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Bridey writes:

Well, it’s just so desperately chic to mock other people’s pleasures, isn’t it? I bet Mr. Henry would come home from Las Vegas with the shocking news that it’s gaudy and vulgar.

I’m not a Disneyphile by any stretch — I haven’t been to Disneyland in years and feel no pressing urge to go again. But geeze. If you don’t like it, don’t go.

From time to time Mr. Henry has been described as chic, but witnesses of his recent Disney World tour would surely testify against such an accusation. In his broad sunhat, anti-UV sunshirt (tail flapping), and slouchy lightweight trousers – all in clashing shades of greenish khaki – Mr. Henry looked like the youngest recruit of the AARP.

Bridey is partly justified in her objections to Mr. Henry’s anti-Disney screed. Of course, he went for the kids, not for himself, as raincoaster so aptly noted, and he freely admits that overall he had a pretty good time.

However, his feet were killing him, the sun was everywhere, and chairs were nowhere. Although he spent nearly a thousand dollars per day, he admits he had good fun watching Little Henry and posse invade the place. Despite the flow of coin cascading from his pockets and the plethora of eateries at every turn, however, he was hungry – desperately hungry, not desperately chic – and desperately trapped, to boot, deep inside the great Mouse kingdom.

At these prices, Mr. Henry doesn’t feel that to expect one decent meal is asking too much. It’s an amusement park, after all. When you are hungry, you are rarely amused.

Why can’t Mouse managers get with the new food program? Why must every food served be sweet and fried and carry the nutritional content of cotton candy? Is there something NOT FUN about eating fruits and vegetables? As a nation, haven’t we gotten past the notion of vegetables as things eaten only under duress?

In Animal Kingdom there are ersatz Indonesian eateries serving unpalatable foodlike substances. For the love of god, bring over some Singaporean street vendors! Even the Bengali and Yemeni halal food carts from the streets of Manhattan would be a huge improvement.

And to think that the original vision of EPCOT, the Experimental Prototypical City Of Tomorrow, included a vast plan for sustainable agriculture! A planned community in harmony with nature and with man! No, Uncle Walt certainly didn’t lack ambition. Mr. Henry has always admired the sheer scope and scale of the place. Only in America, by golly. The bean counters who inherited Disney’s great city of tomorrow betrayed his ideals and turned back the culinary clock.

Lest you suspect Mr. Henry’s peculiar brand of superciliousness and skepticism to be his own original invention, read H. L. Mencken in On Being an American:

To be happy one must be (a) well fed, unhounded by sordid cares, at ease in Zion, (b) full of a comfortable feeling of superiority to the masses of one’s fellow men, and (c) delicately and unceasingly amused according to one’s taste. It is my contention that, if this definition be accepted, there is no country in the world wherein a man constituted as I am – a man of my peculiar weakness, vanities, appetites, and aversions – can be so happy as he can be in the United Sates.

Walt Disney World is America’s #1 tourist destination – a vast Orwellian shining city in the swamp brimming with bratty English schoolchildren spitting insults at cowed, permissive parents, with tattooed teenagers trying desperately to pretend they aren’t walking beside uncool parents, and with grinning sunburned, foot-weary pilgrims of pleasure plodding on and on and on.

Four theme parks and a dozen other destinations employ 60,000 cutely costumed refugees from backward countries and failed American cities – gays and unmarrieds, retirees without health care, unskilled veterans, brave loners seeking a new life in the sunshine state.

On the bus, on the everlasting bus, your senses are subjected to upbeat jingles, catchy colors, and corny jokes. Slipping deeper into stupor, you begin to imagine Glare and Blare as two more adorable animated characters.

In fact, the whole experience is pure American corn in every iteration and manifestation. The food is the worst of it, and that’s the part you literally ingest. After only two days of indoctrination, you become convinced that in order to have fun you must eat garbage. Mr. Henry defies you to escape high fructose corn syrup at Disney World.

Mark Twain, the first modern writer, surely got it right. The food at Disney World is “monotonous execrableness.”

Why were the french fries always the same french fries whether served at the Brown Derby at Disney Hollywood or at any of the sidewalk food outlets?

Why, in the midst of orange groves larger than Arkansas, can you not get a glass of fresh orange juice?

Why must Disney food be “theme” food? Their many attempts to serve ethnic foods invariably get dumbed down into Sandra Lee’s semi-homemade. Mr. Henry understands that it may not be practical to construct Cinderella’s Castle walls from genuine limestone blocks, but must the edible be as ersatz as the visible?

There is not a cooked leafy green to be had for love or money. Instead, there are frighteningly snazzy combos like baked salmon on parmesan foccacia. (Mr. Henry shudders to recall it.)

It took Mr. Henry an entire week to recover from the numbing over-stimulation and hypnotic cheeriness of the place.

And the souvenirs! The irrepressible Trudy writes, “The whole thing was just one big retail Venus fly trap for more shit made in China, with that looming castle as the cosmic bait drawing children and their reluctant into its orb.”

There is a hidden ideology here, an imposed classlessness, a Puritan sense of public obligation towards the simple life. Any attempts to seek out fine food are blunted. Carefully prepared fresh food is simply not for sale. Everyone at Disney World eats the same food, rides the same bus, and laughs at the same amusement. There are no individuals. There are only crowds.