Heat Wave

Whose idea was it to put all of these theme parks in a state that is so terribly, unbearably hot?  Seriously, Disney! The heat and the humidity today almost destroyed my will to live.

It's kind of my fault, though. We decided to have a lazy day and enter the parks around 2pm instead of rushing to the gate at opening time. Mistake! We ended up arriving at the hottest, most crowded time of the day. It was in the 90s, and the trek from the parking lot to the front gate was miserable. We ended up parked in the farthest lot possible, and it took forever to get to the entrance of the park.

The parking lots are seperated from the park by a huge distance, and you have to take a monorail or a ferry boat to get to the entrance itself. By the time we surfed the crowds in the 90+ degree heat all the way to the front gate, I felt like I wanted to curl up in a ball underneath a bench and take a nap. So, we did the only thing we could to keep our sanity until the heat died down: We found as many air-conditioned shows as possible, and sat through them all... No matter how lame. (This means you, Country Bear Jamboree.)

One of the shows we caught to keep our internal organs from boiling into a liquid was "The Enchanted Tiki Room." I remember this show fondly from when I was a kid. I was actually a little disappointed to see that Disney had updated it and changed its original Polynesian charm a bit. Instead of old-fashioned tiki songs and Hawaiian-sounding tunes, the talking robot birds in the show did some sort of weird 80's party rock cover song, and busted out the worst rap song I've ever heard outside of Vanilla Ice's  "Go Ninja Go." Ick. Not exactly a hip update.

On the plus side, the shows were relatively uncrowded and had the a/c cranked waaay up. And they were kind of charming in an old-school way. The best of the shows by far was the Hall of Presidents, where they combined a short film on the history of America with a troupe of very realistic animitronic  president-bots. Each president was represented, and there was a "roll call" at the end where they were all introduced by name. Weirdly, some guy in our theater audience vehemently booed Millard Fillmore. Erin swore that during the role call, robo-Bill Clintion got bored and checked his watch.

Once we all managed to cool down and hydrate ourselves, we actually ended up having a great time. We rode Big Thunder Mountain Railroad with Frankie, and she loved it so much that she wanted to get right back on it again. So we did. We also rode Pirates of the Caribbean and The Haunted Mansion. I was a little afraid that Frankie would be spooked by those two rides, but she ended up loving them. Once she realized that all the ghosts inside The Haunted Mansion were all make-believe, she really got a kick out of all of the special effects. All the way out of the ride, she skipped along yelling “Ooooooooo…! I’m spoooooky!”


One thing that is starting to drive me a little crazy is the number of people that insist on taking pictures while *inside* the dark rides at The Magic Kingdom. Pirates and The Haunted Mansion are both indoor rides, and a lot of the spooky fun comes from the pitch-black environment you’re travelling through. When some picture-happy tourist insists on snapping a photo of absolutely everything inside the ride, the illusion is spoiled. They’re just ruining the fun for everyone. (And making me mad.)

Ok. End rant.

Heat and possible dehydation aside, it was a really fun afternoon at The Magic Kingdom. We’ll probably avoid the parks at midday from now on, but I sitll had a great time. Frankie, especially, was a real trooper. (She even sat through the Hall of Presidents show without a single complaint.) Actually, all of the Coles were troopers. There was an hour-long period of time where the only sentence we said to each other, over and over, was “Uuuuuuuugh…I’m so hot!” But no one got cranky. The magic of the mouse won us over.