Else what's a heaven for?

I've been to Disney at least 4 times as an adult, once even with my parents, but this time was different, both because I had more time there and because I was there with an 8 year old. It was the longest the three of us have spent together: the prior record was a weekend + a night when Jon was convalescing.

Jon was terrified of how busy the parks would be bc it was NYC schools' spring break. Actually, I thought there were more kids there bc their band was playing than from NYC. I'll have to check with my mum at some point, bc I'm sure they would've noticed, but I thought it was more Southerners and Hispanics in the park than anything else: half the families around us were speaking Spanish. Which makes sense: these are the people having children in America. Demography has arrived.

I believe Lucky had a good time, although he wasn't particularly effusive. On the one hand, he was completely uninterested in, say, the games at the end of the Animation exhibit at MGM -- because he has better games on his handheld device. On the other hand, his favorite part of the trip was Legoland, "because it allowed him to be more creative." What he means is, it was a less packaged experience: the speedway at Legoland doesn't have a track, so you can have a multi-kid pile-up, whereas at Tomorrowland, all you really have is a pedal. It must be really hard designing new rides for kids who have everything except experience.

On Julian's suggestion, we watched the Walt Disney story at MGM, which I found illuminating in 2 ways. There's footage of Walt talking about how he'd take his daughters out every weekend, but the places he went were dirty and/or boring for adults, that with Disneyland, he wanted to create somewhere for the whole family. I still haven't figured out why Legoland was mindnumbingly boring for the adults, compared to say the Magic Kingdom. I found the rides repetitive, especially since they didn't describe them on the map, so you had to guess, based on the pictures, what it might be. The shows are dumbed down: the stunts in the waterski show were much less spectacular than when I went to Cypress Gardens as a kid and the humor was all pratfalls.

The other interesting takeaway from the movie was looking around the parks and realizing they are a tribute to the hodgepodge that was Walt's interests. I don't remember why he had a break in his studio's work due to WW2, but he talked about getting into the live action stuff. I see Animal Kingdom as the successor to the Jungle Cruise, which itself was born of Disney's True Life Adventures. World Showcase is a direct descendent of Disney's World's Fair pavilions.

Some other personal highlights from the trip:

• Lucky was up since 4:30am on Friday, he'd been unimpressed by the Animation exhibit, and he'd just been rained on - but when the princes and princesses came out on the boat during Fantasmic, I caught him waving. d'awww...
  
• the looks of fierce concentration on Jon and my faces as we played Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin: totally worth $45 to get those images.
  
• I finally got to see Mickey's Philharmagic: it might be another Disney movie mashup using the same tech as Muppetvision 3D, but I still loved it.
  
• Wearing mouse ears and braids every day.
  
• Dancing to the Animal Kingdom parade with my favorite dancing partner.
  
• Lucky stealing my math book as we waited for the parade to start. And listening to him earnestly tell me (and everyone else) that physics is the only science worth studying.
  
• Dinner at Jiko was so very interesting. yum.
  
• We may've missed the water parks bc it was too cold, but spending two whole days at EPCOT reminded why we used to spend weeks in that park.
  
• quizzing Lucky on what he knows about American history, which was long on NYC history and African-American history, short on anything useful. His biggest problem is that he remembers names and what they are associated with, but not how, leading him to tell us that Frederick Douglass started slavery and it ended with Martin Luther King's death. Best moment?
  Lucky: So wait, who started slavery?
  Jon: Lyndon Johnson, with the Great Society.
  *Kate falls down laughing*
  
• I'm really glad we went on the Behind the Seeds tour.
  
• Sharing my EPCOT favorites with my beloved, from the Japanese candymaker to Impressions de France to the corny jokes of the British street performers. 14yo me couldn't've dreamed of a better happily ever after.