The Elusive Tom Sawyer’s Island
Last week, we went to the Happiest Place on Earth. (Or is that Disneyland?) It could, potentially, be labeled the most overwhelming place on Earth, but we’ll ignore that for now. I hadn’t been since I was a child, which was a long time ago. And while many things have changed over the past twenty years (at one point I stood in the middle of Fantasyland with the weird sensation of knowing that someplace should be familiar and yet failing to find anything that was at all recognizable), some things have stayed the same. One of my very favorite places in Disney World is Tom Sawyer’s Island. It’s an island in the middle of a lake between Frontierland and Liberty Square which is, as the name makes obvious, is based of the book Tom Sawyer. It’s got Aunt Polly’s house and Harper’s Mill, and secret caves, and a fort, and is generally a really fun place to explore. The only way to get to it is by river raft. And I’ve missed it the last two times I’ve gone. It closes pretty early in the day, basically as soon as there’s any hint of the sun going down, which I assume is for safety reasons. But it means that if you’re not on top of it, you’re out of luck. When I last went, at 14, we had a single day at the Magic Kingdom, and I missed the last raft. And I missed it last week, too, though we…