I should perhaps give some background here, so you understand what a big deal this was for me. I am a Disney kid, through and through. Growing up overseas, we couldn't always count on English television, so we were set in the VHS department - and nearly all of it was Disney. The animated classics, of course, but also Flubber and The Shaggy Dog and Candleshoe and The Parent Trap (well, all the Jodie Foster and Hayley Mills movies) and the all Sing-A-Longs and the Ducktales videos and Classic Donald/Chip and Dale/Mickey/Pluto/Goofy/Daisy Volumes 1-5000...I might exaggerate with the last one, but my point is that I lived and breathed Disney. My first conscious career goal was to be a voice actor - and to this day my favorite daydream is getting to voice a Disney villain. I remember when my aunt Alice sent me a subscription one year for the Disney Adventures magazine - it was a whole other world...and then the Disney channel?! Forget about it. I was bought and paid for. But through all this, I'd never been to Disney - World, Land, Euro, none of it. It was literally the castle on the horizon - seen but never reached.
So here I am, 31 years old, tossing and turning like a four year old on Christmas Eve - I could not sleep to save my life. I had been packed for a week and a half, travel day clothes laid out on the back of my chair for at least three days, and hat with my precious Pinocchio bow afixed sitting on top of the pile. I was GOING TO DISNEY WORLD! Alarm went off at 4:30 (though I honestly didn't need it - was waking up every half hour or so, terrified that I was oversleeping) and I got ready in twenty minutes flat. My wonderful daddy left the house at 5:00 to drop me off at Kate's wonderful dad's house (who is always, always so kind to drop us off at the airport even at the most unholy of departure hours). M'dear Kate showed up in Minnie shirt and silver sequined mouse ears - her "fairy godmother" came to her house with a metric ton of Disney swag, so she was pretty much set. We chattered like squirrels the whole way down to Birmingham - the glee could not be contained.
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| And this was at 6:45 in the AM. |
