In which the DisAd switches venues

Arriving at WDW is way different from arriving at Universal. WDW is the size of Romania, for one thing. You drive quite a bit from the moment you enter the grounds to the moment you find your hotel. And once you enter those grounds, you know you are at Disney. It just feels like Disney, from start to finish. The underlying tissue missing at Universal is at WDW in spades. And keep in mind that, while figures on an individual park are hard to find (Disney groups the parks together), each one generates about a billion dollars revenue a year. There’s 4 parks at WDW, i.e., four billion dollars. Magic Kingdom gets about 19 million visitors a year (all of whom are often on line in front of you for Space Mountain). August is not a peak period, but the parks are far from empty. So let’s say that MK generated $4 million the day we were there, spent by about 50 thousand people. One park, one day. So while one is in awe of the physical plant that services a crowd of this magnitude (roughly times 4, daily, on an average day), one still feels that sense of "Disney reassurance" that certain critics have written about. I won’t go into that now myself. I just bring all this up because, predictably, at some point the members of the DisAd looked around and said Wow and started googling facts and figures to try to get a handle on it. Even people who hate Disney from the bottom of their souls are encouraged to go and study it just in terms of management of crowds, machines, hotels, restaurants, entertainment, etc. Tis a wonder.  

We stayed at Coronado Springs, one of the moderate hotels. It’s the biggest of this category because it caters to business conferences, and at times one wished one were at one of the more intimate spots. The rooms are all the same no matter where you are, however, presumably short of the Grand High Poohbah Suite at Swan and Dolphin, and one doesn’t spend a lot of time in one’s room wondering what to do to pass the time, so ultimately it doesn’t matter much. The first thing most of us did on arrival was hit the quiet pool near our room, something repeated for the rest of the week at every likely possibility. When it’s almost a hundred degrees out, a dip in the pool is just the thing, even if the water is hotter than your shower that morning. Wet is wet.

Our inaugural WDW dinner was at California Grill, at the top of the Contemporary Hotel. This is a classy joint with a view of the MK to die for (and to stay for, if you want to watch the fireworks). Because we were celebrating about a hundred events, including an anniversary and a (belated) honeymoon, they decorated our table with little Mickey tinsel. Jason, our waiter, was memorable, and we went so far as to get our picture with him. The wine flowed like wine, the food flowed like food, and the main portion of the trip was underway. And so to bed early, for a c of d start the next morning.