ASK MJ: HOW TO GO TO DISNEYWORLD

Megan asks: I am looking to make my Disney trip much more memorable than all of the others, and doing normal Disney-World things will just not cut it. Any ideas for making Disney-World more fun than ever before?

If you’ve read this blog of mine for any extended period of time, you will know my feeling about rides. That is to say—I am generally against them. Disneyworld has a few rides I can get behind, largely because they are designed for three year olds. But I always feel that the true joy in a place like Disneyworld lies not in its coasters, but in the many social experiments that can be performed.

The first thing you do is read and make a few copies of the list of incidents at Disney theme parks. Familiarize yourself.

In looking at that list, it seems that the most dangerous part of Disneyworld is playing a character. There’s a whole list of incidents in which people dressed as beloved Disney characters are accused of punching and fondling people—and all brought to court and acquitted. Incidents like this:

In 1976, a woman filed a lawsuit claiming one of the Three Little Pigs ran up to her at the "it's a small world" attraction, grabbed at and fondled her, while exclaiming "Mommy! Mommy!" She claimed to have gained 50 pounds as a result of the incident, and sued Disney for $150,000 in damages for assault and battery, false imprisonment, and humiliation. The plaintiff dropped charges after Disney's lawyers presented her with a photo of the costume, which had only inoperable stub arms.

I feel for the pain of The Costumed.

I once had to play The Cat in the Hat at a big theater festival in Philadelphia because the actor they had hired to do it was too big, so I, the lucky dramaturg, got the call at 6am to drive downtown as fast as I possibly could, with a bathingsuit. It was 98 degrees that day, and the costume weighed about 50 pounds and was more or less made of carpet. The only place I could see was out of a small whole in the neck, which meant zero peripheral vision. Also, do you know who usually approaches costumed characters, aside from children? Only the worst people in the entire world. The drunk, the angry, the people who think they’re funny, the assorted insane. And there’s nothing you can do about it, because you’re in something you can barely control. You can hear yourself breathing in there. It’s like being in a spacesuit or one of those old-fashioned diving outfits, but without the light, easy grace.

This is why you’re always supposed to go out with a non-costumed handler when you’re in one of those things. But the festival wasn’t on top of that, so I was sent out alone to wander the streets of Philadelphia, overwhelmed by heat, barely able to walk or see, more or less to my death, except that I didn’t die. Which was lucky. I mean, I worked at Sesame Place as a wayward teen, and I can tell you firsthand about Grover getting punched smack in the face by a crazy dad—and Grover was being played by a 16 year old ballerina who ended up with bruises all over her face, and the cops had to come.

Plus, this one time, I got snowed in at my friend’s house, and out of boredom played Rollercoster Tycoon for six hours, during which time I was obsessed with building food stands and not maintaining my rides. But even worse—I hired many Costumed Ones, including a little dude in a tiger suit who danced around and entertained people in lines. And I picked him up with the big claw you use to make changes and I accidentally dropped him into one of my ornamental lakes and he struggled and DROWNED, and my friend said, “I didn’t even know the game could DO that.”*

So I FEEL for the costumed people of Disney. So let me fold my suggestions for how to have fun into a suggestion on how to improve the lives of the Costumed—our brothers and sisters in furry chains.



FREE TIGGER

Spend your day wandering the park, lingering around places with The Costumed. Watch for kids who are rude to them—jumping on them, pulling on their costumes, yelling at them. It won’t take long. These people are everywhere. Follow the first ones you see. Make sure to get right behind them in one of those crazily long lines for some ride. When you’re finally at the front of the line, maybe just minutes from being seated—pull out your phone and say something like the following:

YOU: Yeah, hey, I’m finally in line for [insert name of ride here]. I know, right? I never thought they’d reopen it after what happened, but . . . Yeah, I heard it took them a week just to get all the blood and stuff off. Yeah, well, what I heard was, there was this kid . . . he was like [insert child of the same sex and approximate age as the child or children in front of you] . . . and I don’t know EXACTLY what he was doing, but . . .

