Chapter Three: Can Amazing Be a Souvenir?
We got off the bus and walked into the Contemporary Resort. To check in. I took my time walking in, took my time walking up to the counter. Because I didn’t want to miss any part of it. I am only ever going to have one first time checking into the Contemporary Resort. If the anticipation of staying there and actually checking in were at least as significant as seeing the view of the Magic Kingdom from my own room, then I didn’t want it to be over too fast.
When my wife and I got married 13 years ago next Tuesday, my best friend and best man did me an amazing favor. Just before we walked out, he said, “ZZUB, it’s gonna go fast. Remember to breathe. Take it in.” Throughout the ceremony, he’d lean in to remind me to stop, look around, pay attention. It’s funny to me that I, the original omniscient narrator, me of perpetual inner monologue, needed to be counseled to pay attention. But I did. I was entirely too focused on getting through the wedding and onto the next thing.
And because my buddy made me stop and look around, I remember exactly what I was thinking when we walked out from the little room behind the stage and out in front to wait for my bride. I remember the first groomsman coming down the aisle and I remember what he said to me as he passed. I remember my roommate from college walking down and making a joke as he went by as well. I remember looking at my grandfather sitting in the front row next to my mom. I remember the expression on his face, a combination of pride and pain. He would pass away just three weeks later.
I remember seeing my soon-to-be wife at the end of the aisle. She looked amazing. And even though I’m sure there wasn’t a spot light on her, she was glowing and brilliant in the candle lit church we were married in. Our flower girl was obsessive of compulsive and was placing the flowers individually on the runner. Which made my bride’s progress down the aisle slower than it would have been. But that just gave me more time to stare at her and memorize how incredible she looked.
Seeing her first appear from behind the door and then come down the aisle towards me is one of the singular moments in my life. When my expectations were so completely surpassed. I’ve always thought Mrs. ZZUB was hot. So it’s not like I was surprised that she looked good in her wedding dress. I was surprised by how unbelievably, incredibly, stop-having-all-weddings-because-no-other-woman-can-even-compete-with-how-beautiful-my-bride-is beautiful Mrs. ZZUB was on the day she became my wife.
There’s lots of other things I remember about that night. The conversation we had during the first song. Telling her how beautiful she was. Laughing about things that were only interesting to us. My best man leaning in to tell me to take a breath, to look around. I recall lighting the unity candle and not being able to get the candle back in the holder and just laying it down on the table. Leading our wedding party in a prayer for us. Wondering if I’d actually used the uber cheesy phrase, “be the difference.” Getting up off of the kneeler and my wife being confused where we were to stand after that. Listening to the second soloist while we walked to our families to hug and thank them. Hugging and thanking our wedding party. The moment when we were pronounced man and wife. Our kiss. Our quick walk down the aisle. I remember walking fast because the first time I went to a wedding as a little kid, I thought it was cool how quickly the bride and groom exited. And as me and my new wife walked out of the church, quickly down the aisle, I remembered being a little kid watching my aunt and uncle do the same thing.
Which is a heck of a roundabout way of saying, I took my time and savored this experience. I disciplined myself to not rush through it.
Unlike ZZUBY who spotted the little kid area with the big TV and ran away from us as quickly as Britney Spears can oops, do it again. Mrs. Z took Baby Z and let her run around and I walked up to the completely empty check in counter.
I asked whether they were able to give us a king room. The CM apologized and said they couldn’t. But he did tell me they were able to accommodate one of our other requests, we were on what I call the Magic Kingdom side of the building. As contrasted with the Chef Mickey side. I had read that the view from different floors weren’t appreciably different. I don’t know whether that is true. And I don’t really imagine the view from the MK end is significantly different than the CM end. I just wanted to be away from the noise. We were on the 8th floor, just 3 rooms down from the end. As I would later point out to ZZUBY, looking at the Contemporary from the front, we were three up and three over.
Rooms on this side of the building start on the sixth floor which means the eighth floor is three up.
The reason they couldn’t give us a king room? There are none on the Magic Kingdom side of the building. (Not to be confused with the Magic Kingdom end of the building. You follow?) According to the CM who checked us in, there are only 10 king rooms in the entire resort and none with a view of the MK. Except, perhaps on the concierge floors.
