Halloween is Over – Bring Out the Fat Man

It amazes me that Disney dedicates one third of the year to two holidays. For one third of the year you cannot see Disney World in its natural state. When it’s boiling hot in Florida, Halloween decorations are going up. Who cares about Summer, we need to make money! I guess coming up with a summer party they don’t need to decorate for never occurred to them.

So Mickey starts putting kids into diabetic shock before the leaves start changing in New England and keeps it up right through Halloween. As soon as the candy runs out Disney needs another way to make money. God forbid you take a break until Thanksgiving. Breaks are for wimps! Bring out the fat man! When the leaves in NH haven’t even hit the ground yet, Disney is putting up their Christmas decorations. Unlike Halloween the decorations stay up beyond Christmas. They stay up through New Years. That’s more than two months of Christmas crap.

I think all the cast members who work through the Christmas season deserve hazard duty pay. Everything might seem nice for a few weeks but I’m guessing they are sick of it by Thanksgiving and that means they still have more than a month left. No human can take that kind of abuse.

Some of it is nice. Like the castles winter overlay is great but it’s the sheer quantities that get to you. Some things do not need to be decorated. When you go overboard you ruin the effect.

Then you get people like me who never cared about Christmas but always ended up in Disney World that time of year because it was cheap and the crowds were low. That would have continued too if not for resources like Touringplans.com. Thanks to them I was able to find a time of year where the crowds are low and there are no decorations. I know some people love the decorations. I can understand that but for someone who hasn’t seen “natural” Disney since he was kid the decorations are a distraction at this point.

You might complain and say “well don’t go then.” That’s the idea but you want to know something crazy? There was once a day when Disney did next to nothing for Halloween and Christmas didn’t start until after Thanksgiving. Yes I know. I just dated myself.

Ricky Brigante Loves Halloween…For a Reason

If you listen to the “Inside the Magic” podcast you know that Ricky Brigante loves Halloween. Every year he does full coverage of all of the Halloween happenings in and out of Walt Disney World.

After listening to a lot of his coverage this year I had to start wondering, why does Ricky Brigante love Halloween so much? I know a lot of people like Halloween but Ricky seems to REALLY love it. So I did what I do best. I looked into it.

Inside the Magic has been around for years so I had a lot of research to do. I went through old episodes, distant creations.com, inside the magic.com, and I even added Ricky as a Facebook friend.

Facebook turned out to be the key. When I saw the photos of Ricky on Facebook I knew something wasn’t quite right. It almost looked like he had makeup on. After following Ricky around for a week I realized I was right. He did have makeup on. I’d see him touching it up throughout the day.

Why would Ricky wear makeup? One day Ricky got caught out in a bad storm and got soaked before he could open his umbrella. I saw his face melt off. Underneath the truth was exposed. Ricky is a zombie.

That explains why Ricky loves Halloween. He can go out of the house without makeup. Not only that, he gets all sorts of complements on his costume. He’s even won costume contests without dressing up.

Before you run in fear the next time you see Ricky just remember, he is a friendly zombie that doesn’t eat brains and would stop to give an autograph or take a photo.

If you don’t know the above story is factious. Ricky is not a zombie (I hope), He doesn’t wear make up (that I know of), and I didn’t follow him around for weeks. However, Ricky does love Halloween and covers everything on his podcast.