As the day grows closer, I'm starting to feel really nostalgic for Disney World. I'm remembering the sights and the sounds and the smells and the feelings of Disney World, and, while it sometimes makes me happy and excited, a lot of the time, it makes me sad because of the memories associated with it. I have to make new memories now, and I don't know if I want that. Do the new memories of how a ride smells replace my old memories of the same smell of that same ride? It worries me.
My favorite feeling in all of Walt Disney World (maybe in all of the world) is the warmth you feel as you move toward the drop shaft on Tower of Terror. You've been in the nice, dark, air-conditioned hotel watching the ghosts and the cheesy fifth dimension scene, and your elevator starts moving forward. You can see that star field ahead of you open, and you start to feel the air warming up as you move closer to the Florida heat. When your elevator locks in to place and you can feel the change from the dry, cool air of the hotel and the hot, sticky, humid air of Florida, you know you're in for something amazing.
I was also hit today with remembering the feeling of the cool, wet air of the queue for Pirates of the Caribbean. This one is almost the exact opposite of Tower of Terror. You leave the Florida heat for the cool, sometimes too cold, air of the passages through the fort. This may be Disney theming at its best. There is nothing here to remind you of the bright sun or the hot, hot heat outside. You are fully, really inside an old fort with skeletons and cannons and chess.
And then there's the smell of Disney. When you load on to Pirates or Its a Small World or Gran Fiesta Tour or even Maelstrom, that smell of not-quite stagnant water is overwhelming. A little sour, mostly musty, it's such a specific smell, and if you ever smell something even similar to it, suddenly you're hearing the cannons fire and the Captain shout, "FIRE AT WILL!"
Or what about the lovely, lovely pie smell of Philharmagic? I stand by my statement that if Disney makes a perfume/air freshener/febreze with this scent, I will buy multiples. It's so delicious
And there's the smell of the corrosion chamber on Test Track. "Did you remember to turn off those robots?" No. And thank goodness for that. My dad has a eucalyptus room scent here at home, and every once in a while, I'll catch a good whiff and be transported into that car, leaning to the side to avoid being misted by the crazy robots.
Or the smell of Dinosaur. Yeah, I know it's the same smell as the Indiana Jones Adventure at Disneyland, but I don't have the privilege of having ever ridden that, so I can't make a comment on it. However, I can say that I really, really don't like that smell. It's so...biting is the best word for it. It actually hurts me to smell it. When you step into the loading room after the pre-show and get ready to descend the stairs and the smell really hits you, the smell is so pungent it hurts. I am not a fan.
The smell of Nescafe coffee makes me think of Journey into Imagination with Figment, since Disney felt it smelled bad enough to work as skunt scent.
And the smell of rotting pizza, ranch dressing, salad, and chicken pasta will always make me think of Star Tours and the Muppets because I had to walk past the Pizza Planet/Mama Melrose dumpster to get to work. That. Thing. Reeked.
And there are smells other people would put here: the burning wood from Spaceship Earth, the chilidog burp from Stitch's Great Escape, the overpowering scent of incense or whatever it is at the Polynesian Resort that gave me a headache and makes me never want to go back there.
I suppose I shouldn't be too worried. When I moved in for my first Program, I had been to WDW as a kid, but I didn't remember much. One of the few things I remembered was Maelstrom, the ride in Norway. I didn't remember that there were polar bears in it, though. All I remembered were the trolls. I remembered the troll yelling, "Over the falls! Over the falls!" and now, every time I ride Maelstrom, I have this feeling that we are, in fact, going to go backwards over the falls. Because that's the feeling I had as a kid. I have new memories of Maelstrom now, though, but they didn't replace the old ones. It's like lasagna. There are layers of history, but once you cut into them, they all end up coming together and mixing together. Seriously, have you ever had a thing of lasagna stay in its layers? Because I sure haven't. I could have gone with rocks or parfait, but those usually stay in their layers and you only see one layer at a time. Trust me, it makes perfect sense in my head.
