There was a spirit of joy and connection in many parts of Disney World. Many of the workers there seem to love their work and many work hard to infuse a sense of joy and connection into the parks. I felt it a number of times all week. Sometimes, as in Animal Kingdom’s Asia, dancers appear and pull in people from the crowd. I loved the Bollywood dancers, and even more, the joy on the faces of the people who opened themselves up and joined in.
Americans seem a grim and joyless people to me sometimes – they spend too much time on Facebook posting and reading warnings. At Disney World I think they permit themselves to loosen up, and that is a testament to the place.
If you are coming to Disney World or thinking about it, you need to understand the new realities of the place, not just the hype and magic-talk. Walt Disney was a creative genius who used his imagination to make a lot of money. He was good at stirring young souls and he was good at making money.
Every where you go in Disney World, you are encouraged to have a “Magical Day.” It is very possible to have such a day there, but don’t take it for granted any longer. It takes a lot of money, careful planning, and skill at accessing new technologies that are not as simple as they seem.
Disney World is not run by Walt Disney or any single individual now. It is not driven by the imagination of a genius. It is a giant corporation run by corporate people who are, like most corporate people, obsessed primarily with making money.
There is a lot of magic still in Disney World but almost all of it came from Disney himself, whose name is evoked here more than Jesus Christ is in the Catholic Church. His name is on every bus, train, ride, pin, button, doll and toy, hotel and restaurant. He was a sorcerer and a mystic, magic came naturally to him.
I’ve been to Disney World a dozen times in the past decade or so, and the place has grown and prospered beyond my imagination, and perhaps beyond Disney’s. The biggest change I have seen is the growth of the Stand By world there, a new class system in the country’s most beloved destination.
It is not any longer an egalitarian place where everyone can wander in with an equal shot at doing what they want to do. There is a distinct class system in place, and it is accelerating quite visibly. Corporations inevitably look to reach the people with the most money, they are not especially egalitarian, as Disney was.
There are now two ways to approach a Disney World ride or attraction or restaurant. The first is simply by walking up to it and trying to get inside. The second – the rapidly growing and encouraged one – is the Fast Pass system. If you wish get on the rides you want to go on or eat where you want to eat or go on the tour you’d like to go on, you need a Fast Pass reservation, a vast digital system by which you can get yourself and your family into a line that moves much faster than the line by people with less money, who can’t afford to stay on the grounds, who just show up. They are called Stand By’s, and they have to wait in a Stand-By line, often an hour or much more on really busy days.
At Disney World, they are citizens of the new Stand-By world.
Disney World has two worlds these days, a Stand By World and a Fast Pass world. If you are not in the Fast Pass World, you are outside the tent, you will spend a lot of time in line and be shut out of many things you would like to see and do.
The same is true of restaurants. If you are staying in one of the Disney Resorts, on the Disney property, you will have to plan months in advance or meet regularly with your concierge to navigate this system or spend hours on your cell phone or Ipad. Even with that, you may be denied access to many things. One restaurant has an 18-month waiting list, and many tours are booked up months in advance.
People staying on the grounds or who plan far in advance can have access to a Disney App called “My Disney Experience” where people can access the Fast Pass system (it is often down or dysfunctional) and make their reservations. People driving in for one or two days often don’t know about this system or don’t have the technology- or time – to access it. They can wait in very long lines at new and sparse “Kiosks” that are supposed to help them, but it is often too late by the time they arrive. Each access to the good rides and restaurants is no longer possible.
It takes even the concierges 20 minutes to a half hour to get online and figure out a system that demands you sign up for three things, even if you only want one and dictates your schedule for you.
Clearly, this is a class system heavily weighted to cater to the people staying at the expensive hotels on the Disney grounds. Disney World does not ever limit attendance, the park is often filled to bursting, and the lines are endless, even disheartening, the hotels and resorts on the property are procreating rapidly. It did sadden me to see all of those strollers in kids waiting for 90 minutes or more to get on the Peter Pan ride, or any ride. They will spend a lot of their day waiting.
I don’t really know how Disney would have reacted to this, he loved to make money, but he was always focused on putting children first – the parks were for them and their parents to have a good time together. Lines are not fun, and it is no fun for people to spend their hard-earned money and travel far to be denied access to the things they most want to see and have heard about for years. As we left Disney World today, I was stunned to see this vast crowd (photo above) just waiting just to get into the park. I think their waiting had just begun, it took them two hours just to buy tickets, now about $100 a person per day.
