SharkBoy is a bit more stylish when he visits Disney – his tees reflected the parks we visited: Animal Kingdom? He wore a shark shirt. Magic Kingdom? “I (heart) (Mikey Mouse ears)”. Me? All I wore this trip was Star Wars tees (and one Alien referenced shirt for Hollywood Studios).

This is where I adjust my tin foil hat: Every 3rd ride, a Cast Member would see whatever Star Wars shirt I had on and would say “Are you excited about Star Wars Episode 1 coming out?” or “Are you going to see ST:Ep1 in 3D?”

After the third comment, I suspected that the Cast Members were instructed to mention this to “fanboys” to generate buzz for the movie.

Which, by the way, is still hovering around 50% on Rotten Tomatoes and only made $7M this weekend. So they recovered the cost of the 3D conversion (which I’m told is not very good). But this is another post entirely.

I started to wonder if Disney is trying to plant the suggestion to go see Star Wars. Not that they have a lot of stock in it (other than Star Wars Weekends and the Star Tours ride). Or it was just a bunch of nerdy Cast Members in a gigantic coincidence.

Weird bit #2: I’m pooping in EPCOT. That’s not weird. Nor is the father/son combo in the stall beside me having a father/son conversation about pooping, either. No. Regular stuff. I hear from the stall next to me that the son has finished and Dad asks him to wait outside the stall while he does his business. I see two tiny sneakers under my stall door face one way, then the next… then face away from me and tilt on an angle that suggests he’s leaning on my door…

Suddenly my stall door swings wide and the kid stumbles backward, right towards my naked lap.

My hand shoots out for the door stopping it from opening fully and managing to upright the kid. “Whoa buddy!” I say as he leaves my stall, fast.

Okay. Several factors in play here. I’m a gay male, nearly 47 years old, wandering wide-eyed like a child through manufactured fantasy lands of plastic and make believe – Bald, old and acting child-like is not “normal” but I do it anyway. I’m also painfully aware that some people do mistakenly confuse “homosexuality” with “pedophilia” and will govern themselves around strangers such. On top of that, parents seem more overprotective of kids these days – evident when you hear parents call to them to “stay close” when you wander by.

So when a kid is launched at me while my pants are down in a place where parents are rabidly defensive of their young, I managed to freak out a bit. I had visions of being hauled off to some Disney detention area in a Kafkaesque nightmare where I had to explain why I was in a bathroom stall with a 5 yr old kid that I didn’t know.

“What’s going on out there?” the father asks.

“Just a door accident!” I shrill, finishing my business and hauling my pants up. As I exit the stall, the kid is gone and I leave quickly. Whew.

Weird Thing #3: I always said the “bubble” around Disneyland is much thinner than Disney World. By that I mean, Disneyland’s manufactured reality is much more fragile and can be easily popped, making real world rush in and ruining the fantasy, than it can be while at Disney World – purely because the real world is so very close to the gates of Disneyland. During our last stay at Disneyland, as we walked from the park to our hotel across the street, we were exposed to panhandling and drunk teens. Over in Florida, you’d have to travel very far out of the World to see that (or at least go to Downtown Disney for the drunk people).

So when this video of a “drunk” (?) man getting pepper sprayed a couple times by Disney Security (and subsequent frat boy admiration from the guy video-ing the whole incident), I’m not entirely surprised this happened. Our last night at Disneyland, we saw groups of drunk people in the park, yelling like idiots while on Splash Mountain, holding each other up as they staggered down Frontierland, acting like assholes. Seeing this video, I wonder if Disney is having a bit of an alcohol problem?