More Decade of Difference

Continuing on this trend...

Roughly 10 years ago, I was in Orlando on my first (and, really, only) vacation to Walt Disney World. My parents and grandparents chipped in together to send my sister (graduating from high school) and me (graduating from college) as a combined graduation gift. Of course, I figured this would be my only vist to Disney, so we had to do absolutely everything.

Part of "everything" was Pleasure Island. Since my sister is one of those young-for-her-class group, she graduated at 17 years old — and you have to be 18 to enter PI without a parent or guardian. She could, however, manage the Magic Kingdom on her own, so she headed there (and, incidentally, got stuck on the big climb of Splash Mountain for half an hour in the process) while headed to my first visit to the Island.

I don't recall much of the visit, but only because of how long ago this was. (Remember, at this stage of my life I rarely drank alcohol.) I'm pretty sure I skipped Cage (now 8Trax) and Neon Armadillo because of the music, and Comedy Warehouse because of the line. Other than going out to watch the New Year's Eve show and fireworks, the only club I specifically recall is, appropriately enough, Mannequins. I remember being put off by the guy selling beer from a vat of ice at the exterior elevator — he seemed to pushy to me, and it didn't fit my goody-goody image of Disney at the time. I remember noticing a bar as soon as I got off the elevator on the third floor. I remember grabbing a seat along the second floor to watch the dance floor below, and the stage show (barely remember details of the show — but one dancer carried another off like she had frozen into a real mannequin), and repeatedly being asked what I wanted to buy to drink. I finally left because I was tired of being asked if I wanted to to buy alcohol. It was probably my least-favorite part of my vacation.

This all hit me this past Saturday, standing on the same second floor, watching the much-more-crowded dance floor from the same vantage point, after having consumed a pleasant number of Adult Beverages, enjoying the heck out of myself. Who'd have thought? It occurs to me to wonder now if one of those cocktail waitresses might have been bartender-extraordinaire Dawn...

(There are more memories from this trip, but they didn't serve this story. Like the team of 6-foot-tall-plus baseball players with Traditional Midwestern Good Looks who were on the plane with us from Chicago here — and me, not out to my sister and only recently out at all, sighing internally the whole way to Orlando. Or the bellman at the now-defunct Disney Inn and the server at the Sci-Fi Dine In who both treated my sister and I like we were dating or engaged or something.)