I returned today from my much needed vacation to Orlando (not exactly my destination of choice, but my daughter loves disney world). It was not particularly relaxing, but it was a lot of fun and it was nice to get out of New York for a bit and have an excuse not to turn on my computer (I still did, of course, but only twice..shhh). i come back with ten recommendations:

1. Unless your child (or you...for some reason known only to yourself) HAVE to go to the Magic Kingdom....STAY AWAY. We went on a Wednesday (supposedly the least crowded day) and waited on a two hour line to meet Ariel (yes..that would be the Little Mermaid). Which leads to me to my second point...

2. Don't wait on line to meet some stupid character. If you don't suggest it to your child...and you carefully avoid the character viewing areas...you can escape this time-waisting nonsense. Its like sitting on Santa's lap at Christmas, chances are your child will either be too young and be scared shit-less or too old and not really want to do it anyway.

3. Bring someone to babysit, at least for one night. Pleasure Island is a nice escape. Eight Clubs for $21, or you can just buy alcohol on the streets of the place, pay no admission fee and smoke while you drink...woohooo. And the parking is free (unlike everywhere else at Disney.

4. Epcot is the only disney park for adults, no matter what the advertisements say. Not a lot of stuff for kids, but the new Nemo ride was my daughter's favorite ride of the whole trip. And you can walk around and buy beer, wine and food from each themed country area. Plus its pretty and we went twice and it was not nearly as crowded as the other parks.

5. MGM is crap, don't even bother.

6. At Disney, USE the child-swap for rides your little one can't get on. Go up twice so that you (who must watch the kid) and those you are with can get on the ride via the fast pass line. You're not supposed to do this, but if you go up yourself and then send someone else, they will not remember you. Why wait on long lines? You're being punished enough for lugging that huge stroller around.

7. GO TO OLD TOWN. Not well known among the tourists, but they have cheap alcohol, nice rides (for kids and adults) and everything is much cheaper with short (basically non-existent) lines. They also have restaurants that you don't need a three month reservation to get into.

8. SeaWorld has free beer all day..'nuff said.

9. Don't buy the rip-off stuff at Disney. You can buy a Mickey Mouse or whatever for much cheaper outside of the park at one of the huge stores near Old Town (the strip their and on International Drive remind me of Vegas).

10. Stay at a hotel with a nice pool if you have kids. They will play there instead of dragging you to the parks every waking moment.

I will probably rest up from my vacation over the weekend before beginning some serious work on two projects in serious need of my attention. The first is an interactive installation I am doing with Jeff Gray, Steven Jackson and Dan Phiffer for display in the Contemporary Art Museum Windows in New Orleans (more on this to come, I've been a little out of the loop this week of course). The second is the development of new marketing strategies for freeFormed, along with three weeks of some serious bug fixing in preparation for an official (meaning widely announced) launch at the end of June.

One tired kid: