Acting Goofy at Mickey's House

“By the way, “the lovely and hardworking Dragonwife said this afternoon after returning home from work, “I’ve made the Disney World reservations for the middle of the June.”

“Awesome!” I said, feeling my inner Disney geek metaphorically jumping for joy.

Our last visit to Walt’s Florida creation was well over eighteen months ago and since it is an important pillar supporting my continued mental health I was starting to feel the strain from being away for so long. Both Dragonwife and I love the place and along with being members of the timeshare-like Disney Vacation Club, allowing us to stay at nearly all of the resorts next the various parks our number of visits over the years could easily be considered excessive by anyone with a less favorable view of Mickey Mouse’s east coast home.

Dragonwife, who was not in a particularly good mood, did have to ruin my happy time by reminding me of some unpleasant facts. “Now,” she said after making a deep sighing sound, “I hope we can have a vacation without you doing something that might get us kicked out of the place.”

“I have absolutely no idea what you mean.” I said, actually half believing the words coming out of my mouth. The immediate look of tired incredulity that flashed upon Dragonwife’s face was enough to show that she was not buying my suave attempt to deflect her cynicism at my less than thought out antics.

“Well,” she said, “let me remind you. First, there was the nasty incident with the girl dressed up as Ariel.”

“That was not my fault,” I shot back. “she said I could take a picture with her. Given my height and her position sitting on the rock, it’s not my fault where my hand landed where it did.”

“Oh please Ron, you groped the Little Mermaid on purpose and you know it.”

This discussion had been rehashed several times and I just kept quiet out of not wanting to dredge up the facts supporting my argument against such sophomoric behavior. Especially since, I made them up in the first place and knowing my wife’s excellent memory when it comes to some of the stupid stuff I have done I thought it best not to open another can of worms.

“One unfortunate incident does not make a series.” I said while momentarily preoccupied with feeding dynamic canine duo of Sparky the hyperactive dog and Jax the furry poop machine.

“Please, there was the other incident with Bell and Jasmine.”

“I was clearly joking my dear wife.  Disney employees have high moral standards and neither one of those ladies would ever behave in such a way, at least not with me… unless I won the lotto. Although I still have my doubts about Jasmine, she had that strange, freaky look in her eyes.”

“Okay, what about that event at Mickey’s country home?”

“Oh damn, you had to bring that up.”

This all began on a hot summer afternoon back in 2006. My daughter Darth Wiggles was four years old and totally in awe with anything that had to do with Mickey, Minnie, Donald, or Goofy. Since both my wife and I wanted to indoctrinate Wiggles into the Disney culture, we had her standing next to those characters for pictures whenever they appeared. One of the best places in the Magic Kingdom for character pictures was a section of the theme park called “Mickey’s Toontown Fair.” Consisting mostly of rides and attractions for little kids it had a large, air conditioned barn-like structure that allowed parents to get a lot of pictures with not only Mickey, Minnie, and their entourage but the human characters like Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Tinker Bell.

After standing in line for close to an hour we exited the barn and proceeded to visit various attractions in Toontown, in particular a structure formally named “Mickey’s Country Home.” Like the other fake homes of Minnie and Donald, it was obviously a cartoon-inspired realization of the type of cottage the world famous mouse might own. The furnishings inside the various rooms did not look that fantastical except for an exaggerated 1940’s style with all the items oversized and rounded. Like all things Disney the imagination and attention to detail was tremendous. My problems started when we entered Mickey’s hypothetical living room.

As anyone with an ounce of commonsense could guess most of the house was roped off with clear pathways for the tourists to walk through. The pathway in the living room had us walking along the one of the walls with everyone seeing the back of Mickey’s television. Placed in front of the cartoonish, old style television was Mickey’s easy chair with flickering lights from the television clearly reflecting off its polished plastic surface.

Maybe it was the heat, the excessive walking, or the extraordinarily crappy theme park food but I somehow became obsessed with finding out if they had actually placed a real television in Mickey’s house with it running some sort of cartoon on a loop. To find out I would have to lean over the rope blocking a more responsible idiot from doing a similarly stupid act. But hey, I am tall and thought I could lean over enough without it being an issue.  WRONG!

Just when I leaned over enough to see the front of Mickey’s television was just a box with flickering light bulbs mounted inside this god-awful alarm sounded. It was something akin to an air raid siren combined with what a couple of dinosaurs having sex might sound like and as I stood up all the other people in the structure were staring at me. Let us just say Dragonwife was not happy with me and the words I heard mumbled by the other tourists were not particularly friendly.

My chief worries for several minutes afterwards had more to do with a Disney SWAT team storming out of some camouflaged door and then hauling me off to the Magic Kingdom version of Gitmo. Things did not get any better as the day continued, not only did I had to contend with a family that wanted to disown me I started to believe I was being followed by men dressed in nice sports coats that appeared to be talking to microphones clipped to the inside of their sleeves.

 Since then I have walked the straight and narrow whenever visiting Disney World and it is something that I will endeavor to do again this June. Well…that is not entirely true, there was one incident on our last Disney Cruise. But, that involved the United States Government and I cannot believe the all knowing and forgiving mouse could carry a grudge that long.