Disneyfied

The windows on the top of the
castle are smaller than the
ones at the bottom, to make
it took taller.

I was just at Disney World.

The easiest impulse here would be snarkiness.

The money-making is shameless. You know those $3.50 lattes financial planners tell you not to buy or you’ll end up living in a cardboard box when you’re old? They are $7.50 at Disney.

In three days, I saw only four people use the stairs rather than the escalator. My husband and I were two of them. I felt like I was on the spaceship in Wall-E, which is a Disney movie.

In one restaurant, I could see 27 television screens from my seat and more screens hung over the stalls in the ladies room.

People have their weddings at Disney.
You can even buy these ears, $25 each.

Our hotel, the Dolphin, looked like it was constructed out of Styrofoam and was topped by 56-foot-tall dolphin statues. They don’t look like real dolphins. They are based on the “nautical dolphins” drawn on old maps.

That’s the thing: Everything is artificial at Disney World. But it’s so well-done. They’ll tell you some of their tricks (on your hotel TV): the streets in the medieval village at the Magic Kingdom are striped with brown. That alludes to how people threw the contents of their chamber pots into the street. At Todd English’s bluezoo restaurant, the lighting looks like the bubble rings of humpback whales.

There’s a word for this: “Disneyfication.”

Disney employees were strikingly nice and helpful. Wikipedia explains this is “emotional labor,” which can be done two ways: by “surface acting,” or faking it, or by “deep acting,” when you actually try to be that weirdly chipper person.

I hope it’s not a terrible job. Glassdoor gives Disney World pretty good ratings as an employer. And according to an entire genre, those attractive college students who dress up like Belle and Tarzan do about what you’d expect in their off-time. I'm glad.

Home Tours

I am a nosy person.

I especially love looking at people’s houses. They are such a reflection of the people who live there.

And now that I’ve discovered home tours, I realize that I am not alone in being nosy. I’ve been to three so far – and all have been jam-packed with attendees.

Each tour is different.

There’s the annual Azalea Trail home tour, sponsored by the River Oaks Garden Club. These are super-posh houses. Gargantuan. Unbelievably fancy. Honestly, though, they tend to look a lot like each other. These houses belong to a certain demographic who share the same taste.

Then, there are the twice-yearly home tours in my neighborhood. Some are old bungalows renovated by young designers and architects. Some are filled, every available inch of wall and surface space, with the owner’s art collection. (Many of the people in my neighborhood are artists and/or gallery owners.)

And then there was the first annual Weird Homes Tour of Houston, which I just went on. Wow. One home, billed as a 5,000 square foot one-bedroom, belonged to an artist who incorporates the cremated remains of multiple people into his paintings. (Who knew? People’s ashes vary in color.) Then, there was one, which was left dark and was filled, to its loftlike ceilings, with carefully built piles of, well, junk, that made my husband turn to me and say, “You know, if you were ever on a first date and the person invited you back here, you’d be certain you were about to be murdered.”

Hats off to the people who volunteer their houses. They do inspire me (fleetingly) to set up my own house. (Five years in and I am, right now, sitting in sight of some unpacked boxes.) But then I lay down till the feeling passes. :o(

Throwback Thursday

Oop, found this blast from the past while googling myself.

Wrote it a billion years ago and had thought it was lost to the mists of time. Was afraid to read it, frankly, but I guess it looks OK. :)