I’m Jake Hounds, and this is One Thousand Words or Less
EPISODE 2 - THINKING AROUND THE WORLD
I was sitting in the hot tub of my Disney World hotel enjoying the warm water in the cool night air when I was joined by a trio of couples sporting a variety of tattoos. I don’t have any tattoos, so I always feel a bit homogenized when I am around people so adorned.
At Disney World, the conversation inevitably turns to the parks: Did you ride TRON? Have you met Mickey Mouse? And so forth. In this case, we discovered we all planned to visit EPCOT on Saturday. The couples, in their late twenties and child-free declared that they couldn’t wait to go there so they could drink their way around the world.
Now, I’m visiting Disney World with my kids, who didn’t get their fill the first time, so we made a return engagement to have fun together while childhood remains. I’d heard of the food and drink culture at EPCOT, but drinking around the world sounded contrary to our perfect day. So I changed our reservation to Monday, to hopefully miss the brunt of weekend drinkers.
Don’t get me wrong, I like drinking on occasion, usually with food, rarely without, and never during the day. Day drinking just makes me sleepy, even a glass of wine with lunch, which sounds so sophisticated until you wake up at 4:30 pm with a headache. But that’s just me. I’m not against people drinking whenever they want.
In fact, during our holiday, I had one of the best drinks I’ve ever had, actually two of them. A Moonshine Margarita, from Chef Art Smith’s Homecoming in Disney Springs. (I am cognitively prohibited from saying Homecomin’ - but to be clear, the restaurant name ends in an apostrophe, not the letter g). Local dialects aside, what a cocktail! Perfect! But would I walk around with one during the day? In this case, I couldn’t imagine walking anywhere with it, as I wobbled towards the men’s room.
Now this was in a restaurant in a shopping district, not a theme park. When Walt Disney opened Disneyland it served no alcohol whatsoever. Walt makes his intention clear in a 1956 interview saying:
“No liquor, no beer, nothing. Because that brings in a rowdy element. That brings people that we don’t want…”
So, how wrong could I be agreeing with Walt Disney about Walt Disney World? The answer is, actually, pretty wrong.
Monday morning in Orlando was beautiful, and our day started in a queue for Frozen Ever After, then we lined up to meet Elsa and Anna, enjoying giant pastries from Norway as we waited. Afterward, we got some caramel corn from Germany which we nibbled on most of the day, and inadvertently became the first visitors to meet Mulan at the China pavilion.
It was about that time that we started to notice cocktail culture had begun. I mean, it’s 11 am somewhere, right? People were walking around with fancy frozen drinks, I saw a mom and dad pushing a double stroller with beers in the cup holders. It became apparent that a lot of people were drinking while I was still thinking about a late-morning coffee.
EPCOT, an acronym for the Experimental Prototype City of Tomorrow, was originally Walt Disney’s vision for a Utopian community but was built as a permanent World’s Fair, showcasing different cultures and ideas. As I walked I kept thinking to myself “How are people already drinking,” it seemed more like a Las Vegas tailgate party on Bourbon Street than a Disney park.
Instead of meandering like most theme park goers, my son calls them “meanderthals,” we saw folks stumbling from one cocktail to another, with booths and bars set up in each country. There is no way you can hide walking around with a giant drink in your hand, no matter how sophisticated your swagger is.
While the daftness of drinking too much is practiced the world over, only in America could it supplant the specific intentions of the founder of a cherished brand. The sport of the matter is to drink in each country as you make your way around the world. So eleven drinks. Eleven! I’ve never even had eleven drinks in one day, not that I can remember anyway. It’s easy too with drinks like the Orange Slushie, made with vodka, and rum, and grand marnier, or the Frozen Mint Julep because nothing says hot Florida sunshine like bourbon.
Soon we started hearing loud talkers, and profanity from the crowds, including a series of f-bombs from a group of younger people. The language increased as the day went on, with my kids pointing it out as they overheard it.
I wondered what Hunter S. Thompson might say about this Monday morning Mardi Gras, and imagined him having a spaced-out conversation with Figment, only to realize that he was speaking with a topiary he had just vomited beside.
I visit Disney World to experience the magic with my kids, and to wrap ourselves in the innocence of the characters that have given us all so much enjoyment throughout the years; It’s a place that welcomes adults back into childhood. To me, the drinking part seems, well, less magical.
When I was a kid my favorite home movie was of my grandparents’ trip to Disneyland from 1964 with my grandfather dancing in front of the castle like a clown. It was only when I was older that I learned he was drunk at the time. I’m sure he wasn’t the first or the last visitor to surreptitiously drink at a Disney Park, or anywhere for that matter, despite the rules. He was a WWII veteran and like many of his greatest generation, he would carry a flask. He wasn’t going to let things like laws stop him from having a drink whenever he wanted one.
It goes to show you that the more you think about something that bothers you, the sooner you will find the same in yourself.
Cheers.
This has been One Thousand Words or Less, I’m Jake Hounds.
Thanks for listening.
One Thousand Words or Less is one hundred percent created by flawed natural human intelligence.
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