Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Each year Anne and I take one (1) road trip to a different part of the United States and see attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. One thing we rarely do is fly. We’d much rather drive than be flown unless we absolutely have to…or are given some pretty sweet incentives to do so. Fast-forward to December 2022 and a most unexpected opportunity: The Powers That Be at Anne’s rather large place of employment recognized her and several other employees nationwide for outstanding achievements in the field of excellence. Their grand prize was a Disney World vacation! We could at last announce to friends and family, “THE GOLDENS ARE GOING TO DISNEY WORLD!”

For Anne it was officially, legally a business trip. Much of the time, she’d have to work…

…except for a single day off, free of company business and responsibilities, so we could at last spend quality time together at The Most Magical Place on Earth™. After indulging for a couple hours back at the resort to recuperate from our intergalactic morning at Hollywood Studios, we followed our Park Hopper pass to the one place where sixteen billion Disney World blogs say you’re supposed to start your travelogue, rather than holding it back till Chapter 24: at Disney’s Magic Kingdom park, starring the iconic Cinderella Castle.

(My stubborn insistence on burying the lede in its exact position in the narrative might explain why this miniseries’ traffic has been demoralizingly negligible, which in turn is why I haven’t bothered rushing it. Or maybe it’s because everyone on Earth already read those first sixteen billion Disney World blogs and has zero interest in giving pity-clicks to #16,000,000,001. Or everyone’s richer than we are and you’ve already been there six times and I’m boring you with what you’ve already seen for yourself. Nevertheless, here we are!)

As part of the luxurious Grand Floridian resort experience, our room was less than five minutes away from the Magic Kingdom by monorail. Anne hadn’t had a chance to ride the monorail herself because of all those business meetings and mandatory team-building exercises. We left our room, walked over to the Main Building, and headed up to the monorail station on the second floor, where — for the first time in my limited experience — the monorail station’s security guards stopped her for a bag check. On my one-man jaunts I’d just been walking through the metal detectors without stopping and without issue. I strongly disbelieve it’s because I looked more benign without my cute tiny companion at my side. Regardless, just as had happened to her at the airport, once again guards had deemed her too, too innocent-looking.

Moments later, at long last, the Magic Kingdom.

No, that’s not the castle, merely the first of the innumerable photo-op spots along the way. A stranger offered to take our pic, then Anne returned the favor in kind, a situation we’ve enjoyed on many of our vacations. Then she kept offering to take pics for several other groups as they kept walking up, family by family, no charge. I began to fret we’d be spending the rest of the afternoon right there as unpaid photo-studio interns. After a time, unpaid business dried up and we could move along without leaving anyone in the lurch.

Once through the gates, the entire park design directs your full attention toward that impeccably crafted fake fortress. Cinderella Castle is 183 feet tall, boldly colored (even more so with the temporary 50th-anniversary trimmings), and built from materials strong enough to withstand hurricane gales. For the past two days we’d stared at it from our balcony across Seven Seas Lagoon; even at that distance its architecture had seemed impossible. Merely glancing at it cues up my head-radio with various versions of the “When You Wish Upon a Star” stinger from every version of the Walt Disney Pictures title card — from the 2-D silhouette that prefaced the rigidly scheduled theatrical re-releases of the Disney animated classics in our childhood (before “home video” was a thing, so re-releases were the only way to catch many of them) up to their latest iteration as of this overdue writing, which accompanies the 360-degree imaginary drone-cam swirl-around introducing Inside Out 2.

In person, it was exactly as magical as was advertised to us all our lives. It was impossible not to smile in its shiny, towering presence.

We walked up a few minutes after 4:00, just in time to catch the last several minutes of Mickey’s Magical Friendship Faire, a recurring performance piece with dancing and frolicking and probably jokey repartee. If any dialogue was being exchanged onstage, I couldn’t hear it, possibly because the sights all around us were plenty dazzling without the audio components. That’s including the crowd gathered ’round the castle, enjoying the spectacle of the ruling class waving to their subjects from the royal balcony.

Eventually the crowd dispersed and wandered off into the rest of the Magic Kingdom, which is designed like a warped wagon wheel with the Castle as its hub and spokes leading outward toward the surrounding territories. That made it easier for us to move closer and examine some of the castle’s finer details.

We didn’t see any public entry point where we could stroll inside the castle. I’m sure sixteen billion Disney World bloggers know full well what secret places lay inside, or I could pretend Google is broken and cherish my wildest unfounded speculations. Is there perhaps a top-secret members-only hotel inside? A throne room where Robert Iger sits with his crown and scepter and orders cartoon spies to infiltrate his enemies’ strongholds? Is it bigger on the inside like a TARDIS? A gateway to another dimension? A dungeon for underpaid animators? A really big broom closet? Unless I bother to look it up, I may never know.

We had dinner reservations that evening, which only left us four hours to gambol around the Kingdom’s acreage. We aimed to make the most of the time remaining and set off to see what else we could do besides gawk at its magnificently impossible castle.

To be continued!

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[Link enclosed here to handy checklist for other chapters and for our complete major trip history to date. Follow us on Facebook or via email sign-up for new-entry alerts. For further signs of life between entries, wave hi to me on . Thanks for reading!]