To Hellholes and Back Page 26

  “The mom had a charm bracelet. We stopped in a jewelry store to get a charm for the day. She told me, ‘I’m collecting charms of every place we go so that when I do pass, my kids will have this.’ She grabbed a sorcerer’s hat for $10. I went to the counter and picked out a $270 charm and gave it to her and she started bawling. We took the girls to Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique for extreme princess make overs. It’s $170 per girl. No charge. I can’t tell you how good it feels to give that away. They appreciated it so much.

  “At the end of the day the mom said to me, ‘For three years we have worried about what to do about our kids when I pass. You made it possible for me for one day not to worry.’ I just start crying right there. We’re both there crying and hugging.”

  Martin’s eyes are puffing up. He’s no fake. Neither am I. It’s getting a little dusty at this table. Maybe lingering smoke from the fireworks. Either way, my eyes are itching, too.

  “I’m still in touch with the family,” he says. “They’re the main reason I quit Disney and went to work at the American Cancer Society. The mom is now in remission. We have plans to meet up again this summer. Assuming all goes well.”

  Though it has fewer strip clubs and Gambler’s Anonymous chapters, Walt Disney World has a lot in common with Las Vegas, in that both envelop their visitors in an overwhelming cocoon of synthetic control. Like the city of broken dreams and bad TV series, WDW is magnificent for forty-eight to seventy-two hours of sensory overload. Once the initial awe wears off, however, the law of diminishing returns kicks in with a fury. After a near week of Mickey, Miley, and Martin, I’m gasping for a change of scenery.

  Orlando is famous for theme parks—there are eight major ones in addition to WDW—so in the interest of giving all of my Florida biases a full airing, I decide to take a day away from the Kingdom for a look at the competition. Universal Studios is by many accounts the most popular attraction in Orlando after WDW, with a reputedly higher caliber of rides than WDW and 444 acres of filming locations. Given that a bitter 1927 licensing feud between Universal and a young artist named Walt Disney led directly to the creation of Mickey Mouse and the Disney empire, it seems like a logical place to start.19

  The contrast between the two parks is clear from the moment I drive into the Universal lot and immediately get bogged down in traffic that zigzags for fifteen minutes through a dark indoor structure. It’s utterly unlike the open, speedy drive through the Disney lot. The sheer size of WDW can paralyze visitors, but ample space for exploding car traffic and park growth was part of Disney’s original brilliance. His secretive acquisition of a chunk of Central Florida twice the size of Manhattan—carried off without anybody knowing he was the buyer, most especially the city of St. Louis, which believed his multimillion-dollar enterprise was coming to their city—is a fascinating study of business subterfuge.

  At Universal, I get in line at 10:48 a.m. to exchange a prepaid voucher for a park pass. A Hispanic family standing behind me starts in with the “inch ahead in line” game, first creeping up alongside, then sending one of their kids on an aggressive scouting mission a few paces in front of me. Calling on my hard-earned experience with lines in Africa, I maneuver in front of the bandannaed punk to block his baldfaced cut in line before the whole familia can pile through the breach.20 A few feet away a rail-thin, tattoed blonde sits on the ground breast-feeding an infant while two other children sprawl at her feet on the concrete. By the time I fend off the familia, fail to avert my eyes from the sidewalk circus, and reach the ticket window, it’s 11:05. Seventeen minutes have elapsed. At Disney, the voucher-to-ticket transaction took all of three minutes, including the wait in line.

  After a week in the unremitting arms of Disney, I’ve begun to form a weird kind of loyalty. This is an unexpected development. Even the competitor’s minor failings suggest a critical inferiority and I find myself on the lookout for any little thing to snipe at.

  To be fair, from the twelve bucks for parking to the ominous biometrics fingerprint scan at the entrance to the life-size Dora the Explorer and Jimmy Neutron to the cups of frozen lemonade going for the approximate price of Chanel No. 5, the setup and crowd at Universal aren’t all that different from WDW. But they’re not quite the same, either. The Disney template—rides, shows, emphasis on concessions—has been copied by a number of would-be rivals, with varying degrees of success.

