Keep Calm and Carry a Poncho

Woah, baby. Why didn't someone tell me that it's best to attend Disney Boot Camp before spending any time at DisneyWorld in Orlando, Florida? Screaming kids, their demented parents, the heat, the humidity and mice called Mickey everywhere.  It's hard work and needs to be trained for, or else you will likely catastrophically injure yourself and/or potentially lose your mind.

Soarin'!

It turns out that I have the patience of people who work with the stupid public for a living.  The place is packed full of Muggles, and I've only wanted to slam people into a wall on a few occasions.

The targets of my mental anguish are mostly American.  I don't, however, think patience is a virtue.  I think hurrying the fuck up and getting out of my way is definitely something to aim for when walking in my vicinity.

Lucky for my fellow Disney goers that the walls at Disney aren't really walls at all; they are generally just a figment of your rapidly deteriorating brain as it grapples with dehydration, one of the early symptoms of the Disney psychosis.

We've been here a few days now and have a routine.  My travelling buddy - who shall not be named because she's scared someone will break into her home in Australia and overwater her plants or dust her shelves or something - love riding Soarin', a five minute simulated hang glider tour of California. 

We love it so much that we get up very early, most days, so we can ride it before the big queues and then we get a fastpass for another go.  A fastpass sort of saves your place in line while you enjoy other attractions in the park, and there are only a limited number given out throughout the day so you have to be quick and organised and efficient and all the things you don't really care to be during your vacay.

Soarin' is the feature attraction at Epcot in DisneyWorld, and we have also been enjoying the caramel treats in Germany in the World Showcase.  If I didn't have travel brain it would have occurred to me this morning that I probably wouldn't usually want to eat a metre squared of caramel topped with milk chocolate. Yeah, that plan shouldn't backfire at all.  Engage brain before eating Disneycrap.

Another thing I am struggling with in Disneytown is sensory overstimulation, so I can't imagine how kids cope with it.  During the evening, especially, there is so much going on and flashing and noise everywhere and bright lights and water splashing and the screaming from rides and screaming from babies and even more screaming from their parents.  It's fucking crazy.  I think the adults are the big ones, but I'm not really sure.

I'm heading to New York City in a few days, which means I'll have to think about more than what I want for breakfast and which rides to entertain myself with.  You don't really have to think at Disney; they shuttle you everywhere if you are staying in the inner circle.

Everything is measured in minutes at Disney.  How long you have to wait for a ride, how far to get here, how far away is the exit, how long do we have to wait until the next fucking shuttle bus.  And Disney minutes are like laundromat minutes, in that they lie, and they take forever to click over.  It's that special magic of Disney.

You are constantly in a holding pattern when you are waiting in queues for rides and they make you weave around and around and fool you into thinking you are actively engaging in pointless interactive games on the walls in the hope that you will momentarily forget that they are stealing an hour of your life for a two minute theme park ride.

And then there's the merchandise. Last week at Universal Studios I bought a hat emblazoned with the theme park logo, because fucking Qantas lost my luggage and I wasn't going to hang out in the hurricane / sunshine state of Florida without sun protection.

And now, since docking at Disney, two security guards, a ferry captain and a Disney character have commented on my hat and its lack of Disney identification.  But I ain't getting one, because too much choice is a prison.  It doesn't help that my rain poncho - built to survive a violent hurricane - is also Universal merchandise.  It's anyone's guess how we haven't been evicted from Disney.

The toilets are called restrooms, but there is no time for rest in there.  The good part is you get to cover your seat with a paper toilet seat cover which you flush down the toilet, providing it doesn't stick to the back of your legs in a half flush reverse pike move.  And even though it only has one job to do, the hotel loo doesn't flush by itself, so you have to hold the lever until the bitter end.  I thought you needed to know that.

Disneyness

Just completed day five in the world of Disney and I feel like the little mouse has burrowed into my brain and left his ears logo etched onto my amygdala.  I am possibly suffering from a psychological disneyorder, if you will.

The amygdala plays a primary role in the formation and storage of memories associated with emotional events which is probably why I can't stop thinking about this: how the hell do Disney take all the taste out of food? How do they do that?  They magically make an appetising-looking cheeseburger taste like nothing.  We'll never know.  It's the magic of Disney.

We are having a night in from the big D tonight, because it's bloody hard yakka and we forgot to go to theme park boot camp before we came over here.  But it's just a temporary disneychantment; we'll be back out there tomorrow.  You need a lot of stamina to get through the day here.  So, instead, we did some laundry this evening.  I'm sorry if that's not interesting enough for you.

When I was walking back after picking up my clean clothes - so they can get drenched again in Florida's daily torrential downpour/hurricane tomorrow - I could of sworn I saw Mickey's ears in the sky, a la the Batman sign.  See, it's carved into my amygdala.  I don't have any scientific evidence to prove that this is a thing, but I imagine that if anyone can do it Disney will nail the shit out of it.