I wonder how many people the parks can really accommodate, I wonder if there is any limit to it? The concierges helped me to get into some good restaurants – this took a very long time – and we gave up on many things. It was just too late, we were told. And we were not Stand-Bys, we were staying right in the heart of Disney World, we had access to the system, although we were not prepared for it.
Life for the Stand-By’s will just get more and more difficult and complex. I think the day will come soon when every ride at any time requires a reservation, this is not the simple and accessible experience that Disney had in mind.
I am very fond of Disney World, but I do not think Disney, whose name is so frequently invoked, would have liked the Stand By world evolving there. For him, part of the magic of the park was in it’s perpetual sense of exploration and discovery. I think he would agree that the magic dies when it takes so much time and energy to get to see it.
The New York Carriage Horses did speak to me, of course, all the way from New York. There is a beautiful draft horse who pulls a wagon – it is about five times heavier than the carriages in New York – that is filled with about 20 dancers and singers. He marches up and down Main Street a dozen times a day in the strong Florida sun.
He does not live in the wild or get to have dinner with other horses, he has a stable right on the Disney grounds with shelter, hay and fresh water. He is checked by vets regularly. Like the carriage horses, his head is down, a sign of relaxation, and his leg is often cocked, a sign of comfort. He moves up and down in a throng of people – many thousands, including many children, who rush up to him, run in front of him, touch him, stick cameras and popcorn in front of him, scream and yell for him to smile.
He is a trusted horse, calm and at ease in his work. He has walked past millions of people, and never harmed one.
He is a working horse, and he has a good job, so much better than so many horses in the world, who haul heavy loads or live without shelter or food or medical care. He is much loved, groomed daily, photographed by many hundreds of thousands of people each week, millions each year. He carries dancers and singers through the park, marches in parades carried people up and down Main Street. The New York Carriage Horses only carry a few people at a time, he carried a dozen or more.
Like the carriage horses, it is touching to see how many people love him, smile at the sight of him, gather around him to photograph him with their cell phones and video cameras.
By the lights and arguments of the people in New York City who seek to ban the carriage horses, including the mayor, this beautiful animal is abused. They say it is explotive for animals to entertain people, it is abuse for animals to work for people, it is abuse – “torture” – for them to haul a wagon through a park and to work out in the sun. They believe a horse who hangs his head is depressed, that a horse who cocks his leg is lame. They believe horses wish to live in the wild, even though there is no wild, these big horses have never lived there and would not last long if they did.
It is work that keeps this horse (Disney has several Clydesdales) healthy, alive, well-cared for and well fed, and that gives so much comfort to so many people, most of whom have never seen an animal like him and will most likely not see one again.
Say what you want about Disney, they do get the magic in the world, especially the magic in the eyes of children, big and small. If the horses are banned, the magic will die, these big horses will become ghosts, joining the tragic gallery of animals human beings won’t make room for in their world.
I went up to this big horse and brought him greetings from New York. You are lucky you don’t live there, I said, If you did, there are people who would try to banish you to city and sent you off to a slaughterhouse or horse preserve, where you would stand around for the rest of your years dropping manure and vanishing from the consciousness of human beings. I bring you greetings from the New York Carriage Horses, they and the people who own and ride them are fighting for their existence.
Then the horse spoke to me. Greetings to the horses in New York, he said. I love my work, and fortunate and well cared for. I am loved every day by so many humans, large and small. I love to pose for them and preen for them and drive them though this beautiful park. I am a lucky horse, and a grateful one. See how much pleasure I give the people here, I am sure the same is true in New York. I hope the love and magic does not die there. I wish the New York Carriage Horses the same as I have been blessed to have.
We are getting wise to the ways of Disney World, me came to the Magic Kingdom early, arranged the not simple task of Fast Passes for the rides we wanted, and were amazed at the crowds that came pouring into the park a little before noon – there was an endless sea of strollers outside of the carousel. There was almost no room to turn around – this is a holiday weekend and the day was sunny and clear. The waiting times for rides ranged up to 90 minutes for most. Outside, the lines to get into the park (for people without passes) was two hours long.
We did what we wanted and retreated back to our hotel and sat by the beach and slept and read. Tonight, we surprised ourselves by deciding to stay in our room and rest some more – room service pizza. I want to do some writing tonight and we have a busy planned for tomorrow, our last day here.
We are going back to Animal Kingdom for another ride or two on the safari and then, in the evening, dinner at the Mexican Pavilion at Epcot, by far the best meal we have had so far. Monday, home to Bedlam Farm and cold upstate New York. A needed vacation, we are happy to be going home, grateful for our time here, it took is five days to think about relaxing, but at least we got to it, for one night at least.
