Thoughts From Vacation

I thought I would share some thoughts I had while on vacation. These are about Disney, politics, America and the such. I think you’ll find them interesting.

● Let me start with the biggie... life is a lot happier when you don’t pay attention to the world. Seriously. By choice, I had little access to the internet while on vacation. Yes, I could pull up Google to look things up as needed, but I avoided all the “talk” sites: no news, no politics, no a-hole sports sites. I also avoided the television and the radio. And let me tell you, it was glorious. I am not kidding when I say that life is so much happier when you aren’t exposed to those things.

This really has me wondering how much of our modern angst and outrage is the result of the a-hole culture that has come to exist online. When everyone I dealt with had to face me face to face, there were no trolls... no asinine opinions... no attempts to be outrageous... no conspiracies... very little selfishness, so much more common courtesy, so much more in the way of manners, etc. It was a lot like life seemed when I was kid. People were nice because they didn’t have the safety of anonymity behind which they could act on their worst instincts and desires.

The internet and our news cycle and our talk radio (sports, politics, etc.) is making us swim in a sewer of the worst humanity has to offer and getting away from it all really makes that clear. If any of you find yourself stressed out or depressed, let me in all honesty recommend that you step away from the net and its tributaries for awhile and see if that helps.

● Disney is conservative America and it’s awesome. Yes, I mean that. Disney is the world that conservative America has long sought to build and it was amazing. Disney is not cynical. It is not whiny. It is proud and unapologetically patriotic – they had a fantastic flag lowering ceremony every night. Everyone there behaves in a responsible, thoughtful manner. The employees all seem to have a strong ownership stake. Honestly, I’ve never met a larger group of people who love their jobs.

So how did this happen? Well, let me be blunt... there are factors at play that keep out the very people that vote Democratic. Let me give you some examples. First, Disney is aimed at people with families. It is not aimed at single people. Hence, we found there to be almost no 20 year olds. That meant an absence of drugs and alcohol and trouble. It also meant that people were more conscious of things like swearing and the lessons they sent because their own kids were watching or because they were there with their own parents.

Next, the rides/attractions at Disney are not adrenaline centric. They are based on using your mind, your love of history, your love of art work and your love of culture(s) to find enjoyment; nothing at Disney could be enjoyed without some thought, without some appreciation for the skills of others, or on the basis of adrenaline or sexual arousal. In other words, you had to be more aware of what you were seeing and you had to grasp the skill it took to create that. That meant thinking beyond your own immediate gratification. That means that there is nothing there for the people you see on COPS, who spend their lives chasing highs and dreading withdrawals and trying to find ways to stroke themselves off. Those people simply didn’t exist at Disney because there was nothing there to attract them. And yes, they are easy to spot.

To put this another way, Disney has created a culture that fits hand in Mickey glove with middle class America. Nothing about it appeals to white trash or ghetto America. And the result is that the people who came, whatever race or nationality, brought with them a set of values that let you stand in a crowd of a thousand people and hear people excusing themselves, teaching their children lessons, and being generally selfless all around you. No one tried to smoke against park policy and dared Disney employees to eject them. No one displayed tattoos with swear words or sexual themes (tattoos were very rare). No one swore. No one was drunk or high. People didn’t fight. They didn’t knock each other down. Nobody had to prove they were tougher than everyone else. And no one whined about their “rights.” Try saying any of that about Six Flags.

And as an aside, none of the intolerance liberals like to claim exists in the middle class was there. People were happy to help foreigners, even Muslims, find their way without a second thought. There were gays, and people treated them like everyone else... because they acted like everyone else.

This is America as it would be if people accepted the values of Reagan conservatism.

● There were two fascinating lessons about capitalism that I witnessed at Disney. The first was that the only criticism people offered during my whole trip was the cost of food, which was insane. Disney is keenly aware of the idea of the captive audience, but they have perhaps pushed that too far as I learned about ways people have started getting around the Disney monopoly.

