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.“The Disniacs are crazy, but they aren’t the dangerous ones,” Orville warned in his most ominous voice.“You gotta watch out for the Collectors.”“Collectors?” I struggled to keep a straight face.“They sound terrifying.”“Don’t underestimate the Collectors! They come to the park with oversized handbags, which they fill with Tomorrowland napkins and mustard-stained hot dog wrappers, and whatever else they can pick out of your pockets for their coffee parlor scrapbooks.They wear Dalmatian fishing hats and Tinker Bell charm bracelets.You may not recognize them at first because they look like the Disniacs, but look a little closer and you’ll see the materialism shining through.They’re snobby.They know the birthdays of the characters and quote lines from the movies.If you don’t know how many gallons of Powerade it would take to fill the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea lagoon, they’ll openly mock you.Then, they’ll turn their backs and shake their heads like the whole world is going to hell.”I laughed at Orville’s description, but once I knew they were out there, I saw Collectors everywhere, and they creeped me out.The Collectors were souvenir hounds.They wanted photos from every angle.They wanted the pen out of my pocket and a lock of Minnie’s fur.One Collector would hand Tigger three books and request signatures.“One for me, one for my niece, and one for my poor mother, who couldn’t make the trip from Albuquerque, bless her heart.” A week later, two of those books would turn up on some online auction site with a minimum bid of $200.One morning, the skies were a little more overcast than usual, so I wore my Animal Kingdom bush hat.Soon, however, the clouds had burned off, and I found myself sweating profusely.I still had another hour in the Hundred Acre Wood kiosk, so I took the hat off and set it on the railing behind me, where it wouldn’t be in my shot.It wasn’t long before I was approached by an older woman, who asked if I knew the legend of the Animals That Never Were.She had a fire in her eyes, which I identified as the Disniac glow, so I indulged her, patiently sitting through her lecture.She explained that Animal Kingdom was originally supposed to have a themed section with imaginary creatures: unicorns, dragons—in fact, the popular Dueling Dragons ride at Universal’s Islands of Adventure was originally supposed to find a home at Disney, but budgets had been overextended already and the project went on hold.I thanked her for the information, waved good-bye, and returned to my photography.When I turned around again, a photograph later, the woman was gone.And so was my bush hat.The Tigger in the kiosk clutched his belly and shook in silent laughter.He pointed his orange finger in my face and bounced up and down, the enormous grin frozen on his stupid, fuzzy face.He cornered me backstage.“Dude, you got snaked!” He was calling himself Crooze that week, wearing earphones around his neck and BluBlockers on top of his head.“You put your hat down and home-girl just snagged it, like that!”“Yeah.” I slung my camera over my shoulder and pushed it behind me, away from his enthusiastic bouncing.He put the BluBlockers over his eyes, then pushed them down his nose.“Yo, I’m the mack in the driver’s seat.Got tiger head and tiger feet,” he rapped.“Make the ladies’ hearts skip a beat when they see me bouncing down the street!” He pushed the glasses back up on top of his head.“Hey, I hear you’re tappin’ Jessie.That is ill!” He put his fist up for a bump.“We went out a few times,” I said.“Nothing serious.”He pulled off the BluBlockers and headphones and picked up the orange head.“Very cool, my man.” He leaned in close and lowered his voice.“I wasn’t sure which team you played for, you know?”“Okay.”“A’ight!” He gave me another fist bump and put on the Tigger head.“Tig to the izzo!” he shouted and bounded out the door.He was annoying, but he was a damn good Tigger, naturally animated and spry.Onstage, he was such a ham that people wanted to pose for pictures with only him, while Pooh shambled off to the side to get out of the way
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