You can say a lot of bad, potentially libelous things about Disney World, but you have to admit, not much goes wrong there, at least not so you’ll hear about it. If there is a sinister side to Disney it can be found in the fact that they are not subject to state laws. The entire 47 acres are considered private property; the police have to request permission to enter. So what DOES happen there is kept quiet. It’s a utopian environment enforced by a totalitarian regime.

But it’s a benign regime, and for the most part the people who work there really are friendly, and everyone will do everything they can to make sure everybody is happy.

On the opposite side of the spectrum is the real world, and by that I mean the phone company, which took four days to restore our service. We discovered we had no telephone the moment we walked back into our home. This is not a nice thing to do to someone who has been deprived of the internet for seven full days.

The kids slid back into reality quite well, although Timmy did have a problem at first when he walked through the threshhold and immediately asked for his new Lego toy, which of course was not going to arrive at our house for another full week. But we had so many other things to throw at him he survived this bout of IWant.

We didn’t get the dog back for another day. John brought her by early the next morning after it was clear we weren’t going to answer our phone on account of we didn’t have one. John did not look happy, and only partly because he’d undergone a hernia operation that Wednesday. The day after we dropped Rhiannon off with him he discovered an enormous hot spot under her neck and had spent the week trying to treat our skittish dog while keeping her from scratching a bigger hole in her neck. This is very difficult to do when you cannot bend over without aggravating your stitches.

But except for the phone and the dog, nothing else had really changed.

I think it’s fair to say this year’s vacation was a more positive experience than last year’s. But a high colonic is also better than last year’s vacation, so this isn’t saying much. What amazes me is that even though we had three more days in Disney this time around, we still approached every day with the same sense of urgency as before. Because there’s so much to DO there. And we somehow managed to do nearly everything we set out to do. Except relax. I’m wondering how many days we have to schedule ourselves for in order to be able to do everything and relax as well. I’m not sure this is even possible.

One thing I noticed this year that slipped my attention last year is how much Disney has gotten into the concept of education. Every single “New” ride they’ve introduced since Epcot opened seems to be geared much more toward teaching than entertaining. In a few cases they got downright preachy.

I’m not sure if I want my children to be taught anything from Disney. Let’s consider some of the life lessons we’ve already learned from bastion of educational mores:

• Sooner or later, one or both of your parents are going to die, and it’s probably going to be your mother. If you’re lucky you’ll be raised by animals in the forest; otherwise, lookout for step-mom.
• If you drink a lot of alcohol, maybe you’ll get lucky and discover you can fly.
• Geniis, fairies, and witches all exist, and sometimes provide some much needed comic relief.
• Most animals can talk. Some even wear clothes.
• It is bad to hunt, unless you’re planning to kill poachers.
• Pantheism is the way to go.
• Bad people always fall off cliffs when they die.
• Getting married between the ages of fourteen and sixteen is perfectly normal if you’re a girl.
• Your father is either an evil pirate in disguise, or a total moron. Or both.
• Your toys walk and talk when you’re not looking.
• You may not know it, but you just might be royalty.
• We prefer to keep our really ugly people in bell towers.

Anyhow, we are hoping to make the trip back again next year. We figure now that we’ve done everything, we can approach it all at a much more leisurely pace.

At least, this is what we’re telling ourselves.

Maybe two weeks will be long enough.

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