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Lake Buena Vista, Florida
You're weightless, you are exotic, you need something for which to care
The massive Disney property contains a lot of hotels, more than one could ever hope or want to visit. All of the Disney hotels have a theme, one that is pervasive and usually quite well executed, whether it be a national park hotel, a 70's futuristic hotel or a straight plagiaristic copy of the Hotel del Coronado in San Diego. In the middle of it all there is an rare exception, the Swan and Dolphin Hotels, operated not by the massive Disney empire but rather by the Westin and Sheraton division of the massive Starwood company.
The hotels were designed by Michael Graves, an architect with a collection of familiar and popular products available at Target but one who is generally hated among most architects. Graves was credited and then later blamed for Post Modernism, broadly (and probably unfairly) defined as a movement that always appeared to value surface artificiality over design. The complex at Disney may very well be Graves' best work (certainly the best I have seen in person), it was so well done that it was hard to dislike. From the carpets in the hallways to the room decor to the giant non-dolphin looking dolphins to the alarm clock to its clever symmetrical massing, it was all Graves all the time. Surface artificiality never felt so right.
The (Sheraton) Dolphin completely towers over the smaller (Westin) Swan, a reason I chose to stay at the Swan. Connected by a causeway (where a boat launch to two of the parks stops) the two resorts are in one of the better locations on the property. Down the center of the (of course) symmetrical Dolphin is a proportionally weak fountain cascading down through a series of clamshells, the final one supported by 2d versions of those so called dolphins.
Even as it proves the inescapable truth that a hotel named after an animal is required by US law to include at least one fountain featuring its namesake, the Swan's (relatively) small lobby still manages to feel just urban enough to make you forget you're in the dead center of the Disney property. The interior view below is typical for both resorts, featuring a ceiling, sculptures, paintings, light fixtures and, well everything else designed by Graves.
The Swan and Dolphin are located in the "Epcot Resort Area", adjacent to the Yacht and Beach Club resort and the Boardwalk resort (with a fair amount of included restaurants and shops). From the front door of the Swan you are a fifteen minute walk to the back gate at Epcot or a twenty minute walk to the front gate at the Disney MGM Studios (slowly moving and quite annoying buses provide all other included transportation).
The Yacht and Beach Club resort was designed by well known, super weasel architect Robert Stern and remains perfectly fine but not something of greatness (although the pool area is landscaped especially well). Off in the distance is the Boardwalk resort (on the left) and the hard to miss Swan Hotel (on the right).
Walt Disney (yes, there really was a Walt Disney) once dreamed of a utopian, radiant city on his property in Florida, a modern vision of a better world for all those Disney workers. He called it Epcot (experimental prototype community of tomorrow) and died after only a few pieces of concept art were completed. Over time the Walt Disney Company bastardized his vision by turning Epcot into a vaguely futuristically themed amusement park and later bastardized it again by creating a "new urbanism" community called Celebration on a very distant edge of the property. Celebration is meant to invoke an ideal, small town life, a vision that looks backwards versus looking ahead. A town center with no public transportation that stretches out to attached condominiums and finally to detached, old looking houses with covered porches creates a creepy fake feel, something that feels closer to the backlot at Warner Brothers in Los Angeles than it does to any real town anywhere.
As part of this effort, Disney hired a few well known architects to help spruce up the town a bit. This is the tower side of Robert Venturi's downtown bank building, interesting enough and more interesting than most of the buildings down there. Venturi is a personal hero of mine for his theoretical work but not for his built work- his theories have an edge that his work appears to avoid at all costs.
A note about the photo- the difference between my deep freeze hotel room and car and a humid early morning created a fitting peripheral fog around the outside of my 0.7x wide conversion lens- an unintended, appropriate effect for such a place.
Technically still in Celebration but far away from all of the action is an office complex that was one of the last buildings completed by Aldo Rossi. The best buildings on the property, simple, well done and completely out of place.
As previously stated on at least one too many occasions, I am a man of few interests: architecture, mountains, hockey, roller coasters and, well, did I mention architecture yet? And since Florida is not known for its rugged natural mountains or late August professional hockey tournaments (and I already covered the architecture part), I was able to justify all that time spent under that unforgiving sun by looking forward to at least a few world class thrill rides.
At the often maligned Epcot park there are three advertised thrill rides, with two of them actually worth the trouble. One of the good ones uses the unusually dumb name of Soarin' and provides an experience much better than such a weak name suggests. Riders board ten person wide ski lift type ride simulator cars, and then are hoisted high above the ground and pushed against an impossibly large movie screen. The effect (including wind blowing in your face and an occasional weak scent) is almost transcendent. The most effective ride simulator I have yet to experience.
The other E ticket experience is Mission: Space (pictured below), a terribly fun simulator that has actually killed people. After a few instructional videos hosted by everyone's favorite, humorless character actor Gary Sinise, you are led to board a four person car (complete with easily accessible vomit bags) and given the dire warning not to look away from the video screen in front of your head and not even to close your eyes. The cars are really part of a centrifuge type system, one that is as much gravity crushing fun as you can possibly imagine. Like all rides it felt especially short (and like all Disney rides a bit over themed) but in the end it was much more fun than I expected.
