Dave Barry's Only Travel Guide You'll Ever Need (6 page)

You know how certain incidents become permanent sore points in a marriage? Like for example a husband will never let his wife forget the time she left a $2,000 video camera where the baby could get hold of it and drop it into the toilet? That’s the status that the Wall Drug Incident has achieved in our marriage. My wife feels
that we’re the only people in the history of interstate travel who failed to stop there, and, fifteen years later, she is still bitter. If she ever files for a divorce, this is the first incident she’ll mention to the lawyer.

And that’s the wonderful thing about family travel: it provides you with experiences that will remain locked forever in the scar tissue of your mind. Especially if you travel with children. We traveled extensively with our son Robert when he was very young, and I have many, many vivid memories of that period, all of which involve public rest rooms.

As you parents know, a small child can go for weeks without going to the bathroom at home, but once you hit the road, it becomes pretty much a full-time occupation. During my son Robert’s early years, he and I visited just about every men’s room on the East Coast. And if it was a really
disgusting
men’s room, a men’s room that contained the skeletons of Board of Health workers who died trying to inspect it, Robert would inevitably announce that he had to do Number Two.

So he’d go into a stall and close the door, and his little legs would disappear, and he’d remain there for as long as two days. God alone knows what he was doing in there. Meanwhile, of course, I’d stand guard outside the stall, because you can’t leave a three-year-old alone. Inevitably strangers would come in, and there I’d be, apparently just hanging out alone in a men’s room, and they’d look at me suspiciously. So in an effort
to reassure these strangers that I was a Father on Duty, as opposed to some kind of lurking men’s-room pervert, I’d try to strike up a conversation with Robert through the stall door:

ME
: So, Robert, my three-year-old son who is inside this stall that I’m guarding as a responsible parent! How’s it going in there?

STALL DOOR
: (silence)

ME
: Ha ha! Speak up, Robert!

STALL DOOR
: (silence)

And the strangers would turn and stride quickly out the door, because nobody wants to be in a public rest room with a person who’s talking to a toilet stall.

Of course, if there’s anything more exciting than traveling with a child, it’s traveling with
several
children. We ourselves have only one child, because after Beth experienced the Joy and Wonder of natural childbirth, she decided not to experience it again until modern science invents a method whereby the man has the contractions. But we have taken Robert’s friends with us on numerous trips, and we have noted a phenomenon familiar to all parents, namely that you would have less conflict if you put the entire North and South Korean armed forces in your backseat then you get with just two children.

Children sitting in backseats are incapable of normal human conversation. Their conversational responses are all intended to raise the level of backseat hostility to the point where one party
has no viable option but to spit Yoo-hoo into the other party’s hair.

STATEMENT OF CHILD
: Hey! I saw a horse!

RESPONSE OF NORMAL HUMAN
: Where?

RESPONSE OF OTHER CHILD IN BACKSEAT
: So what?

(Or: “You did not.”)

STATEMENT OF CHILD
: I like this song.

RESPONSE OF NORMAL HUMAN
: That’s nice.

RESPONSE OF OTHER CHILD IN BACKSEAT
: So what? (Or: “You do not.”) (Or: “This song sucks.”)

STATEMENT OF CHILD
: In a right triangle, the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides.

RESPONSE OF NORMAL HUMAN
: That is correct.

RESPONSE OF OTHER CHILD IN BACKSEAT
: You suck.

One way to try to reduce the hostility level is to keep the children amused with Traditional Fun Car Games, such as watching for other cars’ license plates and seeing who can find the one from the most distant state. This exciting activity is sure to captivate the children and provide hours of enjoyment (“I see one from Iowa!” “No you don’t!” “So what?” “You suck!”).

But for real family travel fun, there’s no substitute
for actually reaching some kind of destination. And the Number One family travel destination of all, as measured in total miles of people waiting in line, is of course:

I’m an expert on visiting Disney World, because we live only four hours away, and according to my records we spend about three-fifths of our after-tax income there. Not that I’m complaining. You can’t have a bad time at Disney World. It’s not
allowed
. They have hidden electronic surveillance cameras everywhere, and if they catch you failing to laugh with childlike wonder, they lock you inside a costume representing a beloved Disney character such as Goofy and make you walk about in the Florida heat getting grabbed and leaped on by violently excited children until you have learned your lesson. Yes, Disney World is a “dream vacation,” and here are some tips to help make it “come true” for you!

When to Go:
The best time to go, if you want to avoid huge crowds, is 1962.

How to Get There:
It’s possible to fly, but if you want the total Disney World experience, you should drive there with a minimum of four hostile children via the longest possible route. If you
live in Georgia, for example, you should plan a route that includes Oklahoma.

Once you get to Florida, you can’t miss Disney World, because the Disney corporation owns the entire center of the state (see map). Just get on any major highway, and eventually it will deadend in a Disney parking area large enough to have its own climate, populated by large nomadic families who have been trying to find their cars since the Carter administration. Be sure to note carefully where you leave
your
car, because later on you may want to sell it so you can pay for your admission tickets.

MAP OF FLORIDA

But never mind the price; the point is that now you’re finally
there
, in the ultimate vacation fantasy paradise, ready to have fun! Well, okay, you’re not exactly there
yet
. First you have to wait for the parking-lot tram, driven by cheerful uniformed Disney employees, to come around and pick you up and give you a helpful lecture about basic tram-safety rules such as never fall out of the tram without coming to a full and complete stop.

