Don't buzz Mickey!

Hey:

On all my visits to Disneyland, I have never seen an airplane or helicopter fly over the Magic Kingdom. Was Disneyland able to get some kind of ordinance prohibiting aircraft from flying over? Does Sea World have this too? What do I have to do to get an ordinance like this so that visitors to my house don't have to put up with flying ads for wet T-shirt contests tonight at 7:00?

-- Linda Nevin, on the beach

Regular listeners know that Matthew Alice believes Disneyland is capable of anything. What Mickey wants, Mickey gets. And that includes a no-fly order over the plastic kingdom. But according to Banner Joe, a local pilot who's been towing ads for years, Shamu has no such clout, so Sea World is a ripe market. For 11 years, Joe says, the air-ad business tried to get the NFL and Major League Baseball to permit overflights of games, even offering them a cut of the ad revenue, which Joe claims was the leagues' objection. The NFL and MLB won the debate when new homeland security laws forbade any flights over a sports event that can potentially seat 30,000 or more spectators. At Petco, you might see flying ads until one hour before the game and beginning one hour after the game. Minimum altitude over land is generally 1000 feet, except downtown where it's slightly higher. On his behalf, let me say that Joe has often used his capabilities for nobler purposes. E.g., the mom of a tot lost in the Cuyamacas asked that he tow a banner reading, "Tommy, stay where you are, hug a tree." Tommy saw the banner, hugged a tree, got home safely. Life is more than wet T-shirts.