The Circle of Life…after dark!
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:
Each year Anne and I take one (1) road trip to a different part of the United States and see attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. One thing we rarely do is fly. We’d much rather drive than be flown unless we absolutely have to…or are given some pretty sweet incentives to do so. Fast-forward to December 2022 and a most unexpected opportunity: The Powers That Be at Anne’s rather large place of employment recognized her and several other employees nationwide for outstanding achievements in the field of excellence. Their grand prize was a Disney World vacation! We could at last announce to friends and family, “THE GOLDENS ARE GOING TO DISNEY WORLD!”
For Anne it was officially, legally a business trip. Much of the time, she’d have to work. Not ME, baby…
Before we recount what happened with the company dinner at EPCOT, it’s important and calming for me to focus first on the most breathtaking part of that long Wednesday evening. At 8:30 p.m. all of us guests were ushered from the banquet facility on the park’s west edge to a centralized, gated party space on the north shore of World Showcase Lagoon. Snacks and booze were offered while we were treated to the 9:00 showing of the park’s resident closing-time light show, a 30-minute program called Harmonious. A synchronized, beauteous onslaught of fireworks, fountains, spotlights, kaleidoscopic effects, oddly shaped screens on floating platforms, songs familiar and unfamiliar, and a barely discernible narrative. It’s all you could want from the end of an amusement-park day and more.
As time-stamped in previous chapters, our Harmonious experience played the night of March 8, 2023. Not till well after the fact did we learn Harmonious was due to be retired. Its final performance was April 2, 2023, three weeks after our vacation. Consider this amateur photo gallery an overdue eulogy or an overlong retrospective, whichever.
The Stargate opens into another dimension of Disney World proportions!
With the exception of our lead photo (which falls near the halfway point), all photos herein are presented in the order in which we took them, or as close as I could get from the time stamps.
At one point Anne switched from her phone camera to her camera-camera. Those shots might be a minute or two off, but close enough to actual presentation order.
Not like anyone’s grading me on the shot order, mind you. Just mentioning it for fun.
As you can imagine, this was a fraction of the total pics we took. I struggled to whittle this down, then gave up after a certain point.
I usually limit each MCC entry to about 20-25 pics, but it’s Disney World. “Overkill” is the point, even when no one’s looking.
Fun trivia: the Disney World miniseries has not been burning up the MCC traffic charts. Hence why I’ve been in no rush to crank these out and we’re now running 13 months behind.
Time was, other WordPress users used to flock to entries about vacations or travel. Nowadays, not so much.
Y’know what’s retaining traffic nowadays? The movie entries, even the ones without scenes after the end credits.
Over the past two weeks, the entry with the biggest clicks is the one on Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days, which only made $3.5 million in domestic box office.
Between the Heartland Film Festival and my annual Oscar Quest, the site content has admittedly skewed heavier toward films over the past several months. That may have bored away some folks who just wanted to see a middle-aged geek couple enjoy unironic bumpkin pleasures.
I mean, there’s more of that come! After the Disney World miniseries, there’re the matters of how we spent my birthday last year, then “Our 2023 Road Trip”, which will be heavy on food and history.
That’s one thing I realize has always crippled MCC: my refusal to focus on a particular hobby or subject. Blogging rules say I’m supposed to post only about movies, or only about travels, or only about geekery or whatever.
A blog whose topicality is “Me Me Me: The Series” only really works if you’re someone apart from the blog. It’s supposed to be, like, a brand extension of your claim to significance, or whatever.
Blogging does not, in and of itself, bestow significance on you. Whenever you see a movie or TV show feign otherwise, it’s because it’s written by an old.
I nearly forgot April 28th will be MCC’s 12th anniversary. Twelve years of blogging! And the site has yet to make its first thousand.
In fact, the ad revenue hasn’t been enough to cover my annual fees in nearly a decade. I’m not whining or passing the hat around, just noting for context.
Time was, an internet presence with longevity alone was cause for notice. There’re plenty of social media trolls who’ve been plying their edgelord prankster ways far longer than I’ve been amusing myself here in my tiny virtual hermit shack. Some probably make money off Twitter now.
Clearly I’m not doing this for the money, fame, or because You, The Viewers at Home, demanded it. You’re more than welcome to demand it, but you don’t.
Blogging scratches an itch. Blogging creates an external hard drive for storing whichever memories I think ought to be captured in paragraph form. Blogging keeps me from running around the streets and getting shot at.
Blogging is my response to all those teachers in my life who saw something in my writing and kept encouraging me to do more, including the one or two college professors who said nice, individualized things to me before I dropped out.
Blogging is a hobby. Blogging is exploring what to do with this alleged voice I’ve been given. Blogging is my vain search for what God really intends of me, in addition to being the best husband and sidekick I can be to the amazing colossal Anne.
Blogging is a way of life! Blogging is like Happy Fun Ball but less deadly! Blogging is a floor wax AND a dessert topping!
Blogging can be even more fun if you’re pretty sure no one is reading the captions!
Seriously, of the few people who’ve made it this far into the entry, the majority are just scrolling through the pics and skipping the captions. Even Anne has admitted to doing this.
In a gallery of 40 photos, I was not about to come up with 40 different captions synonymous with “ooh” or “aah” or describing what you’re looking at, like a 1950s comic book writer.
Longtime MCC readers have seen me do this before — toss an entire stream-of-consciousness mini-essay into the fine print, like a Ryan North comic.
I intentionally didn’t plan any of these captions. Sometimes it’s invigorating to write without pre-writing in my head, and see what happens.
I can blow off steam, let my mind wander, ramble about whatever. It’s fun when it’s fun!
Or if you’d prefer, I could revert to stale basics. “Here’s a thing. Here’s a firework. Another firework. Here’s a light. Here’s water. Here’s more light.” Et cetera.
Sure, some galleries are basic slideshows. Some of them lend themselves to more varied captions than others, when the facts are interesting to write about.
The last thing I want to sound like is Patty and Selma banally growling about their trip to Mexico to a captive audience.
The best-case scenario would be to sound like Don Draper selling you the Kodak Carousel with the greatest pitch ever.
If you’ve seen our photos, you know I’m no Don Draper. But that’s a good thing on many levels.
You can definitely keep all his smoking and drinking. Very much not my thing. Which makes me uncool, but so be it.
That’s okay. My wife thinks I’m cool! (Said in his best Milhouse voice.)
Anyway, we’re almost out of captions, so I should wrap up this double-secret digression as we prepare to rejoin everyone else who just scrolled quickly through the pretty pictures.
If you actually read all these, thanks for joining me on this very special pretend DVD commentary! I appreciate your closer attention in this crowded era of waaay too much content.
In those quieter moments when reader and writer can connect, that’s my kind of harmonious.
…and those are mere slivers of the bedazzling half-hour experience.
It was not, however, the end of our EPCOT evening. Alas.
To be continued!
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[Link enclosed here to handy checklist for other chapters and for our complete major trip history to date. Follow us on Facebook or via email sign-up for new-entry alerts. For further signs of life between entries, wave hi to me on . Thanks for reading!]