Going through old CDs is basically like going through a time capsule. Finding old one-hit wonders is hilarious enough, but it’s even more fun to find old bands you used to listen to. I have a kind of mentality regarding music that means I didn’t just pick the songs I liked off the radio. Once I found an artist I enjoyed, I would insist on hearing every song from every album he or she ever produced.
One of these artists was a singer known as Five for Fighting. I had compiled a pretty extensive track set consisting of his songs when I was younger, and I found an old CD with his song Disneyland on it.
I haven’t actually gone to Disneyland, but I have in fact been to Disneyworld a few times. It’s the spot of quite a few of my favourite memories, especially of my late grandmother. In fact, most of my favourite memories of exploring the park involve my family members.
For example, during our second trip, we decided in lieu of getting a hotel room to rent a small condo with enough rooms for myself, my father and mother, my sister, and my aunt and uncle, as well as their two kids. It was big enough that it began to feel like a second home, and considering the fact that we were lucky enough to be there for three weeks, we were often doing household chores like cooking and laundry.
It was common for my sister, my aunt and I to fold the newly dried laundry, and we’d often put on the TV for background noise. Once, our little cousins were in the living room while we did so, and thus changed the channel to some Disney original film about time travel. It was probably close to the stupidest movie we’d ever seen… but somehow, after that, every time it was on, our aunt would call us into the living room and we’d all sit there folding clothes and watching the movie while complaining about how dumb it was.
As for my grandmother, we invited her to come with us to Disneyworld to encourage her to travel while she still could. She spent most of the day putting around on a scooter taking pictures, seeing every show, and basically being the typical tourist. She even went out and bought her own autograph book so she could meet all of the costumed characters and mascots in the park. Of course, on this grandmother’s side of the family, there is an unfortunate tendency to take the most straight-faced pictures. We had to remind her every time we stopped for photo ops to “Smile, dang it! You’re meeting Mickey Mouse!”
Funnily enough, it was when we were in the grocery store that we saw her the most excited during the trip. While my aunt and father were discussing the shopping list, she practically ran over to them, holding a package of Velveeta cheese. “Do you know how much this is in Canada?” she yelled at the both of them. She apparently thought she was committing highway robbery with how cheap her cheese was, and was overjoyed about it.
Meanwhile, while my family members were getting excited over shows and particularly good deals, I’ve always been the adrenaline junkie. My main mission when going to Disneyworld was to enjoy every ride it was possible to go on. I rode every roller coaster, and would often pick my favourites to ride more than once. I could really only convince my mother to go with me, though, as my sister was afraid to ride any tall roller coasters, and my father has an inner ear problem that left him out of commission after riding something as simple as The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh.
There were still some rides, however, that even bested me. The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror is a particularly creepy ride, with its set-up as a haunted elevator teleported into a ghostly world. Of course, the constant plummets of the elevator didn’t help matters. In one part of the ride, your car is transported not up or down, like a usual elevator, but sideways, going through a hotel room hallway as it suddenly starts distorting and you’re plunged into darkness. We sat there for several incredibly long seconds. Everyone was waiting for the ride to drop us again. I, whether it was in some attempt to show how tough I was for a preteen or just to stop myself from wetting myself, loudly proclaimed, “I’m not scared!”
Everybody in our car laughed, and then screamed as we plummeted to our ‘doom.’
In Tampa, which is only about an hour outside of Orlando, the theme park Busch Gardens promised many exciting coasters to amuse me, but not as much to amuse my sister. In some attempt to cheer her up, I invited her onto one of the roller coasters. She thought this was a stupid idea, but my mother and I were pretty confident there was nothing to worry about. It was just a wooden coaster, after all. Those can’t be as fast or as tall as other roller coasters. “It’s just like Big Thunder Mountain Railroad!” my mother insisted.
That was a mistake. We only had to get up the first hill, with a drop of 91 feet, and stare down at the little tiny ant people to realize this was a mistake. On top of that, the coaster was actually going 82 kilometres per hour, and this intense speed made the tracks shake. I am pretty sure my sister would have yelled death threats at me if we weren’t busy screaming our heads off.
Still, as much as the park is said to be the ‘happiest place on Earth,’ I think the happiest part for me is reminiscing on the time I shared with my family.
…I still want to go back, though.
