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Wild Thing
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[08/20/99]

Wild Thing
Wake up, Sleeping Beauty!
Classic fairy tales get a feminist makeover for parents who don't like their princesses tricked out, locked up or comatose. But were the old ones really that bad?
By Margot Mifflin
[08/20/99]

There goes my baby
Once, I thought my daughter would win the Nobel Prize. Now that she's started college, I just hope she keeps her phone, her power, her housing -- and remembers to wake up for class.
By Stephen J. Lyons
[08/19/99]

First crush
When you're a girl, a grown man's attention can make a woman out of you.
By Maurine Shores
[08/18/99]

Hot Flash
take my tv
The American Academy of Pediatrics says children under 2 should not watch TV. Why would any parent disagree?
By Jacques Leslie
[08/17/99]

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Sarah's adulation told me I was in for an unforgettable week. From the start, the omens had been bad for this, our family vacation to Disney World. Back in July, when we'd first intended to come, wildfires and 100-degree heat had raged across Florida with biblical intensity. Instead of heeding the augury and canceling the trip altogether, we had rescheduled for Thanksgiving week. There were a thousand dollars' worth of non-refundable airplane tickets at stake, after all; there were several hundred more in theme-park passes bought at a reduced advance rate.

And there was the force of destiny. Every family with children of my acquaintance seemed to have made its pilgrimage to Disney World. Editors, photographers, pastors, attorneys -- people who should have known better -- submitted to their duty. One of them, mindful of Art Spiegelman's Holocaust comic book, called the place "Mauschwitz."

How exactly had a visit to Disney World become such an obligation, such a hajj? During my own childhood in the 1960s, I enjoyed the tatty boardwalk of Seaside Heights as much as any Jersey kid. I had gone to the 1964-65 New York World's Fair often enough to drive my father half-mad with pleadings for a Belgian waffle. (Too much whipped cream, he ruled.) But in 18 summers of family vacations, I spent exactly one day at the original Disneyland, and that was only because my left-wing parents refused to visit Knott's Berry Farm, whose owner was said to support the John Birch Society.

As a father, I tried to fill my house with books and craft projects. Rarely did a Raffi tape sully our stereo. The television dial stayed at PBS. I gloated. Maybe that was my big mistake.

Also Disney rocks! Forget the long lines, the schlocky toys and the canned music. Disneyland will always be the Magic Kingdom for this life-long Mouseketeer.

Somehow, Disney World contaminated my home as stealthily as radon gas -- a few Disney tapes from a doting grandmother, a few tales of trips there by cousins, a few excursions to the local mall's Disney store to buy birthday presents. Before long, Sarah and her 6-year-old brother Aaron were bleating for their own vacation in Disney World. I could only feebly argue to my wife that we should wait until they were both older and ready for a full day's trekking from ride to ride. Having surrendered on principle, I soon capitulated on the details.

Now, driving from the airport to the Embassy Suites room we had booked in a feckless stab at frugality, I felt dizzy, almost sun-dazed, even though the sky was overcast. I took the wrong exit, wound up somewhere within sight of the Epcot globe. Here on Disney property, every hedge had been perfectly clipped, every lawn edged as if with an X-Acto knife. Each sign bore the same aggressively cheerful purple lettering. There was nothing as utilitarian as a gas station where I could actually ask directions.

Somehow I backtracked to the corner where Disney property gave way to the strip of fast-food joints, T-shirt shops, and time-share complexes that included our hotel. At the traffic light, we idled a few feet from a statue of Mickey Mouse atop a brick column.

"Emperor Mickey," Aaron chirped.

You got that right, I was thinking.

Another imperial Mickey, this one done up in faux bronze, surveyed the Embassy Suites lobby. Complimentary breakfast the next morning featured pancakes with those famous ears. A television screen the size of a medieval tapestry dominated the restaurant, and from it issued the Disney Channel's cartoon of "Timon and Puumba." I remembered those two from "The Lion King," the only Broadway musical in my memory whose theater doors opened directly into a gift store stocked with tie-in merchandise.

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