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OK, everyone, time to get out your copies of the 2007 edition of the Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World. You do have a copy, don't you? No? Weird.
Anyway, The Guide, if you are not familiar with it, is the bible for anyone visiting Walt Disney World (WDW). It has been the gold standard for WDW guide books for many years now, generally considered to be the best and most thorough guide book out there. As I understand it, it is also consistently the best selling guide book for WDW every year. So you can imagine I was a bit surprised last year when Len Testa, one of the two authors of the book, sent me an email asking if it would be ok for some people from the Guide to meet us at the Magic Kingdom one day and to ride Snow White's Scary Adventures (SWSA) with Ben.
They had heard about us on the message boards at wdwmagic.com, and were so amazed by the story of SW1K that they wanted to meet Ben in person and experience the ride through his eyes. The afternoon they met us was very nice. Len was there, as well as a couple of the other support staff who work on the Guide. They rode SWSA with us, and then we sat down and had some lunch at Cosmic Ray's and chatted about Ben, Disney, and other random topics. When they asked us how we stayed sane riding SWSA so much, I commented that I had reached the Zen of Snow White and that nowadays it is the most soothing and relaxing place in the park for me. We also mentioned reading one section in the guide that talked about one poor staffer who had to sit for hours watching crowd patters right underneath a speaker on the Tomorrowland Transit Authority that repeated the same phrase every thirty seconds ("Paging Mr. Morrow. Mr. Tom Morrow. Your party from Saturn has arrived. Please give them a ring."). We said, "We feel bad for that poor guy, we know exactly what he went through." That's when one of the staffers sheepishly raised his hand and said, "That was me...."
So anyway, nearly a year later I found myself in a bookstore this afternoon and saw the 2007 edition of the guide was out. Out of curiosity I picked it up and thumbed to the entry on SWSA, and was amused to read the following paragraph:
Yup. That's my kid.
Anyway, The Guide, if you are not familiar with it, is the bible for anyone visiting Walt Disney World (WDW). It has been the gold standard for WDW guide books for many years now, generally considered to be the best and most thorough guide book out there. As I understand it, it is also consistently the best selling guide book for WDW every year. So you can imagine I was a bit surprised last year when Len Testa, one of the two authors of the book, sent me an email asking if it would be ok for some people from the Guide to meet us at the Magic Kingdom one day and to ride Snow White's Scary Adventures (SWSA) with Ben.
They had heard about us on the message boards at wdwmagic.com, and were so amazed by the story of SW1K that they wanted to meet Ben in person and experience the ride through his eyes. The afternoon they met us was very nice. Len was there, as well as a couple of the other support staff who work on the Guide. They rode SWSA with us, and then we sat down and had some lunch at Cosmic Ray's and chatted about Ben, Disney, and other random topics. When they asked us how we stayed sane riding SWSA so much, I commented that I had reached the Zen of Snow White and that nowadays it is the most soothing and relaxing place in the park for me. We also mentioned reading one section in the guide that talked about one poor staffer who had to sit for hours watching crowd patters right underneath a speaker on the Tomorrowland Transit Authority that repeated the same phrase every thirty seconds ("Paging Mr. Morrow. Mr. Tom Morrow. Your party from Saturn has arrived. Please give them a ring."). We said, "We feel bad for that poor guy, we know exactly what he went through." That's when one of the staffers sheepishly raised his hand and said, "That was me...."
So anyway, nearly a year later I found myself in a bookstore this afternoon and saw the 2007 edition of the guide was out. Out of curiosity I picked it up and thumbed to the entry on SWSA, and was amused to read the following paragraph:
In 2005 we had the good fortune to experience Snow White with Ben, an autistic tyke who, with his family, has seen the attraction more than eleven hundred times. His parents -- far better people than us -- stay sane by thinking of ways to redesign the attraction each time through.
Yup. That's my kid.
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