At this point, make sure they can hear every word of what you say. Learn down to tie your shoe or adjust something. Get to their ear-level.

YOU: . . . I don’t know if they were leaning out or what, I don’t even think they were. Something just went wrong. There was this lour popping noise, and then a little flash, and one of the gears . . . all I heard was that it got the kid’s arm and [he or she, as appropriate] was sucked in to the mechanism. They tried to stop it, but it was too late. It just kept GRINDING AWAY, and he was screaming and screaming but no one could hear it over the music. Like, even the kid’s parents didn’t hear it. And I heard there was, like, nothing left, because you know how the ride turns . . .

[Wait for imaginary person on other end to say they know what you mean.]

. . . right, that part, well, that’s where his WHOLE FACE came off. They found his face later and they had to keep it in some ice from one of those lemonade carts . . .

And by this point, you should be on the ride.

It goes without saying that you have on your person something that makes a popping noise and makes a little flash. I am sure something can be obtained in a gift shop—some sort of magical fairy princess wand or something. At the first thing that even sort of looks like a turn, let loose with that thing!



They found his face . . .

Now, if the offender is a parent—and it is often the parent—you could try the same trick with a different script, something like this:

YOU: Yeah, hey, I’m in line for [insert name of ride]. Yeah, I was late getting in because I was out in the parking lot watching someone get his car Small Worlded.

[Pause while imaginary person on other end asks what this is.]

YOU: You haven’t heard of this? Oh man . . . it is so sweet. See, all of the characters have cameras in the costumes. And if anyone messes with them, the feed goes back to some central station. They have some insane software—facial recognition, I guess—and then they can actually trace all of your movements back to the parking lot. And then they find your car and plant this chip in it that plays “It’s a Small World” over and over, but at really low volume, so you can barely hear it. So low that you think you’re imagining it. But you aren’t, and you can never find the chip and take it out. They’re really smart with it.

[Pause while imaginary person is astonished and asking about legalities.]

YOU: No, they can. There’s this little sign when you come in that no one ever notices, and it says that by continuing to drive on to the property, you give Disney the right to enter your vehicle. Seriously. I saw it on the way in, but only because I looked for it and someone told me where it was. Oh man . . . they are going to be so sorry. You can never turn it off. It makes your car worthless, and it drives some people insane . . .

These are just a FEW suggestions of how you can spend your time at the Magic Kingdom. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!**




* I know I’ve told this story before but I’m still not over it.
** Which is akin to saying, “Don’t leave the hotel!”

HOW TO SURVIVE THE ECONOMIC CRISIS

Go away for two weeks and what happens? ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD BREAKS.

Oh, sure it SEEMS bad.

Okay, it IS bad.

I guess I’m going to have to fire some of my staff—the guy who polishes all my doorknobs with gold dust-infused butter, the professional remote control operator, the person who sits on my sofa and gives French braids to all my guests, regardless of whether or not they want them or have enough hair for them . . . These are not the times for such luxuries. I knew it couldn’t last. But there are some really good things about the collapse of the world economy. I thought it would be good to bring them up.

Here’s one big one: in many ways it forces us to do things that we really had to do anyway. Like use less stuff. We have been wrecking the environment with all our buying and buying and buying and throwing stuff away. Reusing, swapping, and repairing will be IN! And that’s excellent!

And let’s talk about fun, because, as the old song goes, “not much money, oh but honey, ain’t we got fun!” There are LOADS of ways to have a good time without spending a cent! Here are just a few!

READING

Reading is super cheap, so that’s kind of excellent for those of us in the writing biz. Now, I know books cost money, but there are a few ways of looking at that problem.

