The Happiest Morgue on Earth

It’s been stupid hot here, as you all know, becuase I keep harping on that. S T U P I D H O T.

So tempers are frayed, folks aren’t venturing out of their A/C lairs and the weatherman looks cool as a cucumber. They live for this. At least we have no Tsunami here on the East Coast. Yet.

I heard this on the radio this morning. Most disturbingly incongruous sentence in this whole episode is, “Paramedics tried to revive him, but he died at Celebration Hospital.”

It’s a terrible tragedy – but what seems absolutely obscene to me is that the ride has reopened. Doesn’t that show a tremendous lack of respect for the family of this child?

My heart bleeds for this family. I just checked the measure marks on the wall and both Hannah and Max were over 44″ when they were 4. It seems there should be some other kind of screening for a ride that’s this dangerous.

I haven’t been to Disney World / Epcot since the early 90’s when I went on a lark while on a single-woman’s perfect FL vacation. I rented a tiny cabin with a hammock in the Keys, went snorkling every day and ate shrimp every night with some good, cold beer. Perfect. One day I got a bee in my bonnet about going up to Disney World. I couldn’t decide between DW and Epcot, so I took a gamble on Epcot. To say I was disappointed would be mild. I felt as though I were paying $39 to be subjected to infomertial after infomertial. Every line, every place we were ‘held captive’, every open space was inhabited by an impossible to ignore ad. Absolutely pathetic.

On the “World of Imagination” ride they snapped photos of everyone, then showed those photos to the group as the last leg of the ride. It’s a well known fact that everyone LOVES to see themselves sweating and screaming and taken by surprise. Well, not me. That kind of sealed my strong dislike for DW.

I happened to be dressed very simply that day in a long-ish black skirt and dark blue long sleeved shirt (yes, inappropriate, but I was an artsy grad student…) I had my hair tied in a black scarf and looked rather severe. It also just so happened that my most recent drivers license was a West Virginia ‘non photo id’ because I’d renewed out of state. By combining these two incongruous details, I was able to make the DW folks sweat a bit.

I went to the customer service kiosk (I forget what it was called – guest happiness center or something like that) and told them, tearfully, that I belonged to a religious group in WV who did not believe in being photographed. I showed them my drivers’ license and they apologized for traumatizing me with that hideous photo.

– “What can we do?” they asked, in perfect automaton we-will-make-this-better speak.

I asked if I could get a refund. No problem! And they even let me finish up the day at DW to ride a few rides with no magnified photo surprises flashed in front of me like a demon I-Max movie.

And that, dear friends, is why we go to Cedar Point – where (among other things) you can decide if you want to see pictures of yourself on rides.