As most of you know our family took Gavin to Disney World's Magic Kingdom recently.  I didn't blog about it because it would be a book! and well we've been busy with other things :) We all had a great time and Gavin loved it so much. 

I do want to share a descriptive essay that Brie and TD wrote together.  It isn't the final project because TD had his hands in this draft a little too much, but all the ideas were Brie's and all of the initial descriptions.  TD just added the small details.  I really enjoyed it and wanted to share it on our blog.

Happy Reading!!

Brie

November 6, 2012

Period 2

 

Crowds of People Couldn’t Take the Magic Away!

 

Arriving at the Magic Kingdom Monorail station at Disney World in Orlando, Florida, I felt the rush of the past 3 months of excitement come over me!  Walking down the ramp to the green gates of Magic Kingdom with my family was a blur, with all of us staring in awe at the fall decorations, waiting for the gates to open.  We arrived around 7:40, leaving us 10 minutes of agonizing wait before the Magic Kingdom Opening Ceremony at 7:50.  It was chilly, windy and overcast because Hurricane Sandy was out in the Atlantic Ocean, so there weren’t nearly as many people at the opening gates as I thought there would be.  Or maybe we just arrived first and had front row seats, so I just didn’t notice.  Either way, the train brought the characters for the opening and the next 10 minutes went by like the blink of an eye. 

And then it happened.  The gates opened.  Once the park opened and all the people rushed through the gates like cattle, my stress level went through the roof!  We hadn’t really made a plan, but Heather, my stepdad’s cousin’s wife, explained that we needed to go to the kid rides first, so off we went to ride Peter Pan and It’s A Small World in the very back section called Fantasyland.  We were able to get on both without waiting at all.  The ride wait clock said “5 minutes,” but I think was just because it took 5 minutes to walk to the front of the ride!  Although the Fantasyland section started filling up, Magic Kingdom was big enough that the people that rushed through the gates were spread out and the morning seemed like we could do anything we wanted without a wait!

As the day went on, however, the crowds of people grew rapidly.  Walking down Main Street around noon, back towards the gates to meet the Disney Princesses in the Theater, people rushed in like waves crashing against the buildings around us.  I get nervous in such large crowds, especially with trying to keep up with my family and make sure my baby brother was ok, so I tried focusing on other things to alleviate some of my anxieties. I was able to relax a little and I began taking in a whole new side of Disney, one that the eye just couldn’t capture.  The assorted smells tickled at my nose.  The candy shops smelled of savory candy apples and bitter dark chocolate bars topped with innumerable concoctions of caramel, chocolate and other goodies.  The concession stands smelled of greasy hot dogs and fries.  The restaurants smelled more of gourmet food, but equally delicious!  There were terrible smells as well.  As we were all bunched together, some people thought it was a good day to not wear deodorant.  The stench singed my nostril hairs, making them into little stubbles.  Different noises beat at my eardrums, too.  The mix of foreign languages was muffled, but loud enough to hear sounds like gibberish.  It was all enough to cause a headache!  Each corner I turned there was a young child with glossy eyes and puffy eyelids; tears staining their angelic faces.  The blood circulation on my finger was slowing down as my baby brother Gavin tightened his grip around my finger.  

I found myself back in reality, shuffling through the crowds of people, feeling again as if we were cattle being rounded up, standing, or more like pushing, shoulder-to-shoulder, touching each other.  As it grew later in the day, the crowds grew in every direction, left, right, up and down.  We managed to watch several shows, fighting off people who insisted on encroaching on our personal space!  Even with such people, the Dream Along With Mickey show at Cinderella’s Castle and the Celebrate a Dream Come True parade that we watched in Frontierland were simply magical!  

The darkness finally arrived.  Normally I love nighttime, but I was dreading the fact that the millions of other people, or so it seemed, were probably not going to do much better in the dark!  Waiting for food, getting pushed and pulled in many directions at once, having to tell an old woman to please remove her shoe from my butt, all of these things could have put a damper on any other event I’ve been to.  But not the Main Street Electrical Parade, and certainly not the Wishes Nighttime Spectacular!  Floats covered in lights, designed to make scenes from movies like Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan were amazing.  The Cheshire Cat even made an appearance, disappearing and reappearing in vibrant pinks and purples.  Cinderella’s Castle was a bright and shiny monument against a pitch black landscape, changing from violet to pistachio green to fuchsia pink and peacock blue.  Light up balloons and bubbles from the bubble guns filled the air around us just as Tinkerbell, wrapped in lights, flew out of the castle spire.  This was the moment we had been waiting for the entire day!  Our faces lit up, just as the sky did, as the most amazing fireworks that can ever be seen made this moment seem so… magical!  Not so surprising given that we were at the most magical place on earth!

The post-parade crowds, shoving and stepping could have affected my mood, but I didn’t even notice.  No one did.  We were in such awe from the efforts of Disney to create such a wonderful place that it didn’t matter.  It didn’t even register in my memories!  And although every single soccer mom in the park rammed me in the ankles with her bulky, devilish stroller on the way out, they could not take away the magic that Magic Kingdom shared with us!