Which was pronounced “con-see-air” by a lady on the Monorail who wanted us all to know she was staying in a more expensive room than we were. To which I thought, “if you can’t pronounce it, you probably can’t afford to stay there. Hopefully, you’ll learn how to pronounce the word before you pay off your credit card.”
But back to check in. I had the most efficient check in CM ever. No long boring recitation about how the Dining Plan works, no explanations for how to maximize our trip. No hard sell for Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party. And soon enough, I had our keys in hand and we were headed up to our room.
The elevator doors opened and out we stepped. I could hear the din from Chef Mickey’s. I know I could. But I marched in time to the quickening beat of my own heart. Whatever calm I had disciplined into myself on the bus, and in the lobby was fading away. Now I was especially eager to open the door to our room. To see what I’d been waiting 35 years for. As we walked along the balcony, I looked down at BVG, at Fantasia.
And then we were at our door. Mrs. Z made me stop because she wanted to take a picture of me opening the door. I pulled ZZUBY next to me and used her Key to the World to open the door. But first we smiled at Mrs. Z so she could record the moment.
And then I opened the door.
The room looked familiar. Having studied every picture of it I could find online. I had more than a good idea of what it would look like. And there wasn’t a thing about it which disappointed me. It occurred to me that the room was even oriented the way I thought it would be when I anticipated it in my mind. We pushed the stroller into the room and out of the way and in turn checked out the space. Marveling at how much room there was, how cool it all looked.
Dude, we’re so country come to town. “Look at that, Ma! Them headboards are soft and fluffy!”
Normally in a hotel room, the big thing I want to check out is the TV. But not this time. This time, the thing I wanted to see more than anything was the view. But you don’t open the biggest present first Christmas morning. You don’t take too big a bite of the jelly donut either. You take your time. But I'd taken enough time looking at other things. I moved towards the sliding glass doors.
I thought I knew what the view would look like.
I’ve seen every picture on every web site.
But it turns out I wasn’t prepared at all for what I would see. I was genuinely surprised.
The Magic Kingdom was so close.
There are exactly five moments in my life when the thing I anticipated was actually better than I thought it would be: the first time I set foot on campus at Alabama, the first time I saw the Pacific Ocean, the first time I saw my bride, the first time I held my child and the first time I walked out onto my balcony and looked out at the Magic Kingdom.
It’s impossible to capture just what it looks like. So many pictures are zoomed in which give the false impression that you are closer than you are. So I expected to be farther away. Indeed, with my own camera, without any zoom, the picture makes the Magic Kingdom appear smaller than it really is from your balcony. It’s true that there’s a parking lot in the foreground. But when you’re standing on your balcony looking towards the Magic Kingdom, you don’t look down. These pictures of the view are about as close as I could get to what it actually looked like.
ZZUBY and Baby Z joined me on the balcony. ZZUBY stood next to me and I hoisted Baby ZZUB in my arms so she could see too. I pointed out Splash Mountain, Thunder Mountain, Space Mountain. The Monorail. The Astro-Orbiter. Mrs. ZZUB had come up behind us and snapped another sweet picture. Me and my girls.
After awhile, we headed out for dinner and a quick survey of BVG and Fantasia. Then we headed back up to our room to get settled in. We had no problem unpacking our stuff. Found plenty of room in the closets and the few drawers there. Then we stacked up our empty suitcases in the huge empty space in the toilet part of the bathroom. The toilet is separate from the sinks and shower/tub. I think there used to be a sink in there and during the last re-do, they took it out. NOPhilTitola. It was a good place to store our bags.
The sinks themselves weren’t much of an issue and we didn’t find any problem storing our stuff in the bathroom. There’s a space between the sinks. There's also a shelf underneath. And if the sinks took longer to drain, it wasn’t appreciably longer.
The beds were softer than Sean Hannity’s interview questions of Sarah Palin. But not squishy. Firm but soft. Like a good biscuit. And there were a gazillion pillows mostly pretty comfortable themselves. The room was as clean as any Disney room we’ve been in the last few years.
We did experience a few housekeeping issues which I'll discuss in greater detail later.
One cool thing about the Contemporary was the computer in the room with internet access and an online concierge.