The one thing that they can't do is keep all the kiddies out of the parks.  Who in their right mind would take children to Disney?!  I can't imagine anything more horrible.  Children are highly annoying, and they completely ruin your day.  And why, for the love of god, do people allow their five-year-old to steer a pram?  For fucks sake.

Every day we are shuttled to any Disney park we want from our hotel.  Driving around the whole Disney complex - highways included - you get the idea that the whole of Orlando is purpose built by the uber multinational, as a snug little home-away-from-home for it's star, Mickey Mouse.  His east coast abode.

Disney don't do dirt. Or cigarette butts on the ground.  Or trash on the side of its highways.  They go above and beyond to keep the place picture perfect.  And it is very much appreciated.  Every tree, every road, every overpass is artificially created, and it seems that nothing is actually real, but everything is in fact very real, just very manufactured.  I actually love this place.

Kids may love Disney, but parents not so much.  I think I witnessed the early warning signs of divorce on at least five occasions today.  Mummy and daddy travelling to crowded theme parks in summer with four kids and the mother-in-law will do that to you.  The Disney staff, however, are so friendly that I suspect they are Disneybots.

I have been fond of Disney since I visited Disneyland in Anaheim two years ago.  It's a brilliant business model; market your company as the happiest place on earth and then people will desperately want to return, even though their pockets are being drained and they become devoid of anything resembling sanity.  Theme park madness, it is.

I've been NASA'd

Last week I went to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, which makes me more of an astronaut than you'll ever be.  I had been summoned by NASA to undertake some astronaut training and also to channel my extraordinary engineering abilities.  I have a keyring that says rocket scientist to prove it.  They don't just sell those things at the merchandise shop, you know.

As I walked through the door at Kennedy I was bombarded by a real-life fake astronaut at the entry to the facility.  He so desperately wanted to have his photo taken with me, so I obliged.  He was a great big ball of fun but his space backpack looked like a 24 pack of toilet rolls covered in white paint. Hmm.

The first thing budding astronauts do on arrival at Kennedy is jump on the tour bus.  But of course.  We headed on over to the LC-39 Observation Gantry, which is just a fancy name for a rather high tower made of steel, ladders, elevators and ice cream stands that one climbs to take a gander at the launch pad in the distance.  The launch pad area is fairly awesome, even though it is a good few clicks away.

Just near the gantry is the Crawler Transporter, which is just a fancy name for the sandy, gritty road that is used to roll space shuttles along on the initial stage of their journey to the moon.  Or on their journey to test piloting if their flight commander only got 99% in their astronaut entrance exam.  The concrete underneath this road is apparently 16 inches thick, which is helpful as the contraptions that carry the space-going machines weigh, like, a shitload.

We also saw the Vehicle Assembly Building where they put all the nuts and bolts together in a hideously complicated fashion.  This building is massive, but fairly non-descript, if you discount the Starship Enterprise-looking thing hanging around inside it. 

Just kidding, you don't get to see Space Shuttle Atlantis at all.  They just tell you it's in there and you are supposed to act all excited as if you can see it.  The final mission of Atlantis was July 2011, the last flight of the now defunct NASA space program. Good one, Obama; you tool.

To be honest, the whole Space Centre is filled with the same boring, beige concrete structures that house Bureaus of Statistics' in government cities, and the only thing that makes them vaguely interesting is the NASA logo.  Although many of them have cool names, like Integrated Booster Retrieval Area.  I made that one up, and I don't even know if that's a thing, but it sounds legit and spacey.

I then popped on over to the Apollo/Saturn V Center, where you can stand underneath the rather humongous Saturn V rocket that hangs off the ceiling.  It was the backup for the famous moon mission.  I guess NASA did a how-to-hang-a-rocket-ship-on-your-ceiling Saturday morning workshop. 

I can't get bluetac to hold my Christmas tinsel on the walls in my workplace so kudos to them.   Maybe I shouldn't have dropped out of Advanced Aerodynamics at university.  At this point of the day I was fairly confident that my trip to the moon was just around the corner.

Me walking in Neil Armstrong's moonboots.

I also touched some black lunar rock, which raised my suspicions, what with the moon being white and all.  Maybe NASA were pushing the affirmative action thing.  This is America after all.  Or is the moon black?  Or grey? I don't know. Who cares.  I'm sure I'll know it when I see it when they send me up.  The Americans have been there many times, so I'm sure they've put up welcome to the moon signage and a Starbucks.

I was super busy for the rest of the day, such is the life of a rocket scientist slash astronaut.  I bought freeze-dried icecream balls, which were completely disgusting.  IMAX is there too and provided two amazing presentations, with actual footage of the Hubble telescope and the international space station in 3D.  Incredible.

