A Mid-Dumber Night's Dream

My mind should just let me forget my dreams. 

It never goes well. 

Do they sell brain leashes or something? 

I would have preferred, off the shelf, standard script, regular, terrifying nightmare.

This was more of a "stress mare." 

A highly vivid, deranged, lucid and realistic feeling "stress mare."

That looks to be the new normal for me. Two nights after this one was a far too life like dream of the entire house being filled with small pieces of broken glass we had to clean up a couple days before Christmas. Our home was far larger than usual, and one of the cleaning methods was this awful smelling gel that stuck horrendously to skin and clothing. 

Again, not nightmare scary, but highly stressful. Unlike the one detailed below, there wasn't really a narrative to allow the stress to build to epic proportions, however. 

The storyline stressmare began with our usual Disney World attending family group going to a Circus. I have been to large arena circuses. They were miniscule compared to this monstrously large , stadium filling, spectacular.

Honestly, I should have realized this was a dream due to the fact that the kids willingly attended a circus. Considering I missed multiple violations of the laws of physics happening around me, that subtle hint eluding me isn't much of a stretch, I suppose.

We were seated way high up, in the nosebleed seats of one of the upper decks. A magician announced he was doing a trick. The next thing I knew, I was hanging in one of those "spider web," net like hammocks well above the rigging for the aerial acrobats. 

The rest of my family were on platforms below me. A kid (likely supposed to be Morgan, but played by a dream stunt person who looked nothing like him for this dangerous bit) was facing the high wire. The ringmaster said the child would do a Tarzan swing out, in theory, to land on that wire. The problem is- he swung out at about a forty-five degree angle to the tightrope before letting go. I was already freaking out from being unstable at that height. Watching him begin to plummet on release added significantly to my condition. Then Morgan(?) vanished into thin air and appeared on the other platform. 

Ta Da!

I'm not sure if the magic trick only made me think I was in the high hammock, or the way it moved when I tried to inch to the edge and get down made me pass out, and someone carried me back to my seat.

Either way, the next thing I knew we were all in our seats again. Since everyone was in a similar terrified condition, I'm pretty confident the "trick" was hypnotizing us...

The only other option is the dream world had mastered teleportation, which in hindsight may be equally likely. 

Whatever the cause, we decided to leave our really high seats, and go home if there were no lower options available. Luckily (and I use the term loosely) there were many open seats down at the lowest level where the nine of us and Mickey Mouse were guided in. 

Yes, we are such Disney people that costume character Mickey travels with us now.

Mickey was guided into an earlier section of seats that we were where ALL of the costume characters, from a myriad of companies, were sitting. Mickey worked his way up to the top, passing characters from a myriad of franchises filling all the seats, and hugged Winnie the Pooh as he sat down. (It is possible that this was my sub conscious commenting on the loss of copyright issues... 

Or simply my sub conscious missing hugs from Pooh and Mickey.)

My family was incensed that Mickey left us flat to sit with his other costumed friends.

Which, I guess, is the natural reaction. 

We sat in our own section, down at the end, for the big "dragon finale." The sky above was an amazing, unspoiled sea of stars. Even in the dream this seemed improbable given the amount of light pollution around stadiums and I was pondering if it was a projection. I couldn't ponder too long as the dragons began and our section, along with all the others, began moving freely, quickly and somewhat jerkily, around the stadium. We could easily see the fireworks and balloons launching from the dragons. There were also those foldable, paper, kids party centerpieces fired out, which we not only saw but caught as they stressfully shot toward us at unsafe speeds. What we couldn't see were the dragons. Our lower quality seats kept moving just as they came into view. At first I thought it was carnival trickery and there were no dragons, just the stuff they were shooting. However, some of the movements did quickly reveal the dragons, also revealing that we ended up in really crappy seats. 

The movements continued as the circus finished and our individual seats separated, becoming dark ride vehicles. 

Well... more like "dark ride swings" because our legs hung freely in the air and the chairs were attached to a Peter Pan like track above. 

Yes, my fear of unsecured heights was thrown into overdrive for most of this adventure.  

My theory about the projected star scape turned out to be true as the "ride" took us through ENORMOUS circus tents as part of the attraction. 

Like, CRAZY ENORMOUS.

Like, the stadium was INSIDE the series of connected tents.

The design of the dark ride was awful. Not only was being uncomfortably wedged in while wobbling high in the air stressing me out, but my arms and legs kept banging into the props and settings of the attraction. The impacts were sometimes bending or knocking bits clean off, as I careened through the ride. 

Sections of the experience were "outside" (but still in the tent) and above various carnival rides and costumed characters. I fought my fear and tried to lean down and high five the old school, creepy looking Hamburglar, as he ascended a hill to his meet and greet location. (I missed and almost fell. AAAAH!) 

Yes, there was a mass of classic McDonaldland characters mixed in with the various other properties. 

Oddly, considering Anabelle and her cousins have been doing non stop inside jokes and suggestions that Veronica is Grimace for the past  couple of years, AND Anabelle and I went on a pilgrimage to try his limited edition shake...

(It tasted purple) 

The large purple one did not make an appearance. Perhaps they couldn't convince any dream extras to wear such an unwieldly costume.

The ride ended, bringing us all back down to earth. Once assembled the kids all RAN to be on the line to meet Hamburglar. 

There were two stress inducing problems with this goal.

The first issue is that which characters were in the meeting locations changed every five minutes or less. The lines were significantly longer than that, preventing any prediction of which character could be met. Which group the character came from that would be at the end of the line couldn't even be known, as there was no theming. Remember, there was an entire arena section of the characters to choose from.

The second issue were the lines were all gigantic, and intertwined with each other, forming a singular mob of people. This meant there was no way to tell what line one was on. At the same time we realized the character where the kids were trying to go was a guy in a, extremely shoddy hot dog costume, we also realized we were really on line for an extremely lame merry go round featuring flat wooden swans rolling on a hay covered ground.

The kids didn't want to do either of those things, and rightly so. They all ran off to play hide and seek in an area with a bunch of wood cut out set ups and props in a nearby tent. (Or a nearby section of tent. It was hard to tell where one ended and another began, the folds really mixed together.) 

Though I didn't notice it at the time, in retrospect, the area they ran to was like the Mickey Shorts room in MGM where the kids were excited for Potatoland. No wonder they wanted to go there.

Stress levels maximized, partially because we couldn't continuously see where all the kids went in the swirling mass of tent folds, (However they were all clearly in the Potatland section) but more so because all the other adults in my family were angry with me for taking everyone on the wrong line (which I did not) and therefore it was my fault the kids all ran off. 

(Looks like being the Where Will We Go Next Guy leaves some worry lines on my subconscious.) 

This is where I woke up, completely freaked out with my heart pounding only an hour or so after falling asleep. What started as a somewhat early night was turned into a very late one as I recovered.

Hey, you only have to read about them.

I have to live in the head that writes and performs them!