I really liked the internet access so I could keep up my hurricaneology. And check scores of games I was interested in. I’m in a college football pick ‘em and needed to make my picks. It was very handy having access.
In other words, pretty much none of the things I worried about were problems. Sure it would have been nicer to not walk out of our room and see a scaffold over a portion of the Monorail track.
And it would be nice not to have the construction zone where a restaurant should be.
But it would also be nice to beat Kentucky by more than 3 points. And it would be nice if our government didn’t convince us there was a financial crisis which “needed” to be remedied by a $700 billion dollar bailout which hasn’t seemed to calm the markets. It would also be nice if people didn’t drive around with bumper stickers that read, “Mean People Suck.” For some reason, I always assume they’re talking about me. Since I’ve yet to happen upon perfection, I’m willing to not hold Disney and the Contemporary Resort to a standard no other place satisfies.
I’ll tell you plain: we loved the Contemporary. If it was a cake, it would be Butter Grilled.
Some people say paying for the view is a big fat waste of money. I’m usually one of those people. My rule is, if you pay for the view, you’d better dadgum well enjoy it. I think we did. We were there eight nights and six of those eight nights we watched Wishes from our room. We loved being able to sit on our balcony, eat Twizzlers, drink Yoo Hoo and watch the shells explode over the MK. They pipe the music through one of the channels on the TV and that was pretty cool. When the show was over, we just went back into our room. There were no crowds. No pushing. No shoving. No snarky CM asking you to return your stroller. No schlepping to a bus, a boat or a Monorail. No smelly people. No sweaty arms. No stench of pee.
We were crazy go nuts for the Monorail too. I thought we might walk to the MK in the mornings but taking a better look at the walk we decided it wouldn’t be much faster than a ride on the Monorail and the few minutes we saved wouldn’t be worth the additional energy we wasted. From our door to the MK turnstiles was 15 minutes. One day it was only 12. Not a bad commute at all in my book.
Not surprisingly, my favorite part of the Contemporary was the view from our room. I spent a lot of time on the balcony.
From the first time I stepped out there until the afternoon we checked out, I never got tired of the view. I liked to sit out there at night and watch the fireworks. I liked to hang out there in the afternoon and see the boat traffic. The Monorail coming and going from our building. I never got tired of it.
I liked to get out there early in the morning, to spend some time with God and to watch the Magic Kingdom begin its day. I could see the Monorails coming on line. And before the busses started running, I could even hear the music coming from Tomorrowland. You can’t really see people walking around the MK from your balcony at the Contemporary but from where I was stood, I could see a 14 year old boy looking back up at me. Well not at me as much as the building I was in. I owed it to him to not take for granted that I had that view for nine days. I owed it to him to listen to the sounds of the boat horns and rumble of the busses and the purr of the Monorail as it glides along the track.
For months and weeks I was afraid that I’d get there and be so sadly disappointed by the distant view of the castle. The Magic Kingdom just a speck in the distance, a large parking lot obscuring the view. Why did I think that? Why did I think God didn’t want to bless me with this? Have I become so cynical that I expect God to Himself be ironic? Allow me to realize a desire of my heart only to be disappointed by the experience. Is that
really the God I serve?
No. It isn’t. God loves His children. He loves us enough that He wishes for none of us to perish. He loves us enough that He sent His Son as a sacrifice for us. Knowing that, then, why did I think He didn’t want to bless me?
Somedays I think if I rode my bike more often I wouldn’t forget so quickly how to ride it, you know? It’s good to be mindful that God loves us. Wants the best for us. Even here. He likes to bless us. The same way we like to bless our own children. If we enjoy taking our kids to Disney World because it brings them joy, how much more does our Heavenly Father want to give us good gifts?
And so it was that each morning I’d eagerly climb through the dark curtains in our room and out onto our balcony. To sit a spell. To pray. To read God’s Word. To watch the Magic Kingdom wake up. And to breathe.
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That's a lot of ME bribes! And even though a TR might be a $3,000 view, my DH said, "Darling I love you, but give me the Garden Rooms"! And when discussing with LittleYAK she said, "no worries Mom, it the Contemporary!" Amen!
Yes, the parking lot is below, but we must think about the beyond. She would have none of it (perhaps she was talking to me from some remote third world country) she was the professional! And it definately wasn't a MK or Bay Lake view!
