"I'm Going to Walt Disney World"....Pt.1

When the chimney expert came on Monday and was looking things over, to make conversation he asked if I had seen the Super Bowl. I hadn’t.

 I love football and I’ve said before that giving up watching football and NASCAR was one of the hardest things about moving to the woods. Now that I have a laptop and satellite internet, I do check in on scores from time to time. (Just so you don’t think I’m wimping out on leaving the “other world” behind, I still avoid reading the news). In this case, however I did not know the outcome of the game. I am one of the old school guys who care little about NFL expansion teams or teams that have moved to a new city or changed their name. The only teams I care about are the old ones like the Browns, Steelers, Packers,  and so on. The Baltimore Ravens? Who cares what they do. The 49ers are an older team but from the west coast, who cares about a west coast team?

 Anyway, somehow the conversation came around to the promotion Disney does with the game’s most valuable player saying “I’m going to Walt Disney World” while still on the field immediately after the game. If Dooley had been there he would have rolled his eyes at that point and walked off as he always does when he thinks I am about to rant.

Why would this spark a rant? I was in the Walt Disney marketing department working as a cameraman when this campaign started. By all rights my department should have been the ones who produced this commercial. I should have gone to the Super Bowl that year. Instead, the marketing execs decided to give the work to an outside production company. We had always kept the production work in-house up to that point.  After that, more and more of our work was given to New York based production crews. It has always been my contention that moving the work up there gave the execs an excuse for spending time and living it up in the Big Apple while “supervising” the shooting and editing. Sour grapes?  Perhaps.

 Fortunately, the Disney MGM Studios opened up a couple of years later and my department re-formed outside of the Marketing Division. We found ourselves working on non-Disney commercials, feature films and network TV shows. It was wonderful. I finally did get to go to 3 Super Bowls after that, shooting footage for Disney Entertainment when they produced the half time shows.

 So, I didn’t rant to the chimney man, but that ‘I’m going to Disney World” campaign will always be a sore spot for me. It’s something I need to let go.

Funny thing is; I am going to Walt Disney World in two weeks. Tell you more about that tomorrow.