I bought mine in Toronto but I have since seen it in Kingston. The forward is as follows:
"To look at me you would never know that I harbour a secret. I live in a decent house, hold down a steady job and pay the bills ib time. As far as you know.
I play a mediocre bass guitar in a good blues band, I love watching football and I secretly yearn to tradse my sensible hybrid car in for a pickup truck.
But mention something as innoculous as "Main Street" and I break out into a sweat.
That's the first clue. Look a bit closer, however and the signs begin to manifest themselves; almost every t-shirt I own has a mouse on it somewhere; if you look closely at my watch you'll see cleverly hidden Mouse ears; O refer to the guy at the gas station as a Cast Member, and mt credit card bill has an inordinate number of charges emanating from the Orlando, Florida area.
Spend more than five minutes talking to me and I'll figure out a way to insert Mickey Mouse into the conversation. It can be annoying, but I have no qualms about the fact that I am a hard-core Walt Disney World fanatic, and I know how to do it right.
This is not a boastful claim. It's just something I've learned while in the throes of my addiction. I love Disney World, and I'll spend as much time vacationing there as I can without going broke.
Actually that's a lie. I don't really care about debt. I just need my fix.
I need to be standing on the sparkling clean streets of the Magic Kingdom, enveloped in ethereal music wafting from hidden speakers and bathed in the early morning Florida sun. I crave the oasis provided by an air-conditioned restaurant as fellow addicts fill the perfectly manicured park outside. And I need the end of the day to be a head full of margarittas as Illuminations unfolds infront of me- a majestic display of fire and hope.
But it didn't start out that way.
Falling in love with the idea of having my breakfast served by adults making minimum wage dressed as fictional cartoon animals was the furthest thing from my mind when I got on a plane with my wife and headed south one August day in 1998.
It was on that day I learned an important fact: Walt Disney World is not just for kids. It may have started out that way but the days of riding "It's a Small World" over and over are over. There are nightclubs, restaurants, bars, shows, attractions, shopping and golf and fishing- enough to keep us coming back for many, many years. For those who haven't succumbed to the seduction or haven't been to central Florida for a long time, it's hard to understand.
At first, I'd plan a vacation and people would ask, 'Where are you going?' Now, no one asks. When I say we're going away, I'll get a knowing nod or chuckle. In fact, I've stopped saying that we're going to Walt Disney World. I just say we're going to Florida. It somehow sounds a little less crazy to my ears.
I often think about why I am so enamored of the place. I have theories about how working in the newspaper business I spend a great deal of time thinking about war and terrorism and crime and how Walt Disney World provides a total escape from that.
That might be somewhat true, but it's too easy an answer. It would be best-and probably more entertaining- to examine how this all came out from the beginning." (Mousejunkies, 2009)