8 Days in Disney
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(click through for larger view)
(I’ve taken this shot, almost exactly, everytime I go to Disney. Always trying to improve it. What do you think of this one?)
Back in March when we put our house on the market, I scheduled a trip to stay at Disney’s Caribbean Beach Resort. At our asking price, I felt confident we’d sell our house and figured we’d be crammed into some temporary housing about now – making the trip a much needed getaway for the kids.
We sold (and subsequently bought) a lot faster than I thought but we made the trip happen, despite the poor timing having just moved into the new house.
I think the family had a great time. I had a good time.
I knew that it had been too soon since my previous Disney trip when I started paying attention to things that “Guests” are not supposed to, as opposed to looking around all, slack-jawed and in awe like the average 1 in 15 years visitor.
The thing that annoyed me the most this trip was what I call the unnecessary exercising of small powers. This phenomenon, I’ve observed, occurs when you have an individual who is generally frustrated by some situation. The person will then use their position to exercise frivolous use of their “power.” It usually occurs frequently in individuals who typically exhibit little or no control in their careers or lives.
Eg, “I can’t control my kids. I hate my current job, my wife/husband is pissing me off and my life is generally not what the postcard advertised. I know, let me screw with this guy.”
As a table washer in Hollywood Studios, you can make those pesky visitors wait by looking at them in the eye, then turning around and taking a full 5 minutes to wipe the rag of the table they are waiting for.
(Yeah, that happened, it was funny.)
One particular instance that got me was this queue organizer, while waiting in line to see Mickey Mouse, right after the entrance to the Magic Kingdom.
Let me setup the situation for you.
You’ve been waiting in a line for an hour. It is hot. The kids are pissed. It is crowded. The wait time-sign out front, said 30 minutes. People are bumping into each other in tight spaces. Kids are crying. Your basic “Happiest Place on Earth” scenario.
The queue wraps around to an entrance that is ostensibly where the Mouse is hanging out to take pictures with the kiddies. An employee asks your party size and lets people trickle into the room.
The room, is a waiting area for another room where Mickey and Minnie are doing their “Say Cheese” bit.
A short, forties-to-fifties aged Hispanic lady with a warm smile manages this waiting room with no more than 20 people.
I am a conscientious line waiter. I don’t cut lines, I “fill in all available space”, I even try to keep the cubic presence of my family unit to a minimum. We stay together in an almost-uncomfortable huddle and I (TRY) to keep my kids from being annoying to other people. So, given all this, we move into the room and fill in all available space. (A U-Shape around the outer wall)
Miss Queue Manager Lady commences to direct each individual person exactly where they can stand, even by grabbing you on the shoulders and placing you in an invisible square all around the outer wall-line of this room. Surely, some Disney Imagineer’d marvel will pop down into the center of the room, proving her exactness was in our protection… Nope. Surely she’s just making room for more people about to enter behind us? Nope. In fact, my family unit was probably LESS compact in our cubic presence of the available surrounding space-time after her human-tetris routine.
A couple things here. I don’t like people touching me. You need to know me to touch me. Secondly, don’t you think, after waiting for an hour and 15 minutes, the very second a person can enter the next room to get the whole Mickey photo session thing over with, they will move, with post haste, of their own will?
Ahh yeah.. oh wait, it’s my turn? I dunno.. lemme see… hanging out in the room with poor Air Conditioning and unhappy kids while the kids behind me bump into me every 2 minutes because they are absolutely wild… or…… enter the next room to get awesome pictures of the kids in awe of the huge Mouse… Which… will I do…???
At any rate... this one's to you, o' wielders of unncessary small bits of power. May your anal-retentiveness make hundreds of more customers uncomfortable. ;)