My Odd Local Movie Theater And Why The SO Will Never Take Me Back to Disney World

Not all that long ago, the SO took me on a trip to Disney World. Now, while I understand that “it’s the most magical place on earth” and “no one can wear a frown at Disney World,” I’m not exactly one of those people who appreciates the magic. (I'm pretty sure the latter isn't really a common phrase, but I feel like it could be.)

My own mother once said, “I think I had the only children in the world that never asked to go back to Disney World.”

I visited when I was nine. I told Mickey that he and I had the same birthday. He seemed pleased (at least, he clapped his over-sized white gloves). I went down Space Mountain, and I bought large Lady and the Tramp stuffed animals from our hotel. As far as I could tell, I was done. For life.

Today, for me, Disney World is a trifecta of things I don’t enjoy: lines/large groups of people, heights and loud noises.

Since new technology allows for rides where you actually just move around in a kind of virtual reality while your cart shifts from side to side, you can also add small spaces and motion sickness to the discomforts mentioned above.

Also, seeing how I feel about parades, you can understand why this might not necessarily be my ideal vacation.

I tried to buck up, but as the SO rarely fails to remind me, I didn’t do a very good job. I’m sorry that I don’t see the point to going down the same roller coaster twice from different sides (it’s just the mirror image!) and that I like to nap, but that’s just how I am.

(I will say that Orlando has excellent outlet shopping – Kate Spade, David Yurman and Burberry? Amazing.)

One of my favorite parts of the trip was actually visiting the MGM Studio Theme Park. They had one of those rides that isn’t a ride – if you’ve been to Orlando in the last 20 years, I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. You wait in line to be shuffled into a room where you’re lead into another room where nothing really happens. While you’re seated (or standing, depending on the situation), a character of some sort appears and tells a story or is threatened by some other creature you probably don’t recognize and your seat vibrates or pinches you at opportune moments. Then, you exit through the gift shop.

Call me a traditionalist, but being poked by a chair doesn’t count as a ride. In fact, I think it’s illegal in a few states.

At MGM, one of these “rides” is the Twister experience. You wait, you’re shuffled onto a stage and while you’re watching, the area below gets windy, there’s some lightning and fake trees fall over.

If I have to be at an amusement park, I want The Mummy roller coaster, not a decrepit sound stage.

But, getting back to my favorite part of the ride, while you’re waiting to be shuffled from spot to spot, Helen Hunt (khakis pulled up to the waist and pleated in classic mid-‘90s style) and Bill Pullman, stars of Twister, discuss the harrowing experience of making Twister on screens that are meant to entertain you while the previous group of most-likely-disappointed “riders” make their way out and through the gift shop.

I kid you not: At one point, Helen Hunt says something along the lines of, “It was terrifying to experience the fury and power of an F5 tornado first-hand.”

A note to Helen Hunt, maybe you’ve been in Hollywood too long, but having large industrial-size fans pointed in your direction on a movie set does not replicate the experience of an F5 tornado. It's kind of like how Richard Dreyfuss can't claim to have netted a Great White despite the intensity of filming Jaws. While it might have been realistic, it was still pretend. Maybe we need to dial back that adventurer/survivor attitude just a little bit.

If nothing else, I think a real F5 tornado would have messed with those very crisp pleats on your shorts.

So in the kind of related but kind of not category, when they installed the Hurricane Simulator machine at my local movie theater, there was no way I wasn’t trying it. For a mere $2.00, I too could experience the fury of a hurricane and have something to talk to Helen Hunt about the next (or first) time we ran into each other.

I stood in a tube while “the winds” reached 80 mph, and I have this to say: 1) It wasn’t even my worst hair day and 2) An average thunderstorm is more threatening.

I guess the moral(s) of my story is, simulation isn’t the real thing, maybe we should all be a little careful about the experiences we claim to have had and Bill Pullman never should have had an earring.

That is all.