Disney World. Disneyland on steroids, 4 separate parks, an entire transportation hub and system, multiple resorts within 33,100 acres of land, and the hot and humid Florida climate add up to an impressive paradise. The rides are astoundingly themed and the thrill rides have just the right amount of thrill, so no matter your fear level, you can bear it. The scenery is beautiful and is just as grand and majestic as in the stories and movies, and every single park has their specialty must-go show: a live performance, one with fireworks, a parade, or even a light-show! Each park has its own unique feature that will keep you playing or watching until the park closes. Or maybe even after that, with the after-hour tickets! The only fault to this seemingly flawless paradise are the crowds. I can easily state that even on weekdays which are not holidays, there are swarms of people in the park. The most popular rides are jam-packed, as are the shows. I can tell you this: If you don’t go to a show early, you may not be able to get into the theater. And all of the roller coaster rides’ wait times are sure to be more than one hour if you don’t go early in the morning or late at night. But on holidays, there is no avail. Hordes of people clog the park, and you won’t stand a chance to catch multiple rides. You would be lucky to get 3 a day. But if you travel at the right time, you might stand a chance. According to an anonymous local Uber driver, January and February are just the right months to go. Since it’s after Christmas, those large swarms of people are not likely to come back so early. Also, the relentless Florida heat lets go during this time. A helpful tip for any of the lands you may visit is to download the My Disney Experience app, which helps you check ride times and lines remotely, which can prove vital in planning your day. Finally, staying at either Disney Hotel Swan or Dolphin will grant you one hour of early access, allowing you to get to the rides that you want ahead of the crowd. So, with the vacation month planned, it’s time to explore the parks. Hollywood Studios has been the most recent park to get an update, with Black Spire Outpost, or as I like to say, Star Wars Land. There are two new attractions, Smugglers Run and Rise of the Resistance. I recommend Rise of the Resistance first thing in the morning, and Smuggler’s Run later, but you should request for the role of pilot, or else the simulator ride is no fun. I also recommend Toy Story Mania, which is an extremely fun arcade shooter game. The Rock and Roll Roller Coaster is also a scary G-force roller coaster that goes upside down at some parts, and finally the Hollywood Tower of Terror, which is a drop tower. As a pedestrian in the Hollywood Studios said: “It feels like you’re one of those cartoon characters in those comedy shows, falling from [the sky] as the floor disappears!” And it certainly does! As for the shows over there, the best by far is Fantasia, which is a live show involving fire on water, Mickey Mouse, and all of the Disney classics characters and sing-alongs. Another great show is Indiana Jones. You see how they made some of the most iconic scenes in the movies. Be sure to come 15-20 minutes early though, or else you might be left with limited-view seating, or even not be let in! Finally, Slinky Dog Dash is a ride that I do not recommend for 100+ minute wait times. This ride’s line can be deceiving, with me personally spending roughly over 3 hours in the line of this ride. However, to avoid this disaster from occurring, you should try the longer wait-time rides at night, especially the popular ones such as Slinky Dog Dash, Toy Story Mania, Rise of the Resistance, and the Hollywood Tower of Terror. This can enable you to avoid the unreasonably long wait times of the midday and still enjoy some of the best attractions in the park. The second theme park I’m featuring is Animal Kingdom, which in my opinion, is highly underrated. The reason I’m saying this is really because most kids, or people, don’t really appreciate the beauty of the natural world, which this park amplifies. This park, somewhat like EPCOT, is based on the sights, sounds, smells and feels of the park. Not exactly its rides. But I’m not saying that its rides are bad either! For a truly natural ride, you should take the Kilimanjaro Safari! It has a relatively short wait time in the morning, and its tour of the African Savannah is a good chance to take photos as well as educational because of its tour guide’s commentary. Another great one is DINOSAUR, which is the highlight of Dinoland U.S.A. It is an open ended roller-coaster-type ride, so if you have any bags, you better hold them tight! Luckily, it doesn’t go that fast, it rather just shakes you left to right. However, the crown jewel of the entire park, or in my opinion, the entire Disney World! Avatar: Flight of Passage! This ride is a thrilling 4D simulator that puts you on a banshee, or a flying animal in Pandora, the imaginary world of Avatar. You ride on it as you explore the wonders of Pandora! Nothing can prepare you for this ride. The sights, smells and sounds make it a truly 4D experience. The queue is dotted with all sorts of scenery that will keep you captivated during the wait. Do this nearer to the end of the day, because even in the morning, the wait times exceed 75 minutes. But remember. This ride is a must-go. Now, with Animal Kingdom, there aren’t really any nighttime shows, but
