Sounds of Disney

Here is a short list of things I've heard at list a million times since we arrived at Disney World:

1. "Come on, Grant!" Grant cannot simply walk from location A to location B. He has to look at or play with every object between those two points, frequently attempting to injure them.

2. Inanimate objects playing Disney tunes. Disney has spent a fortune making trees, rocks, and sidewalks play their library of cartoon hits. Virtually everywhere you walk, "Zip A Dee Doo Dah" is humming quietly in the background from what appears to be a fern.

3. "If you don't RIGHT NOW, I'm going to beat the out of you!" Disney brings out the best, and worst, of parents. Grant has never heard these words, of course.

4. "AAAAGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!" Similar to #3, Disney seems to alternate between a chorus of the most pleasant and inviting sounds known to man, alternating occasionally with a toddler scream that sounds as if it came from the shock therapy ward of a mental institution.

5. "Welcome home!" The gate keeper at the entrance to our resort greets us this way when we return from outings. I always want to ask, "Can I take a weed eater to Goofy's head over there, or perhaps do some ultimately unsuccessful home improvement projects on my room? If not, I'm not home. But this is a lovely substitute."

6. "That was pretty good, but I bet you can do better!!!" Apparently the non-Disney universe is clapping and/or greeting deficient. I have not once clapped or yelled "Good morning, Mickey!" in a satisfactory manner on my first attempt. Frequently my second attempt contains a muted expletive, just out of spite.

7. "I want to ride another ride!" Grant began saying this at about 10am at the Magic Kingdom. He was still muttering it in his sleep at 3am the next morning.

8. "That'll be ." Disney is not cheap. We got a good deal on our trip, but I pity the folks who did not. I have seen multiple parents sobbing at the checkout lines of the various giftshops as Junior slurped away on a $10 lollipop. "M-I-C-K-E-Y...Give me your money!"

9. "Do they have Thomas or Percy here?" Grant nearly got a beat down from Goofy while waiting for breakfast this morning. He was gleefully reading a Thomas the Tank Engine book WITHIN THE DISNEY GROUNDS. Mickey's been trying to knock that cheeky little engine off the rails since his inception. I suspect one day Thomas might end up sporting mouse ears.

10. And finally, "Can someone give me a push?" This is the request made by one of the thousands of people now riding around Disney in power chairs after the battery starts to die. I find it distressing that SO MANY people, mostly American, require mobility assistance, and in at least 75% of the cases here, it's due to simple obesity. I'm a big dude, but I've already told Erin that if I can't walk on my own two feet for a trip to Disney World when I'm old, I do NOT deserve to be issued a power scooter. It's my own fault. I should've backed off the burritos long before I cracked the sidewalk at the entrance to the Magic Kingdom.

More pictures to come from Disney's Hollywood Studios tomorrow.