“THERE IS NO WAY OUT!” I imagined an evil alien broadcasting telepathically to me from the very core of Spaceship Earth.
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…
When I began my one-man tour of EPCOT with awkwardness and a little anxiety, I’d asked myself going in, “What’s the worst that could happen?” We found our answer there Wednesday night.
Around 3:00 I left EPCOT on the monorail back to the Transportation Hub, switched monorails, and learned the hard way I’d boarded the wrong one. I’d enjoyed a full lap around the resort monorail Tuesday night while Anne was at her employees-only beach party. I’d of course just completed my round trip on the EPCOT/Hub monorail. Thanks to my inattention to minute detail, I discovered I was on a third line — the express monorail that runs the same full circle but stops only at the Magic Kingdom and the Hub, nowhere else. I grimaced as we passed the Polynesian Village and my stop the Grand Floridian, then sighed and tried to enjoy the extra minutes of sitting and relaxing. I can handle inconvenience when I know what’s going on and can rest easy knowing when or where the endpoint will come.
Another teaser image for Tomorrowland in the Magic Kingdom.
My best shot yet of Disney’s Contemporary Resort, on the opposite end of the lagoon from our room.
Art inside the Contemporary as the monorail drove through its center.
Meanwhile, Anne’s mandatory business meetings, classes, announcements, and HR-directed team-building exercises wrapped up a couple hours earlier than she’d expected. She used this delightfully bonus free time to explore the rest of the Grand Floridian grounds that I’d mostly already seen without her. She did some light souvenir shopping, took superior photos of the Easter egg collection (many of which were in that gallery), and retired to our room in the Boca Chica building for a spell.
The ceiling in the Grand Floridian Convention Center.
Her alternate shot of the fountain behind the Grand Floridian’s Main Building.
By the time I circled back to the Hub, switched to the correct monorail, and finally got back to her a little before 3:30, her first nap of the week was well in progress. Now that the woman I love is old, naps are one of her favorite activities in the world.
Milady conked out on the balcony. She’d been kept well-fed by her superiors’ caterers, but she’d had a long day.
#1 on her Disney World to-do list had been “BUY MICKEY MOUSE EARS”. Achievement unlocked that very afternoon. The sunglasses were freebies handed out at the Tuesday night beach party. They aren’t prescription, but they were an okay sleeping mask.
We weren’t sure what to expect from the evening. The original itinerary told her only “5:00 p.m. – 10:00 p.m.: Evening event.” At 2:00 this same day they’d revealed the shindig would be held at EPCOT. We were to meet in front of the Grand Floridian’s Convention Center and board charter buses to the park. The meal options were also provided to employees so they could order dinners in advance. That’s really all we knew going in. We hoped it wouldn’t take the entire evening because we had big, big, big, big, BIG plans for Thursday. We dumpling-shaped fiftysomethings knew we’d need our rest so we could enjoy The Greatest Theme Park Experience of Our Entire Lives the next morning. If we simply had to party for a while, we’d roll with it for as long as necessary, but we aren’t party people. We’re virtually never invited to parties except by Anne’s relatives.
Come 5 p.m. sharp, we boarded a bus right on time. For reasons unknown it sat and sat and sat before departing at last around 5:45. Thankfully the seats were plush and the legroom was adequate, but the inactivity made us a little antsy. We’d’ve been happy to sit and sit and sit in our own room.
We pulled up to EPCOT’s west side circa 6:15, then resumed sitting and sitting. Eventually we disembarked and were ushered onto EPCOT grounds, through the United Kingdom area — no stopping or gawking permitted — and into the World ShowPlace Pavilion, an event facility and/or banquet hall that isn’t marked on their official maps. At this point, we were now officially attending a Company Party, and all that entails.
The obligatory pre-dinner mixer, where we could chat up hundreds of strangers or the few new faces Anne had met in her meetings. Some had even packed nice clothes for this “evening event”.
The waitstaff kept the unidentified hors d’oeuvres coming nonstop, including this delectable fried thing seasoned with stuff.
Around 7-ish we were encouraged toward our assigned tables for dinner. The food was fine for what it was; Anne’s was better than mine. Things got momentarily awkward when I allegedly took a fork that, per 16th-century nobility-feast customs that weren’t taught to me in my section-8 childhood home, actually belonged to the young lady in a fancy evening dress seated on my left. I maintain it was closer to my plate than to hers and was therefore mine by basic turf rights. Rather than follow those same antiquated rules to their ultimate conclusion and order the Disney World waitstaff flogged for their ambiguous utensil placement, she grumbled for a bit before begrudgingly compensating by taking a fork from the empty seat on her left. Miss Manners may not have been thrilled with my indifference to the duel-worthy slight I’d just committed. If only I hadn’t quit finishing school a few credits short.
Spring greens with pickled avocado, garbanzo beans, spring peas, watermelon radish, Gorgonzola cheese, and minted mustard vinaigrette. I feel utterly spoiled whenever I’m served a complimentary salad that isn’t just iceberg lettuce, tomatoes and Ranch dressing.
Pairing this ordinary dinner bread with Mickey Mouse-head butter turned it into elevated dinner bread.
For Anne, sea bass in a blood orange beurre blanc with citrus gremolata, roasted butternut-squash-and-pumpkin risotto, haricot verts and roasted baby carrot.
For me, tenderloin of beef filet with bordelaise sauce, Gruyère potato pavé, haricot verts and roasted baby carrot.