non-literary genre
Live Fast, Die Young, Be Wild, and Have Fun: Chloe Ruan, 13, Reviews Lana Del Rey’s Born to Die
It all started during the summer of 2021, in July. July was for swimming. It was for sleeping in, playing outside, going to the Alamo and the lakes and wherever you wanted because you had all the free time in the world now. It was for getting away with watching TV-14 National Geographic documentaries on sharks (it was Shark Week) and seeing The Little Mermaid II for the first time — both of which I watched in a fit of hazy boredom one otherwise unremarkable morning. July was for falling down a rabbit hole of melancholia and intoxicatingly tragic glamor. It was for coming across the album that will forever be engraved in my memory: Born To Die (2012). I cannot overstate how strange the cover looks even now. The singer seems plastic, with her honey-brown hair set in perfect waves around her symmetrical face and a red bikini top underneath a white collared shirt. Her pink lips are pursed, and her eyelids are crescents of peach-colored skin among mascara-thick eyelashes and carefully-sculpted brows. There’s a barely-discernible car and some nondescript fences and trees in the background. Her name hovers in the cloud-dotted sky in white picket-fence letters — LANA DEL REY, while at the bottom, in smaller letters of the same font, is the album name. It’s breathtakingly beautiful, but it’s always disturbed me, too. I was twelve when I first laid eyes on it that July. She looks like an alien, I’d thought. Born To Die. How do I describe Born To Die? The songs are dreamy and sentimental, bittersweet as summer. But it all feels right. Lana’s voice contains pure, soulful yearning, with an old-Hollywood, American-summer quality and pretty crying notes interspersed with smooth, swooning tones. She often sings about loss and hope, love and abuse, romance, friendship, fame, depression, and mortality. She knows that “sometimes love is not enough and the road gets tough” and that ultimately we were born to die — but she also knows that the streets are paved with gold and that life is capable of being sweet like cinnamon. Born To Die was the first record I ever bought. It was the entire reason I even got a record player. Opening it after returning from Target was like walking through the pearly gates — like unleashing the power of the universe. In some songs she sounds like warm caramel, singing about her love, life, and American dreams. In others, she throws herself into the whole hopeless heartbreak-themed persona — she is, after all, the self-described “gangsta Nancy Sinatra.” She’s Miss Daytona, the scarlet starlet, Elvis Presley’s daughter (she says it herself: “Elvis is my daddy, Marilyn’s my mother / Jesus is my bestest friend”). She sings miserably about how she wishes things were different (“Dark Paradise”), describes her underage escapades at boarding school (“This Is What Makes Us Girls”), and wonders why she’s unhappy even though her life is perfect (“Million Dollar Man”). The album is partially autobiographical, too — in the same way some of Elvis’s last songs (“Moody Blue,” “Unchained Melody,” etc.) express the tragedy and depression that surrounded his final years, Lana sings about the experiences she’s had in her two-and-a-half decades of life. She knows what it’s like to be a rebel — to be in bad relationships, to be so emotionally drained that she just doesn’t care anymore, to be hurt by someone she sees as the Messiah, to have to leave behind everything she’s ever known. To get into trouble a lot, to be taken advantage of, to go through a philosophical crisis at a young age, to get famous when it’s least expected. Come and take a walk on the wild side, let me kiss you hard in the pouring rain . . . you like your girls insane. During the summer of 2021, I was under the impression that I was cursed. All my best friends always ended up moving away and leaving me alone. I missed my people, my childhood. Nothing had been the same since I’d finished elementary school — in other words, I was mourning the past. And in Born To Die, so was Lana. I felt I was the sad queen of a bygone era, of a golden age that everyone but me had moved on from. And Lana felt that way, too. She and I were the same. To me, a little twelve-year-old reminiscing on my old life, Born To Die was everything. It still is everything. It’s summer, it’s love, it’s nostalgia. It’s a reminder of the best time of my entire life. And so there will forever be a special place in my heart for the blessing that is Born To Die.
