There's Uncle Walt with his anthropomorphized rodent. Any other mouse you'd try to kill: call an exterminator, or break its neck with a spring-loaded trap. But at Walt Disney World, Mickey Mouse is a rock star, worshipped and adored by children and adults alike, who kiss and fondle him, seemingly unaware that mice carry disease.It's a disease called fun, and I was immersed in it for five long days. "Please," I begged by the end of our Disney World vacation, "no more fun. Stop the fun." If you're looking for a relaxing vacation, take up heroin. If you're looking for a fire hose of fun shot directly into your face, Disney World is the place for you.
Disney World (that's the one in Florida) is comprised of four parks: the Magic Kingdom, Epcot, MGM Studios, and Animal Kingdom. There are also water parks and an adult-themed park with the surprisingly un-Disneylike name of Pleasure Island, where you can go on X-rated rides like Booty and the Beast, Choke-A-Hontas, A-Ladd-In-Me, The Little Spermaid, and Peter Porn. I don't know if those are the actual rides, because we didn't go to Pleasure Island. We did go to the parks, and here's what happened.
MAGIC THE GATHERING
The first thing you notice about the Magic Kingdom (that's the original park, the one with the castle) is an "interesting cross-section of American citizens," i.e., there sure are a lot of stupid hicks. How else can you explain the existence of handwashing instructions in the bathrooms?
It's weird, because I didn't see any instructions around the park for how to breathe or how to swallow. In the stalls, there were no instructions for wiping your ass. If your customers need help washing their hands, they're going to need help wiping their ass. At least provide a pocket reference guide.
You also see a lot of shirts like this. The only thing more embarrassing than proudly wearing an MC Hammer lyric from the 80's is wearing it misspelled.
I went to Disney World as a kid, and many of the rides were still there, but revamped. The famous "It's A Small World" has been changed into "It's A Small Mind," where animatronic dolls from each country dance around their ethnic stereotype.
'Tweren't for the whiskey, Irish children would rule the world!
In France, all children dance the can-can around the Eiffel tower!
Comment dit-on "stupide" en français?
In Australia, dingos take your baby!
Our favorite attraction was probably Mickey's Philharmagic, a 3-D movie that goes for the full sensory experience by spraying you with water and blowing wind through your hair. When the candlestick from Beauty and the Beast holds up a giant 3-D apple pie, you can smell the pie. Then he accidentally lights the curtains on fire, and it's real fire. I thought they laid it a little thick on the smoke, because some elderly people were choking, but that burning beam that fell and crushed a family from Kansas looked totally real. So did the firefighters that stormed the building, screaming at everyone to get out. "I'm not animatronic!" the fire chief kept yelling, as we playfully poked him, trying to discern his metal exoskeleton. 
The worst ride was probably the Carousel of Progress, a ride that Walt Disney himself created for the 1964 World's Fair, and hasn't been updated since. It has the old-school Disney animatronics that were once state-of-the-art, but are now state-of-the-fart. Near the end of the ride, someone got stuck in the entryway -- this is not a joke -- and they had to halt the ride, which I thought was humorously ironic: we were held up on the Carousel of Progress. There's some kind of metaphor about life there.MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR
Despite my cynicism, I have to admit that Disney World truly did have some magic moments for my parents, my wife, and my four-year-old. At dusk, the Disney employees set up free games for the kids in the main park square, like hopscotch and kickball. I was really touched by that attention to detail: they weren't charging for each ball kicked, or trying to sell us a souvenir photo afterwards. They were just playing kickball.
Watching a four-year-old's face as he goes through Disney World is to experience childlike wonder. Adults are wonderless. Our wonder has wandered. Disney World is a child's wet dream. And that, of course, is a dream where the child wets the bed. It's OK. It happens to everyone. Mommy will change your sheets. No, you don't need new pajamas. They're just damp. Go back to sleep.
My own magic moment was finding a little theater tucked away at the front of the park where they were showing old Steamboat Willie cartoons. This was the original Mickey, before the Mouse sold out, the pure unadulterated genius of Wizzy Dizzy. The rest of the park was mobbed with wall-to-wall tourists, but the theater was deserted. Since I am a student of comedy, I sat down, the entire place to myself. The cartoons were brilliant. Comedy usually does not age well, but they were still as funny as ever. Donald Duck made a cameo appearance, much zanier and -- dare I say -- daffier than the uptight, anal-retentive waterfowl that he is today. Mickey and Minnie weren't the engines of a multibillion dollar marketing machine, they were just some crazy kids out to have fun.Mice. I'm sorry, I keep forgetting. They're filthy, plague-ridden, infectious mice.
But hey: fun is infectious, as we would find out on Day 2.
