Our approaching Disney vacation meant three things. Our dilapidated roof was going to have to tough it out another winter. My wife and I, after beginning the process of packing with good intentions, would be gnashing at each other like dogs by the time we were through. And my daughter, who possesses an almost professional understanding of Cinderella, would realize a 3-year dream of eating buffet food with the good Princess. She had once seen a cheery brochure showing Cinderella kissing a boy on the cheek in front of what appeared to be an omelet station that had piqued her curiosity. “You can eat with Cinderella?” I remember her asking, “Does she eat Mac and Cheese?” Come to find out, Cinderella eats the living hell out of Mac and Cheese.
We were told to make dinner reservations well in advance of our trip and, while we thought 3 months covered the ‘well-in-advance’ part, we ended up getting ‘shut out of the castle’ as insiders would tell us, and had to settle for a banquet room inside the well-meaning Grand Floridian Hotel. The ‘Castle’ dinner was a sit-down affair located inside the Magic Kingdom and was reserved for families that had made reservations 18 months in advance. Stories told of marbled floors, exquisite food, impeccable service and attentive characters that fawned over wide-eyed kids and signed autographs until their fingers, and in some cases paws, cramped. Our experience would be, in a word, different.
After an hour-long process of fitting my daughter into her costume-complete with the requisite blue dress, elbow-long white gloves, black throat-choker, tiara and ill-fitted slippers, we stopped at the Hotel reservation desk exactly 15 minutes before our scheduled reservation. Our hostess told us we could wait in a short line to get Fairy Godmother’s autograph while they prepared our table. Godmother was a meaty Chinese woman in her 60’s that didn’t omit any sort of fairy charm. She seemed a little angry to me and, as she passed by me on the way to her ‘break’ I wondered to myself what the Godmother at the Varsity dinner was like and whether or not she smelled like hot dogs the way that ours did.
Dehlia, who had been a bundle of overstimulation all week, was quiet and reserved and ignored the lady altogether. She was staring inside the banquet room with her hands folded, her eyes wide and her lips pursed. She kept her eyes on Cinderella and watched her move from table to table. I called her name a few times but she couldn’t blink, much less answer me. She wanted to say something, she just wasn’t sure what.
Our waitress quickly shuffled us to the farthest corner of the room, past a Stepford army of miniature princesses. The room was packed with 4-8 year old girls-all of them dressed in varying combinations of Princessery. Some sported crowns. Some violently shook magic wands. And others simply sat up in their Cinderella strollers and screamed. All of them, it appeared, were exhausted from Park hopping and appeared to be in the throes of turning back into pumpkins.
The intent of the Character dinner was simple. Two mice, Godmother, Prince Charming and Cinderella herself would rotate throughout the entire room, stopping at each table for autographs, pictures and, at least in Cinderella’s case, anything buttered or fried. While waiting for characters to land, families visited the buffet lines—an adult version-complete with bloody-red prime rib, steaming whitefish and some sort of off-green vegetable buried in something white. If there’s a Hell, and they eat dinner there, this is what’ll be on my plate. For the kids.