Slipping a Mickey

I just got back from Disney World. Why would a sane adult willingly visit a child-infested theme park, you ask? There’s no Ez Jr. or li’l Ezzette running around, which would be the first obvious reason. And I didn’t get married and decide I wanted the cheesiest honeymoon south of the Poconos, which would be the second reason. Nope, I just wanted to go on some cool rides. As it turns out, that’s the worst reason you could have for going to Disney World. If you want to experience gut-wrenching G-forces and involuntary screams of terror while crammed into a rubbery, vomit-stained seat, Boston’s many fine cabbies would be happy to punch your ticket on the Storrow Drive Heart Attaxi. If you want to take a spin on the Aerosmith Rock ’n’ Roller Coaster at MGM Studios, however, I have some advice: wear comfortable shoes.

I assume Kofi Annan hasn’t heard about Disney’s line-routing system, which flouts Geneva Convention prohibitions against psychological torture. I’m surprised I didn’t see any Taliban prisoners being interrogated while waiting in line for the Rock ’n’ Roller Coaster. You move down to one end of the line, get within feet of the ride’s entrance, then turn the corner and plod back to the other end, somewhere near Jacksonville. This process is repeated about 80 times. The upshot is, if the Swedish Bikini Team is in line somewhere in front of you, then you get to check them out every time they go past in the opposite direction. Of course, this being Disney World, the line looked like a bunch of Orcs that had escaped from Middle Earth. You could find a more attractive crowd in an Ozarks strip club. For example, the couple behind us was passing the time by popping each other’s zits. I’m not kidding. This guy’s girlfriend was squeezing his zits and plucking hairs out of his face, and because of the twisting line I kept seeing them every two minutes. I’m not normally rude to strangers, but these people needed to know that this wasn’t what I had in mind when the tram driver in the parking lot told me to have a magical day. “How many more people are they gonna squeeze in this place?” I said loudly as we passed the offending couple. “This ride’s gonna burst!” They both gave me dirty looks but didn’t relent. I don’t even want to think about what they must do when they’re not surrounded by hundreds of people. It probably involves gerbils and floor wax.

The Rock ’n’ Roller Coaster was worth waiting in line for an hour, if for no other reason than it sped me away from the gruesome Line Trolls for a minute or so. One of the only conscious thoughts in my head as we looped around the track was, “I’ve got to scream a little deeper. I sound like a girl.” Then it was off to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Disappointment. This was supposed to be a three-scene act on giant sets with lots of stunts, but before the show, a friendly man with a microphone told us he had good news: The first set was broken and thus couldn’t roll out of the way to reveal sets two and three, so we wouldn’t get to see the final two scenes. I guess I should just be glad he didn’t have bad news, because then I’d probably have caught meningitis from my seat.

The first act was certainly entertaining, with a Harrison Ford stunt-double dodging spears, flames and the famous giant rolling boulder, but the ending was extremely anticlimactic. Indiana got up after the boulder smooshed him and that was it. With that kind of unfulfilled expectation, the boulder should have been blue. Everyone sat there digesting their disappointment before quietly shuffling away. I wanted to scream, “Wally World’s closed? You can’t close Wally World...The moose says your set is broken, I say it works.” But by then I was busy fantasizing about sitting someplace dark with a beer and some Buffalo wings and a football game on TV. Someplace that wasn’t built to resemble a 19th-century trading post with fiberglass rocks outside, which ruled out the greater Orlando area.

Now, as I sit in Boston writing this, the temperature is 2 degrees. There’s an overturned coffee on the sidewalk outside my building that I’ll be stepping over until March. And waiting in line for a roller coaster while drinking a beer in 80-degree weather doesn’t sound so bad. ∂