Here’s what the Entrance Plaza looks like now:
And here’s what it looked like in 1983, when the world was new and bright and airy and open:
Of course Spaceship Earth still looks majestic, but it’s not the same. I’m not generally one to say, “O, how better it was in the misty past,” but … kinda here. Ditto Horizons. But let’s not get into that now. We have a Joe to catch up to!
We forged forth into Future World East, where Joe would be meeting us in front of Mouse Gear, a retail establishment whose name is singular and not plural, despite the fact that there are actual gears on the front and that’s really misleading (see similar: Cinderella Castle, The Epcots). But first we paused at the information booth to look for Food and Wine Festival Passports, which Marty totally had the idea for first and which Disney totally stole from him. Basically, you get these passports that list each country and each unique food or beverage item you can get from that country. Like, the section for Australia will list the pork chop which, I mean, multigenerational wars have been fought over less, is all I’m saying. Anyhow, the point of the passport is that every time you get something at a country kiosk, you get a stamp, and you’re supposed to collect them all, like Pokemon.
Alas, the information booth was plumb out of passports, and the rumor was that since it was the first official day of the Festival, they hadn’t quite gotten fully up to speed. Disappointed but hopeful, we headed over to Mouse Gear to wait for Joe in the shade. Animal Kingdom might be more humid, but Epcot is one hot park.
Moments later, Joe sauntered up to us.
“You’re smiling,” Paul said, smiling himself. “What gives?” (Paul didn’t say what gives, by the way, but I’m trying to bring back 70s slang for the purposes of the trip report arc.)
“Search me,” said Joe (he didn’t say that at all!), and pulled four Food and Wine Festival Passports from his satchel. They all had our names on them.
Every once in a little while, the smallest gesture makes the hugest impact. More than almost anyone I know, Joe is a sweet, kind, earnest sentimentalist, and it is this reason above all others that he and I have been such great friends for so long. I’m sappy as hell, and Joe’s sappier, and sometimes in the middle of the best place in the world, all it takes is one quiet, beautiful moment to make you stop and try not to well with tears.
My passport had my name on it, and for whatever reason, that meant the world to me.
* * *
I’ll be a little quick here, because it’s already a long trip report and I need to finish writing it before my actual next trip: we toured around World Showcase, we noshed well, and we did it in terrific company. We returned to Future World with our tummies overfull and our steps logy. But we managed to make two more stops before heading out of Epcot for our midday break, and I wanted to quickly talk about those.
This is, by the by, not simply an excuse to use this super mega fantastic old Epcot map. But since I’ve mentioned it.
See that domed building between Horizons and World of Energy? That used to be the Wonders of Life pavilion, which was set back a ways from the other original Epcot pavilions, up a winding path and behind a gently spinning double helix rising up from a quiet pond. Inside it were two motion simulator rides – Cranium Command and Body Wars – and a film about, uh, human reproduction, and also some other stuff I wish I’d been around to see but now can’t because they lost their sponsors and gutted it and turned it into a convention center and also because Saddest Christmas Ever.
But unlike Horizons, which no longer exists and has been replaced with the okay but clearly inferior Mission: SPACE, the pavilion building for Wonders of Life still stands. I know it’s ridiculous pseudo nostalgia – I was never there when it was real, when it was tangible – but I feel it, just the same. This year, the pavilion is the Food and Wine Festival headquarters, with all these expensive seminars and that guy from all the cake challenge shows on Food Network and expensive cookbooks stacked and rising like shaky pillars to the curved ceiling high, high above.
It’s still there, though, this place I never was and which will never quite exist again. The place is bustling with the now, the fervor of the present … but the past is still there, subtle, unassuming, beguiling. It’s in the walls, in the small triangular windows by the entrance. The structure of the restaurant exists, and I collapse into one of the seats, glad to be out of the sun and glad to be with my friends, but also glad to be communing with the past. I guess that sounds silly, but it doesn’t feel silly.
Walt Disney World was never meant to be a museum, and I’m happy for that. I welcome change, so long as the change makes sense and it’s as engaging as whatever was there before. But it’s good to understand the past, and sometimes take trips there.
* * *
Oh, and we also rode Spaceship Earth, because Dame Judi Densch says papaaaaaahrus and it makes up for calling Rome the first World Wide Web.
* * *
When you’re a devious schemer in the name of making awesome things happen, it’s good to have a co-conspirator. For months, Joe and I worked together, planning surprises for the other boys, in part because Joe is genuinely a nice guy and in part because I have a hero complex. This night’s excursion was to be twofold: one, to have a surprise birthday at Kona Café at the Polynesian for Marty, and two, to treat both guys to Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party.
Now, I’m not going to say that I completely ignored the WWII adage Loose Lips Sink Ships. All I’m saying is that Paul may have had an inkling that something was up. Look, I keep secrets like I keep full tubs of hummus: poorly. Plus, because the whole concept of the Halloween Party was dressing up, I had to toss together some cockamamie story about it being Dapper Day, which is all about dressing up nice-slash-steampunk and everyone knows is in the spring and I’m transparent but I mean well.
After a jaunt in the pool and a refreshing nap in icy-cold air conditioning, the four of us got dolled up to, uh, one degree or another. Paul wore his snazzy Tiki-with-Dole Whip Adventureland shirt, Joe and I of course did Steampunk, and Marty? Marty sort of went as Isaac from Children of the Corn.
Don’t question it. Just go with it.
