I don’t often remember my dreams, but I did last night and whoa! It’s a doozy. I’m pretty sure I dreamed up the world’s most disappointing amusement park attraction. I have no idea what prompted this dream. I have no idea what it may mean. All you armchair dream analysts should have a good time with this one.
In the dream I was in a car with my family on a highway in Orlando, Florida. We were heading to the airport after being at Disney World. This part of the dream isn’t particularly weird since a few weeks ago my family and I were in a car on a highway in Orlando, Florida heading to the airport after being at Disney World, but the dream took a bizarre detour.
Along the road we saw another amusement park, which is pretty accurate to the real Orlando. What caught our eye were huge likenesses of the birds from the movie Rio, which is a movie my kids like (despite it being a movie about forced mating), so we decided to stop.
Once at the park my husband and I spotted what appeared to be a Tower of Terror-style, indoor, horror roller coaster. We made a beeline toward it. I have no idea what happened to the kids. When we were actually at Disney World my parents were with us and would sometimes take the kids while my husband and I went off on our own. I choose to believe that is what happened in the dream and that this isn’t a dream about abandoning my children.
The amusement park was empty for an amusement park (which is probably based on when we rode the actual Tower of Terror while at Hollywood Studios during a morning “extra magic hour” before the park opened to the public). If you’ve ever been at an amusement park for an event where the crowds are well-below capacity you know that getting on a ride tends to involve rushing through long trails or passageways that are meant to house hundreds of people waiting an hour or more. This was the case for the ride in my dream as well.
We rushed through spooky dark hallways ignoring details meant to entertain people stuck in unmoving lines. At one point my husband and I took a wrong turn and accidentally went out an emergency exit. Luckily, the reentry door was not actually alarmed as a sign had warned and we were able to reenter the path to the ride without difficultly. A costumed park worker (creepy butler) didn’t even say anything when we came through the door.
At some point we were instructed by a woman in a neon pink cat costume to remove our shoes so that we could climb a ladder. When we climbed up we found ourselves in what looked like a school gymnasium. There were rows of folding chairs that we were instructed to sit in. This was clearly not the ride. There was a large screen hanging on a stage, so maybe a thematically appropriate film to get us ready for the ride?
Then we were all given paint chip cards. You know, those things you pick up at Home Depot when you are trying to decide on which shade of white to paint your bathroom. (The same things that are featured in thousands of Pinterest projects, which will likely lead to stores starting to charge for them. Thanks, crafters!) Anyway, we each received three of these color sample cards. We were told to pick the set of colors we liked best and look at the number on the back. The number told us which person from the line of people standing in front of us would be our techie. We were told that all these people had jobs behind the scenes at the amusement park.
We were told to shout out our numbers. I assumed that these people were going to lead smaller groups on to the ride, but when we shouted our numbers the techies just started talking about their jobs.
Don’t get me wrong. I highly respect and appreciate people who do technical jobs for amusement parks, theatres, movies, and such. They perform essential jobs that create the magic the audience sees, and those in designer roles are true artists. “Some of my best friends are techies.” Really. My problems with the techies in this dream were
- Getting talked at by anyone, even people with interesting things to talk about, is far from the same thrill as a roller coaster, and
- Everyone was talking at once so we couldn’t understand what anyone was saying.
After a few minutes everyone stopped talking, and two doors opened up at the front of the room. The audience got up and went through them. My husband and I followed our row. Perhaps we were finally going to get on the ride.
Nope. That was the exit. The “ride” was over.
Realizing this, my husband and I doubled back to get our shoes, something that didn’t seem to occur to the other audience members.
We got a bit lost in the dark corridors trying to find our shoes. Eventually we found a room filled with rows of abandoned shoes. We searched the rows for ours.
As we were searching the neon pink cat girl popped her head out of trapdoor in the floor. She looked at us then went back into the floor without saying anything.
That is all I remember.
So, internet, what do you think? Is there any deep meaning to be gleaned from my dream of the world’s most disappointing amusement park attraction?
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Kim Z. Dale 