They entered the Animal Kingdom Lodge lobby, and both boys gasped. Finn had never seen such a place. It felt as if he’d stepped into Africa itself: the vast floor and the columns were crafted from a dark, unusual wood; the lobby furniture was covered in brown-and-white animal skins; giant chandeliers made of spears and shields hung from the ceiling. African music played, the rhythm enchanting. The bellhops wore brown safari outfits. The lobby stretched two hundred feet or more, leading to stairs and giant windows that looked out onto an African savannah, where Finn could see two giraffes and several wildebeests.
Upon seeing all of this, Maybeck hissed a bad word.
There were people everywhere. Some occupied the sumptuous furniture; others milled about, heading this way or that. The clatter and hum of people eating and talking wafted up from a lower level to the right. A few people waited in line at the registration desk to the left. But all around, there was a feeling of excitement and mystery as families and staff came and went. Into this walked two boys, one in a Park worker’s coveralls, the other in shorts and a T-shirt.
No one paid them the slightest bit of attention.
“We’re invisible,” Finn said softly.
“I hear you,” Maybeck agreed.
Finn rarely found a place inside Disney World where he was not self-conscious about being a DHI actor, where he didn’t feel the weight of eyes trained on him wondering if he was him, the Disney host from the Magic Kingdom. Yet here, in the wondrous lobby of this magnificent lodge, he felt transported across the oceans to another continent, one far away from Mickey and Minnie and the person he had become.
“Any ideas?” Maybeck asked.
“We can’t exactly ask someone if they’ve seen a boy and a girl,” Finn said, having already walked past a few dozen boys and girls, most in the company of their parents, but not all.
“No.”
“If I could get on to VMK, Wayne might be able to look up what rooms have been checked into in the past few hours, but there would be too many to count.”
“Yup.”
“Not much help.”
“Nope.”
“So, do you have any bright ideas?” Finn asked. The two boys passed a small study, like a private library, on their left, and they continued down a long corridor of hotel rooms.
“We can’t exactly go knocking on every door,” Maybeck said.
“You think?” Finn stepped aside and allowed a family coming toward them to pass. “I was hoping for something more constructive.”
“I’ve got nothing,” Maybeck said.
“I noticed.”
“We could divide and conquer,” Maybeck suggested. “I could take the upstairs or the other side of the hotel.”
The lodge was fashioned in a giant Y, with the lobby in the stem, and the rooms stretching out into both wings of the V at the top of the stem. The V stuck out into a savannah, and the long corridors periodically offered viewing stations on either side, where all kinds of wildlife could be seen, from birds that stood four feet high to zebras and Thomson’s gazelles.
“We could stay in touch by DS,” Maybeck continued.
Finn stopped and grabbed Maybeck by the arm. “That’s it!” he whispered harshly.
“It is?”
“The DSs,” Finn said. “When a DS gets a new message, it beeps.”
“So?”
“So…if we keep texting, and if one of us is near the door to their room when it beeps, then we’ll hear it and know which room they’re in.”
“Sweet,” said Maybeck.
“But what if they’re being guarded? The guards will just turn off the DS.”
“They weren’t guarding you that time at Space Mountain.”
“True.”
“Why guard someone who’s asleep and can’t wake up? Kind of a waste, don’t you think?” Finn thought about how he would do it. “You’d put them on the bed, pull the drapes, put a DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door, and leave them.”
“Okay! Makes sense,” Maybeck said. “Then we start with rooms that have DO NOT DISTURB signs on the doors. At four o’clock in the afternoon, how many rooms can that be?”
“Not many,” Finn agreed.
“Start sending messages while I find the rooms with the DO NOT DISTURB signs.”
“If they’re here,” Maybeck said, “we’re going to find them.”
* * *
Finn pressed his ear to the door outside a room with a DO NOT DISTURB tag on the handle. He’d found three doors so far. With his ear to the fourth such room, he heard a faint but familiar beep and knew it was a DS.
Finn: found it!!!
A minute later Maybeck came down the hallway toward him.