Chris Mitchell by Cast Member Confidential: A Disneyfied Memoir

Author:Cast Member Confidential: A Disneyfied Memoir
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Journalists, South Atlantic, Walt Disney World (Fla.) - Employees, Walt Disney World (Fla.), Entertainment & Performing Arts, General, United States, Photographers, Personal Memoirs, Disneyland (Calif.), Amusement & Theme Parks, Biography & Autobiography, Travel, South, Biography
ISBN: 9780806531281
Publisher: Citadel Press
Published: 2010-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

You Ain’t Never Had a Friend Like Me

The unfortunate science of cryonics has failed ever since its idealistic birth in the 1960s. Based on the idea that a person can be frozen within moments of death and revived years later, cryonics got off to a bumpy start in 1967 when the Cryonics Society of California first attempted to freeze people in crude capsules not far from Disney’s Burbank studios. These early pioneers met their end the way God intended: decomposing in a Chatsworth cemetery, the by-product of limited funding and a failed cooling system. Recent advances in nanotechnology and bioengineering, however, have sparked a renewed interest in the field of cryonics. Currently, there are more than a hundred people frozen in a state of suspended animation and about half that many pets. These new age alchemists are the true Utopians: idealists, dreamers, visionaries who dare to put it all on black because, if Magic really does exist in the universe, Eternal Life is the ultimate rabbit in the existential hat.

The day after the Disneyana Convention, I was back at DAK. It was an exceptionally muggy day and a disaster, photographically speaking. On the whole, the guests were in a funk. Children, who could only be differentiated by the patterns of ice cream stains on their shirtfronts, screamed when the characters reached out to hug them. And parents, all of whom looked like they would gladly trade their spleens for an hour at a pool with a margarita and a Xanax, protested that they were too sweaty to have their photos taken. As a result, I had only shot three rolls of film by the time I clocked out for the day.

I had no way to reach Calico, but I had a pretty good idea where to find her. I wanted to take her a present, something to let her know that I had been preoccupied with thoughts of her all day at work. Stuffed animals were too predictable, and real animals were sure to put up a struggle. But luckily, Animal Kingdom had one other natural advantage: beautiful tropical flowers.

Calico was at the Magic Kingdom doing love and shoves in Ariel’s Grotto. I finally found her at four in the afternoon, and at least fifty kids were in line ahead of me. I recognized one child, covered head to toe in rainbow sherbet, who had kicked Mickey in the shin with such resolve that the Mouse had to get ER’d. It took thirty minutes to get a private audience with the animated celebrity, but it was worth it to walk into the cavernous Grotto lit with colored lights and see her there, perched on her rock. She was radiant.

“Oh my!” she exclaimed, her hands pressed together in her sequined lap. “What a handsome prince!”

“I had to beat down a Japanese family to get in here before your break,” I said.

“Are those flowers for me?”

“They’re tropical,” I offered.

She examined the rough edges of the stems where I had to hack through them with my car keys.

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