But now the tram ride is over and it’s time for fun! Right? Don’t be an idiot. It’s time to wait in line to buy admission tickets. Most experts recommend that you go with the 47-day pass, which will give you a chance, if you never eat or sleep, to visit
all
of the Disney themed attractions, including The City of the Future, The Land of Yesterday, The Dull Suburban Residential Community of Sometime Next Month, Wet Adventure, Farms on Mars, The World of Furniture, Sponge Encounter, the Nuclear Flute Orchestra, Appliance Island, and the Great Underwater Robot Hairdresser Adventure, to name just a few.

Okay, you’ve taken out a second mortgage and purchased your tickets! Now, finally, it’s time to … wait in line again! This time, it’s for the monorail, a modern, futuristic transportation system that whisks you to the Magic Kingdom at nearly half the speed of a lawn tractor. Along the way cheerful uniformed Disney World employees will offer you some helpful monorail-safety tips
such as never set fire to the monorail without first removing your personal belongings.

And now, at last, you’re at the entrance to the Magic Kingdom itself! No more waiting in line for transportation! It’s time to
wait in line to get in
. Wow! Look at all the
other
people waiting to get in! There are tour groups here with names like “Entire Population of Indiana.” There sure must be some great attractions inside these gates!

And now you’ve inched your way to the front of the line, and the cheerful uniformed Disney employee is stamping your hand with a special invisible chemical that penetrates your nervous system and causes you to temporarily acquire the personality of a cow. “Moo!” you shout as you surge forward with the rest of the herd.

And now, unbelievably, you’re actually inside the Magic Kingdom! At last! Mecca! You crane your head to see over the crowd around you, and with innocent childlike wonder you behold:
a much larger crowd
. Ha ha! You are having some kind of fun now!

And now you are pushing your way forward, thrusting other vacationers aside, knocking over their strollers if necessary, because little Jason wants to ride on Space Mountain. Little Jason has been talking about Space Mountain ever since Oklahoma, and by God you’re going to take him on it, no matter how long the … My God! Can
this
be the line for Space Mountain? This line is so long that there are Cro-Magnon families at the front! Perhaps if you explain to little Jason
that he could be a deceased old man by the time he gets on the actual ride, he’ll agree to skip it and … NO! Don’t scream, little Jason! We’ll just purchase some official Mickey Mouse sleeping bags, and we’ll stay in line as long as it takes! The hell with third grade! We’ll just stand here and chew our cuds! Mooooo!

Speaking of education, you should be sure to visit Epcot Center, which features exhibits sponsored by large corporations showing you how various challenges facing the human race are being met and overcome thanks to the selfless efforts of large corporations. Epcot Center also features pavilions built by various foreign nations, where you can experience an extremely realistic simulation of what life in these nations would be like if they consisted almost entirely of restaurants and souvenir stores.

One memorable Epcot night my family and I ate at the German restaurant, where I had several large beers and a traditional German delicacy called “Bloatwurst,” which is a sausage that can either be eaten or used as a tackling dummy. When we got out I felt like one of those snakes that eat a cow whole and then just lie around and digest it for a couple of months. But my son was determined to go on a new educational Epcot ride called “The Body,” wherein you sit in a compartment that simulates what it would be like if you got inside a spaceship-like vehicle and got shrunk down to the size of a gnat and got injected inside a person’s body.

I’ll tell you what it’s like: awful. You’re looking
at a screen showing an extremely vivid animated simulation of the human interior, which is not the most appealing way to look at a human unless you’re attracted to white blood cells the size of motor homes. Meanwhile the entire compartment is bouncing you around violently, especially when you go through the aorta. “Never go through the aorta after eating German food,” that is my new travel motto.

What gets me is, I waited in line for an
hour
to do this. I could have experienced essentially the same level of enjoyment merely by sticking my finger down my throat.

Which brings me to my idea for getting rich. No doubt you have noted that, in most amusement parks, the popularity of a ride is directly proportional to how horrible it is. There’s hardly ever a line for nice, relaxing rides like the merry-go-round. But there will always be a huge crowd, mainly consisting of teenagers, waiting to go on a ride with a name like “The Dicer,” where they strap people into what is essentially a giant food processor and turn it on and then phone the paramedics.

So my idea is to open up a theme park called “Dave World,” which will have a ride called “The Fall of Death.” This will basically be a 250-foot tower. The way it will work is, you climb to the top, a trapdoor opens up, and you splat onto the asphalt below like a bushel of late-summer tomatoes.

Obviously, for legal reasons, I couldn’t let anybody
actually
go
on this ride. There would be a big sign that said:

WARNING!
NOBODY CAN GO ON THIS RIDE. THIS RIDE IS INVARIABLY FATAL
,
THANK YOU
.

But this would only make The Fall of Death more popular. Every teenager in the immediate state would come to Dave World just to stand in line for it.

Dave World would also have an attraction called “ParentLand,” which would have a sign outside that said: “Sorry, Kids! This Attraction Is for Mom ‘n’ Dad Only!” Inside would be a bar. For younger children, there would be “Soil Fantasy,” a themed play area consisting of dirt or, as a special “rainy-day” bonus, mud.

I frankly can’t see how Dave World could fail to become a huge financial success that would make me rich and enable me to spend the rest of my days traveling the world with my family. So the hell with it.

You must be very careful here. You must sneak out of Disney World in the dead of night, because
the Disney people do
not
want you leaving the compound and spending money elsewhere. If they discover that you’re gone, cheerful uniformed employees led by Mickey Mouse’s lovable dog Pluto, who will sniff the ground in a comical manner, will track you down. And when they catch you, it’s
into the Goofy suit
.