My first visit to Disney World at the age of four scarred me for life. Florida is the Sunshine State, but all I remember from that very first trip is rain. It seemed that entire lakes emptied themselves over our heads as we trudged through the gaily-adorned streets of Disney, swathed in our fluorescent yellow ponchos, sold to us at the steep price of $9.99 each. My eyes were focused on the ground in front of me, my feet making bee lines towards puddles and the red lights in my tennis shoes lighting up with each muddy splash that soaked my jeans and made my parents cringe. The sounds of adult conversation floated high above my head, beyond my comprehension, and I was lost in my own imagination held up only by my parents, one of my tiny hands clasped in each of theirs.
The conversation and the sound of our footsteps faded out and I pulled myself back into reality. I looked up at my family’s faces to see what the cause of our standstill was. My eyes immediately went past them and traveled even farther up, sweeping up the façade of a terrifying black skyscraper that seemed to materialize out of thin air. I couldn’t read the words on the building, but I didn’t need to be literate to hear the screams that were coming out of that tower that obscured the sky. My heart felt like it was in my throat when I swallowed. My father smiled down at me and led me over to the sign that proclaimed, “you must be this tall to ride this ride.” I moved to stand under it and felt the top of the bar just barely graze over my white blonde hair. Enthusiastically, my father pulled me out from under the bar, up onto his shoulder and our group moved to stand in line.
What seemed like (and may very well have been) hours later, we had slowly marched to the front of the line and were now being led inside the lofty structure that had loomed over us. Inside, the dark walls began to instill a sense of fear within me. I crouched down and pressed myself against my dad’s leg, grabbing onto his jeans in an attempt to cling onto some sense of sanity as we walked further and further to what I sensed was our doom. The guide asked us to enter the elevator and fasten our seatbelts. I took a trembling step towards my fate before being scooped up by my father, who held me up to his face and told me I had nothing to worry about before strapping me in my seat.
It began just like any other elevator ride. I felt the strange sensation of the floor pushing up from below us as I sat in my hard wooden seat, feet dangling off the ground. There were no other children around me, I was the lone child in a sea of adolescents and adults; the sense of terror that my father had dispelled returned. The journey up seemed to take forever, and I began to wonder where we were going anyway. Suddenly; we were falling.
I screamed. My nails dug into the unforgiving wooden seats and my thin body slowly slipped from the confines of the nylon seatbelt. I found refuge underneath of my seat. The falling stopped and started again with seeming irregularity and, had I any real conception of death at that age, I’d imagine I would have thought I was dying. Eventually, as we came to a complete stop, tears replaced my screams. My family attempted to hush me while they hurried out of the ride and back onto the streets of Disney, all the while I was still falling.
That was my very first ride at Disney, and it set the theme for my entire first trip. Any ride that involved darkness was immediately met with tears and protests, and this included even the most innocent of rides. My mother had to literally put me in a body bind to get me onto “It’s A Small World.” The entrance tunnel was just too dark after my experience on the aptly named “Tower of Terror.” My parent’s kept reminding me that this was Disney World, home of all of the movie characters that I loved so much. All I kept thinking was that Disney had coerced me here on a bed of lies, held up under the massive white-gloved hands of Mickey Mouse. I was too young to realize that my imagination had gotten the better of me, for what would be just one of millions of times.
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In 1951, the results of many people’s imaginations came together to form the Walt Disney animated feature film, Alice in Wonderland, based on the book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. In movie theaters everywhere children shielded their eyes, and adult fans gazed open mouthed as the fantastic, but sometimes questionably sane, tale of Alice’s journey took on a colorful animated form.
One sunny day, the air filled with butterflies and the scent of fresh spring flowers, Alice is sitting in a tree, ignoring the history lesson her teacher is spitting at her. Alice begins fantasizing about a world of her own where everything would be nonsense, before she is further distracted by the appearance of a white rabbit with a pocket watch. Intrigued by the rabbit’s constant exclamation of lateness, she leaves her cat Dinah behind and follows him down the rabbit hole.
Alice tumbles down the rabbit hole for what seems like ages, defying all manner of physics and finally lands, only to see the rabbit disappear through a door that she is simply too large for. Alice begins taking a string of remedies and drugs that turn her into a myriad of shapes and sizes until, overwhelmed and miniature, she cries herself right through the key hole of the door in a sea of her own gigantic tears and into a Caucus race.