The third thrill ride is General Motors test track, something that had its moments but not something I'd look forward to again. Riders board fake cars that are subjected to different fake performance tests. Sure the final sections when you reach the higher speeds are fun, but I really could do without the rest, especially the near collision breaking test, a bit too close to my reality and driving fears than I really ever want to experience on a vacation.
The unmistakable icon of Epcot, a giant 180 foot high sphere with a dark ride about communications inside that I last rode in 1988. Far more interesting underneath and up close than it is from afar, the size of the park makes it usually too distant to be all that it could be.
The future world section of Epcot yields to the more sedate world showcase, a collection of pavilions around a lake representing eleven countries with shops, good restaurants and an occasional boat ride or movie. Having traveled to all but one of the countries represented (I count Hong Kong as part of China but have yet to visit Mexico), there are equal amounts of authenticity to artificiality. While the fish and chips in England were probably top ten fish and chips good (yes, I do actually rank fish and chips), the poor excuse for a pastry in France tasted more like what you would expect from a school cafeteria in the Poconos than anything (anything) I've ever eaten in France.
Pictured below is an early evening walk by of the Italian pavilion, one that does not bother me nearly as much as the Venetian in Las Vegas. The Venice in Florida is at such a small scale that it never feels (or tries to feel) like anything authentic, as opposed to Las Vegas' Venetian which has a right sized scale campanile but a level of obvious, blunt commercialism that just completely undermines any sense of (a different) place.
Some quick impressions of some of the other parks, for anyone who cares about such things.
The most recent park on the Disney property is Animal Kingdom, a relatively unpopular park featuring a safari ride and probably a few other things. Probably.
The smallest of the parks (the Disney MGM Studios) features one amazing ride called the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. If you get past all of the well done theming, you find yourself strapped in an elevator that shoots you up and drops you in a way that could best be described as just damn fun- I found myself instinctively laughing as others screamed in terror. The rest of the park is fun enough but understandably does not rise to such levels.
I am way out of the demographics for most of the attractions at the Magic Kingdom (the original park with the castle) although for my four year old niece it was in fact magic. Some of the attractions have not aged especially well, the most obvious being a show called the Country Bear Jamboree. If you have not experienced it, the show involves a series of odd, stereotypical and often offensive mechanical bears moving in synchronization to a soundtrack featuring a series of odd, stereotypical and often offensive songs using a sound system that could best be described as being state of the art for the park's opening in 1971.
The attached picture features both an entertaining, all singing flume ride (Splash Mountain) and a crowd that is still trying to figure out exactly what do after the ending of the big midday character parade.
In addition to fingerprint scanners that are now required as you enter the park, the innovators of Disney have also come up with a good version of a Fast Pass system. Popular rides have two lines, a standby line and a Fast Pass line. At a popular ride (say Splash Mountain) you would see two signs. One would say that there is a 90 minute wait, while another might say that there are Fast Passes available for entry in 90 minutes. You walk over to the machine, put in a ticket and get a Fast Pass ticket that lists the time window when you are supposed to return and another line that says when your ticket is eligible for another Fast Pass. When you go back to the ride in that window, you find yourself in a ten minute (or less) line, allowing you to visit other less popular attractions in the time you would have stood on line. A great innovation.
Another great thing (and benefit of traveling with my sister and brother in law) was a policy that Disney has for parents with strollers. As we entered rides that did not allow frisky one year olds, either my sister or brother in law waited outside as I enjoyed the ride with the other and my four year old niece Kira. As we got on line, they told the park employee that they were stroller parents (without any proof required) and received three additional passes that got us back in the fastpass lane at any time. The effect of this was almost instant double rides on Mission Space, Splash Mountain and Soarin', a great benefit (at least for me and Kira).
Meanwhile this slide shows a side that was unavoidable at all of the parks, a stroller log jam of often epic proportions. This time I was able to see both sides of the argument since my sister (of whom no one has ever doubted her ability to efficiently pack) drove a double wide, killer stroller loaded with more backpacks and storage volume than I probably took with me when I spent a month traveling around the world a few years back. (In their defense, all of those items were required to make sure that both girls could enjoy a day in the park without incident). Strollers are a fact of life at the parks, creating massive, makeshift stroller parking in areas that were never designed for them in the first place. The lots would quickly turn ugly during the occasional heavy downpour (an expected fact of life in central Florida) but my sister and brother-in-law were able to assemble a quick, serviceable, makeshift tarp made of carefully placed plastic rain ponchos.
Second to the strollers are a disproportionate amount of wheelchairs in the park. While I normally applaud anyone traveling in a wheelchair, I will say that the park needs to figure out an alternate way of getting them onto the rides. I would guess to say that at least half of the continuously loading rides we were on needed to stop to let a handicapped person on or off. The rides have a tendency to lose their magic if you find yourself stopped in the Haunted Mansion, Splash Mountain or It's a Small World and stuck in the same looping audio for several long minutes at a time.