(Not pictured: our desserts. For Anne, strawberry shortcake pound cake with a Chantilly cream and strawberries. For me, vanilla cheesecake with graham cracker crust, guava gel and mango compote. Give or take an ingredient.)
After we’d had some time to eat and commiserate with our table mates (or not), the Powers That Be took to the stage along with a British comedian who’d been emceeing the various business meetings and team-building exercises which, up till now, had been proprietary, on-the-clock housekeeping. The ensuing presentation piggybacked on all that behind-the-scenes programming and presented some awards as well as still more company business and HR-written corporate affirmations. Numerous in-jokes were lost on all us plus-ones. And frankly, I have my own job and my own HR-written corporate affirmations, catchphrases, and Seven Habits knockoffs to absorb on an everyday basis. I don’t really benefit from being inundated in two companies’ worth of it.
The dinner portion of our program ended at 8:30. We were herded outside and toward a gated party space on the north shore of World Showcase Lagoon. We hundreds outnumbered the available seating, a handful of picnic benches. Still more amuse-bouche desserts and various forms of booze (couldn’t tell you what; not our thing) were offered while we were treated to the 9:00 showing of Harmonious, EPCOT’s closing-time light show as of March 2023. That, as previously recounted, was spectacular.
At 9:30 the private dessert party kept going, but Anne and I were ready to go back to our room and get some sleep as soon as they’d let us.
They wouldn’t let us.
For the first few minutes, the staff gently asked us to stay put. More minutes passed. They kept asking this of us.
After a time, we and several other guests were informed we were not allowed to leave the party. At all. They wouldn’t tell us why not.
When several ladies protested that they needed restrooms — an amenity the party space lacked — they reluctantly allowed folks to go to the nearest restrooms a city block away, but made them promise to come right back to the party space after they were done and not go anywhere else.
We understood not running toward the shops or rides that were closing. We did not understand why we couldn’t simply go take the monorails back to the resort. We received no answers. No promises. No tantalizing hints. No announcements. No emceeing. No communications. No nothing. Just a roped-off exit and a cast member to stand guard and grant conditional bathroom breaks.
Some guests were doubtlessly so engrossed in each other’s company that this was never a problem to them. They had booze. They had small talk. They had nice Florida weather. They were probably surrounded by more familiar acquaintances than either of us. Back home, partying is probably their only hobby. Bully for them. The two of us, and many other exhausted fellow inmates, were done.
But we couldn’t leave. At all. We just kept standing and standing and standing on hard concrete, waiting for any authority figure to appear and explain any of this. We hazarded a guess that perhaps we were waiting for all of EPCOT to be 100% emptied of guests before we’d be permitted to go forth and…I dunno, actually do something. But, again: no one would talk to us.
Is a party still a party if it’s holding you captive?
Spaceship Earth looked pretty at night. Sure would’ve been awesome if we could WALK TOWARD IT.
At 10:15 the silence was broken. Yes, as a nominal party-planning committee rep finally informed everyone, we had indeed been kept waiting for all other remaining guests in the whole park to exit, disappear, or be hunted down one by one and eliminated like Bambi’s mom. We were then herded for the last time toward the World Discovery pavilion — i.e., the area with all of EPCOT’s most hyperballistic, motion-sickening thrill rides that I’d skipped without regret on my earlier six-hour EPCOT adventure. Everyone was free to roam there and only there for the rest of the night, with permission to ride unlimited rides and/or keep partying and partying until whenever.
Or, alternatively, if we were really truly sure we were ready to go and didn’t want any more freebies, we could board the charter buses parked in the northeast corner of the park, through the darkness just past the Treasures of Xandar gift shop.
With nary a further word between us, fatigue notwithstanding, Anne and I channeled our middle-aged rage and barreled directly northeastward through the crowd like Juggernaut and the Rhino aiming for the nearest Marvel superhero. Well, Juggernaut and a cute li’l Lady Rhino. We weren’t the only ones. Our pack was small yet mighty, as in “mightily peeved”.
We passed dozens or maybe even hundreds of 24-hour party people who were probably younger or drunk enough to stick around as long as possible and still get up early in the morning for their long-awaited free day. Some were likely kidding themselves and were dead the next day. We bypassed them as well as several new serving tables that had sprouted up all around, offering still more free snacks to one and all. And not just amuse-bouche sized, but actual meats and other full-sized theme-park concessions. We ignored very nearly all of it.
I paused to grab a pair of churros only out of spite. No dips. Minimal sugar coating. Stale.
Our no-longer-hardy band of expatriates boarded the bus and collapsed within. We welcomed our freedom from EPCOT and the plush seats, in that order. We mercifully took off a few minutes later and were returned directly to the Grand Floridian around 11-ish without further incident.
Ironically, our in-bus entertainment for the ride back was not a Disney cartoon.
Well, almost without further incident. After our heads hit the pillows, at some point the Electrical Water Pageant once again took to the Seven Seas Lagoon outside our window and tooted the night away. The pageantry was even less charming now. Or maybe it was only a nightmare.
…
Anne and I agree this night was the worst part of the trip. Of course we knew This Too Shall Pass, but in the moment we did not appreciate being trapped without explanation. As we know all too well from our respective day-jobs, communication is such an important part of serving others.
As it happens, Thursday would indeed bring The Greatest Theme Park Experience of Our Entire Lives, leading off with the absolute best part of the trip. Longtime MCC readers who know much about Disney World can guess where our day began…with an unforgettable experience five years in the making.
To be continued!
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