Marty is either easily fooled or easily fooled on purpose; I’m not sure I care about the distinction, I’m just happy we got to surprise someone. We parked at the Polynesian and sauntered to the Kona Café inside, resplendent in all our Dapper Day/Surprise Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party/Marty’s Soopa Sekrit Birthday Party finery. They sat us right away, a cozy table by the back, and we feasted like drunken kings. I had the coconut almond chicken. Paul had Too Many Wings. Joe tried the shrimp and scallops. Marty had the pomegranate barbecue pork chop. He could have had anything he wanted. As the meal ended, I toasted him and we all raised our glasses.
You know, the Polynesian is where John Lennon officially dissolved the Beatles. I’d like to think that the four of us, joyful and building friendships with each other, served to counteract that a little. We’re not the people who did “Help!” or “Hey Jude” or “Eleanor Rigby,” but we’re us, and us is pretty okay.
* * *
Here’s the basics of Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party: it’s a hard ticket event, meaning that there’s a separate charge to get in, though you don’t have to actually have to have a “regular” park pass in addition to your MNSSHP ticket. There are fewer people there, meaning lines are lighter and rides load quicker. There’ a special edition of the regular Wishes fireworks spectacular, called HalloWishes, and the Halloween Parade that opens with the Headless Horseman riding his horse down Main Street, USA carrying a flaming jack o’lantern in one hand. Seriously, he is headless. It’s terrifying and awesome all at once. Plus, there are trick or treating candy stops, a Villains Ball, special Halloween projections and decorations, and everyone dressed up real nice. Disney fanatics are iffy on the Very Merry Christmas Party, which people claim was better in years past, but no one is iffy on the Halloween party. It’s spectacular.
Honestly, the parade might very well be the best part … though in a previous year, I met Baloo at a special meet and greet and danced with him, which might be a high point of my life. The Headless Horseman is one reason the parade kicks so much ass. Seeing unusual characters – like Rabbit, from Winnie-the-Pooh, of all creatures, and Clarabelle the cow – is another. Then there are the Grave Diggers, these creepy dancers in skull makeup, dressed in ominous purple and swinging portentous shovels. They’ll whirl around as a group, retreat and approach, then slam their shovels to the ground and sccccrape them so sparks fly. It’s all done in rhythm with the parade music and the effect is eerie and thrilling at the same time. There are people who go to MNSSHP just to see the Grave Diggers, and I can’t say I blame them.
My favorite part of the parade, though, and by definition my favorite part of the Halloween Party, is when the float with the giant chicken in the henhouse who clucks along to “Ghost Riders In the Sky.” Now, you know my buddy Joe. Tall, sweet, mostly quiet. Some might say circumspect. And yet when that chicken comes along singing cluck-cluck-cluck-cluuuuuuuck-cluck-cluck, Joe loses it. He throws his head back and laughs like laughing is the only thing in the world worth doing.
We spent the rest of the night cramming candy in our mouths and riding rides in the dark. The Haunted Mansion is, inevitably, the most popular attraction during Halloween parties. Usually, there’s a ghoulish woman perched on the lawn outside, wearing spectral robes and cackling and occasionally tossing sarcastic barbs your way. She wasn’t out that night, or perhaps she was off, I don’t know, poltergeisting or whatever spirits do when they’re not contractually obligated to Disney. The Mansion was shrouded in a dense layer of fog, though, and eerie blue lights shone within, like will o’the wisps dancing in the dark. We rode two-by-two in our Doombuggies, and escaped with our heads barely attached. It’s one thing to come out of the Haunted Mansion into a bright, shiny, sunny day – mid-July, maybe, when there are fluffy clouds in the big blue sky and there’s magic afoot. We emerged into darkness, with low organ music intoning over the grounds. Maybe Disney doesn’t to sheer terror, but man, do they have spooky down to a science.
We capped off our night with a one-two punch on mountains from the past and from the future. My newfound love and dedication to Space Mountain never flagging, I settled in next to Marty for another blast off into the vast unknown. Over in Frontierland, the skyward buttes of Big Thunder Mountain are lit up with earth tone illumination. We headed up the long and winding queue, past the boxes reading Lytum & Hyde Explosives Company, into our mine train where the disembodied old-timey prospector voice tells us to hang onto our hats and glasses because this is the “wiiildest ride in the wiiiilderness!” Marty always cracks up when they translate the fun stuff into sedate, well-meaning Spanish. Marty’s kind of awesome.
The four of us clambered aboard our rickety Big Thunder Mountain Railroad train, Marty and Paul in front of us, Joe and I riding behind. A galaxy of Disney stars can’t compete with the real thing: we click-click-clicked up that first lift hill and above us the sky was a star-littered ocean, dark and vast and far away. Big Thunder tricks you, every time, because it’s not the biggest or the fastest coaster in Walt Disney World, or even in the Magic Kingdom. But it’s thrilling, just the same, and especially at night. There’s a science to it, actually – the tracks are warmer, or more well-oiled at night, something – but this is beyond science. This is heart, and gut, the places you feel the important things most insistently. It’s faster at night, and those bunny-hop hills toss you out of your seat more casually, more frequently, as you round the mountainside and point up at the goat standing on top of the shack, because it’s Disney World and there are incongruous goats everywhere. Then it’s past, flying past, and there’s another click-click-click rise, and off in the distance there’s Cinderella Castle, its soft lights and pastels a dream away.
But we’re in the now, the four of us guys. Big Thunder is our world and we’re screaming and laughing, and as we plunge again, falling fast and falling faster, I can’t think of anyplace else I’d rather be.
There’s another drop up ahead, so I hold on tight.
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