This particular segment showed a Michael Rennie-type alien courting earthlings for mutual knowledge and understanding by encouraging visits to their galaxy through their superior trans-galactic spaceships. The protagonist was skeptical, speaking to nothing more than a bad feeling he had about the whole enterprise, but his co-worker was not so suspicious. Being linguists, they had been charged with the translation of the book these characters had brought along with them, entitled To Serve Man.

You can likely guess the punchline, of you don’t already know the show itself. The protagonist finally gives in to his curiosity and heads for a trip to the wherever. However, as he is about to board the spaceship, his co-worker races up to the gate to inform him that the code of the text has been broken; it’s a cookbook!

Similarly, Dizzyworld is the epitome of the corporate scheme to lull us all into blind and dumb hedonistic consumerism, visions of thrill rides and stuffed Goofy dogs dance in our heads to the utter exclusion of facts, reality, or anything resembling real thought or even genuine curiosity.

Unlike reality, and consistent with our fondest fantasies, the place runs like a well-oiled machine, at least when viewed in the abstract. It’s a vast, huge complex of amusement parks – Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Adventureland, etc. – as well as numerous resort villages, all conveniently connected with a superbly managed transport system that will get you anywhere you need to go. Within the complex, of course, as well as to and from.

And the Company does not miss a single opportunity to pitch and sell, whether it’s other parks within the complex, or the complex itself while transiting to and from. Every square inch of property – be it land or bus or boat – is fair game for selling and pitching. What land is not groomed within an inch of its life is rented out to shops and restaurants and kiosks to push every legal nonprescription drug known to modern man, from ice cream and French fries to T-shirts and keychains. The vendors don’t need to do any hawking; this service is provided by the father company in the form of bigger than life cartoon cutouts. Mickey’s very presence in the general vicinity - hell, just the promise of his presence - is enough to insure a full house and long lines at both entrance and checkout.

When viewed in the specific, Happiness Central’s smooth operations can give off that faint hint of a toy train transformer about to fry. The heat; Florida is brutal six to seven months out of the year. The last week of official summer, and it was 90, degrees and humidity. Not pleasant. The lines; unless you figure out how to avoid them, they are unavoidable. And sometimes, even when you do figure out the tricks, they’re unavoidable. The redundancy; the rides can be essentially reduced to three types, of which Dumbo, Splash Mountain, and Pirates of the Carribean are the examples. These are duplicated in various forms throughout and across all parks, just dressed up differently to match the particular subtheme.

And then there are the people. They all appear economically comfortable – not rich, definitely not poor – but physically uncomfortable. That is to say, the overweight were well-represented. And well-fortified. The food was abundant and everywhere, with even the token veggie offerings (i.e., lots of potatoes and green beans). But of course, it all had that Wal-Mart hard-sell pre-fab feel to it, the culinary equivalent of cardboard covered in glitter and sequins.

And then there is the pressure to do it all and have fun doing it all. In the course of racing from one site to another (like racing the equivalent of four city blocks in Wal-Mart to get nails at one end and a hammer at the other), one inevitably overhears lots of kids having world class meltdowns, not to mention fathers screaming at screaming kids, mothers screaming at screaming kids, screaming kids screaming at their parents, and parents screaming at each other. Add to this mix the real fear of getting lost, of losing your group, and – worst of all – losing your kids, and the tensions can run pretty high. In the heat and humidity. And the rapidly draining bank accounts.

Are we having fun yet?

Most of the individuals I actually encountered were very nice and cheerful, albeit very hot and sweaty. And most of those I actually encountered seemed good-humored and amused by the whole affair. But here’s the rub; I actually encountered hardly anyone at all. All encounters were with "the help," the bus drivers and ticket takers and waitrons and cashiers. Truth is, there was no real interaction between the actual “citizens” of this fabricated community; we were all tourists. Instead there was just an odd sense of isolation glazed over with a fluffy coating of fun. Happiness Central. But nobody knows your name.

Except your group or partner or family members who make up your little happiness bubble. That may be all this American adventure that is Disneyworld pretends (hm…) to be about, a place where families can have fun together, to quote Walt. But the end result only galvanizes the unreality of it all. I quite honestly have not ever felt that isolated when I visited foreign countries, even ones where the language was entirely mysterious to me. Again, tourists all. I simply don’t know what to make of that.

But, I will give Walt this much: I did have a wonderful, glorious, fun and perfectly happy time with my family. Oh I have a vague recollection of a meltdown or two, maybe a tense moment or even a short word. But my sister in law is a master at organization and had the whole thing perfectly arranged, with virtually all kinks accounted for, if not eliminated. My brother just always rises to the occasion and jumps to rescue, no matter what, but most especially to make everything a blast. And their kids; geez, their kids were just so far and away better entertainment than Disney, I cannot even begin to tell you.

Well, I'll try. Here’s a quick story; indulge me. The very last evening, right after dinner with Pluto and Chip (or was it Dale?) and Mickey, at a revolving restaurant that of course distracted the dickens out of my 4 year old nephew, we stopped at the goofiest fountain I think I’ve ever seen. It is hard to describe, but picture a series of squares like raised flower beds, about knee-high, built of concrete, but each containing not flowers but four circles about the diameter of a beach ball.

This is the way the fountain works. From a circle in the first box at the far end, a very finely articulated plume of water, in fact a tube of water about an inch in diameter, shoots an arc into a second circle, which then shoots another arc into another circle, and so it goes, around the set of circles until one plume arcs out of the box into a circle in the next box, and so it goes. The resulting effect appears to be one plume of water jumping from circle to circle and then from one box to another.

So my nephew and his 7 year old sister (in swimsuits their clever mom had packed for the occasion) could not resist finding the spot that would drench them with each great arc leaping from one square to the next. They squealed with delight every time they got nailed, oblivious to the fact that they were the brunt of the perfect seltzer bottle routine but loving every minute of it. The Marx Brothers would have been proud.

They then figured out that he could stand at the edge of the departure box and she at the arriving box and both get handily splattered in rapid succession. So we now have slapstick squared, and they are just screeching in ecstasy and getting soaked and nearly losing their breath they’re laughing so hard. It was a purely hysterical scene, a couple of times the water actually knocking them off their feet. All this uproarious hilarity soon drew a crowd, and everybody was laughing out loud, I’m coaching the kids to move more to the left more to the right, dad’s madly video taping, and mom’s trying to keep baby from joining in the melee. Whew; the funnest twenty minutes of recent years, I have to say.

And that brief twenty minutes was worth all of it, the airport madness, the Dizzyworld weirdness, the Florida steambath. My flesh and blood making delightfully fun fools of themselves by having so much uncontrollable fun they could hardly contain themselves, so much fun they could hardly care about playing the fools.

Definitely my flesh and blood.

I already miss ‘em, somethin’ fierce.