As I discovered on a recent trip to Disneyland, it IS a small world after all … filled with huge lines, bratty kids, overpriced baubles, chocolate-covered frozen bananas and high-tech devices of torture the Disney brass deviously dubbed “attractions.”
They call it the Magic Kingdom, but I’m convinced I plunked down $45 to spend a day in Hell.
Granted, I visited the theme park over Labor Day weekend. And being an unmarried, childless male whose idea of Fantasyland is the decidedly kidless environs of a Vegas casino or an Inland Empire strip joint, it might have been poor judgment to drop into the center of the juvenile universe on the busiest weekend of the year.
Still, I never expected the obscenely large throng of rabid Mouseketeers hell-bent on consuming everything and anything Disney, running amok like wild anteaters at an insect-infested log convention.
Enveloped by a dark cloud of rambunctious tykes while waiting in line for more than an hour to board the Indiana Jones Adventure “attraction,” it occurred to me that Disneyland embodies everything that is wrong with modern youth.
Take, for instance, the 8-year-old scamp in the matching TeleTubbies ensemble who spent the majority of his time in the queue attempting to deposit the messy remains of a chocolate-covered banana into the back pocket of my khakis.
“Ben,” his mother whimpered with all the authority of a freshman high school hall monitor. “That’s not very nice now, is it?”
And little Ben, who bore an eerie resemblance to that Damian kid from The Omen, cracked a wicked smile and momentarily withdrew the banana from the general vicinity of my ass.
“Sorry mommy,” he hissed. Of course, the mother’s placid admonition was about as effective as placing a crossing guard on the 405 freeway, and within minutes Ben had managed to smear a chocolate mess on my favorite pair of trousers, not to mention my already cantankerous disposition.
“Now look what you’ve done, young man!” the demon’s mother cried, as I did the math on a prison sentence for whacking an 8-year-old upside his head.
“I’m very sorry, sir. I have no idea why he’d do such a thing.”
Have you checked his scalp for the mark of the beast lately?
“You know what this means, Ben,” she asked the little fiend, who didn’t appear the least bit concerned over what I assumed would be the serious consequences of his actions.
“Young man, do you know what this means?”
I figured a spanking was in order. Perhaps a bitter tongue-lashing. Some sort of humiliating public castigation.
“DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS?!!!”
Oh boy, was she ever serious. Looked like Ben was going to be riding Space Mountain without the safety harness.
“Time out!” Huh? “That’s right, Ben — time out! For the next five minutes, you are not allowed to speak OR attack innocent bystanders with chocolate treats. Do I make myself clear, young man?”
No, damn it! You make yourself and your offspring a blight on society. A cold sore on the lip of the universe. Dandruff on the collar of humanity.
This timid, ineffective brand of child-rearing that so many of today’s parents have adopted is creating a generation of undisciplined monsters who will surely wreak havoc throughout the 21st Century.
On top of that, I paid good money for those khakis, and I expected not-so-gentle Ben to pay as well.
Ahh, but Revenge wears many hats. Turns out, The Indiana Jones Adventure is akin to riding cross-country with Hunter S. Thompson: fast, furious and extremely jarring. While I revel in that sort of frenzied madness, Ben the future felon didn’t fare so well.
The khaki-loving Roller Coaster Gods had rattled the pint-sized hooligan’s cage. He emerged shaken and stirred, with tears streaming down his color-depleted cheeks.
I had to smile, seeing his TeleTubbies shirt stained with what appeared to be the second coming of a chocolate-covered banana.
It’s a small world, Bennie, and what comes around, goes around … quickly. (Dan Dunn is a freelance writer living in Santa Monica.)
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on September 21, 2002. Read the original PDF.