1. Books at the library are free. Also, books are good to swap. So if you buy one book, you can swap around with a group of friends and get like TEN books for the one you swapped around! (Or whatever! I mean, just put in the number of friends you have swapping books!) Or you can do what I did in order to survive grad school—you can sit in the bookstore and read the entire book cover to cover in the coffee bar. (I called this my “Barnes and Noble scholarship plan.”) Reading . . . still the most affordable and awesome pastime.

2. Might I point out, however, that books are still excellent cheap gifts? Mine are especially cheap. Perfect for everyone on your holiday shopping list! And here’s a great tip . . . buy a book, take off the dust jacket, READ it, put the dust jacket back on, and then GIVE it to someone as a gift! They will never know, unless you get mustard on it or something. You have totally gotten both the reading and gifting experience out of it! SMART!

3. Also, if you keep visiting my blog, I tend to give books out. In fact, I have stored up a HUGE PILE of them to give out starting right after Thanksgiving as part of my annual holiday cheertacular. There you go!

AUTHOR APPEARANCES

Author appearances are usually free. We are carted around and deposited in your local bookstore where you can come and stare at us for ZERO DOLLARS and ZERO CENTS. If you want, you can come and see me read and sign and it won’t set you back a nickel! (Of course, if you were truly decent, you would at least braid my hair since I no longer have anyone to do it for me and I never learned how to braid hair. I know. It is shocking but true. I do not know how to braid my own hair.)

Where can you see me? Well, you can TALK to me this Wednesday night on the Readergirls Teen Reads Week chat. It’s at 9pm, Eastern Standard time. Or you can come and see me in person/braid my hair at the huge event I am doing in Pittsburgh with John Green on November 13th. You can read the updated Bulletins page for all the info. My Bulletins page? ALSO FREE!

THE INTERNET

During the first Depression, there was no internet. This is one of the things that will make the New Depression different. You can get tons of free entertainment online! Like my Judge Judy fan fiction!

Did you not know about my Judge Judy fan fiction?

All of my Judge Judy fan fiction is basically the same—Judge Judy listens to a case, schools someone on how to behave, and makes out with the bailiff. It’s a little formulaic, but every time I try to mix it up, people get upset. Like the time I wrote crossover High School Musical/Judge Judy fan fiction.

It was a totally awesome concept. Troy was suing Ryan, and then Sharpay made out with the bailiff . . . and then Troy had a dream sequence where he imagined the basketball court was like an ACTUAL court and Judge Judy sang a song called “From the Bench to the Basket.” It had excellent lyrics, like these:

Listen up, all you students!
I know all about jurisprudence.
And if you want to make out in my court,
gotta learn that kissin’ ain’t no sport.
Gotta learn to weave, gotta learn to duck,
gotta learn how to get down and . . .

I cut it off there and posted that as part one of the story, just to get people on tenterhooks.

It was a really exciting concept, actually—because Judy was going to scream, “Puck!!!!!!” And then this hockey puck would come flying out of nowhere! Really, nowhere, because they were in a courtroom that had turned into a basketball court that had THEN turned into an ice hockey rink! Because, hello, DREAM SEQUENCE! And Troy would have to DUCK from the PUCK, and then it would go into some extended metaphor about his relationship being “on ice.”

I guess I was just pushing it after a while with the whole courtroom-high school musical-romance-basketball-hockey mix. It just confused people. My ratings went down the tubes. Also, people seemed to think I was going somewhere totally different with it. There were complaints.

In the end, all my fans wanted more of the classic Judy gets case/yells/makes out with bailiff I had been giving them. This is the problem with being an artist—once you do something that people like, no one will let you experiment with anything new.

Anyway, I hope you like my Judge Judy fan fiction, because once the New Depression comes, I’m going to be writing a lot of it. Again . . . the cost? ZERO DOLLARS. It would help if you wrote some fan fiction of my stuff so that I had something to read while playing with my limp, loose, unbraided hair.


FIND HUGH JACKMAN

This is a super-fun game that just requires time, energy, and a desire to have some old fashioned fun! And it totally proves that you don’t have to spend major Benjamins on fancy game consoles to have a good time.

