Putting the Magic in the Magic Kingdom

Charles the Magician and I embarked to the Magic Kingdom early Friday morning. I slept on the way up, and was feeling slightly better by the time we got off the bus an hour later. But really, there’s no better panacea than the sights and smells of Main Street USA. We didn’t really have a plan, but just made our way to Cinderella’s Castle. We were walking over to Tomorrowland when I heard my name, and who should appear behind a Mickey and Minnie topiary than my friend Chris Walsh. He and a friend were spending the week at the park, so the four of us walked back to the castle to watch “Cinderellabration,” the coronation of Cinderella. Chris and his friend then left for Splash Mountain and Charles and I made our way to Space Mountain.

I should take a minute to say if you ever have the chance to go to Disney World with a magician, grab it. It’s an entirely different experience. Charles spent a lot of our time pointing out when magic tricks were going to happen, or bemoan the fact that Disney had the rights to the Smellitzer, which would be perfect for a trick he is working on. I left feeling like I had gotten a behind the scenes tour.

I hadn’t been to Disney World in fifteen years, and even then I think I spent most of the time in Epcot and MGM, so I was happy to see how much had changed and how much had stayed exactly the same. The best ride we went on was the Buzz Lightyear ride, a combination of a ride and video game where you got to shoot things. We went on twice, since the first time my score was embarrassingly low.

In a lot of ways, Disney World is a prime example of how you can’t go home again. All of the rides that I remembered as favorites didn’t really hold up twenty years later. It’s a Small World felt interminably long, Space Mountain made me think I was going to have permanent neck problems, and I just felt creepy going on the Snow White by myself. The ride to Peter Pan’s Flight was too long, so my memory of that was held intact, but the fact that Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride has been replaced by a Winnie the Pooh ride made me want to write a scathing letter to Roy Disney. However, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Haunted Mansion, Thunder Railroad, and Splash Mountain all were excellent. And I would go back in a heartbeat.

Our day ended with us getting embroidered ears and taking pictures with as many characters as possible. We got Geppetto, Friar Tuck, and the Mayor, so I think we did pretty well for ourselves all things considered.