I've been to Disneyworld with my wife and two kids twice in the last two years, and have written quite extensively about it online. Until now, I've felt pretty good about my online representation of these trips, but now I'm reading what Lileks' is writing about his trip (it starts here and continues throughout the week. Just keeping clicking "Next.")

Here's how a professional writer expresses exactly what I was feeling, but with such eloquence and wit as to make me want to give up writing anything ever again:

Having spent four days in the realm of the Mouse, you could cut my wrists and I'd bleed Disney Kool-Aid. Because that's how much I drank. [...]

It's clean. It's so clean and perfect you wonder why everything doesn't look like this. But why is it clean? . . . Why can't we have cities that look like this, and theme parks full of urban grot for the people who want that authentic experience that graffiti-slathered-metal-shutters represent? [...]

The park isn't open, so we join the throng of hardcores and neophytes, waiting for . . . what? The answer comes in a few minutes: a train, an actual steam train, appears above, with all the Beloved Licensed and Trademarked Characters leaning out and waving. Including Cindyrelly! A welcome song is sung; everyone waves back (including me, I note - I haven't even set foot in the place yet and I'm almost weeping at the sight of Goofy.) The music! The architecture! The trains! From the very first moment, it's like a live wire jammed into your Disney Lobe, a part of your brain that's been rewiring since you were very small, just so it could release endorphins at this very moment. All that's missing is Disney himself in a white robe and sandals, carrying a lamb, projected against the sky. If they'd done that I would have bloodied my knees. [...]

The breakfast? The best hotel breakfast ever. They don't take your order. There's no point in taking your order, because they know what you want so they might as well bring it. You get a big plate of eggs, bacon, potatoes and sausages, plus tiny Belgian waffles shaped like you-know-who. This is what it means to be an American: pouring syrup on Mickey's head and eating him. It's secular communion. [...]

Disney employees seem to come in two flavors: there are those [who] are working . . . for Disney. Whatever. Then there are those who are WORKING for DISNEY! And they just beam because they are having the best day at the best job in the best place ever. There might be some people like that at Microsoft, and grew up with a Bill Gates doll they took everywhere, but they're few. [...]

Oy. Wow. Yes. Yes, indeed.

Oh, man - this is absolutely pitch perfect. I wish I had the words to express how precisely this encapsulates the feeling of being there. But, of course, if I could do that, I'd have written them myself in the first place. Sigh...

If you're considering going to Disney (or if you've ever been), I implore you to read the whole thing. Then, when you're done, click over to my pages and laugh at the relative incompetence - my ego needs the pageviews!

:-)