Walt's World

Happiness and memories and stuff. 

In 1955 a guy named Walt opened a little amusement park in California. It was a modest success. It did well enough that Walt decided that nobody should be limited by their proximity to one coast when making vacation plans. What better place to build another one than swampland in Florida? After convincing the state to grant them a special government district that essentially gave the company the powers and autonomy of an incorporated city, they started the ball rolling. Unfortunately Walt passed away before things got built, but fortunately for my children it was built none the less. Since then a bunch of people have made a trek to central Florida at one time or another to ride rides, hang out with movie characters, and generally have a good time. You can now add my family to that list.
This is not something that I planned on doing. If you could sit down and design a place where I would not want to go, destroying beautiful swamp and replacing it with crowds of people would be right up there at the top of my list. I would much much rather hang out in a swamp. My wife is more attuned to the likes of our children and was the one who planned this trip with a series of reluctant grunts from me. I'm glad she did. (don't tell her I said that)
We had some other adventures aside from the happiest place on earth. We held baby alligators, visited a walk in clinic, walked on a variety of beaches, found fossil shark teeth, and got to swim in hotel swimming pools. All of these things have individual stories behind them that deserve to be told, and tell them I will. However we are currently in the middle of sorting out the wide variety of illness contracted from touching every available surface at the amusement park. Their slogan might be "The Happiest Place On Earth" but it really should be "The Origination Center Of The Epidemic That Wiped Out The Human Race." I started the day surrounded by coughs and one child with an unspecified full body rash who had to stay home. Another call later in the day brought home the second one with a fever of 103. We're continuing to have a good time.
Stay tuned this week and I'll go over the vacation more. I'm going to try and make it less of a slide show of what my family did, and more of a discussion of the pros and cons and ins and outs of travelling with a herd of children. For now, I need to slip on my level 4 biohazard suit and tend to my sick flock.