I had a quality weekend this past week spending time with my new wife, Leslie, and our niece, Eliza, who came over to our house for a night. When you spend time with a six-year-old, you find out about another world that is generally hidden from sight from most adults.

I found out about a great new board game for kids called Balloon Lagoon that features artwork by one of my favorite modern artists, Gary Baseman. In this carnival-style board game, participants try to accumulate plastic balloons with spelling and dexterity challenges. It also helps if you can tell the difference between a shark and a mermaid just by seeing its tail. Baseman, the artist who designs the graphics for all of the Cranium family of board games, got his start designing magazine graphics and album covers before becoming the executive artist and producer of the subversive Saturday morning cartoon Teacher’s Pet.

Cedar Point’s majestic wooden roller coaster The Blue Streak. Photo courtesy of coasterphotos.com

Spending time with a six-year-old is also a good way to find out what’s new in the television cartoon world. One of the new shows on the Cartoon Network that positively sends Eliza into fits of giggles is Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends. When eight-year-old Mac is suddenly forced to give up his imaginary friend—a gelatinous blob of a ghost named Bloo—he finds out about a nuthouse of an orphanage for imaginary friends who must now fend for themselves. It’s a great concept and one that leaves the door open for the introduction of crazy characters and wild scenarios that keep the kids’ imaginations well-oiled for the rest of the day.

One thing that hasn’t changed since I was a kid is the way that advertisers take advantage of shows that are on when the parents are sleeping late on the weekends. Sugary cereals and toys guaranteed to break an hour after leaving the box are regularly hawked with the same intensity that pharmaceuticals are pushed during the nightly news. And if there is a sneakier company than Disney out there, I don’t want to know about it.

For the past three decades, Disney has slowly but surely force-fed kids the notion that a trip to Disney World is not a dream vacation but a birthright. If you are old enough for kindergarten and your parents haven’t gotten around to taking you to Orlando to meet Mickey Mouse, you should report them to Social Services as the criminally negligent duo that they are.

The latest television advertisement for Disney shows a bunch of adults walking around in super hero costumes. The first time I saw it, I figured that the adults in question were probably heroes because they volunteered their time at the Boys and Girls Clubs of America or gave blood to the Red Cross or at least had had that heart-to-heart talk with their kids about the dangers of elementary school bullies.

Nope, the tagline at the end of the ad suggests that the easiest way to become a superhero in the eyes of your kids is to get off your duff and schedule your precious vacation time around a trip to Disney World. And for a limited time, according to the ads, a family of four can enjoy a 7 day/6 night Disney World vacation for as little as $1,500! As with all such offers, however, it is like the old Tom Waits line “The big print giveth and the small print taketh away.”

The $1,500 (still a huge chunk of the budget for a lot of families) entitles the family to spend their Disney World week in a smallish motel facility near a Disney-themed pool (no pool slide) and food court. The family will be allowed to enter one theme park per day. Once you find out about the $1,500 package, they will steer you toward the $2,500 package that features full access to the theme park, a nicer hotel with a nicer pool (with slide), and “world class” restaurants where costumed characters will join you for a meal—most likely breakfast with Chip ‘n’ Dale.

It may sound like a bargain but in reality that $1,500 package will most likely be doubled after the car is gassed, souvenirs are grabbed, and expensive food court munchies are gobbled. All for the privilege of riding a few lame rides and having your photo made with some college kid in a Goofy costume.

I am completely dumbfounded by the headlock that the Disney Corporation has on the youth of America. Maybe that’s because my parents took my brother and I to Disney World in the mid-1970s when the theme park was less than a year old. This was before the park boasted such attractions as Epcot Center, MGM Studios, Blizzard Beach and Typhoon Lagoon. My little brother and I were privileged to enjoy Disney World in the heyday of the Not-So-Haunted House, The Hall of Boring Presidents, and Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. The latter was actually the highlight of the trip as we puttered along in a Ford Model-T-style buggy while critters from The Wind in the Willows attacked us from the roadside. “Look out for that rabbit! There’s a hedgehog coming straight for us! That toad’s got spectacles!”

I believe, as a 13-year-old at Disney World, my actual quote was something less enthusiastic like, “big whoop.”

Our trip to Disney World was dampened by a previous trip to Cedar Point Amusement Park in Sandusky, Ohio. That underrated theme park was nothing but rides, rides and more rides! And among its five (count ‘em, five) roller coasters was a behemoth called The Blue Streak. Yes, the Blue Streak was at that time the fastest roller coaster in the world as it reached a top speed of over 45 miles per hour. The line for admission to The Blue Streak snaked by a variety of superbly worded warning signs: “Do not ride The Blue Streak if you have heart trouble, asthma, arthritis, or suffer from migraine headaches or the condition known as ‘the vapors.’” “Cedar Point is not responsible for the loss of loose change, jewelry, glass eyes, false teeth or dental fillings.” “Emergency medical personnel are standing by.” “You must be 48 inches tall and sign a legal waiver to ride The Blue Streak.”

You’d think with such a buildup the ride itself would be anticlimactic. No, the Blue Streak lived up to its promise and for a few seconds I honestly believed that no metal bar across my lap could keep me from hurtling helplessly into space. I was doomed to scream my way through a four-second freefall before ending my life as a crumpled mass of meat on the Cedar Point midway. During the Blue Streak’s 72-foot vertical drop, G-forces strained to yank my head off of my torso by simply diverting all of the blood in my body to the top of my skull.

Of course, as soon as it was over, we ran to the back of the line to ride the Blue Streak again.

I recently found out that the Blue Streak, first built in 1964, is still in operation at Cedar Point. After four decades it continues to be one of the main attractions of a park that bills itself as “the largest amusement ride park in the world” and has given more than 51 million rides since it first was first introduced. Most of those 51 million have screamed in terror and more than a few have peed their pants a little. What fun!

So before your kids talk you into an expensive trip to see Mickey and Minnie, pull out the measuring tape to see if they are at least 48 inches tall. If they are, I suggest you take them to Sandusky, Ohio and let them scream a while.