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 had two and a half days at the MK.
What does this mean? Maybe, subconsciously, I didn’t really want to go. Maybe I was afraid that the memories of childhood wouldn’t live up to the reality of adulthood. Maybe, despite nostalgia, I didn’t care that much. Maybe it’s a metaphor for missed opportunities.
(I mean, most likely it’s because the Magic Kingdom is freaking huge and it’s hard to coordinate anything and be any particular place at the right time, let along the few hours you can get to the island. And also that dealing with a child on the spectrum in a place that’s huge and filled with stimulation everywhere makes getting anywhere on time really hard.)
(An employee manning the Frozen ride in Epcot yelled at us for being an hour late for our Fastpass, for example. To that guy: you were a jerk and you made an already unhappy situation worse.)
And, well, it gives me something to look forward to the next time, right?
(Besides, I got to do most of the things I wanted to. I got to go to the Tiki Room, and on the Jungle Cruise, and see Muppet Vision 3D.)
Thoughts on missed opportunities? Or Tom Sawyer’s Island? (I know at Disneyland they’ve changed it to something else–pirates or something–so let’s ignore that version.)