Blasphemy! Some People Can’t Stomach Disney World

There are times in life when one’s true character is revealed, when the winds of events strip away all pretense, leaving exposed the essence of one’s nature.

I’m not sure at what point during our recent visit to Disney World I reached that pivotal moment. Was it during the “Legend of the Lion King” show when I realized that I had just spent nearly $300 for two days of a fabulous time and was now spending part of it watching a movie?

Was it when we walked by an ersatz frontier town and the sound of a wailing Western ballad over the loudspeakers did bizarre battle with the sight of crowds of T-shirted 20th-century vacationing humanity in floppy Goofy ears?

Or was it the night when we trudged from packed restaurant to packed restaurant in an agonizing quest for dinner that reduced a normally resilient 7-year-old to wracking sobs?

Hard to say, really, but at the end of two days in the Magic Kingdom, I knew this about myself: I am not a Disney person. Michael Eisner need not lose a nanosecond of sleep; plenty of other people are. Attendance at Disney World in 1995 was 33.1 million, Amusement Business magazine estimated.

But the Disney theme park experience is one of those crystallizing phenomena that separate the human race into two camps: those who cannot wait to come back and those who cannot wait to leave.

The rift goes beyond socioeconomic or class differences, says Bob Sehlinger, author of “The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World” (Macmillan).

“If you take the population of people you would consider to be educated and bright and to exhibit good taste, there’s a split right down the middle,” he said.

“There are good friends of mine who, I think, are just brilliant people and they just love the place. And there are other people who go into anaphylactic shock and break into hives.”

I give credit where due: The famed Disney attention to detail, skill with a spectacle and devotion to cleanliness are enormously impressive.

But the price of admission also includes what I regard as extreme unpleasantries: long marches between attractions spent trying not to lose young children, a car-tram-monorail commute from our Disney hotel more arduous than my trip to work, the obvious artifice in everything you see.

Not to mention the uneasy feeling of being in thrall to some sort of benevolent dictatorship that owns the amusements, the stores, the land, the lagoons, the beaches, the roads, the transportation systems, the hotels, the restaurants and even, when the searchlights ply the Florida sky at night, the very heavens.

The value in what you get in return eludes me. There is nothing offensive about charming amusement park rides, robot animals, special-effects movies and live musical shows, but nothing so extraordinary that I thought it worth the enormous cost.

What was extraordinary was that while our two children and their best friend, ages 5, 6 and 7, enjoyed the attractions well enough, what they really wanted to do was just play.

“When can we leave and go swimming?” our older daughter begged repeatedly.

I couldn’t blame them. They wanted to make the action, not watch it.