There’s certain rides at Disneyworld where, if you don’t go on it while you’re there, you just don’t feel like you’ve actually visited (although your next month’s Amex bill will probably provide confirmation that you did.) It’s different rides for different folks. In my case, it’s always been the Peter Pan ride, one of the very first rides I ever went on back when I was on a high school trip to the Magic Kingdom.
As it so happens, it was also Carol Kalish’s favorite ride. Carol, Marvel’s former direct sales head and a good friend who died far too soon, loved the Peter Pan ride (although it was marred for her during one outing when she went on with a comic book retailer and he spent the whole ride talking about Marvel’s rack credit program).
So I was very interested in how her namesake, Caroline, would react on her first excursion on that same ride.
As we stood in line, I pointed at the passing pirate ships and told Caroline we were going to fly. “Fly?” she said uncertainly. “Fly in ships?” She wasn’t sanguine about it at all. When we clambered into the vessel (Kath and Ariel were in the one in front of us) Caroline clutched tightly and nervously to the lap bar that settled on us. Her eyes went wide as we moved forward, up, and then appeared to be hurtling into thin air (naturally she didn’t look up to see that we were being carried on an overhead track.)
“See, Caroline? We’re flying,” I told her, and pointed at the “night sky” over London. “See? There’s the stars. And there’s the city, way down there!”
“Stars,” she whispered in astonishment. And then, as we went higher, she suddenly pointed and gasped in delirious joy, “It’s the moon!”
Sure enough, just to our left was a large full moon. The silhouettes of Peter, Wendy et al were moving across it as it turned. I had my arm wrapped around Caroline just to make sure nothing happened. And she stretched out her little fingers, desperate to touch it, not quite succeeding. Completely enthralled in Disney magic, she cried out, “Oh, Da! It’s the moon!”
She watched the rest of Neverland with proper amazement. And although there were any number of rides and character greetings she enjoyed, that was the one moment in the park where she was totally swept away by pure fantasy-made-real. For a few seconds, one little girl sailed through the stars in a pirate ship and came justthatclose to touching the moon.
If Carol was watching through her eyes, I think she liked what she saw.
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