20 years ago I went to Orlando in Florida and spent a week at Walt Disney World Resort. It was a proper "what the hell" trip to make up for the previous two years not having been the happiest period of my life. My friend - let's call them Chris - specialised in what the hell trips, and neither of us had ever been, so what the hell.
I hadn't started blogging back then, indeed I was only (sigh) 35, so I've never written about the trip before. But with the aid of a diary, a plastic bagful of ephemera and four Kodak photo discs I'm going to have a go. I should point out that the photos are a desperate disappointment, mostly of backs of heads or blurred or taken in darkness (and only cover the first few days of the trip), but what the hell.
Sunday 6th August 2000:Gatwick → Orlando
This was the flight of my life. We'd booked premium economy, but at the check-in desk Virgin Atlantic unexpectedly bumped us into Upper Class. They never said why, but Chris flew a lot for work and we definitely weren't complaining. After free drinks in the lounge we boarded our Jumbo and (oh joy) got to ascend the staircase to the tiny prestige cabin on the upper deck. I sat front right, with three windows all to myself (and the occasional view of Bermuda). I was perhaps most excited by the goodie bag packed with colourful items Richard Branson thought might be useful on the flight, all of which I saved for later. Two stewardesses had been devoted to the twelve of us but were regrettably underused. The beef medallions and chablis they served were very tasty, but the cheese and biscuits less so. Film choices proved no better than downstairs. The quantity of legroom has never been repeated.
After nine hours in our luxury attic we touched down in the Sunshine State. My diary records that we "whizzed through immigration", as indeed we had through Gatwick, because pre-2001 was a very different time. Chris had pre-booked a car, and blimey if it didn't turn out to be a red Chrysler Convertible. A lot of top-down driving ensued throughout the coming week, although the radio malfunctioned so it wasn't quite the full-on American dream. Our first stop was the All Star Music Resort, where our 2nd floor room was fairly basic and smelt of toothpaste. For dinner we drove off site to Downtown Disney, a lakeside food and retail hub where we filled up with cheap pizza. Just in case we hadn't seen enough films on the plane we then bought tickets to watch the newly-released X Men movie, and I somehow didn't fall asleep despite having been awake for 22 hours.
Monday 7th August 2000:Magic Kingdom
Our chosen breakfast involved thick pancakes with syrup, something called 'sausages' and chocolate milk. We had gone native fast. We'd also splashed out a few hundred dollars on a full Unlimited Magic Pass (souvenir Millennium Celebrations edition) so we had the pick of any of the Disney Parks in the area, but on day one it's obviously the done thing go to the Magic Kingdom. Our passes allowed us inside before the general public, which also enabled a mostly empty trip on the monorail so the day was already going splendidly. From the entrance Main Street USA leads up to Sleeping Beauty's Castle, just like it does in the Californian and Paris versions, with the big rides spun off into themed zones all around.
We hit Tomorrowland first of all, where I wimped out of Space Mountain but went for a Buzz Lightyear Spin and queued for an ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter. Standing in line was, I think, the first time I noticed that many Americans were really quite large. Over in Frontierland we rode the Thunder Mountain railway, twice, and in Fantasyland endured the earworming "It's A Small World". There was of course too much to see and not enough time to see it, especially when Chris was intent on stopping for lunch and tracking down a hat with Tigger on it. We managed to get back to Main Street in time for the end of the Magical Moments Parade, which consisted mostly of assorted characters waving from trucks, and then the 95 degree heat and jetlag all became too much and we fled back to the hotel.
I was pleased that we got to go back again in the evening, although by now it was getting dark so it was harder to enjoy the fibreglass skyline. Instead we stood in Liberty Square and awaited the legendary Main Street Electrical Parade, an event which still felt like Walt had devised it in the 1930s. Illuminated snails and mushrooms and fairy castles passed by, even an attempt at Big Ben, each comprising strings of light bulbs atop an unseen chassis. My favourite part was the Moog synthesiser backing music that tinkled throughout, which I felt the urge to track down on CD before flying home. We stayed for the 10pm fireworks, then wished we hadn't as we joined the slow crush out of the park afterwards.
Tuesday 8th August 2000:Epcot
Breakfast on Day Two again involved pancakes with syrup plus sausages, but I'd learned to skip the chocolate milk. We were up early to beat the queues at Disney's futuristic attraction, Epcot, a cluster of technological sheds plus a lakeside loop of global stereotypes. The geodesic dome of Spaceship Earth looked fantastic, especially with a millennial 2000 clinging to the inside, but the 'ride' inside turned out to be sponsored by the AT&T telephone company. Universe of Energy was 45 minutes with Ellen DeGeneres and Exxon, Wonders of Life plugged health insurance over biology and The Land was an inherently Nestlé production. It's not what Britons fly all this way to see... in much the same way that Americans would have scratched their heads at the contents of the Millennium Dome.
Honey I Shrunk The Audience was more fun, courtesy of Eric Idle and giant 3D pets, while the Living Seas involved giant tanks and several unnecessary lifts. I felt like we were getting a lot more done today, but Chris still demanded a mid-afternoon break for some urgent clothes shopping. I hadn't packed any shorts but Florida's humidity and high temperatures (see also London, 20 years later) demanded a pair, plus several ankle socks to boot.
Suitably reclad we returned to Epcot to tick off as much as possible of the Lake of Nations before nightfall. China's waterfront zone featured an impressive 360° cinema and Norway had mustered a wooden church but Italy was alas mostly restaurants. We ended our walk in the so-called United Kingdom, where a crowd gathered to watch an inexplicable parade of clocks outside the fish and chip shop. I would very like to go back to that moment and tell 35-year-old me not to waste half the film in the camera on this mostly-obscured so-called spectacle. The night of course ended with some loud and spectacular fireworks, which I wasted most of the rest of the film on, and yet again there was an un-Disneylike bundle to exit afterwards.
