Mickey Mouse and Watches

This is not a history of the Mickey Mouse Watch, this is my story. This is the story of me taking three watches to Disney World last week. At first, I had planned to take two, the orange-dialed Orient Mako and the blue-dialed Vostok Amphibia, but since the Vostok is my newest watch and I hadn’t taken it off, except to fondle it, since I got it, I decided I’d only bring the Vostok and see how much I could beat it up in the place where magic never ends.

I mentioned this plan to my brother, also a watch freak, who agreed, “Yes, you should only take one watch: the Orient.” With the guilt heavily in place — you see, he recommended the Mako to me in the first place, and his own personally modded Amphibia turned out to be a dud that stops for several minutes at a time while he’s wearing it, and so he resents mine, which only gains 7–15 secs. per day, far besting the declared daily rate for the movement (-20/+60 secs. per day) — I flip-flopped and decided to bring both. And since I was now bringing two, I figured I might as well bring the new Casio that tells the temperature, barometric readings and my altitude so I can know exactly how friggin’ hot it gets in Mickey Mouse town.

Since it had now been awhile since I’d worn the Mako — and frankly it’s the only watch I’ll ever really need, it really is an outstanding watch for any amount of money — and had now wound and set it, I wore it for the six-hour drive in the family truckster. The following day was my oldest girl’s birthday, and she chose Disney’s Animal Kingdom for our day’s adventures. Given where we were headed, I wore camo shorts and a bright, but not blaze, orange t-shirt. Hey, guess who has a watch with a dial to match that! Besides having water resistance to a depth of 200 meters, a scratch-resistant mineral glass crystal and astoundingly accurate timekeeping, that orange-dialed watch looks great whether it matches my day’s costume or provides contrast to it. While no one complimented my bold timepiece that day, I did get two compliments on my dip-dyed blue hair the next day!

I tried once again to wear the orange Mako with the blue NATO strap I got recently because blue and orange are complimentary colors and because I thought it would go nicely with my (at the time) deep blue hair, but the strap is still too stiff. So, for vacation comfort’s sake, I wore it on the tried and true James Bond-inspired grey and black striped strap. A little boring at this point, but still looks great.

After most of a day at the Animal Kingdom we returned to the Disney resort hotel, which sports a main pool with a 120-foot water slide alongside an Aztec pyramid and all sorts of other amenities, including a pool-side bar that makes a margarita with crushed fresh blueberries, mango juice and other delicious tropical flavorings besides tequila. Since the water slide was nowhere near the 200-meter water resistant rating — and in the opposite direction — I wore the Mako at least a dozen times down the slide. The tough diver watch came out unscathed, as expected. I even shot a video of the watch on my wrist as I slid down the chute. Yes, I know that’s just plain silly. (I did say watch freak, didn’t I?)

After my shower and with a wet nylon watch band, I put the Orient watch aside to dry and put the Vostok back on. Since the Amphibia’s movement allows hand winding, and since I’ve been logging it’s accuracy nightly with the WatchCheck app (it’s averaging +10.6 secs./day), I kept it wound and ready to go. I wore this watch to The Magic Kingdom and Epcot Center, as well as the pool, over the next three days. I really like wearing this watch. The Orient feels like a finer finished watch — it’s slightly heavier and has the tough mineral glass crystal, and I haven’t even mentioned the case and crowns — but there’s something about the Vostok that really appeals to me.

The model of Amphibia I got, with the blue dial and indexes at five-minute intervals, has a 12-hour bezel, which allows the wearer to track a second time zone by setting the bezel such that the hour-hand points to the correct hour of the second time zone on the bezel. It’s still useful as a timing bezel — simply multiply the number on the bezel by five. Even my younger daughter, whose birthday was the third day and picked Epcot, will be able to do it next year, after she finishes kindergarten.

The watch is just as tough, if not tougher, than the Orient, but costs substantially less than the MSRP of the Orients. Even though I got my Mako on Amazon at a price far less than it usually sells there, the Vostok was still about half the cost, though I had to wait a couple of weeks for shipping. I have another article that discusses the incredible engineering feats that went into the waterproofing of the Amphibia and there are YouTube videos that discuss it in even greater detail, but suffice it to say, at +10 secs. or so per day for a watch I never have to worry about, and is also a marvel of engineering both inside and outside the watch, I really do feel honored to wear it on my wrist. And I’m a true-blooded American too, dammit! (Did I mention the watch was created for the Russian military in 1967 at the height of the Cold War? Hmmm, it was, and that’s where they ship from.)

So, that third watch, the sub-$30 Casio was in an exterior pocket of my backpack for the first day or so before I wrapped the strap around the strap of the backpack, so it would have unaffected airflow allowing it to provide accurate temperature reading. Well, it ranged from the low 80s to about 94 degrees Fahrenheit. There were some rain showers that got the temp down some, but once again we were fortunate to have reasonable temperatures for our Disney escapades.

I think I brought the perfect number and selection of watches for the trip. Just the right amount of variety, durability and usefulness.

Oh, I did look at the Mickey Mouse watches in some of the gift shops, but it was in the Japan section of Epcot that I decided on the watch to buy myself after seeing the Hello Kitty watches and a few pieces of merchandise for the movie, “My Neighbor Totoro” — one of my kid’s favorite movies, and one of my favorites of their movies. I found a Totoro watch (four actually) on eBay, new for $6.69 delivered. It’ll be a couple of weeks before it arrives from Shenzhen, and it’s not mechanical. It may not be quartz — or even work at all! — but that’s what this watch freak decided needed to go next into the collection. I hope you enjoy wearing your watches and have fun with them.