unpack, and get to that palace.
After checking in, Chris had a nice moment when an elderly black gentleman with beautiful white hair and a very erect posture arrived to help them with their luggage. “I honor your service, son,” the veteran had said quietly and with a knowing look.
“Semper Fi.” Chris smiled.
“Semper Fi,” the old Marine acknowledged.
The family took the monorail to the park entrance and stepped down onto the platform. Above the roof of the train station Aurora could glimpse the long banners streaming from the tall towers of Cinderella’s Palace.
“Dad, there it is!”
“Just like the picture, isn’t it?”
“Oh, yes! Let’s go. We don’t want to miss Mickey. I’m sure he’s awake by now. He’ll be home, though, don’t you think?”
“Come on, follow me. I’ve got passes. We’ll head straight for Main Street and then go find out.”
Aubrey had zero interest in Cinderella or her palace and convinced his mother to come with him inside a shop that did fake tattoos. Marjorie told Christopher to go on ahead and they’d all meet at Splash Mountain, the log-flume ride and their first adventure of the day. Christopher had decided it was the most benign and so a good way to judge Aurora’s capacity for the more challenging rides. Aubrey, he wasn’t worried about. Aubrey’s idea of fun was jumping off the roof into the hedgerows with a Superman red bath towel tied around his neck.
“So, Dad,” Aurora said, looking confused and dismayed as they made their way up Main Street to the palace, “you did say you and I were going to knock on the palace door and say hi to Mickey, right? Just the two of us, right?”
“Of course. And we will.”
“Oh.”
“What’s wrong, sweetie?”
Aurora burst into tears.
“It’s just like you said, only-only who are all these other people?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, well, I don’t know, Dad. I thought it was just going to be me and you. Going to Mickey’s house and all. Not a whole other bunch of people. Just the two of us.”
“Well, sweetie, it’s just that, well, this is a public amusement-”
“Dad!” Aurora cried out. “Look! There’s Mickey right over there, getting off the streetcar. C’mon. Before he goes inside!”
And with that, she put her little head down, curls flouncing, and made a beeline through the crowds for her favorite mouse.
Christopher smiled and said, “Hey, Aurora, wait for me!”
He saw her for an instant, beaming, and waving him onward.
It would be the last happy moment of the day.
T here was a mercifully short line for the log flume ride.
While Marjorie and Aubrey went to use their passes for more tokens, Christopher took Aurora to watch the riders come flying out of the topmost boarding station and careening down the twisting and steeply angled chute full of churning water. The chute straightened out at the bottom, and the log full of passengers plunged into the deep lagoon with a great splash, soaking everyone aboard, causing fits of laughter. It was fun, Christopher thought; he’d done it many times himself as a boy. He didn’t think it would scare Aurora one bit.
They climbed the stairway to the top, Christopher holding onto the rail to manage the ascent. When they finally reached the boarding station, he asked, “Does this look like fun, sweetie?”
“Oh, yes, Daddy, let’s go!”
“All right then, I’ll get in the very front seat and you take the one just behind me. That way you can wrap your arms around me going around the curves if you want to.”
They took their positions and waited for the rest of the riders sitting behind them to board.
“Here we go!” Christopher said, turning to smile over his shoulder at Aurora.
The log whooshed from beneath the corrugated roof section, riding a flood of rushing water like a surging tide, and took the banked curves at increasing speed. A few minutes later, he caught a glimpse of his wife and son far below, waving at them and waiting in the crowd as they approached the final straightaway. No. Wait. They were pointing up at the chute and appeared to be saying something…
No. They were screaming.
He instantly saw why.
The lower straightaway chute was completely dry. No water at all, just the fierce sun’s glare glinting off the smooth stainless steel. He didn’t have time to think about it. The second the metal log hit that dry patch it accelerated dramatically. Frantically, Christopher turned to grab Aurora.
It was too late.
She was gone.
The log struck the surface of the water at the bottom at a ridiculously steep angle and going at least five times faster than its designed speed. It pitch-poled forward and ejected the six passengers into the wide deep pool. Logs were continuing to slam into the pool, hurling more people into the “lagoon.” Christopher, in shock, clawed for the water’s surface looking for Aurora, kicking his one good leg furiously. He saw her red hair floating and feared the worst. He swam to her, ignoring the screams of the frightened and injured, and pushed her face up out of the water.
“Is that it, Daddy?” she said, sputtering.
“Oh, my little baby, are you hurt?”
“ ’Course not. Is that the special ride? It’s ever so much more fun than just splashing down in the silly old log. It’s just like holding your nose, closing your eyes, and jumping off the high dive at Meadowbrook Club, isn’t it?”
Christopher hugged her to him and swam to the side where EMS personnel were helping frightened passengers from the pool and wrapping them in towels. No one, thank God, seemed to have been seriously injured, just a few scrapes and bruises. There was an elderly woman lying half in the water and half out who appeared to have landed on the walkway surrounding the “lagoon.”
At lunch near the Mississippi Paddlewheeler, considerably calmer now that everyone was all right, the Marleys discussed the rest of the afternoon’s activities. Marjorie was still shaken by the flume incident and not sure she wanted to trust any of the other rides as planned. Christopher sympathized, but the look on the children’s faces convinced him that to hole up in their rooms watching Little Mermaid or Shrek III or whatever for the remaining two days was a nonstarter.
“I asked one of the security men, darling,” he said to her. “He said it was the first incident like that in the forty years he’d worked here. He said it was some kind of computer glitch. Maybe a power spike that opened a drain, something like that. Did you know that thirty feet below us are miles of tunnels and computer control rooms? Computers run everything in the whole park.”
“And you find that reassuring?”
“Computers run the Boeing 777 that got us here. So, yeah. I find that reassuring.”
“I don’t know, hon. It scared me to death. But I also think we should not let one mishap ruin their entire trip. They’ve been looking forward to it for two years.”
“Right. Me, too. So let’s all just go have the most fun afternoon ever. Deal?”
“Deal.”
And so the Marley family finished lunch and headed toward the Haunted House where the most dangerous things were the steep stairs. Passing the flume, they were reassured by the fact that it had already reopened. Continuing along by the river they were startled by a huge roar that went up from the crowd, somewhere over on Main Street. Christopher looked at his watch.
“It’s one o’clock; the parade is just starting,” he said.
“The parade?” Aurora said and burst into song. “ ‘Who’s the leader of the band they call the Mousketeers? M-I–C-K-E-Y…’ ”
They reached the line for the Haunted House, and it seemed to stretch back at least a mile.
“How long a wait?” he asked a heavily tattooed biker in front of him, piercings in his nose, tongue, and ears
