What can I say?  We love Disney World.  I think it opened in 1971 and we took our kids in 1973.  Since then, we have gone over a dozen times.  We have taken our children and parents.  We have had family reunions involving four generations and lately, it’s been just me and Carole.

It’s nice to go someplace that is clean and everyone is friendly and helpful.  Think about that.  It’s the Disney philosophy.  No arrogant clerks.  You never get the feeling that someone wants to pass you on just to get rid of you.  Sweet.  I find myself smiling a lot.  Even when I see young parents with three worn out, cranky kids, I smile and say to myself, thank goodness they’re not ours.

The last two times we have gone down, we have combined Disney World with a two-day golf school at David Leadbetter’s Champion Gate.  It’s only about four miles down I-4.  While at golf school, we stay at Shades of Green, the military recreation center at Disney World.  And Missy, our daughter who lives in Jacksonville, came down to keep Carole company.

One of the neat things about the Leadbetter Academy is they let me pick the dates for my instruction.  Then, they post the dates on their website and fill up the class (four students per instructor).  Maybe this was the one time that the economic downturn helped me.  It turned out that I was the only student who signed up.  The class only took about five hours  each day, rather than eight, but I was receiving one-on-one instruction.  Not bad.

Andrew Park, my instructor, video taped everything I did.  We spent quite a bit of the first day reminding me of what I had learned and forgotten two years before.  That’s a hell of a note.  I won’t forget again.  We also spent a lot of time in the classroom looking at the videos.  Andrew would set up a split screen with me on one side and Tiger Woods or Ernie Ells on the other.  Now, I ask you, is that fair?  Once you got past the fact that we were all swinging from the right side, the similarities vanished.  Oh yes, the ball looked about the same.

The split screen is an excellent way to observe what Tiger was doing wrong.  Oh, I’m sorry, I was referring to Tiger Rice.  Andrew wanted me to be tall like Ernie and Tiger.  So did I.  So did my football coaches.  It just ain’t going to happen.  When I was growing up, my Mom told me that if I ate my salad, I would grow tall.  What a crock.  I finally figured out that Andrew wanted me to stand taller over the ball.  “Stand tall like Tiger.”  I got it, but it took me much too long.

I do love the game.  The Washington Post, for Valentine’s Day, asked people to express love in six words.  All I could think of was, “It’s curling, curling.  It dropped in!”

The down side of a golf school is it will take me two or three months to be hitting the ball as well as I was before I went to school.  But the thought of hitting the ball farther, straighter and stopping the ball on the green like a “dropped cat” keeps me going.  Oh, I forgot to mention.  I finished first in my class.

For the last five or six trips, we have obtained a Disney package that included everything.  Room, meals, recreation (spelled GOLF- I played twice), transportation and entry to all the parks.  We also have been staying in the concierge building which provides breakfast, late morning and early afternoon snacks and appetizers between five and seven o’clock.  We seem to be paying for a lot of duplication and we plan to take a look at how to be more frugal.  Disney World has great restaurants.  We particularly like Narcoossee’s,  located at the boat house at the Grand Floridian.  But let’s face it.  You can only eat so much and with everything free, it becomes a task.  Eating should never become a task.

Because all the help is so polite, it’s fun to watch them struggle with stupid questions.  Stating, “That’s really dumb” is not an option.  For example, there is a launch that takes passengers from the Magic Kingdom to the Grand Floridian and then, on to the Polynesian Village.  We always stay at the Polynesian Village.  As the launch was pulling into the Grand Floridian, I asked the captain if the boat was going to take me to Fort Wilderness.  I could just see the captain mentally racing through his etiquette book.  Just saying, “Didn’t you read the signs before you got on the boat?” wasn’t acceptable.  Also, after having one of the concierges change a few reservations for us, she asked for our room number.  I told her we weren’t staying in the concierge building.  The look on her face was priceless.  Then, Carole gave her the room number.  The concierge later told me that she would have handled the matter politely because that was what was expected of her.

This is the first year that I can remember when I didn’t buy a Disney T-shirt, golf shirt or tie.  You can only wear so many and I never dispose of any of them.  Also, I received a Leadbetter pullover and cap (part of the goodie bag).  The “free” goodie bag comes with the not-so-free lessons.  I did buy an Uncle Sam stove pipe hat.  When I wore it I “stood taller.”  I was almost as tall as Tiger.  Andrew would have been proud of me.