Cinderella's Castle

As a freshman, planning Spring Break was prominent in my mind starting from around Thanksgiving. It was a chance for me to abandon the cold Ithaca weather and travel with my new Cornell friends. After intense research, typical arguments over hotels, airfare and location, and convincing my parents, my Spring Break was set.

We were going to stay at the luxurious Breezes Bahamas. The pictures were promising, the food at our super all-inclusive resort looked yummy, the pool was gorgeous, and we could learn to be trapeze artists. All our food and drinks were covered in a flat fee — life was good.

In anxious anticipation, one of my four friends who were accompanying me on this trip decided to look a little deeper into this Breezes hotel. A little research led us to some unsightly pictures of leaky faucets in the hotel rooms, hair in the pool, and cracked tiles in the bathrooms. Sigh. But we were still going, it was paid for, and spending an additional five minutes in the snow would have driven us to insanity.

In the Bahamas, we were greeted with rum punch at the airport and our cab driver gossiped to us about Anna Nicole Smith’s final resting place. Everything seemed picture perfect. We checked in, lugging our suitcases down the hall to our rooms — which were dismal, but I didn’t see any health violations, so I was relieved We wrote everything off to “how much time are we really going to spend in the room?” and went on our way.

Exploring the pool, food places and the bar (legal!) made us feel a mix of emotions. The pool was frankly sub-par compared to the pictures we had seen and what we were used to on family vacations. The food was disgusting — my first thought was “I am going to be eating a lot of French fries on this trip,” followed by “Why would they serve jerk chicken over chicken fingers?”

But the bar, with friendly bartenders happy to serve Americans who were only legal south of the border, was glorious. Chalk that up to the best part of super-inclusive hotels.

Points off to Breezes, however, for false advertising of delicious food and clean pools.

Freshman year, the Bahamas was perfect. It was full of Cornell students, providing a level of comfort outside of the country. There was freedom and a free-flowing bar. MTV was fortunately absent, and I thankfully witnessed just one wet t-shirt contest. (I am still disturbed to this day.)

Some things in this world, however, are scarier than wet t-shirts.

Spring Break has become so much more than a fun week away from the stressful college world. Mexico, which has been a popular destination for years — Cabo San Lucas, Acapulco and Cancun have been among college students’ favorites for years — has recently been called out as a travel alert by the U.S. Department of State.

Is drinking legally and dancing with the devil really worth risking your life? A committee of the House Homeland Security panel noted that there have been over 1,000 deaths on the U.S.–Mexico border in 2009.

By now — with Spring Break ’09 over and done — the decisions have been made and hopefully everyone returned safely, but I would guess a lot of people went along with their trips because the plane tickets and hotel rooms had already been booked before the government issued all these warnings.

My Bahamian adventure was two years ago. This spring break, I chose to go a little tamer — venturing no further than the Mexico Pavilion in Disney World’s Epcot Center. If in 2007 I was trying to be a cool 21 (read: could drink legally) in the Bahamas, for 2009 I wanted nothing more to be a sweet six-year-old. Where better to do that than in Orlando, Fla?

Disney provided a stark contest to the Bahamas, obviously. The only rowdy drinking witnessed was of Drink-Around-The-World at Epcot on St. Patrick’s Day. The only wet t-shirts I saw were on the small children cooling off in the jumping-water areas Disney provides. The food was not free, but grossly over-priced — but obviously much tastier.

The thrills in Disney were of a roller coasters-and-elevators-that-drop-13-stories sort. Quite different from the excitement in Nassau where nightly concerns involved avoiding getting kidnapped (and ripped off) by those sketchy cab drivers.

Beyond the obvious differences between Disney and The Bahamas, I expected the economy to play a huge factor in my vacation. In 2007, economic recession was a term I would have maybe associated with the 1920s. In 2009, it is an everyday part of life.

Despite this, Disney World was overflowing with people. The crowd in The Bahamas was college co-eds and college wannabes — one certain group of tattooed men with the forever symbol on their lower back explained to me that they ventured to a different spring break hot spot each March. The people traipsing all over Magic Kingdom were families, mostly families that looked best in their XXL Disney World t-shirts and not shirtless on the white sand Bahamian beaches.

Perhaps Disney World was full of all these people because of the escape it provides. On my four-day hopper pass into the Disney World parks it said: “Where the glass slipper always fits.” We are all craving that fantasy — to indulge in that for a week and forget about Madoff, AIG and the Dow Jones kept all those people somewhat sane. Obviously waiting 120 minutes for Soarin’ at Epcot (for those people who couldn’t get there at 9 a.m. like myself) doesn’t bring out a person’s most sane side, but it sure beats watching CNBC.

You wouldn’t realize Disney attendance is supposedly down or notice the company’s alleged job cuts. Disney “cast members” still populate every corner on Main Street USA selling Minnie Mouse ears to eager Americans, eager to step into the magic. Disney does a fantastic job of masking economic problems, just like they stealthily cover up any injuries in the parks. Disney works hard at making sure each and every person leaves with a smile on their face. Isn’t that what Spring Break should be about?