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In the fall of 2000 I returned to Disney with my father and my new stepmother, this time at the ripe age of 9 years old. Five years had transformed me from a small, white haired cherub, into a taller, gangly, golden haired tiny human being. The one thing that hadn’t changed was my fear of the infamous Tower.
As I left school early in the middle of that September, I suddenly became the envy of all of my friends at school. I delighted myself with images of riding rides all day long while they sat in English class and diagramed sentences. I would be dining with Goofy while they sat on the hard wooden benches in the cafeteria, eating the same inedible food that they ate everyday. As far as I was concerned I would be eating rainbows.
For the first few days I amused myself with riding the usual Disney rides, though there were some I claimed I was too old for now, including the ever popular Dumbo ride. My father was busy with business, so for the most part it was my stepmother and I picking and choosing what to ride and where to go. But for the last two days of our trip my father joined us in exploring the magical world of Disney and I, ever willing to please, let him pick some of our conquests for the day. Top on his list was the “Tower of Terror.”
I didn’t want to disappoint my father who I knew was easily frustrated by fear of any kind, so I hid my horror from him as we made our way through the parks, pausing to ride a few rides here and there, heading towards our final destination, and my doom. My mind was flooded with memories from my first trip down that elevator from hell, my vision was blurry, I prayed for a heart attack, a stroke, a monstrous earthquake, anything so that I wouldn’t have to go through with it.
My stomach somersaulted as we approached the line, my father and his wife chattered away like tiny birds, oblivious to the terror that was raging through me. It was as if a dam had broken and had let out all of the fear that had been contained in the past five years. As we approached the doors that spelled our end, the screams of the other victims echoing out of them, I couldn’t help it, and tears began to flow; I was in my very own Caucus race.
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The Caucus race in Alice in Wonderland is characterized as a race where the participants run continuously around in circles, where there is no clear winner, and nothing is accomplished and nothing moves forward. Alice joins in the race only to quickly realize the predicament that she has gotten herself into and she breaks off. Once again she follows the rabbit, only to be corned by two peculiar twins, Tweetdledee and Tweedledum, who tell her a rather ridiculous and sad story about a Walrus and Carpenter who con a bunch of oysters into being eaten. She escapes the twins and stumbles upon the white rabbit who mistakes her for his servant and orders her into his house to find some of his belongings.
Forgetting herself, she takes a bite of food from his room and immediately grows to ten times her size. The rabbit fears that she’s a monster and calls for help. The Dodo comes to his rescue and begins a misguided attempt to set the house on fire in order to remove the “monster.” Alice realizes that this is getting her nowhere and rights the situation herself. Unfortunately she once again misjudges the potency of the food she consumes and shrinks even smaller than she was before, around three inches high. Still chasing the rabbit she finds herself in a forest of flowers. At first the flowers treat her with kindness thinking that Alice is simply an odd type of flower, but as they examine her more closely they begin to see that there are some very striking differences. They conclude that she must be a weed and promptly kick her out of the garden.
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Back at school the following week I was, just as I had imagined, the envy of every single one of my classmates. They wanted to hear about everything I did while on my trip and I was happy to oblige but of course I left out some of the details that would have embarrassed me. I managed to avoid the subject of my fear for almost my entire day back until one brave soul dared to ask if I went on the “Tower of Terror.”
I was torn. I knew that it wasn’t right to lie to everyone, but I also knew that life was cruel, and elementary school even more so. One slip up could determine my rank in the social order of my elementary school for the remaining 2 years and I certainly didn’t want that; God forbid it were to follow me into Middle School too! I didn’t think I could possibly outlive the shame that the truth would bring. Panicking, realizing I was taking too long to answer, I heard the words slip out of my mouth before I could take them back.
I had been too afraid to ride it. Suddenly I was no longer a point of interest, I was treated instead like those gifts you get at Christmas from relatives, that you hate but keep on display in case they come to visit. You put it in a corner. I was in a corner and I was longing to escape it.
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Alice, cursing her luck with the flowers, follows the sound of vowels being sung as if by an emphysema patient, through the forest until she comes upon a caterpillar. Instead of helping Alice with her problems he takes her words and turns them around on her and confuses her far more than she already was. She tries to leave only to be enticed back by the caterpillar with the promise of important information. He provides her with some mushrooms, which cause her to grow again. After eating them she rights herself to her original height.
