The Great Disney Propaganda Machine

We crept out of the Disney hotel in Florida the other day at the crack of too early in an attempt to escape Brand Disney without detection. We were headed for the concrete jungle of New York City,  where dreams are made of and, according to all reports, bad coffee is brewed.  If I can possibly make it there - and get out of Disney in one piece and without any residual brain washing or damage - then I can make it anywhere. 

The Disney brand even tried to indoctrinate us through videoconferencing facilities on the Magical Express Shuttle Bus on the way to the airport, part of a carefully calculated post-Disney experience no doubt.  Even at the airport you will find Disney and theme park-esque retail outlets trying to steal the last dime out of your pocket.  They will get you eventually it seems; even if you are just passing through Mickeyville.

We sat at Orlando airport for ages and ages, due to a big arse weather system floating in the general vicinity of where we were and were we wanted to be.  I am happy to sit out a monster storm cell, but not so much if the delay is due to a passenger who can't organise themselves to get to the airport on time.

On the last night in Disney we got to see their electrical parade, which is basically an event where all of the most interesting characters and floats are elaborately decorated in humongous chains of Christmas lights and wind up and around Main Street USA, the primary thoroughfare through the park.

I have been trying to scour a good location to view this parade for a week.  Apart from its monotonous brain-spasming catchy tune, it is a pretty decent demonstration of the all-American cheese factory that is Disney.  My favourite float is Peter or someone and his magic dragon or whatever it is, who blows misty fake snot all over the kiddies.  Brilliant.  Perhaps he had Dragon Flu.

With all the muggles and minions floating about, I am surprised I haven't contracted some lethal type of cold or flu or meningococcal from breathing in gross, deadly pathogens at DisneyWorld.  Or at least Type 2 diabetes from all the sugar I have consumed. 

Did I mention the toilets here?  They need to be discussed.  At length and right here.  The Big D thankfully favour toilets that have the decency to flush themselves.  If only people in Australia knew how to do that at shopping centres.  I suppose it is quite a difficult feat to accomplish.  Disney also provide paper toilet seat covers in your stall, presumably so you don't contract some hideous bum disease.

After doing your business, you simply flush the paper bum cheek protector down the gurgler.  The toilet in the hotel room, however, is ridiculously lazy, as it can't really be bothered flushing itself.  Perhaps it only lifts its fingers for tips, like everyone else in the service industry in this country.

The result of this is you have to hold down the lever until it is all gone; like I have nothing more interesting to do.  Fortunately these defunct toilets across America may have saved millions of people from a lifelong pattern of leaving grotty loos for the next person to deal with.

Days of Paleontology

That's a big word, isn't it? Paleontology? I'm sorry, I will endeavour to keep my loquacious confabulations to a minimum.  Most people think paleontology is just about the study of Sarah Palin, but this just isn't true.  It's also about the study of really, really old stuff.  I know, I'm a rocket scientist now.  I have a keyring from NASA's Kennedy Space Centre to corroborate this claim. 

I write on the very topical matter of dinosaurs because my Disney hotel in Florida was replete with baby-sized prehistoric, histrionic tyrannosaurus rex'.  They were everywhere.  They run in front of you as you walk the pavements of the hotel and the evidence that they don't always make it to the other side is smeared on the pretty cobblestones of the Port Orleans, French Quarter themed resort.

Ants - who are, on average, very short - probably don't even know that dinosaurs are extinct.  Not that I've seen any ants in Florida.  Or flies.  America doesn't deserve to not have any flies.  Oh wait, I did see a fly; he/she tried to steal one of my fries.  But that was just one fly, and I think the exception proves the rule, no?

Speaking of things that are or should be extinct, one can buy a leg of a T-Rex to eat for your dinner at Disney.  Or they could be turkey limbs; you really don't know these days.  Especially in Florida; land of the nutjobs.  Many people walk around with these repulsive bits of meat hanging out of their mouth like Captain Caveman, and the meat is all pink and raw-looking and still quivering in its dinosaur booties.  Seriously gross.

In other dinosaur-related hearsay - who knew there would be so much - today I ventured out into big, tall, stinking New York City for a day of stuffed creatures at the American Natural History Museum.  It was chockers full of real, fake and real/fake combo dinosaurs, mammals, tigers and other things I've never heard of.  And it was brilliant. I will discuss this at another time because it is now sleep time for me.