Courtesy

After my week-ish of vacation, I find myself with some residual feelings about the way we treat each other in this country. I was at Disney World for five days. It is, to me, the happiest place on earth. What can go wrong there? You sleep in a hotel, get up, eat, go to a great amusement park, eat, go to another great amusement park, eat, get back to your hotel, sleep, get up, and do it all over again. My family and I have it down to a science.

One of the rules on many of the rides and in many of the shows is that you are not permitted to use flash photography. Now, to me, that seems completely fair. Even without taking pictures on such attractions, I came home with over 200 photos saved on my camera's memory card. That is plenty of material to make my way through in Flickr and Snapfish and Facebook and wherever else I will be publishing my vacation pics. However, while at Disney World, people persist in ignoring these rules and take pictures anyway! The worst infraction was on the Great Movie Ride in Disney's Hollywood Studios, when a woman was told FOUR TIMES by the ride operator (while still in character, I might add, which I found to be amazing) not to take pictures with her flash on. FOUR TIMES! After the first time, I would have been apologetic and sort of slumped down in my seat because getting yelled at as an adult on a ride SHOULD BE embarrassing. However, this lady had the nerve to ignore this request the first three times...thereby kind of ruining the ride for everyone.

The other stuff I saw was more run-of-the-mill. There were people who were "excuse-me"-ing their way up the line to where the rest of their party was (we prefer the less-convenient-for-us-but-nicer-for-everyone-else method of letting others go in front of us until the rest of our party catches up), people stopping in the middle of a thoroughfare and creating a traffic jam, and people on scotters driving around like it was the Indy 500 and they were vying for the top prize. This is not to say that all people were doing these things...but I did see more than my fair share. There were also many, many children whose carefully crafted schedules were so out of whack that they were in continual meltdown mode. I saw two specific children who were having such complete and total tantrums that I thought that if I were their parents, I would think of leaving them there, just doing their thing. Note that I am not a parent. Perhaps there is a reason for that!

For the most part, however, we got plenty of doses of that Disney World magic and that amazing customer service that they have down to a science. The happiness that was shining out of most people's faces (with the notable exception of the man we overheard say to his wife, "You are RUINING this for me." Ouch.) made the entire time there feel like a fabulous holiday. I don't know when I will get to go back to Disney World, but I am so happy to have had this time with my parents and my sister, enjoying each other's company in a place we love so much.

Now, the airport experience? That's a whole different story...