The Vacation Kingdom Idealization

Early on in Another Musical Souvenir of Walt Disney World, the aural masterwork from the author of Passport To Dreams Old and New, you notice that something’s missing. Yes, the Magic Kingdom’s familiar background music is there, including lots of little snippets that could only be heard at the park itself until now, as are the comforting sounds of Magic Kingdom watercraft, the heavy clanking of the WEDway PeopleMover, and even the long-absent percussion of cannon fire from Pirates Of The Caribbean. What’s missing are the people.

I don’t mean there’s a complete absence of human voices. There’s plenty of them, in fact: Jack Wagner’s Monorail narration, faint echoes of Jungle Cruise spiel that occasionally bubble up before being subsumed by the sound of Adventureland’s artificial jungle, and even com chatter in the Space Mountain queue. What you don’t hear is the crowds; that omnipresent dull roar punctuated by an occasional shout or the cry of an exhausted child that’s inescapable in perpetually crowded places like Disney World. I don’t mean to sound like a misanthrope, but other people are the number one obstacle to enjoying your day at the Magic Kingdom or any other theme park. As much as we fantasize about the return of beloved old attractions like 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, probably the greatest fantasy of any theme park aficionado is to have the place all to themselves, and Another Musical Souvenir of Walt Disney World allows you to indulge that fantasy.

It’s almost a dreamlike experience; you’re floating from land to land in a peacefully vacant Magic Kingdom, catching fragments of pre-and post-show audio from various attractions as you pass by, occasionally wandering into and out of ride queues. Then you’re on the resort monorail heading toward the Contemporary as Jack Wagner tells you all about the evening entertainment in store for you there, and bam!—suddenly you’re in the Contemporary’s Grand Canyon Concourse and you realize where those crowds that were curiously absent from the Magic Kingdom were the whole time. But it’s not the kind of crowd noise you hear when listening to a park audio track that someone recorded by setting a recording device next to a speaker. It’s carefully blended in to give you the full auditory flavor of the mid-1970s Vacation Kingdom nightlife.

It’s not a stretch to say that “An Evening In The Vacation Kingdom” is the crown jewel of this collection. Pretty much all the Disney audio you can find on the Internet is from the parks. With a little work, even an unsophisticated schlub like me can slap together an iTunes playlist that roughly captures the feeling of walking around the Magic Kingdom or EPCOT Center in the 1980s. But stuff from the resorts, especially the pre-EPCOT Center “Vacation Kingdom” era, is pretty much impossible to find, and even if you could it takes great skill to blend it all together in a way that makes you feel like you’re really experiencing the Seven Seas Lagoon nightlife. I can’t express just how good this track is; even if the rest of the collection was nothing but the Tiki Room: Under New Management in an endless loop, “An Evening In The Vacation Kingdom” would make it all worthwhile. It really is that great.

Something else I love about this collection is how it evokes all the layers the Magic Kingdom experience used to have: the Swan Boats, the steel drum band in Caribbean Plaza, the cannons over the entrance to Pirates, the Mike Fink Keel Boats, and the live entertainment in Tomorrowland. All of these are things that were whittled away over the years to save money (even as ticket price and room rate increases have far exceeded the rate of inflation) and it’s nice to inhabit, even in an aural fashion, a Magic Kingdom where they’re still there.

Another Musical Souvenir of Walt Disney World can be downloaded here: http://passport2dreams.blogspot.com/2014/12/another-musical-souvenir-of-walt-disney.html

Get it now, if you know what’s good for you.