The place where dreams are manufactured
Posted on | May 16, 2009 | 2 Comments
As long as they’re plastic dreams, wrapped in sparkly cynicism and tied with a big, money-grasping, bow.
Yes, I’m off to Disneyland Paris.
Four glorious days of that rictus rodent gurning and waving with his podgy, gloved hands at me. Four days of Heston Blumenthal prices for sub-fairground fast food. Four days of educationally sub-normal adults pushing kids out of the way so they can be in the front for the parade. Four days of watching the characters’ cheeks twitch uncontrollably from being forced to constantly smile as they’re closely monitored by Disney security for the slightest deviation in ‘sunniness’. Four days waiting, praying, for Cinderella to finally crack and go mental in a massive murder/suicide spree. At least it’d be a break in the trudging, monotonous, veneer of happiness thinly pasted onto a bundle of depressed, and depressing, fibre-glass structures in a gloomy, jaundiced, manufactured suburb of what is, otherwise, quite a nice city.
Four days. Expect me to come back with a substantially lighter wallet. I’m guessing there is considerable expense involved in keeping Walt Disney’s head frozen and that’s the justification for the avaricious prices charged in, and around, the park. Of course, I don’t mind paying for the ambience of a faux-jungle-hut or for the service-standards of those who know they have a captive audience- “Don’t like it? What you gonna do, queue for another fifty minutes over in Aladdin’s Pizza Palace? Ah haaa haaa haaaaa!”
Four days watching George Lucas, who, thanks to some sort of weird LucasFilms licensing thing, can often be seen standing by the shop selling bad copies of Indiana Jones hats or over at the X-Wing fighter, rubbing his hands in glee, only stopping to occasionally argue with a customer that Jar Jar Binks is a wonderful character and shout that, when the prequels are remastered, Binks will be, incongruously, CGIed into every single scene.
Four days of standing in lines, in the rain, for forty-five minutes for a forty-five second ride in a plastic, hollowed-out Dumbo. Four days of the lifeless, insentient, and, yet, somehow malevolent eyes of the racist puppets in It’s A Small World After All (one of Walt’s personal favourites, apparently).
Four days.
God help me.
Comments
Gerry Hayes
I mostly sit around all day and drink tea. Occasionally, I write stuff and send it to strangers so they can humiliate me and deride my efforts. Other than the self-harm to dull the shame of failure, it's not a bad life. Like I say, there's tea.
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You have my sympathy. But I think you just might enjoy watching your kid having fun. And if not, at least you’ll come back with plenty of stuff to write about.
Enjoy!
(And I like Jar Jar Binks!)
Indeed. My daughter loves it and that’s reason enough. I’ll be bottling up my bile for the duration of the trip. This helped get it out of my system before I go.