Are you near, McKludge: Orlando?
I remember long ago some pretty orange groves, not this
Nearly overnight, Orlando --
-- Made a suburb by themselves, did Disney™, coming from afar
You can hear Matthias: "Bums!" --
Lake Buena Vista: laws, Walt Disney was their czar [1]

Universal™, now, Orlando
From the Tower, each ride in it screams of vast pull: gravity [2]
TT: gf made, Orlando [3]
She was strong; athletic life; but work for Mouse would make her cry
And it's sad, but true to say
The roar of cars; the traffic; small town went bye-bye

There was just a crossroads there, before
Big citrus store, Orlando
They would process lots of orange juice
Grape-fruit, produce; Orlando
Though tour-ism got a giant boost
There's some regret
But if Magic Kingdom™ came again
And big bucks, spend: expand-o
We would prob'ly do the same again
Not fight the trend, Orlando

Now there's tolls. free-ways, Orlando
Been many years since Disney came and rifled all the land
Ev'ry tourist comes: Orlando [4]
Do you still recall that fateful time the city, new, was planned?
Then we fin'lly realized
How shrouded were the sights of Disney and his band

There are insects in the air at night
Mosquitos bite, Orlando
There are thuderstorms through summer, fall
Each ev'ning, squall, Orlando [5]
There's a port nearby from where ships cruise [6]
Rockets launch, yet [7]
And sometimes a hurricane makes land
But weakened: sand, Orlando [8]

That was something of a boom, ignite
Its star was bright, Orlando
Then a fright'ning bust next decade, see
In seventies, embargo [9]
Disney never thought that they could lose
Recover? Bet.
It will always have its fame; Mouse: lend
Wish: SeaWorld™, end, Orlando [10]

Yes, it'll never be the same again
Old days, at end, Orlando

[old days long since faded; quality of life faded; song fades with it]




[1] Under a lot of fake names, Disney bought up huge tracts of groveland and vacant land in the 1960s, set up their own "municpal taxing district", and, for all practical purposes, owned and governed an entire town. At first called the City of Reedy Creek, it was later renamed Lake Buena Vista. "Buena Vista" comes from the name of the street in Burbank, California, where The Walt Disney Company is located. Talk about "company towns" ... frequent allegations of favoritism, etc., as bad as any coal-mining "company town", and Disney had power far beyond other tourist attractions.

[2] Universal Studios' Orlando theme park slogan: "Go to Disney for the sights; come here for the rides." They're not kidding. (Like, say, being accelerated upward like an astronaut in the Space Shuttle, then being dropped six or seven stories in free-fall.)

[3] McKludge never did answer TT's question, at TJC's Mouseterpiece, whether his gf and TT's former were the same person. ;)

[4] Always ranked among the most popular tourist destinations in the world; at times, #1. More theme parks and entertainment attractions than anywhere else in the world.

[5] Old joke: Iowa (Central US state) was searching for a new state slogan to attract business and tourists to the largely-agricultural state. One prankster submitted "Iowa -- Centrally located between two oceans". (1500 mi/2500 km in each direction, ha ha)

Meteorology: "Orlando: Centrally located between two bodies of very warm water".
(Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico, with the even warmer Gulf Stream Current flowing alongside both coasts.)
When the warm, moist air currents from those two meet in the middle, BANG! .. and guess where "the middle" is?

Result: The *most* thunderstorm days of any major city in the world, averaging more than 100 days/year with thunderstorm activity. Lightning is frequent. (Far more people are killed by lightning than by sharks, but which scares more people, asks the shark-friendly turtle?)
Locals visit the parks in the late spring or late fall, avoiding the summer weather and crowds, and the winter escapees from the frigid North.

[6] Port Canaveral, less than an hour from the airport. Many cruise ships, including gambling ships. Although gambling is a terrible evil on land (except when the State runs it, as in Lotto) it is magically purged by going beyond the twelve-mile limit.

[7] Also about an hour away: Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, home of unmanned rocket launches from the 1950s through the present day, and home of the Mercury/Gemini/Apollo missions that eventually sent men to the Moon and back. Later, Kennedy Space Center was built a little northwest of that complex, the launch point (and desired landing point, weather permitting) of the Space Shuttle.

[8] The city itself is about 42 miles (68 km) from the Atlantic, and farther from the Gulf. Hurricanes weaken as they cross, first, the barrier islands on either coast, then, the land between the coast and the inland cities. There are hurricanes there, but with less frequency and lower intensity than at coastal areas -- one factor that influenced Disney not to locate the park in the more-developed and -accessible (at the time) cities of Miami (Atlantic coast) or Tampa (Gulf Coast).

[9] The Arab oil embargoes of the 1970s, a protest against US policy in the Mid-East, drove the price of oil from two or three dollars a barrel to almost $40/bbl. Retail gasoline prices nearly quadrupled between 1969 and 1981. Since many of Florida's tourists arrive by car, the industry was devastated as travelers were afraid, not only of the price, but of shortages and not being able to find gasoline en route, or to have to wait in long lines.
As a result, Disney stock, which had soared from the late 60s to the early 70s, crashed dramatically, and wouldn't recover until well into the 1980s.

[10] Recent headline: "Killer Whale Kills Trainer At SeaWorld". Say it with us: "D'oh!"...
Did they think the name "Killer Whale" was a joke? What did they expect?
Something in TT doesn't like the idea of taking a creature that roams a thousand miles or more (sometimes visible right past his beach, when he's lucky) and penning it up in something the size of a closet, relatively speaking. You wanna see marine life, learn scuba or just go snorkeling.

Calvin: "Mom wants to know if we want to go to the zoo."
Hobbes (the toy tiger): "Ask her if we can tour a prison afterwards."
(Calvin tells Mom, no.)