Smartphone Addiction: One Middle Schooler’s Perspective
When I look at my classmates’ faces, absorbed in their smartphones, they look eerily expressionless, even hollow. Their eyes look tired and droopy; their faces look drained and sulking. They look like they have no choice. It is almost as if they are compelled by some unseen force to use every second of the time limit their parents have set on their devices. I cannot help but think of them as stuck in quicksand. They are not even trying to get out of it! I think my fellow classmates, and most middle school students and teens, are addicted to smartphones. Smartphones have taken over our society. According to 2019 data, 53% of American children own a smartphone by the time they are 11 years old. 84% of teenagers own a smartphone. I have read many news reports in which researchers claim that smartphones can be fun and educational for children and teens and help them socialize with others. As a middle school student who sees the negative impacts of excessive smartphone usage in school, I strongly disagree with these claims. First, excessive smartphone usage causes students to have a distractive personality. The constant buzzing of new messages turns the student’s attention toward the phone and away from the teacher. Students tend to lose their attention easily and cannot focus on what is being taught in class. Even when their phones are not buzzing, their attention seems to be directed toward the phone. Smartphones and other devices are designed to be addictive. For example, in many video games, players are shown their own and their competitors’ scores. Children want to beat other players’ scores. Children may not know this, but their ambition to beat others in the game causes them to keep on playing the game. Sometimes children lose sleep over games, which can be very harmful to their health. Another example of how smartphones are designed to be addictive is the way the apps notify the users when their post has been liked or commented on. It makes children feel pressured to keep on posting more pictures so that people continue to like their pictures. No wonder the children in my school are hooked. Second, smartphones can really hurt children’s mental health. Children can lose self-esteem because of hurtful things on the internet. They can fall behind in their studies and suffer academically. They are so distracted that they are not able to keep up with the work in school, which affects their grades. This can cause them to be depressed. Children who are lonely in school turn to their smartphones to distract themselves or make friends online, but that does not seem to help. When children are on their phones so much, they don’t socialize with people around them. As a result, they have trouble working in teams. They are unable to ask for help when they need it. They are unable to develop healthy relationships with others. This causes them to plunge into their devices even more; the cycle goes on. Parents must take the responsibility for these consequences because they are the ones who choose to give their children smartphones. Some parents think that by setting time limits and parental controls they can control their child(ren)’s phone use. I think this just makes things worse. Students in my school use all the time they have on their smartphones until their time limit goes off. They seem to be waiting for that time in the day when they can use their smartphones; they are the first thing they reach for at lunchtime. This machine seems to immerse them. Sometimes I imagine them turning into a machine. Why do parents give their children smartphones? This question has been haunting me and I think I finally know the answer now. Parents want to have a good relationship with their children, so they give them everything they want to make them happy. Parents may also think that their child is growing up and they deserve to have a smartphone. It is possible that their child is nagging them to have a smartphone because their friends have it. Some parents want their children to be able to communicate with them or contact them. Some others may think that there are many advantages to using smartphones, including playing games, socializing, having fun, and learning. Yet others may think their children are not susceptible to these kinds of behaviors. Others might think the disadvantages are minor. I do not think any of these are good enough reasons to give your child a smartphone because of all the severely negative impacts it can have on a child. In my experience, most children my age do not know how to control their smartphone usage. I only know of one student in my class who has a smartphone but does not bring it to school. At home, she uses it to listen to music while doing homework. I suspect that she is the exception. It breaks my heart to see children not being children, and students not being students. Children are missing social and academic experiences in school. They are getting into patterns of behavior that are hurting them now and will hurt them in the future. I urge parents not to give their children smartphones at such a young age. Give children their childhood back.
