I love the smell of gunpowder at midnight.
It’s 10:45 Eastern Standard Time and my new bride and I drove to Orlando to pick up my sister-in-law at the airport. She had flown from Russia and was joining her sister for a new life in Alabama. What better way to celebrate than to spend 15 fun filled hours walking the streets of Disney World. In July.
Twelve hours in, and the blood in my feet no longer flowed. After standing in line (the days before the coveted “fastpass” tickets), consuming fried Disney, being tossed around on various rides built ostensibly for humans, my feet – the ones with no feeling or blood – rebelled and I sat down on the curb.
That was July 4, 1994.
No other rational person would have gone to Disney on that date, so the other (roughly) 40,000 were also insane to some degree.
Close to midnight, we watched colored flying gunpowder explode into magical shapes and designs. Neither my wife nor her sister had ever seen these kinds of fireworks before growing up in the polar region of Russia. (She would say that it wasn’t the polar region. But I say when it snows from September to April – it doesn’t matter).
I can’t say these fireworks were worth the previous 15 hours of hard labor, but they rate with some of the best I’d seen.
November 2009
A few months ago, I read that Thanksgiving would be a good time to visit Disney-World as most folks would be at home celebrating turkey. So, last week the (now) four of us (absent sister-in-law) loaded up the van and my two daughters and my still lovely princess bride headed for the magic castle in Florida.
Disney had graciously provided a complimentary 5 day (military) pass for me and reduced rates for the others in my family; thank you Mickey.
And all those people who wrote that it would not be all that crowded during Thanksgiving week
LIARS.
I suspect the author was a blogger anchored in the depths of some Disney data center because once you’re there – it’s just tough to turn around and go home.
We spent two days at the Magic Kingdom, two at Hollywood Studios (which I can’t help but refer to as MGM Studios) and one day at Epcot Center. I can’t name all the changes, but things were different from 1994; the light parade especially. I think in 1994 it was called the Electric Light Parade, which used light bulbs as opposed to the LCDs. I like the new better.
On Thursday night we stayed long enough to see the light parade and then the fireworks. They too seemed bigger and more costly.
Halfway through the show, clouds of smoke from the fireworks almost enveloped the crowd. This reminded me of a 1995 fireworks over the Mobile River in Mobile, Alabama where the entire show was obscured by low clouds and fog. We heard the boom and saw some flashes, but the fireworks were pretty much ruined. Had it not been for a relative’s flatulent gag toy, the whole evening would have been wasted – I think.
This year’s Disney fireworks also reminded me of the aforementioned 1994 Disney trip and my church youth group’s 1983 Disney trip (which was the summer my father died).
From Tinkerbelle’s spectacular gliding down the zip line to the grand finale neither I, nor our girls, were disappointed. The girls stood on the handrail behind us for as long as they could, mesmerized at the exploding lights; oohing and ahhing appropriately.
I stood, keeping them balanced, enjoying the moment, pushing back the thoughts of going back to work, inhaling the smell of gunpowder.
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