Since my book 3500 came out a few weeks ago (which you should totally go buy if you haven't already!), I have been very gratified by the reviews that have come in. I know I was always told back in my theatre days never to read the reviews, but how can you not? Although it has been nice to see so many positive reviews, the thing I am actually most interested in is the criticisms. Interestingly, I have seen some that essentially say, "he spent too much time talking about himself and not enough about Ben" and then some that boil down to, "Ben's story was interesting, but I would have liked to read more about the family."  So in that sense, I think I got the balance about right. Once question came up in a Goodreads review, however, that really caught my imagination: "How did the parents survive 3500 rides?" Here, then, is my answer to that question.

I can't really speak for Ben's mom, aside from mentioning that she was once asked the same question by Len Testa from the Unofficial Guide and she responded that she spent her time on the ride imagining how to improve it or how to create other interesting rides. She had always dreamed of being an Imagineer, and as I recall she has a pretty cool concept for a Mary Poppins themed attraction that she would love to pitch.

As for me, I ultimately reached what I called The Zen of Snow White. The ride would just kind of wash over me as I pulled my cap down over my eyes and micro-napped for three minutes. It really did become a very relaxing thing for me, and as odd as it sounds I truly did enjoy the rides. In fact, I would go so far as to say that once the ride closed I actually missed it almost as much as Ben did.

One thing that we did early on to keep us sane was to put in place the "three ride rule". Ben was only allowed go on Snow White three times before he had to go and do something else. Early on he would do the three rides in rapid succession, and then rush over to something nearby like Pooh or Dumbo before coming straight back to Snow White. Over time, however, he became more relaxed about it. He would still do three rides in a row, but he would spend a fair amount of time just standing inside the alternate entrance between rides. We would get there, and he would take out his camera and start taking pictures of the big mural, or peer into the exit doors trying to see all the way back to the Love's First Kiss scene. He might spend ten or fifteen minutes there, always careful to stand out of the way so that other guests could come in through the alternate entrance and easily get past him. For my part, I would generally either carry a book or else make use of the web browser on my smart phone to pass the time. Virtually all of the cast members who worked the ride knew Ben on sight, and also knew that he would tell them when he was ready to actually go on his next ride. So in the early days we might go through a set of three rides in 10-15 minutes depending on load/unload conditions, towards the end of the decade it might take upwards of 45 minutes to complete a set.

During the rides themselves, if I wasn't napping then I would frequently challenge myself to try to find something new on the ride that I had never noticed before. 

Some details I discovered early: I loved the fact than on the crest over the first doorway into the castle, an Imagineer had apparently signed their initials in the artwork - WCS. I have tried to find out whose initials they were, or else what the letters stood for, but I never did find the answer.

Other details were more subtle, or even silly. Things like all of the individual faux-carvings in the woodwork of the Dwarfs' cottage, or the specific ways the trees moved while passing through the dark forest.

One detail even qualified as profane. There was a particular tree, positioned on the left as you came out of the dark forest and approached the Dwarf's cottage, which had a single short branch angled upwards and a particular pattern to the wood. To my eyes, the pattern on the trunk just above that branch resembled a set of six-pack abs while the shape of the branch itself was ridiculously phallic. I took to calling it the "well-hung tree", although I only ever shared that tidbit with a few close friends. Maybe I'm a terrible person for seeing such a thing on a children's ride, but honestly once you saw it you could never un-see it.

For some of the rides I would spend my time observing how all of the lighting worked -- where were the lights positioned, how did they create the desired theatrical effects. There was one light in the mine shaft that had a slowly rotating fan in front of it in order to make the gems embedded in the mine wall appear to sparkle.

For other rides I might spend the entire time looking down on the floor behind the cart (we most often rode in the back row) and noticed how the cart moved in relation to the rail. The contact point to the rail was roughly center mass on the cart, which caused the front and rear seats to have lots of motion during the turns while the center seat stayed relatively stable. You could see the well-worn tracks that the wheels had left on the floor, and the different patterns that the front wheels made on the turns as compared to the rear.

I might spend a ride specifically looking in exactly the opposite direction that the Imagineers intended when they designed the ride, deliberately looking in all the places where they didn't want you to see. Sometimes there was maintenance equipment tucked away behind a flat that you could only see if you were turned around backwards and looking at just the right angle.

I spent a fair amount of time creating a blueprint in my head, trying to picture how the ride path fit together in order to tell what was on the other side of any given wall. Just over there is where a particular display in the gift shop would be if I could walk through the wall. The angles of that corner come together in just that way because when the cart comes around to the opposite side sixty seconds later there has to be space for that particular character figure. If I were to walk through those emergency exit doors I would come out just here in relation to the gift shop.

Socially, it was fun to see all the cast members come and go. Some were there for years and years, familiar friends whom I chatted with several times per month. Others would come and go quickly; I could always tell when the intern program had turned over to a new batch of trainees. There were a few cast members who would go out of their way to say hello to Ben and to ask what the current ride count was. 

For a long, long time I had the pleasure of being able to frequently see the Sword in the Stone show happen in the courtyard in front of the carousel. Ben and I would be hanging out in the alternate ride entrance at Snow White, and Merlin would come along just across the way and search for someone to be King for a day. It was always the same cast member who played Merlin, and he was consistently fantastic. I knew all of the beats of the patter, and what kinds of people would be picked out of the crowd, but the kids' reactions always made it fresh and interesting to see. I was genuinely sad when they stopped doing that show, it was a great bit of fun to watch.

Another thing I did to pass the time was to write code in my head. I work as a software developer, and there were many times where I was trying to think my way through some particular coding challenge. The background noise of the ride made for a perfect white-noise generator, and I was able to roll different ideas around in my mind and work my way through different data structures or design patterns. More than once I would hit on a beautifully elegant solution, and then sit up that night banging out the actual code once Ben had gone to bed. 

I can't even count how many hours of my life were spent either on Snow White's Scary Adventures or else standing in its immediate vicinity. I sometimes joke that I am grateful he didn't pick It's a Small World to connect with, but honestly being there in the park with Ben has never, ever been a chore. Watching Ben grow was its own reward, and beyond that I never have gotten tired of the energy and creativity that flows like an electrical current through Walt Disney World. Yes, sometimes you see tired families in their worst moments. Yes, sometimes Florida can be almost unbearably hot and humid in the summer (seriously, drink at least a bottle of water every hour, stay hydrated people!). On one or two very rare occasions it could even be bitingly cold with the wind blowing through the walkways and chilling you to the bone. There were even some times when on some particular day I might actually be sick and tired of Snow White and would beg Ben to go see Pirates or Haunted Mansion.

But it was never, not once, a matter of "how can I survive this repetitious drudgery?" I "survived" by loving my son, and by finding the places where my own joy and inquisitiveness could dovetail with his. I am confident that, had they not closed the ride, I could have spent the next forty years still visiting Snow White's Scary Adventures and never tiring of seeing the excitement on Ben's face every time we passed through that mine and heard the plaintive cry of, "Awww, she's gettin' away! Hurry!!" That never, ever got old.

I miss it a lot.