The Disney Reality

Chapter 6- The Basement

We snuck down the hall to the elevator and went in it to go down to the lobby. Once we reached it, the room was more eerie than it was in the daytime. The lights were dimmed to have the room be barely visible. The silence seemed to have echoed or maybe that was just my own mind creating the ambience. We walked towards the front desk and peered over to the other side. There was a notebook tucked away in a cubby behind the desk. We walked over the small push in door and Jamie picked it up. The light made it hard to see, but he was able to make out a few words. He reported to us that it was a sign in sheet. He then paused as we saw his jaw drop like he saw something unbelievable. Lisa asked him what was wrong. He stuttered out random words and letters until she took the paper from his hands and read it herself. She revealed to me that only our names were on the list from when we signed in two days ago. We were all certain that there were other residents here the day we came. Jamie suggested we look around the hotel and see if there was anyone still here. We agreed to do so and begun on the second floor. Each hallway was pitch black with only the white paintings of Disney characters appearing in the sea of blackness. Luckily, Lisa was smart enough to bring the glow sticks. She handed them to us and kept the blue one while Jamie had green and I had red. We walked down the seemingly everlasting hall to find that no one’s lights were on and there was no sounds coming from any of the rooms. No fans, no AC, no television...hell, I’d rather hear someone snoring than the eerie silence that surrounded us. We traveled up the stairs to each of the 15 floors and there was nothing. Nobody else besides us and whatever may lurk in the dark. We took the elevator back to the lobby but the elevator did not stop on the lobby. Instead, it took us down to the basement. We pressed the lobby button, but nothing happened. It didn’t even light up. We were stuck down in the cold, vacant, dark basement. Seeing how the elevator didn’t work, we ventured out in search of the stairs, which should have been near us, but wasn’t. There wasn’t even a sign leading to a staircase. We prayed that our glow sticks didn’t run out as we travelled uncharted territory. We saw things you’d usually find in a desolate place: used mechanicals, papers everywhere, broken devices, boxes of films and toys and practically everything ancient. We saw there were multiple rooms that were either locked or empty, but none were labeled. We kept looking around until we found a door that was unlocked. We slowly opened the creaking door until darkness revealed itself again. We held up our glow sticks, but even they weren’t able to light a pathway for us. We hesitantly crept into the large closet-room as we heard the faint creaks of the floor. Weirdly, it was the only room with wooden floors while the rest were tiled. As we walked in, Jamie hit his foot against something hard as he winced in pain. We turned around and looked down at his feet to see something with white wrapping around black. He leaned into it and told us it was a Mickey Mouse mascot head. He noticed that the eyes weren’t a normal color. They were crimson red instead of black and white. He stepped over it and looked back from time to time, knowing that in Disney World, anything was possible. Luckily, Lisa saw a light switch a few feet beside us. She shuffled to it and flipped it on as the darkness vanished and fluorescent lights filled the room. We surveyed the area to recognize that it was a mascot room. There were empty Disney suits everywhere from Mickey and the gang to Alice in Wonderland to Dumbo and even Lady and the Tramp suits. It was actually the coolest thing about the situation. We saw just how many characters Walt Disney had birthed into the universe. Though we were on a hunt for the exit, we thought we might as well have a little bit of fun by trying on the massive suits. Jamie wore a Cheshire Cat suit while Lisa wore a Lady suit. I wore one of my favorite characters, Simba the Lion. We acted as though we weren’t stuck in a cold dark basement and let our imaginations run wild by acting out our favorite scenes and being effervescent.