The King, possibly the scariest and happiest fast food mascot is having trouble holding on to his wallet. Over the past few weeks, individuals in Chicago and Orlando have found wallets stuffed with the King's possessions as well as a note asking them to keep the wallet and have a whopper on the King!

In all, the King will lose 5,000 wallets during this promotion, illustrating a serious need for a wallet chain! Each wallet contains a driver's license, cash, map of local Burger Kings and a gift certificate! The amount of cash ranges from $1 to $100 and features the King in place of a dead president! Several individuals are also reporting that the King left behind a receipt for getting his "Bling Cleaned".

Losing wallets as a way to promote a business isn't new; McDonalds ran a similar campaign in 2006 and GE Financial services gave away a $100,000 investment account and several mortgage payments back in 2000. Lost wallets aren't just a U.S. method of advertising; they have been used to promote a financial newspaper in Sao Paulo as well.

Although advertising with lost wallets isn't new, it's still fun, and makes me wish I lived in a bigger city where companies advertise like this. Even if Burger King stuffed each wallet with a $20 the advertising from this campaign is sure to pay off as the story of lost wallets has already invaded workplaces, blogs and Twitter.

So it's refreshing to see an airport take control of its own destiny. In Orlando, a city that stands to lose a great deal from the coming slowdown in tourism and convention business, the airport (coded MCO) wants to help passengers save money flying there. So it has uploaded page of the latest airfare specials flying there.

It makes sense, and it's so simple you have to wonder why your airport isn't doing it to stimulate business. Many smaller American airports are floundering as the major airlines yank service. But if airport authorities do all they can to help keep the planes full, the airlines will be less likely to suspend service. If they go, the airports, which depend on landing fees that are built into the cost of every ticket, will go into the budget hole.

Now Iceland is newly one of Europe's poorest countries. As one newspaper put it, Iceland is now "banging on the doors of Russia." A year ago, the American dollar bought only 60 krona. Today, it buys nearly twice as much, or 111. Costs have been halved. Now, after years of staying away because of scalding Scandinavian prices, Americans can tour Iceland for prices that are more in line with many of our own cities.

British tourists, who are just a couple of hours from the North Atlantic nation, are pouncing on the deals, which are already cost a third less than they did before the crash. Icelandair, which takes five or six hours to reach its country from several American cities (Orlando, Minneapolis, Boston, New York), is selling round-trip flights to Reykjavik, its clubby capital, for just $400 all winter, and another $150 buys a Hilton hotel stay for three nights while you're there (the booking deadline is Oct. 21, but I'd expect more deals to come).

In presenting the ongoing case that America is turning into latter-day Rome, I present the all-you-can-eat buffet. Shamefully wasteful? Possibly, especially when the leftovers are thrown away. Horrifyingly indulgent? To a European, maybe. But in a country where we shield our children from actual porn, the typical endless buffet is one borderline bacchanalian orgy that we can confidently call family-friendly.

As grocery prices spike, there's no better time to acquaint yourself with the basic principles for squeezing every smidgen of value from your next buffet sitting. One of the prime ways to maximize your buffet buck is go for lunch. It's always a few dollars cheaper than dinner (at the Bellagio in Las Vegas, lunch can be as much as $15 cheaper). Going then may also save you from gaining as much weight as you would from a dinner banquet, because you'll still have many hours left in your day to burn off that calorie infusion. You'll also likely want a smaller dinner after all that afternoon food, saving you even more cash later in the day.

Lots of unlimited buffets, such as at the Golden Corral chain, switch dinner pricing in mid- to late-afternoon, but provided it's open continuously, you pay the price charged at the moment you sit down, not when you leave. Plan things right, and you can enjoy the dinner buffet, which may include an expanded menu, at the lunch price. In Vegas and Orlando, two towns packed with crowded buffets, going well outside of the mealtime rush is a smart time-saving strategy, too, because you won't have to wrestle so many other sharp-elbowed customers for the fried shrimp.

I guess pipe dreams can come true, too. This afternoon, in a balloon-smothered luncheon at New York City's Times Square, Disney announced its big marketing push for 2009, and it has the Mouse doing something it almost never does. It's letting people into its parks for free.

The gist of its new ad campaign (mark your big anniversary or birthday with a "celebration vacation" at Walt Disney World or Disneyland) is nothing spectacular. But the centerpiece of the promotion is noteworthy: During 2009, you can get into its parks for free on your birthday.

And like Disney's previous push, the Year of a Million Dreams, implementing it won't cost the company much in the way of infrastructure. Next month at Disneyland, Disney property Miley Cyrus (pictured, with generous rodent) will have a 16th birthday party to help kick things off (she'll give the best present: the gift of P.R).

Mind you, this is a company that starts charging children the "adult" price at age 10, and at Walt Disney World in Florida, that freebie can mean a $75 savings on a one-day pass (Disneyland in California is $69). For kids under 10, the savings will be $63 in Florida and $59 in Anaheim. Disney's parks always did give a few extra gimmes to guests of all ages on their birthdays, including self-congratulatory buttons, balloons, and oozier-than-usual smiles from "cast members." But Disney's parks are notorious for rarely discounting tickets to the general public, and it almost never gives passes away. This economy, though, is seeing lots of stalwarts cave.

That cushion is not expected to last. Dwindling airline seats and high gas prices are cutting into the parks' ability to draw crowds as big as they once were, even as shareholders demand more profit each year. Even once you pass through the gates, there's less bang for the buck. Once upon a time, you could buy your ticket and get a full day of entertainment, including shows, rides, parades, and fireworks. Less so now.

Some of the country's most major parks, even ones we thought were doing well, are wasting no time in hoarding their pixie dust. Your amusement park dollar just doesn't get you as much as it did a few months ago. Among the casualties:

In the grand scheme of things, I have to admit that "Bruce" isn't a bad name. Although there were some unfortunate "Bruce the Moose" and "Goosey Brucie" moments in the schoolyard when I was a little kid, I feel like I got off relatively unscathed. Besides, even in my worst moments, I could take comfort in the fact that my father, Bruce W. Watson Sr., had managed to survive having the name for several decades.

Still, I can commiserate with the future "Dixon and Willoughby Partin." This as-yet-unborn infant will undoubtedly suffer a truly extraordinary amount of ribbing when it comes time for him to begin school. On the first day of class every year, as the teacher calls out the roll, she'll come to Dixon and Willoughby Parton and stare at the poor, blushing kid sitting in the third row as he tells her to call him "Bud."

At recess, the other kids will gather around and ask him how he got his bizarre moniker. Was he named for one of his dad's war buddies? Could his name have come from his grandfathers or a pair of uncles who died in driving accidents? Maybe he's named after an exotic handgun, the Dixon and Willoughby nine millimeter...

And poor Dixon and Willoughby, if he's an honest kid, will have to admit that his name came from a contest. He'll tell his classmates how his father called in to an Orlando radio program and offered to let the on-air personalities name his unborn child in return for a $100 gas card. The deejays, Dixon and Willoughby, recognizing a good deal, agreed, and the rest is history.

While this certainly beats turning tricks for gas, it's more than a little disturbing. Among the many questions that it raises, one will probably keep me up into the early hours, tossing and turning:

What rhymes with "Dixon and Willoughby"?

Bruce the Moose is a freelance writer, blogger, and all-around cheapskate. "Nixon and Billowy"? "Vixen and Pillowmeat"? "Blitzen and...