Disney's Magic Kingdom and Epcot: It's hard to believe that the Magic Kingdom is 35 yrs old, and Epcot about 25! Seems like yesterday that I remember Epcot opening, but then again, so does my high school graduation. The first thing about the Magic Kingdom is that EVERYONE is there--though luckily not all at once. Get there early, and you can ride 4 rides in an hour without a line (which we did). Get there late, and, to quote Hoyt Axton in Gremlins talking about the "Bathroom Buddy" shaving kit, "You...are...in...trouble!" Same goes for Epcot. Get there early, and step right onto "Soaring: Feel the True Sensation of Air-Sickness as You Sail Over That State That Might Fall into the Ocean!" Get there late, and spend all your time perusing beer steins in the Germany pavilion.

As far as the meals go, I discovered that Disney is terrific if you love chicken strips.

With their expanded ethnic menus at Epcot, you can get sushi, sashimi--and chicken strips. Or veal parmigiana, fettucine alfredo--and chicken strips. Schnitzel, spaetzle-- and chicken strips. Cripes, if Disney had a whore-house they'd probably also serve chicken strips.

The food at Epcot needs some authentic spicing-up--and that's all I'll say about that. The best place to hang out, I found, was in the England pavilion holding a cold pint of Bass. The "Rose and Crown" is a pretty damned good imitation of a real English pub--if ONLY they had Samuel Smith's bitter on hand! Or Adnams. But Bass is still good, even if it wasn't a "Real Ale" (meaning "Cask Conditioned").

Oddly, Epcot was the biggest disappointment to me--and I had expected to like it the most; as for the Magic Kingdom, we basically rode the hell out of it and got more than our money's worth. We actually ran out of rides we were interested in, so my oldest daughter did the Indy track three times, my youngest daughter and I did Big Thunder Mtn Railroad three times, Splash Mtn three times, that dull Snow White ride, Stitch's Soporific Escape, and even did the "Carousel of Progress."

Oh my God, I almost forgot about the Carousel of Progress. It's an original Walt Disney ride from the '50's, narrated by Jean Shepherd (the film The Christmas Story's narrator), and tracks a family from 1900 to 1920 to 1950 to 1980--oh, I can't remember exactly when, and why not? Because some idiot kept standing as the theater-carousel rotated, causing the ride-wardens to interrupt the narration every 30 seconds to cry out "RIDERS OF THE CAROUSEL OF PROGRESS PLEASE REMAIN SEATED AT ALL TIMES THANK YOU" and then the narration would resume.

So the ride went like this:

(Jean Shepherd): "Say, life sure is easier since we got this new-fangled ice box! Only needs five pounds of ice, and keeps the milk RIDERS OF THE CAROUSEL OF PROGRESS PLEASE REMAIN SEATED AT ALL TIMES DURING THIS ATTRACTION THANK YOU and grandma doesn't have to get out the sweeper since they invented that new RIDERS OF THE CAROUSEL OF PROGRESS WE REMIND YOU NOT TO STAND OR WALK DURING THIS RIDE FOR YOUR OWN SAFETY THANK YOU hey Jimmy, didn't I see you standing next to one of them motor-cars the other day? It beats me how anyone RIDERS OF THE CAROUSEL OF PROGRESS PLEASE REMAIN SEATED FOR YOUR OWN SAFETY THANK YOU and what do you think of our new electric streetlamp?"

Needless to say, a few of us questioned the name "The Carousel of PROGRESS" since this attraction went nowhere fast.

Back to Epcot. The fun of that place isn't the fake villages, or that horribly addictive "Canada--oh Canada! (Can-aa-da!)" song in the Canadian pavilion--no, it's talking with the people from other countries who work there. In Moracco, we talked with our waiter for some time; he wrote our kids' names in Arabic in their autograph books (more on those awful things in another post), and showed us a great time. In Norway, we talked with a waitress whose boyfriend is from Albia, Iowa; and in Germany with our Oktoberfest waitress from the former East Germany. Best of all for a soccer fan like me was the long conversation I had with one of the Brit shopworkers about the Premiere League and upcoming World Cup. Anyone who doesn't talk with these pleasant, engaging young people is missing more than half the fun. They're actually, in a way, missing the point of the whole place (for example--if you ask the Canadian girls at the film entrance, they'll sing their national anthem. Try it--I did!). Best of all, that part of Disney is free.

Enough Disney. My next post, I promise, will be about spies. Maybe even my opinion of the next James Bond.