The other was a lesson in the failure of central planning. All of the Disney gift shops were stocked with the same stuff. Clearly, Disney runs them all through a central store rather than letting them compete. The result was unfortunate for Disney. First, while we were willing to spend a buttload on stuff, we found almost nothing that appealed to us. So we got away spending almost nothing. Secondly, someone at Disney clearly assumed that Star Wars would be their big seller as about half their merchandise was Star Wars related. Unfortunately for them, they misunderstood their audience. Disney World was princesses as far as the eye could see and only a few dads cared about Star Wars – we saw almost no sales of the Star Wars stuff.

The lesson here is that when you centralize, the opinions of a small group can ruin an entire economy. Had Disney not centralized their stores, I can assure you that their variety would have been better and there would have been less Star Wars in places where it really didn’t fit – like the Beauty and the Beast area or the old west area.

● American Express must die. Get this. Because I like to keep a certain amount of cash handy, I put our cruise on my Amex card and I let it run some interest. On the trip, I decided to put all my spending from Disney World on a Visa and all the spending from the cruise on the Amex so that I had a very clear sense of what each part cost. Well, everything went well at Disney with the Visa. Then we boarded the cruise. On the second night, we got a letter from cruise services. My Amex had been declined. Huh? Well, long story short, Amex decided all on their own that they were suddenly worried about my ability to pay back what I was spending (despite never having missed a bill in 20+ years) and they shaved around $8,000 off my credit limit and cut me off. That fact that I was on a cruise far away from home didn’t bother them in the least.

Now, it turned out well because my other card easily picked up the slack – though I was worried initially that the other cards might follow their lead (they didn’t). But seriously... WTF? What if this had been my only card? I specifically set that card aside to take care of this cruise and Amex knew that, yet, they waited until I was out of the country to do this. They could have warned me days or weeks before, but they didn’t.

This is inexcusable and this is why I have no love for big banks. For twenty plus years, I’ve been the perfect customer for them. They knew where I was and what I was doing. And yet, they essentially stranded me out of the country because their computer told them to. Be warned about dealing with them.

● Saint Martin was a pit. Half the island is ruled by the Dutch and half by the French and it is a mess. St. Thomas, by comparison, was amazing. This is obviously a shallow observation, but I wonder how much of this had to do with attitude? The locals on Saint Martin were obsessed with slavery. Everywhere you looked, there are statues related to slavery and that was almost all our tour guide talked about, and we never felt welcome. The locals at St. Thomas, on the other hand, were all about commerce. They never mentioned slavery. Instead, they did their best to sell us stuff and to convince us to come back... something I would love to do! And the difference was that St. Thomas was a happy, rich place and thriving place, whereas Saint Martin was a mess.

● We snorkeled with stingrays. Yeah, stingrays. Disney had 69 of them in a lagoon and you could swim with them. Do you know how weird it was to stand there as dozens of these things (with up to 5 foot wingspans) swam by, rubbing against your legs? Amazing. Freaky at first, but amazing.

● Am I the only person who didn’t know that the Caribbean can get pretty damn cold? The water was really cold compared to what I expected! Brrr.

● Finally, on a happy note: there is magic at Disney. We stayed at the Animal Kingdom Lodge. Outside our room, you could see African animals all day long as they roamed the savanna Disney has made. It was amazing. Walking into the lobby was like walking into a Hemmingway novel. Our girls couldn’t stop smiling the whole time. Our youngest cried when she met Ariel. The dinners on the cruise ship were like the best a French restaurant has to offer every single night. The other hotels at Disney, while expensive, were also some of the best food we ever had. Their staff were amazing. I kid you not that our cruise ship waiter came to feel like family. You find yourself so happy and content at Disney that you truly feel younger again. And even though I am getting old and I know better, let me tell you I smiled a lot when I met Baloo. It was amazing.

:)