A Dream is a Wish...

"...If you keep on believing, the dream that you wish will come true."

What bunk. I've been wishing hard every second since I got home that I was back in Disneyworld, but every time I wake up, I'm still in my own bed!

That's the amazing thing about Disneyworld. Everything about it is just so...darn...perfect! I can't figure out how something this enormous, with this many moving parts, works so well. Everyone is so happy, from the bus drivers to the ride operators to the waitresses. It reminded me of my summer at the Dodgers, where Dr. Charles had a group of us doing research on the total experience of going to a ballgame. He proposed that the experience started the moment you entered the parking lot to the moment you left. How was the view as you walked in? Where did you eat? Was ketchup available? Did the bathrooms have a hook on the door for your purse? It was those details, he hypothesized, that were more important to having a returning fan base, than if the team won or lost. Well, this is what I mean by the perfection at Disney. Everything, and I mean everything, was ideal. And that perfection, and that happiness- manufactured or not-- does rub off on you!

Jason and I only had two days of park passes, and with his conference, we probably couldn't have done it any differently. Saturday we took on Magic Kingdom. We slept in and got to the park around 2pm. It sounds late, but we realized that we had an extraordinary advantage over the vast majority of people there: No strollers! With nothing to hold us back and map in hand, we plotted our path and then boom! boom! boom! ran from ride to ride to ride. Disney has an amazing system now called "FastPass." It's included with your admission. You pick a ride you really want to go on (Say, Space Mountain.) You put your card into the FastPass machine. You'll get an entry ticket for a future time, usually about an hour or so later. At that time, you can return to Space Mountain, and cut the entire line and hop right on! Disney also has cellphone apps now that tell you the actual wait time at any ride around the park. So if at 3pm you get your ticket for a 4:30 ride on Space Mountain, you can check the app and see what other rides that have short waits to fill in the times... Pirates of the Caribbean here we come! That's where our mobility came into play. We probably zigzagged back and forth across the whole park 15 times. Then something else glorious happened...at 8:30pm, the park became empty. We could walk on to any ride we wanted between 8:30 and 11pm. So we did just that! By the end of the day, we were totally sweaty, filthy, and gross, but we had taken Magic Kingdom by storm and even rode Space Mountain twice. Somewhere in the middle of this day, my camera broke, but not before getting this one happy picture:

Our second day was at Epcot. Ugh, if there was ever a park that needed more time! Epcot is huge and definitely more "adult-y." I remember thinking it was kind of boring as a kid and now I know why. The rides are definitely not the best part. The best part is the "World Showcase" where Disney has basically blown up "It's a Small World" and lets you walk around to different "Countries." The people working at these little villages are all authentically from those countries, and you can buy food and booze all along the way and shop and dine. But with just a half day there, we did the FastPass war again and suddenly found ourselves at 8:45pm with the park about to close at 9pm. (The 11pm close at Magic Kingdom really made a huge difference!). We had just started our "around the world" journey and suddenly realized that we had no time! The last boat back to our hotel left at 10pm, so we sat down in "Germany" for dinner and had to call it a night.

There's so much more I could write about Disney. The hotels could be a vacation all by themselves. The restaurants, the water slides, the sand-bottom pools, the towels wrapped up to look like Mickey, it was all too perfect and too fun. Jason and I were actually and truly sad at the airport on our way back, in disbelief that it was over. At least I had a smile this morning while I drank my coffee:

I hope that if you're reading this, and you're a grown-up, you think about going back to Disney soon. It could be with a group of girlfriends, your parents and siblings, or maybe someone special! But doing Disney as an adult is just as awesome as it was when you were a kid. If anyone is planning a trip, find me and I will be happy to share what I learned!!

Peace and Love.