A conversation here at work got us trading vacation stories which reminded me of two pretty funny stories from my various trips to Walt Disney World. One of the benefits of my work with the show choir is that I get to travel quite a bit for essentially nothing. I've been to Walt Disney World about 10 times and only paid for admission into any the parks once.
These are two stories where I was somewhat of a douchebag to other Disney guests; once was intentional and the other was not.
The first (intentional) one happened when I was much younger...like in my early 20's. I was young enough that the students in the program still thought of me as one of their peers and not as a chaperone or authority figure of any kind. I had spent the day with a half dozen or so of the members of the choir and we all decided we wanted to watch the nightly electric light parade at Magic Kingdom. We stopped and got some ice cream at the shop on main street and went to find prime seating right on the square. We got there probably an hour before the parade started to get a spot exactly where we wanted.
About five minutes before the parade begins this couple with two kids in tow forces their way between us and instructs their kids to sit down right in front of us in the street. The dad was alternating between standing and half squatting the entire time so he's majorly blocking our view. As politely as possible I said to the dad, "Excuse me, sir, but we got here over an hour ago to get these seats and now you're blocking our view. You're welcome to stand behind us and your kids can sit here in front of us."
He replied in a very definitive NE U.S.A. accent (Boston, NY, NJ, CT...who knows), "You're too old for Disney and I'm not leaving my kids up there unattended." And with that he turned around and started to get out his giant 90's camcorder to tape the parade. I turned to my friends and said, "We're gonna make sure they can never watch that tape with their kids."
When the parade started we stood up (because we had to in order see thanks to mister east coast) and got as close as we could to the microphone on his camcorder. We discussed the parade like we were Willard Scott on Thanksgiving morning with one exception...we used every curse word in our arsenal non-stop.
"Oh wow look at that f-ing float. Have you ever seen so many f-ing lights before? Holy $%@# that dancer was really getting down. Oh eff, that is the most amazing f-ing thing I've ever seen."
The dad shot us a few perturbed looks and eventually asked us to pipe down. I just smiled and said, "You could always move!" They eventually packed up and moved to a different spot.
The second (unintentional) one happened on a much more recent trip. The newest attraction at Disney's Hollywood Studios was the Toy Story Mania. It's an interactive ride where you have a gun attached to the front of your car and you go through various exhibits firing virtual cream pies, water balloons, lazers, etc at targets. It was very popular and according to the Disney staff we spoke to they said the best bet for getting to ride it without a huge wait was to get to the park before it opened and book it straight to that ride.
So, that is exactly what we did. Just as we arrived at the entrance to the ride this older guy tried to sprint past us and shoulder his way in front of my group. I stepped in front of him and blocked his path so he had to get in line just behind us. The whole time were winding our way toward the ride our group was loudly commenting on the "nerve of some people trying to cut in front of us" etc.
When we were almost to the actual ride the lady in front of us with two small kids whipped around and said, "Would you like to go in front us?" I was a bit confused and just said, "Ummm...no?" She said, "I really think you should. In fact, I INSIST!"
We traded spots with them in the line when suddenly it dawned on me...she thought we were talking about them. I turned around and said, "Uh, ma'am, excuse me. I hope you don't think we were talking about you before. We were trying to give a hard time to the people in line behind you that tried to bump us out of the way to get in line in front of us."
A look of complete relief washed over her face and she said, "Oh my God I'm so sorry. I did think you were talking about us. You see just yesterday a couple of adults literally pushed my 8-year old daughter out of the way to get in line in front of us for an attraction that had a 20 minute wait. I'm just a little oversensitive because of that I guess."
I offered to trade them their spot back, but she refused. I felt like kind of a heel, but it all ended well in the end.
Have you ever accidentally been a douchebag before? It's not nearly as much fun as doing it on purpose.
