Seriously, stop reading if you are not a terrible person.
Fine, you've been warned.
I wake up with a start and don't immediately recognize my surroundings. An alarm is going off somewhere and it appears to be midday.
Eventually I realize I'm sleeping on the floor of my bedroom. This doesn't necessarily surprise me, I do this quite frequently when I go to bed drunk, worried that I'll sleep through my iPhone's incessant screeching.
Fortunately, when I scurry to the kitchen I see that it's only 8am. Unfortunately, I realize that the pizza I through in the oven at midnight has now been cooking for 8 hours. The smell is bad, but the house didn't burn down.
It's a Friday and I'm supposed to go to Disneyland today. Not only that, but I'm supposed to dress in a costume inspired by Winnie the Pooh. It's a thing called Disney Bounding that I don't really understand. But I'm a frat star so I've got like 30 pairs of maroon polos and matching maroon Sperry's. If the people at work didn't already want to fuck me, this should do the trick.
I hop in the car, still drunk, wondering why there haven't been PSAs made about hungover driving. Surely after my three bottles of Malbec at the Borns concert last night I would still blow above a .08, it takes a moment for me to realize that this probably isn't a major problem in most areas of the country as most 29 year olds are probably not still binge drinking on Thursday nights.
I pulled into Disney's Grand Californian Resort and was informed that my suite would be ready in a few minutes and that my group was already assembled in the lobby.
Full disclosure: I was a tiny bit disappointed to be here. This was my work's writer's retreat; an annual trip for all the writers and the assistants. The previous three trips had been to Vegas and had included airfare, a room at Encore, shows, dinners, bottles, basically everything I would do if I didn't make $700 a week. Conversely, Disney is one of my favorite things in the world. My father took the family 15 times to Disney World when I was a little kid, I decided to make the best of it.
But then again there is a difference between going to Disney with Lynn Moeller of Gladbrook, Iowa and going on a several thousand dollar VIP tour, so let's just breeze over the highlights shall we?
When you get a VIP tour, you do not wait in lines.
And I'm not talking like the Fast Pass shortened line...
I'm not talking about the Make a Wish kids with cancer lines...
You know what our tour guides said to the cancer kids? FUCK OUTTA HERE CANCER KIDS, LET THE RICH PEOPLE PASS.
You know those shitty animatronic rides from the 60s that I loved as a kid growing up? Mr. Toad, Peter Pan, Pinocchio, Snow White? We knocked those out in the first 15 minutes. I also realized that most of those rides are actually an allegory for getting your children to behave. Speed in a car? Going to hell. Eat the apple (sin!) Coma. Go to a carnival? TURN INTO A DONKEY, GET THROWN IN A CAGE AND THEN GET EATEN BY A FUCKING SPERM WHALE.
It's a little intense to process Disney's preachiness when you just venmo'd someone $200 for 8ball emoji and beer, wine, gun, cigarette, brunette raising her hand.
After all the kids rides we upgraded to Haunted Mansion, Splash Mountain, Pirates and Indiana Jones...whatever, you saw my snap story. It was fucking lit.
We lunched, we California Adventured (they serve beer!!!) and then we got ready for the main event, dinner at Disney's exclusive Club 33.
During the break before dinner I was able to kindly talk the room service into ringing me up for a half dozen beers but categorize them as "miscellaneous food item" on my itemized receipt, because I'm a fucking pro. Thus with a good buzz and a sport coat that I probably haven't dry cleaned in like three wrap parties, I made my way down to the lobby.
For those of you that don't know, Club 33 is a private dining club with a $25,000 initiation fee, a $10,000 annual minimum and a closed wait list. It is one of the hardest dinner reservations in the world. I've flown international on a private jet, I've skied the Swiss Alps, hell I've done a lot of shit that a middle class kid from Indiana has no business doing.
Club 33 is my crowning achievement.
Located at 33 Royal Street on the Disneyland property adjacent to the Bayou district, Club 33 is famous for being the only place in Disneyland proper that one can enjoy an adult beverage...and I enjoyed about 12 of them.
The first thing you see when you walk in is a large New Orleans style courtyard, with a cascading staircase to the restaurant above. Check out my Insta if you want to see it (or my sick green pants.)
When it's time for your dinner reservation you are escorted into the lodge, an elegant oak building that has the feeling of English aristocrats that have just returned from a fox hunt. It is simultaneously modern yet with hints of Victorian era London. I decided immediately that I would drink Mint Juleps for the entirety of the evening because I feel like if I ever killed a fox it would be the proper celebratory drink.
I often balk at the idea of a mixologist, but the guys at the club 33 bar (and trust me, it is all men) earn that title. They pour cocktails with the precision I would expect a surgeon to use when removing a cancerous tumor, it is insane. As an alcoholic, I didn't enjoy the fact that it took him 15 minutes to pour every one of my drinks, but as a guy that loves the show How Things Work, I was spellbound.
Dinner follows drinks and we are escorted to a new room, this is the restaurant I suppose. I look at the menu, a 7 course affair. I don't think I've ever had 7 courses. I've been to fucking Alinea and even that was like just 5. I didn't even understand most of the items listed, I just kept asking 'what is the chef recommending tonight?' like I'm some big fucking foodie.
"And will you be trying the wine pairing tonight?"
I panicked for a second because I'm not quite sure what that meant. Fortunately one of the more cultured people at my table asked what the pour was because apparently that is a good question to ask when a wine pairing is involved.
"3 ounces per course."
I did some quick math and realized that would only be 21 ounces for the night, or three total glasses...woefully insufficient.
I take a quick glance at the girl next to me who was apparently thinking the same thing.
"We'll just stick to bottles please."
I'll be honest with you, I double fisted the whole night with a $400 /bottle red and my mint juleps. There was fried zucchini, some sort of soup, salad, a lobster ravioli, filet mignon, seared scallops, MY GOD IT WAS AMAZING.
At one point I stepped into the restroom and I realized immediately why Republicans are so smug. It was like a country club locker room, but better.
If you have all of this it's really hard to give a shit about anyone else. Because for people at the top, nothing really matters. I was literally laughing with people about the military coup in Turkey DURING DINNER. Because I am a terrible person. Whatever.
After dinner we went back into the park and skipped more Make-a-Wish kids to go ride Space Mountain like 10 times and then I retreated to my room to order more 'miscellaneous food items' and play Pokemon with all of the feral children roaming the streets of Downtown Disney.
TL;DR Disneyland was 1000 times better than Vegas could have ever been and I'm very blessed to have the opportunities to do cool things like this. Perhaps I'm actually making headway in this industry. It helps to have a famous and incredibly generous boss.
I mean that right there would have been a pretty good weekend, but it didn't stop there.
Saturday morning I had a large brunch and went down my resort's water slide a few times before going to another WASPy oasis, Manhattan Beach.
After taking in a few hours of the AVP tournament next to the pier (it's free and there is a ton of SWAG, you should go!) we took the crew to a beach house (!!!) and proceeded to drink a gallon of Fireball.
Now this is where the story goes off the rails a little bit.
One of my drinks may or may not have been spiked with LSD, but I'm fairly certain something informed my actions the rest of the day, because after this party we went to a bar (Shellbacks) where I spent thirty dollars putting on an hour long Justin Bieber playlist.
At this point I blacked out.
But when I woke up a few hours later I had a girl in my bed.
Again, potential accidental ingestion of LSD.
Or maybe that's just me being awesome.
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