  The lamest ride at Universal is Twister…Ride It Out, an unbelievable waste of time based on the unbelievable waste-of-time movie from 1996. Other than a few buckets of water and some cheesy “lightning,” the dominant feature of this attraction is some ancient behind-the-scenes footage of Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt reliving with typical thespian pomposity the metaphysical experience of pretending to be scientists in a fake storm. That they allowed a woman in a wheelchair entry into the ride should have tipped me off to the actual level of thrill I was going to get inside.

  On the other hand, the Spider-Man 3-D ride, with its combination of frenzied motion, 3-D film, and elaborate sets, capped by a virtual four-hundred-foot free fall, rips open my eyeballs to the wild applications of modern thrill-based technology. It’s a close call, but Spidey 3-D gets the nod over Soarin’ as the best four minutes in Orlando.

  The most remarkable of Central Florida’s inspired-by-Disney parks has to be the Holy Land Experience, a Biblical theme park operated by the Trinity Broadcasting Network that from the outside looks like a made-over Medieval Times restaurant. After Universal, I repair to this assumed repository of only-in-America surrealism, where an overly friendly young man claiming to be Paul the Apostle greets me at the gate dressed in a flowing robe of ancient Israel. Behind him, an old dude pretending to be Moses stands draped in a bedsheet holding plastic tablets into which are carved the Ten Commandments.

  “Paul” wants to know if it’s my first time in the park, then opens my guide and map and starts explaining the layout to me, like so many patrician church fucks in my past assuming that I can’t read or figure things out for myself. Here again I have to remind myself of my promise to approach each destination on its own terms. This is southern Christianity, after all, so I guess literacy among the flock can’t be taken for granted.

  Evading Paul’s entreaties, I soon find myself alongside a replica of the unfortunate Jonah trapped inside the surprisingly roomy belly of a whale. The story broadcast over well-worn speakers is a familiar one, though in the Holy Land version Jonah is accompanied on his penitential adventure by a wise oyster and goofball octopus sidekick. The latter speaks with a dipshit backwoods drawl, like an outcast from the Country Bear Jamboree. I don’t recall either of these figures from the book of Jonah, but I suppose wisecracking invertebrates are no more implausible than a lot of the stuff in the Bible. In fulfillment of the scripture, Jonah escapes the great fish’s digestive imperative in time to issue his famous admonition to the citizens of Nineveh to repent and don sackcloth or face an eternal lake of fire. Given that the ruins of Nineveh lie near modern Mosul, Iraq, we now know that Jonah wasn’t just bullshitting around.

  At the Jerusalem Street Market, I’m approached by Pastor Sandra, a lively, heavyset black woman in her sixties who introduces herself as one of the park’s “prayer warriors.” I ask what this means. Pastor Sandra explains that her job is to wander the grounds and pray for or with anyone who needs it—sort of the Holy Land equivalent of Martin the super greeter. Only with less access to $270 souvenirs and Bibbidi Bobbidi Judaic make overs.

  We talk a little politics—Barack, Bush, unborn babies—but Pastor Sandra keeps telling me I have to stop worrying about this world and just concern myself with Chuck and God’s plan for him. This of course is classic fake-Christian dogma, which grants absolution for willful ignorance and unalloyed egotism—there are no bounds, no rules, just the Almighty and the almighty YOU. For some reason, though, I’m never as put off by evangelizing African Americans as I am by fervent whites. Something about their preaching seems less judgmental; or at least more rooted in actual opp
ression, which makes the clinging to guns and religion bit a little more understandable. Plus, their church music is way better.

  I stick around for the sunset “Crucifixion and Resurrection” show, a gala event that begins with Roman centurions marching onto an outdoor stage, brandishing swords and threatening the audience of believers. It’s a nice Tony n’ Tina’s effort, but for Roman thugs about to hammer the King of the Jews to a piece of lumber, it’s pretty weak sauce. You see more convincing taunting by perturbed French Huguenots in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

  A bedraggled, bloodied Jesus appears at stage left dragging his cross and imploring, “Father, forgive them. They know not what they do.” And after some halfhearted beating, “My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?” With the exception of a sobbing woman in a middle row—fifty-fifty odds she’s a plant—the audience doesn’t seem particularly moved as the parade makes its infamous way up a mini-Golgotha. Competent dinner-theater pros sing dramatic songs, and the crucifixion is pulled off with more flair than you’d expect given the desultory nature of the rest of the park.

