Gaylord's Animal Kingdom

I just got back from a convention in Orlando. I stayed at the Gaylord Palm's Resort and Convention Center in Kissimmee, Florida: "Located just 1.5 miles from the front gate of Walt Disney World®." 

When I arrived at the hotel, I checked-in, navigated my way through a huge atrium, past mini-Gatorland (Real banner:"Gators, and Turtles and Snakes, Oh my!"), up to the 6th floor, and down the hall to room 6333.

Roommate Sam, opening the drapes of our Atrium-View Double: "Doesn't this place remind you of Jurassic Park?"

Tentatively: "Yes?"

"I mean the opening scenes where they tour the laboratory and the museum. Remember the atrium?"

"Right." It was coming back to me now. "The atrium where the blond kids play hide-and-seek with the velociraptors? The one the T-rex smashes through in the end?" It seems like the T-rex ripped down the "Welcome to Jurassic Park" banner in a moment of slap-across-the-face irony.

He was right. It kind of did, although the Gaylord Palm's atrium was about 10x bigger. The remarkable bit was that it had the same sense of being too perfect and too full of sunshine. The hotel had even hung a bright orange 60'x20' welcome banner from the atrium's beams with our company event logo on it. It was a marketing dream.

I watched the first Jurassic Park movie at the drive-in with a bunch of high-school friends. We marveled at the CGI Brontosauruses, the Triceratops's steaming poop, and the explanation of amphibian DNA filling in gaps of dinosaur stuff.  And we all knew that one day a storm would come to destroy the sanctuary; and that on that day all the fat, slobby, self-interested characters would be eviscerated.

It's just the way Spielberg does things. Predictable? Absolutely. Nuanced? Absolutely not. Cash-generating? Yes!

Let me start first with what I am not saying: Guests should not worry about giant lizard creatures wreaking havoc on the hotel or its occupants. The food we ate was anything but gut-eviscertating. And customer service was stellar.

Let me continue with what I am saying: The Gaylord Palms is a stage set. It is all hollow columns and fake stone, and recreated Spanishy architectural elements. The resort's 1,406 guestrooms smell slightly of decomposing drywall.

On Sunday, before we got on our flight back to Salt Lake, I went with a few friends to Disney World's Animal Kingdom. After planning out our day with Amanda, a helpful cast member, we ran to jump on Dinosaurs, the main attraction of the park's Dinoland USA section.

Guests load onto 4x4 looking cars, go back in time, narrowly avert Dino attacks and the meteorite that would end it all, and make it back, safe and sound, to 2010 after about 5-minutes.

As we exited, on our way to Mt Everest, I thought how much fun it would be to bring my little brother, my nieces and nephews, and future children to experience the Dinoland USA ride with me. The animatronic Dinosaurs were predictably robotic, the story line ridiculous, and all of our screams disingenuous. But I can honestly say that it was fun to suspend reality, to laugh, to scream and ultimately to pretend.

Sure, I've been to Spain, and to Mexico. I've seen gators and crocs in the wild. I've sipped granizada in a 1,000 year-old Spanish courtyard. But I sure didn't do any of that for $139 a night, and the jet lag was much, much worse.