I had planned to write this post yesterday as part of the #PositivelySocial blogging day proposed by Frank Eliason.
The plan was this: I planned to drive across from Tampa to Lake Buena Vista and spend some “me time” at Walt Disney World® to unwind and get away from the day-to-day for a few hours, then drive to Downtown Disney close by with my iDuo in tow, find a comfy place to sit down, and write my post. Then, go home, go to bed.
Well, that was the plan. Everything went well until Magic Kingdom® Park closed at 10:00 PM.
First, I had to follow the “herd of cattle” through the theme park, down Main Street to the exits, and then out to the various transportation options for the trip back to the parking lot—Magic Kingdom’s parking is actually a mile and a half away at the Ticket & Transportation Center (TTC) on the other side of the Seven Seas Lagoon, which requires that one takes the Express Monorail that goes straight to the TTC, the Resort Monorail that also makes at stop there after an initial stop at Disney’s Contemporary Resort, or a ferryboat across the lagoon.
The problem was that there was a broken-down monorail on the Express route, so it was shut down. Thus the thousands that normally are in a massive line there when the theme park closes are now in an even more massive line for the Resort monorail. The overflow from the monorail line then created a massive line for the ferryboat. The overflow from the ferryboat’s now massive line created a third massive wait at an unmarked stall in the bus terminal for buses that were dispatched help pick up the load caused by the shut-down monorail line. Ultimately, it took less time to walk to the fourth floor of the Contemporary Resort and board the Resort monorail (now packed like the Boston “T” during rush hour) when it stopped there to get to the TTC, instead of waiting in the massive line back at the theme park.
After killing my feet from the extended walk to the Contemporary and the additional time it took, instead of my planned stop at Downtown Disney to write this post, I went straight home and to bed. There’s now a good-sized blister on the ball of my left foot from the extended walking in the cheap “Walmart special” sandals I was wearing.
Frustrating? Yes. Even more frustrating, perhaps, for all the parents with their kids in tow, half asleep, fully cranky.
What does this have to do with being positively social? Lots.
There are multiple ways to respond to such inconvenience and frustration—get angry, blow up at the nearest cast member about the monorail being down and how they should have done proper maintenance or done more to reopen the track; or go with the flow and find ways to enjoy the wait, maybe with conversations with other guests visiting from other parts of the world, entertaining the cranky kids with their stories or pulling down a movie off Netflix or the library on my mobile device. Or turning that walk to the Contemporary into a nice casual evening stroll.
I did the latter. And instead of a frustrating night, it turned into a nice evening (albeit with sore feet this morning).
So what do you choose when things don’t go right? Resist? Or flow?
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Steven Buehler