The idea behind the game is really simple: you have to find Hugh Jackman. He could be anywhere! Go look for him!

This is a really flexible game, because you can play it alone or in teams. (If you play it alone, it is called “stalking.” In teams, it is called “being a fan.”) There are also all kinds of variations I’ve heard of, like: “Find David Tennant,” “Find John Barrowman,” “Find Alan Rickman,” and “Find Katie Couric.”

The winner is obviously the one who finds Hugh Jackman. The prize? Hugh Jackman! (Or David Tennant! Or John Barrowman! Or Alan Rickman, though I think someone has already played that game . . . )

(By the way this game is totally excellent but a tiny bit illegal, so maybe you should just stick to reading or board games.)

DISCO DANCING

Disco dancing is 100% free! You can covert your room into an AWESOME DISCO in a few easy steps! First, invite all your friends over. Get as dressed up as possible (shiny materials preferred). If you do not have a disco ball, just get a mirror and call it a disco square. Have someone stand by the light switch and flick it a lot. This will be your awesome lighting. If you don’t have any disco music, you can just play it right off Youtube!

Here’s a video to start you off! Here is Abba performing Dancing Queen in 18th century costumes for the wedding of King Gustaf of Sweden!



I hope these few suggestions help take away some of the concerns you may have been having. We are all going to get through this—some of us with unbraided hair, but whatever.

Do YOU have any tips to share? Let’s hear them!

THE TRAVELS OF ME AND FREE MONKEY

At the moment, both Free Monkey and I are on the road. He is in LA, and I am in Georgia, spreading the word of Girl At Sea.

First, the Monkey report.

FREE MONKEY is now in Los Angeles for the first stop of his World Tour. (The visit to Hank was a pre-tour stop to prepare.) You can see his activities by going to Little Willow’s site.

I flew to Atlanta on Monday night, and I am there now, sitting in the Georgia sunshine. Last night, I did a fantastic event at Little Shop of Stories in Decatur, where I spoke to a an amazing reading group.

That much is good. But the getting here, friends . . . that was not so good.

I have to preface everything below by saying that I am used to traveling internationally, so flying inside the US can be confusing. I don’t mean this in a “I only fly to fancy, faraway places!” I mean this in an “I expect the worst in terms of long lines and strict security” kind of a way. I expect my body to be x-rayed, my passport to be checked every six minutes, my shoes to be blown up, and my comings and goings to be ruthlessly questioned. On international flights, they make you show up days in advance so they can do all of this. They even board you a full hour before you take off just to make super-super sure that you are belted in snug and secure so they can seal the plane and check it fifty more times.

All of which I LIKE, because I am nothing if not pro-safety.

Comparatively, when I arrived at La Guardia (New York’s domestic airport), things seemed pretty relaxed. I checked in without showing ID. The security check seemed normal enough, but then I walked through the terminal, looking for my gate, and found that it was not so much a gate but more of a dark hallway in the back with about three hundred people crammed in it with nowhere to sit. The board behind the counter was not a digital display—it was one of those old fashioned boards where they stuck up plastic numbers.

Frankly, it looked shady, like some guys had quietly backed up to an unused corner of the airport, maybe one that had previously been a bathroom or something and was under renovation, parked their plane, and tried to stir up a little business.

The problem was, there didn’t seem to be a plane. They weren’t even acting as if there was supposed to be one. The flight was supposed to take off at 7:00. It had read 7:00 on the board, but since they didn’t know when we would be leaving, they simply removed the last two numbers and left it as 7:

After about 45 minutes of standing there, slack-jawed, staring at the 7: . . . I decided this was getting a little old, so I walked around and around until I found one seat, recently vacated, in the middle of a crowded row. I was just happy to be sitting down, and I barely registered the strange objects that were across from me, which were: a pair of black high-heeled fur boots, a sealed bag, and a plastic tub marked “chemical de-icer.”

