3500: An Autistic Boy's Ten-Year Romance with Snow White by Ron Miles

Author:Ron Miles [Miles, Ron]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2013-02-11T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

SW1K

On the second weekend of April, 2005, Ben rode Snow White's Scary Adventures 33 times, bringing his running total to 987 and effectively ensuring that the next weekend would see his 1,000th ride. Everybody was very excited about this but Ben, who really didn’t seem to attach any particular significance to the number of rides. Honestly, the only reason we had an accurate count was my own personal obsession. I had been keeping a running tally in my journal. I had also posted occasionally about Ben on the forums of the popular unofficial Disney website WDWMagic.com. Several people on that forum had suggested ideas on how to commemorate SW1K. The one that I really liked was seeing if we could actually get Snow White to go on the ride with Ben.

I tried calling Disney Guest Services, and was essentially told to check in with them when we got to the park that day and they would see what they could do. That was not a very reassuring stance on which to hang my hat. But when I posted my dilemma on the WDWMagic board, I was immediately contacted by someone who knew the stage manager of the Cinderellabration show, which features Snow White and which performs throughout the day at the Magic Kingdom.

The biggest concern was that, from a legal standpoint, Disney generally does not allow costumed characters to go inside dark rides because of the potential liability. Much remained up in the air right until late the night before the big day when I received a phone call from Graham Murphy, the afore-mentioned stage manager. Graham was able to arrange a personal meet and greet for Ben with Snow White immediately following the 11:40 a.m. performance of Cinderellabration. After a short visit she would personally escort Ben to her ride and join him for his 1,000th trip. Needless to say, we were all very excited, except for Ben, who was sound asleep at that point.

Saturday morning, April 16th: Usually I don't take Ben to the Magic Kingdom until the afternoon, but because we had a commitment to meet Snow White at noon and because Ben still had a few more trips to get under his belt prior to the big 1,000, we left for the park just after 9:30 in the morning. Going that much earlier in the day presented several problems. First of all, it was just generally an unusual thing to do, and Ben is always thrown off-kilter by unusual changes in routine. The next, more serious complication, was that Ben wanted to stop for fries, but all of the typical fast food burger joints are still serving breakfast at that time of the morning, so no fries were available. From Ben's perspective, I was dragging him out of the house at a weird time and then refusing to even provide him with sustenance. He was understandably upset and cranking up steadily. I knew if I let it continue to build that it was going to throw him off for the entire day.

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