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Florida Is Terrible (Except When It's Not)

The Orlando Area Has Some Perks

By Sam PinnelasPublished 3 years ago 5 min read
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My parents on the Winter Park boat tour

Florida is known exclusively in two modes: Sunshine Funtime Beach Disney Wonderland or Scary Drug Alligator Insanity Death Pit. I say, "Why can't it be both?" Today we'll take a look at Central Florida, which I will define as going as far south as Sarasota and as far north as Ocala or Daytona Beach, even though most of my time was spent at my home in Altamonte Springs or with my friends in Winter Park and Windermere and my school in Orlando (alright, that's enough cities for now).

Let's begin with a beautiful Floridian body of water.

Sarasota Bay Kayak/Boat Tour

That right there is a Sarasota estuary connecting with the Gulf of Mexico. At the right time in the right light, the water and sky perfectly reflect each other's colors, and you could make a case that you are looking off into symmetrical infinity. On the shore, newly hatched turtles escape their fetal containments and begin the cycle of life and death with just minutes of life experience. Under the water's surface, manatees unknowingly fight against extinction while caring for their young more than any human could care for their own, and dolphins poke their glistening genius noses above the surface to check on their silly human co-habitants. Meanwhile, under the water's surface nearby, an alligator has just ingested its second bag of dumped opioids and is ready to kill someone over it. I once -- and this is a true story -- saw a hawk carrying away a raccoon that was holding a snake that was biting into another snake; I tried pointing this out to people around me, and there was not much response beyond, "Oh..." Like it wasn't out of the ordinary.

Sarasota Bike Tour

This is my family and me about to set forth on the night portion of our Sarasota bike tour, where we were surrounded on all sides by people angry about a drug deal gone wrong. The response from our tour guide was, "Oh..." And then he continued to tell us about the town being called Circus City due to its ties to the Ringling Brothers. However, it was a shame that our night ended on that note when, just hours earlier, we were treated to a stroll through the treetops of a subtropical forest, on the Myakka Canopy Walkway, looking from a literal birds-eye view on real nature. Despite the hardships and "Florida"-ness of the city, Sarasota is consistently considered on of the best small cities in America.

But without further delay, let's get to the real reason you're probably here: Orlando theme parks. I'm not going to touch Seaworld proper because Blackfish has already covered that territory thoroughly. So I will use their sister property Discovery Cove to mine for bittersweet commentary.

Discovery Cove at Seaworld Orlando

I mean... look at those little guys. True, if you look deep into the top one's eye, it looks like nothing but infinite death exists beneath the surface, but... you know... maybe they're just playing. Okay, clearly this is going to be harder than I thought, so just look at these photos I took of my girlfriend feeding a bird, and we can move on to Disney World.

Initial excitement

A minute later

Over it

So what can I say about Disney World that hasn't already been said? Probably not very much, but I can tell you what it means to me to have grown up with the world's biggest tourist attraction as an option for a casual Friday afternoon hangout.

It's honestly the most fun. When you're with your parents and following familial rules of conduct, Disney is like an unstructured field trip, but when you're with just your friends and have no concerns of dinnertime or getting ready for work in the morning, it's like the most perfectly constructed playground. Everything is constructed and implemented perfectly to create a childlike utopia, and that feeling doesn't go away even when you've grown up with the facade. What it does do is give you an appreciation for what the Disney image means.

On the one hand, seeing the same level of perfection presented over and over for a quarter of a century allows you to understand the terror in a perfected presentation. At a certain point the charm wears away, and the repeated precision represents a society bound to unreasonable expectations. The joy once thought to be intrinsic to the "happiest place on Earth" is exposed as choreographed and focus tested.

But none of that even matters when a child smiles wider than one could imagine when they walk through the main gates of the Magic Kingdom. Because it's for them. If you are over the age of 12, you probably shouldn't enjoy Disney that much (even if the corporate overlords have tried to calibrate the experience to be as painless as possible for adults). That's not to shame anyone who does; I had a Disney annual pass until the end of college. However, only at a certain age can you fully appreciate the planned spectacle of Disney, and only at that age can you still go crazy when the Beast walks into the character breakfast, even though his costume is scarier than any of the parental deaths in Disney films.

Of course I'm going to show you that picture now.

Ah!

Maybe that picture really sums up my home in Central Florida better than anything else. There is this pure genuine attempt at authenticity. Florida wants to believe that you are getting what it is giving, and to a certain extent it does believe it. But once you crack the shell even a little, the flaws are there all out in the open, and citizens either embrace it, deny it, or work towards fixing it.

My relationship with where I come from is as complicated as realizing that Casey Anthony and George Zimmerman lived less than 20 minutes away from me when they were arrested. The Orlando area wants so desperately to be the dreamland people imagine when they hear the city's name. While I may not always love it, I will always say it's where I'm from.

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About the Creator

Sam Pinnelas

Not born in a log cabin on a not stormy not night...

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