Alice finds herself in a wood where there are dozens of signs, all pointing in different directions that read, “up,” “yonder,” “this way,” “that way,” “back,” and other assorted nonsense directions. She is pondering the signs when she is interrupted by the Cheshire Cat who is singing a song that makes about as much sense as the signs. The cat seems to have a remarkable ability to disappear and reappear at will and also seems equipped with the remarkable ability to give horrible and misleading directions. Eventually he points Alice in the direction of the March Hare’s House where they are in the middle of celebrating an Unbirthday Party.
An Unbirthday is every day that is not your birthday, and the party that accompanies such days comes outfitted with nonsense rules and guests with the attention span of a chipmunk on speed. Alice, drained of all her patience, leaves, still following the white rabbit, and Alice begins to blame all of her problems on the rabbit before realizing that she has gotten herself into this mess because of her own curiosity and imagination. Devastated she sits down in the woods and begins to cry, thinking that she will be trapped in Wonderland forever.
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For the next few years after my second trip to Disney I spent my time trying to ride rides of every magnitude. The bigger, faster, and scarier, the better. All to prove that it wasn’t my fault that I hadn’t mastered the tower a year earlier, but rather the fault of my parents for subjecting me to that at such a young age. I began to gain a new sort of confidence with myself and when I was 17 years old my grandmother took me to Disney Land in California as a graduation present. I told myself that I was prepared to take the terrifying fall again. I was ready to stop falling, and to pull myself back into the real world.
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Alice, with a new burst of life, determined to get herself out of the mess that she has gotten herself into, runs into the Cheshire Cat who point her to the Queen of Hearts. The mischievous Cat claims the Queen can help her find her way home. Alice hurries to find the Queen but is more distraught than she was before finding her. The Queen turns out to be quite mad, and quick to anger, and her greatest delight in life seems to be sentencing her subjects to beheadings. Strangely, the Queen seems to take a slight liking to Alice and invites her to a game of croquet.
The game proves to be even more ridiculous than some other aspects of the world and to make matters worse, the Cheshire Cat appears at just the wrong moment and begins to torment the Queen and frames Alice. The Queen is adamant about beheading Alice on the spot but the king persuades her to hold a trial, which is quickly assembled, and it is revealed that the rabbit was late for Alice’s trial the entire time. They call to the stand a number of witnesses, all people that Alice has met in her travels, and things begin to spin out of control.
Alice runs and runs, chased by the Queens guards, as Disney works his magic, colors swirling haphazardly in time to a childish rhyming song, as all of the characters flash before her eyes, reminding us of where she’s been. Alice runs and reaches the door that she first saw upon her entry into Wonderland, whose door is still locked, and through the keyhole she spies herself, still outside in her lesson, fast asleep. She wills herself awake, and happily finds herself back in reality again. She promises herself to never let her imagination take control of her again.
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This time as I approached the tower I still felt the familiar butterflies that had accompanied me on previous such walks, but I was determined that I would change my ways and restore my courage. I was eager to change my reality just as Alice did. I, like Alice, had been giving myself very good advice, and then simply not following it. I knew there was nothing to be afraid of and that the danger was all in my imagination; but having this knowledge did not make it any easier to face. It still loomed over me, ominous as ever, daring me to step inside and face my fears.
When I stepped inside the elevator panic really began to set in. As the doors closed I fastened my seatbelt and looked down at my feet, which this time were set firmly on the ground. I looked under my seat, and marveled that I could ever have squeezed myself into such a small space. Thinking about that brought back flashes of images from my last frightening ride, and my mind was filled with screams and flashes of lights that represented my broken memory of the event. Claustrophobia began to take over at the elevator began it’s climb to the top of the building.
We reached the peak and we were sitting silently, wrapped up in that moment of calm before the storm, right before unseen forces drop you into infinity. I took a moment to glance around me. I saw the faces of my fellow captives in the small chamber, and I could taste the energy in the air, a mix of fear and excitement. I focused all of my being on the excitement and brought myself out of my imagination and into the reality of the situation. Faced with this new clarity I thought to myself, quoting Alice, as I felt the world fall from under my feet; “After this, I shall think nothing of falling downstairs.”