As well as being an active space facility, Kennedy is also a theme park so there is the obligatory theme park ride.  Of course.  The Shuttle Launch Experience tips you upside down and tries to create zero gravity and that's a bit of fun.  I didn't get to go to the moon after all.  Maybe next time.  By then perhaps the next U.S. President may have reactivated the NASA space program.

Universal Orlando

Have just spent three days at Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida.  Lucky it was only a brief visit, because I don't have the stamina for theme parks.

That place is packed full of big mobs of people - mainly Americans and loud, shrill South Americans teenage tour groups with matching pink, yellow, red, blue or green backpacks - oh no, it's the backpacks!  These girls don't do quiet.  What's so fucking hard about being quiet for five seconds?

Due to Florida's unfortunate geography, it's also jalepino hot and more humid than a sauna. And just when you think the weather has reached its peak in grossness it starts raining and ligthning all over the place, so you have to put on your plastic poncho in the 30 degree sauna.  But it's awesome, providing rollercoasters, hotdogs, old Hollywood and Harry Potter are your thing.

Too tired to blog about the awesomeness of Universal tonight - it's past midnight and I've spent the last hour trying to get Qantas to send me my luggage, which they lost somewhere between Canberra - Sydney - Los Angeles four days ago.

The idiots have now found it, and sent it to LAX, but apparently it's all too difficult to put it on a plane to me.  FFS.  How is this company such a popular airline?  Their customer service is appalling after they lose your stuff - or "delayed" and "late" luggage as Qantas prefer to call it.

City of Dirty, Bronze Stars

Los Angeles.  Meh.  In a couple of days I will spend about four hours in Los Angeles Airport, in transit to Disney World in Orlando, Florida.  I spent a couple of days in L.A.two year ago - well, Beverly Hills and Anaheim - and I really have no interest in venturing into the city again.

L.A. certainly doesn't live up to its hype.  But why should it?  The wannabes transition through it, much like I will be I suppose.  They just stay a bit longer.  And bleach their hair and teeth a bit brighter.  And get paid a lot of money to act like someone else.  Or get paid a lot of money to act like someone else and take their top off.  We all make our choices.

The whole city reminds me of a large suburban industrial estate, like anywhere you'll find in Australia, except the people are prettier and the cars are flashier than in Fyshwick.  L.A. doesn't have a homely feel to it; I guess because no-one really lives there. 

Its inhabitants are there to get famous, infamous or to make money off people who are already famous and/or infamous.  I imagine one can lead a fairly lonely, empty existence if that is your goal.  It's all about posturing, knowing who knows who in the zoo, and becoming the next Home Improvement girl or Kardashian layabout.  Like, you know, totally.

When I arrived there two years ago I had high expectations for my travels around glamourous Hollywood.  I wanted to see a glittering studio city town, paved in red carpet, movie stars, child actors who should be in school and Lindsay Lohan shooting up on Sunset Boulevard. 

Apart from the Lohan bit - she was due in Beverly Hills court house when I was there - the reality is somewhat different.  I remember getting off the hop on-hop off tour bus in a rundown street and being told it was Hollywood, and I was standing on its iconic Walk of Fame. 

I looked down at the dirty cracked pavement and saw a faded bronze star of some celebrity I had never heard of.  Tom Cruise or something?  A metaphor for the industry that holds 'em close then spits 'em back out and turns them into fanatical cult members.  Welcome to Hollywood.

Evidently the area has been largely refurbished over the past ten years, so one can only imagine the horridness of it all in the 90s.

The Vegemite Black Market

I am travelling to the United States of Crazy on the weekend and I plan to take in a jar/tube/bucket of vegemite, because I can't survive without the glorious brown yeast extract for a whole month.  Contrary to my previously held belief, vegemite is evidently not banned from entering the United States.  *cue happy little vegemites cheering all over the place* 

Word on the street was that Australia's beloved dark brown goo was not allowed to show its face at U.S. Border Security under section blah blah of the Bioterrorism Act, or something, or because it's not white enough, or something.  And people say Australia is racist.  Turns out the ban is just a bit of an urban legend, spread by someone who doesn't like to spread vegemite.

The legend lived on last year, when Australia's Foreign Minister, the splendidly coiffed Kevin Rudd, took the highly unusual step of making himself the news, again, by having a bit of a larrakin knockabout with U.S. Customs officials in Washington - as you do - as he was trying to bring in a jar of the stuff to the States. 

Turns out the whole spectacle was contrived by Brand Rudd.  Who would have thought?  And it also turns out he was just trying to ingratiate himself with the media.  Again; who would have thought?

What the U.S. really should ban is that vulgar peanut butter.  Dreadful substance.  As if peanut butter wasn't enough yuck, the United States of Crazy deemed it necessary to come up with something else disgusting to accompany PB on rye, because it's just not gross enough on its own in a sandwich.  Jam that has evolved into a jelly substance; what a good idea.  Gross.