  The final test—for me, not Christ—comes just as I’m leaving. I’m within sight of the turnstiles when Paul the Apostle beelines through the dispersing “Crucifixion” crowd to intercept me. Up close, I see he’s got the opaque, meth-addict eyes of a lobotomized Eric Roberts. He clasps my hand and gets down to business.

  “Do you know if you are going to heaven?” he asks.

  I respond to this extremely forward pickup line by saying that it would be nice to think so but that I’m really not sure any of us know the answer to that question. Such low-level cynicism, of course, means nothing to a man who introduces himself to strangers as Paul the Apostle.

  “I know for certain that I’m going to heaven,” Paul says. “Can I tell you my personal story of salvation?”

  Normally I have no patience for these sorts of look-at-me religious exhibitionists, about whom James Clavell was no doubt thinking when he wrote in Shgun, “There’s no fanatic like a converted fanatic.” But just as it would have been senseless to go to Mexico City and not try the street food, it seems half-assed to venture to the Holy Land Experience and not sample the complete menu of psychoses. “Fire away,” I tell him.

  Paul pukes out the familiar convert yawner of a dissolute former existence under the spell of booze, drugs, pornography, loose women, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and every other vice that makes life in Central Florida bearable. Eventually, of course, he hit rock bottom, whereupon God took him by the hand and showed him the Way.

  Born-again Christianity is by far the most convincing argument we have attesting to the wicked power of drugs and alcohol. Talk to a few fake-Christian ciphers and it becomes obvious that liquor, coke, and smack are but mere gateways to the hard stuff of megachurch depravity. People with this addiction love nothing so much as their own well-rehearsed saga of decadence—always greatly exaggerated, especially the fucking of loose women these guys all make sure you know about—that always leads to their brain-dead salvation. No wonder religious conservatives defended Terry Schiavo’s right to vegetate in perpetuity—it’s what they’re all striving for here on Earth.

  I’m bored by addicts and recovery—it was almost impossible for me to make it past the half-hour mark of any episode of Behind the Music—and I’m perpetually angry with the hijackers of Christianity, so I have to interrupt Paul.

  “Guys like you are the most self-centered conversationalists of all time,” I say, as cordially as possible. “You’re a fraud who knows nothing of Christian doctrine.”

  “I never brought up doctrine,” Paul whines. “You don’t have to go to church or observe a bunch of rules to be a Christian. All you have to do is let God into your heart.”

  “That’s not even close to being true,” I say. “There are plenty of rules. It takes a big commitment to be a proper Christian. There’s a code of behavior that has to do with selflessness and charity.”

  During the entire three and a half hours I’ve been in the park, not one performer, attraction, or preacher has mentioned anything about traditional Christian values. Not a single word about aiding the poor, comforting the sick, rejecting violence, or embracing personal sacrifice. No one says, “Whatsover you do to the least of my brothers, that you do unto me.” Not even peripherally do you hear reference to the humbling Ash Wednesday reminder that from dust we come and to dust we shall return.

  What the keepers of the Holy Land Experience do talk about—exclusively, fanatically, without pause—is themselves. Their story. Their relationship with God. That’s it. Nothing more. That one thing justifies everything else, as though nothing else is required of the believer beyond a singular devotion to the self and an imagined connection to Greatness.

  I disengage from Paul the Apostle by telling him that he’s been led astray by dark forces, that there’s still time for him to repent, that he’s certainly on the path to hell, but that Jesus still loves him and that I’ll pray for his soul to be spared damnation. This is more or less the closing argument I’ve been on the receiving end of in debates with born agains around the world, and after a week of Disney pleasantries, it feels good to turn the tables and vent a little.

  Paul and I part with an awkward handshake. I try to give him the traditional priest-greeting-the-congregation two-hand clutch to solidify my old-school church cred, but his hand is a dead fish. Paul does not, as Pastor Sandra and several others have, ask to exchange e-mail addresses.