Let me just put that into perspective . . . you can’t even bring water past security. You can’t bring bottles of shampoo. I once had my lip gloss taken from me and put into a small sealed bag. (I’m not sure what that was supposed to accomplish, aside from not getting the lip gloss on my stuff.) One time, when my flight to England was delayed, I had to leave the terminal and use the ladies room. They held my passport while I did this, and when I came back, they gave me one of those full body patdowns, they examined my shoes, and took the battery out of my computer to examine it.

So, that someone had come in with a tub of suspicious-looking chemical stuff was weird. What was even MORE weird was that that stuff had been sitting there unattended for TWO HOURS. I knew this from my seatmates, who had seen the pregnant woman who had come and left it there so long before. By the time I came on the scene and collapsed into the seat, there was quite a buzz about it.

Because the only thing more disturbing than a random tub of chemicals in an airport is an UNATTENDED tub of random chemicals in an airport left next to furry boots and a scary bag.

There’s always one woman who takes control of the situation, and we had one. She went to security. In fact, she went to FIVE PEOPLE, begging them to come and take away the Incredibly Suspicious Packages.

Again, this comes in sharp contrast to international travel—or anything in England. If you leave a bag for more than five minutes in England, they swoop in with an entire team, take it away in a big machine, and blow it up. The English have a lot of experience dealing with bombers, and they don’t mess around.

But at La Guardia, they really could not have cared less. They shrugged her away.

“No one will listen to me,” she said. By now, we were all involved in the story of the boots, bag, and de-icer and everyone was waiting for news.

This is when the staff of "I Can't Believe It's An Airline" sprang to life. The guy at the desk came on and said, “Who wants to go to Atlanta!”

You know, like it was a surprise trip, and not an airplane that we all had tickets for. But everyone was so excited that there was A PLANE that cheers and clapping broke out.

It was only as we were quickly scrambled back into line (it was a big rush now, of course, further confirming in my mind that this plane was not actually supposed to be here and we were getting into the equivalent of an unlicensed taxi) that the police showed up with the bomb sniffing puppy. It was definitely a puppy—he was sort of a shaggy German Shepherd, with huge paws, clearly delighted to be at work. I don’t know exactly what he found, but he went a little crazy with delight for the de-icer. The sealed bag turned out to contain large cheese puff balls.

So if you heard any stories about weird stuff being found at LaGuardia airport the other night, I was there. And if it was some scary germ or something, drop me a line and let me know, because I was sitting next to it for a while. Unlike that guy who flew all over the world with an infectious disease, I will turn myself in immediately. I think I might like quarantine.

So we got on the plane, and I eyed the contents of my seat pocket. (I’m always hoping that some day I will find something wonderful in there, like a first edition Harry Potter or a baby bunny.) Instead, I saw that my safety card had been ripped into pieces. The only other thing in there was a barf bag.

“Who ever uses those?” I thought to myself. I am lucky enough to have a very strong stomach, and the idea of throwing up on an airplane is pretty much the worst thing I could imagine.

And then we took off, and the girl across from me barfed into her barf bag.

Things started to look up once we took off and were flying along peacefully. We landed very suddenly (everyone down! down! down! we're landing!), and then I thought things were really on the move. But they had had a storm in Atlanta hours before, and for some reason this messed everything up, and we sat on our spot on the runway for well over an hour.

When I finally got to my rental car, I breathed a sigh of relief, and then I looked down at the ground next to it and saw this, which I had to pick up and take with me:



Would you take this as a sign?

I really could not have asked for a better way into my LIST OF THINGS TO BE AFRAID OF IN THE SUMMERTIME. And this story also proves why DRAGON TRAIN is so appealing. (Dragon Train is appealing for many reasons, but now more than ever.)

That’s coming next, just as soon as I complete something I have to turn in, pretty much now. (Not a book, but another writing project.) Deadlines call! FREE MONKEY travels!