Relay: 30 Hours In Fantasyland
Nearing the end of a hard winter with little in the budget for luxuries, my husband and I decided to take the family on a day-and-a-half side trip to Disney World while visiting my grandmother in Florida.
I was leery of it and practically begged my husband to put it out of his mind until another time, and then I caved. Ever budget-conscious, I figured we’d just have to bite the bullet, get out the plastic, and nurse the spending hangover later.
Our 30-hour whirlwind tour was a splurge, to be sure. I hadn’t been to Disney since I was in my 20s, but I had read a lot in advance this time around to get the lay of the land and make the most of our brief time there. Swimming? Forget about it. We could swim another day. Sleep in? No way. We would do all the free things like ride the monorail and the boats shuttling visitors to and from the hotels in the Magic Kingdom on day one, then arrive at the gates of the Magic Kingdom by 9 a.m. sharp on day two so as not to waste a minute of our precious day in the park.
I expected everything to be expensive and for every ride to dump us straight into a gift shop, where we would watch the dollars fly from our wallets like Tinkerbell on a flight through Neverland. Turns out, I was pleasantly surprised. An ice cream cone in New Fantasyland costs less than one on Newtown Lane. Same goes for a toy in Adventureland. In fact, two hours at the beloved Sag Harbor carnival cost me more per hour last summer than 30 at Disney World, not that I’m about to forgo that August ritual.
I guess when you already live in Fantasyland, it’s hard to be shocked by the price of cotton candy. It was an interesting reality check in a land of make-believe.
Disney World offers a glimpse of the future that is both very pleasant and a tad unsettling. A Magic Band lets you wear all your details on your wrist, kind of like microchipping, but less invasive. The pluses: no need to carry a wallet, a room key, a park pass; and if your kids get lost, I imagine a Disney “cast member” could just scan their Magic Bands to find Mom or Dad’s cellphone number and have you come and collect them by the entrance to the Country Bear Jamboree. I found myself wishing we had something similar when we were in Manhattan with the kids two weeks ago. Maybe we should just have them microchipped like a dog or cat. . . . Not.
The minuses: shades of Big Brother, but isn’t that the world we live in today anyway? Orwell might have been surprised to find that we have largely rushed willingly into the age of constant surveillance, happy for its conveniences and mostly uninterested in its repercussions. Or maybe he wouldn’t.
Sometimes you just want easy. Is that so wrong?
On that front, Disney’s FastPass+ is a stroke of genius, too. Instead of waiting on a line for like 280 minutes, it allows visitors to the park to reserve most rides and attractions, if available, in hourlong windows and avoid the worst of the lines. Everything should have a FastPass.
I’ve gotten softer as I’ve aged. Once upon a time, I would get on a plane with a vague itinerary, a ton of advance reading, and a reservation for only my first night of lodging. The rest would fall into place, or it wouldn’t, though it almost always did, even in the days before the Internet.
I was younger and more resilient. Nothing felt better than having nowhere to be and all day to get there, and I would explore from near sunup to sundown to the point of exhaustion and the consternation of my travel companions. I could recover from an eight-hour camel ride and cold night on the desert ground more quickly, if only because I liked the sound of it so much.
A walk through Cinderella’s Castle doesn’t compare to visiting a Mayan pyramid in Guatemala or arriving in an ancient Rajasthani fortress as the sun rises. Those are pleasures I’ll share with my kids when they’re older. For now, I’m okay with Frontierland and the Animal Kingdom Lodge, with pixie dust and kid-size sinks so I don’t have to lift my little ones up to wash their hands. Easy is nice. And so are rides.
Carissa Katz, The Star’s managing editor, has continued to find her way around Disney World from afar.