  The night out with Martin and detours to Universal Studios and the Holy Land Experience have been useful in my pursuit of perspective and enlightenment, but I’d already grasped that WDW and its staff are impressive in ways that places employing guys galloping around in the robes of old Judea are not. Although I’ve got a full day remaining in Orlando, there’s really not much ground left to cover. Instead of trudging through Disney’s Wide World of Sports Complex or doing princess recon for niece Grace at Cinderella’s Happily Ever After Dinner at 1900 Park Fare, I spend my last day in Florida at the condo pool dodging kamikaze dragonflies and reflecting on my Disney experience.

  For skeptics, one of the most interesting attractions at WDW is the Hollywood Studios gallery that houses Walt Disney: One Man’s Dream. The walk-through exhibit, which culminates with a fifteen-minute film on Disney’s life, isn’t particularly objective, but it is informative. It’s hard not to be impressed by Walt Disney, a man who built an empire without killing anybody, breaking a ton of laws, coercing labor from legions of unpaid coolies, or morally bankrupting himself or his followers. “America’s uncle” was only sixty-five when he died. Poll the first fifty people who pass you on the street and their combined accomplishments probably won’t come close to Disney’s.

  I can think of a number of ways to justify my qualified change of heart toward Disney, but the honest explanation is the simplest one—for the most part, I’ve enjoyed Walt Disney World. The place is organized, much easier to deal with than expected, and entertaining in its own way. In a world increasingly bereft of them, Disney runs a very tight ship. Saying so doesn’t amount to an endorsement of the Disney value system, which I still find off-putting. Dr. Bahr told me that in Africa I’d find all of humanity’s foibles on display without pretense, but he forgot about poor taste, which though rare in Africa is the leitmotif in a lot of Disney. That said, throw a week of vacation, a reasonable budget, and a nine-year-old niece or nephew at me and I’d go back.

  I’m not new enough to the travel game to believe that my limited view of Disney can’t be refuted or that it necessarily sums up the median experience. And I’m definitely not trying to court “sell out” accusations from fellow flamethrowers. There are plenty of Disney horror stories out there; I know because I hear a number of them, most memorably in the Orlando airport from a mother, father, and fifteen-year-old son on their way home to Philadelphia.

  “Twenty-seven dollars for the worst piece of meat I ever ate,” grumbles the father.

  “An hour
and a half to get from the Grand Floridian to the Animal Kingdom,” gripes the mother. “And using the Disney transportation system, no less.”

  “We’re never coming back,” adds the father.

  Buried in his Game Boy, the kid doesn’t have an opinion either way.

  So much of travel depends on luck. After our first trip to Paris—one of those magical journeys in which the French treated us as though we’d arrived two steps ahead of Leclerc and Patton—Joyce and I sat in an Orly airport departure lounge next to a young American couple who were bitching about the asshole French and vowing never again to set foot in their repulsive, mean-spirited, vile excuse for a republic so long as they drew the sweet oxygen of American liberty. To say that I did not share their view is not to say that I didn’t believe them. Just as Fenway Park is Fenway Park, Paris is Paris—the history and crumbling architecture are nice, but it’s the crowd around you and the performance of the professionals in the field that will most determine the quality of your experience. All tourist destinations are unreliable because people are unreliable.

  Just as I hadn’t bothered to involve myself with the couple in Paris, I leave the Philadelphians after a few minutes. They have their Disney issues; I have mine. And however surprisingly palatable the experience has been, the truth is I’m not sorry to be going home. It’s an enormous relief to be finished with the year of hellholes, even if, looking down from ten thousand feet as Orlando disappears behind me, I have to admit I’m not exactly Soarin’.

  Epilogue

  It’s customary upon completion of surveys such as this one for the writer to step back and ask, “What have I learned?” In the wake of an easier and often more enjoyable time than I’d expected in the course of gauntlet tourism, I’ve come up with a handy checklist answer. This has also proven useful as a reply to queries from friends who want to express an interest in my life but who don’t necessarily need to be regaled with long-winded tales of my derring-do: