Disney World on Five Bucks

Ever walk around thinking nothing can crack your cynical shell? I mean, there you are, holding your daughter’s hand through Walt Disney World—one of many curiously red-eyed parents—and the place reminds you of a toilet, kinda, because the rides are really just big colons (aren’t they?) put there for you to pass through in order to end up in the gift store on the other end. I used to come here often back when they built the damn place. Walt Disney was already dead then. (It’s true. Disney was dead and frozen by the time Disney World opened its gates in 1971.)

I went there for the first time with my fourth-grade friend, Brenda Kendrick, and her family. I had five one-dollar bills actually pinned to the inside of my pocket. Brenda’s parents had a big motor home, which they parked on a campground on Disney property, and Brenda and I slept in the bunk above the cab, with a window that looked out over the cultivated wilderness.

Decades later, I returned to the small Florida town where I lived when Brenda was my best friend, and I sat in a parked rental car outside her house, astounded that the very same motor home was parked behind the gate in her carport. I should have gone to say hello to Brenda’s parents, but I just sat there, marveling that something so big could survive from my childhood.

So I have this in my head here at Disney World, the fact that I used to come here when the place was sparkling new, and—in spite of myself—I’m a little awed at how well preserved it all is. Any corrosion is kept at bay with endless fresh paint and seamless repairs, like a cadaver at a really expensive funeral. I marvel at it—I really do—because, again, here is something so big that’s survived my childhood.

As I myself did, only to wind up back here, a parent this time, holding my daughter’s hand. It’s her turn to buy the myth, and it’s my turn to pay for it. Dollar bills are flying from my wallet like doves released at a wedding reception. I keep thinking back to the day when I came here with five bucks in my pocket. I can’t help it. I don’t think they even charged admission then; you just bought optional ticket books and used those to enter the rides.

AN ‘E’ TICKET, RED-EYE RIDE
“Five dollars. I had five dollars,” I keep thinking to myself. Back then it was the most money I’d ever been trusted to hold, hence the big safety pin that was pushed through the stack to secure the money to my shorts. Out of frugality, I attended the Hall of Presidents exhibit twice because it was free and didn’t burn up one of my precious tickets, which were calibrated in value from A to E.

Then, an E-ticket meant a really good ride at Disney. Now you use e-tickets to gain access to an airplane. Two days ago, I did just that. Onboard, I fibbed to my kid that the bloody-faced bombing victim pictured in Newsweek was really just wearing a scary mask. In actuality, the lady was crying out in anguish amidst a hell created by humans. But my daughter doesn’t need to know that, not on her way to Disney World.

But I know it. It’s on my mind as my girl and I walk out of another ride into the gift pit at the other end, and for some reason there’s a Jiminy Cricket statue encased in glass right there in my way. My daughter runs to it and points. “Look, Jiminy Cricket,” she says, and I wonder how the hell does she know Jiminy Cricket? Jiminy Cricket goes way back even before my time, back even before there was a Disney World or -land, and here he is, encased in glass like an artifact.

“Yes, look at that,” I smirk. And I was all set to let out a smarmy laugh, when all of a sudden a sob escaped instead. A sob, just as wet and stupid as it sounds.

Jesus God, I guess I must have actually bought the myth again, and I must have been so marveled to see it there, so perfectly preserved, surviving inside me all these years with five dollars pinned to the inside of its pocket. So this explains it—why many parents were walking around red-eyed at Disney World. Thank God there was a bench nearby, which is where I sat, hoping nobody would notice me behind Jiminy Cricket, covering my mouth with my hand.