The Mouse House Redux

Some of my fondest memories are of times at the Disney World theme park. In fact, some of the first memories I’ve retained are from my first trip to the amusement park. I was four, and sitting in between my parents in a car on Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, filled with a mixture of excitement, fear and familial comfort. I also remember the thrill of going on Space Mountain over and over again later at night as a teenager, the unfettered access to the ride that was so elusive earlier in the day becoming manifest. I can’t forget the luxurious dining experiences my wife and I had on our honeymoon, the kind of which we continue to talk and joke about. I still get a twinge of panic when I think about buying several Lego Star Wars sets and then almost feeling them slip out from underneath my legs on the lurching, fast-paced Aerosmith Rock ’n’ Roller Coaster.

Of course, these memories, and many others were from before a time when I even had children of my own that I could bring to the parks. Taking a child to Disney World is a fresh experience (particularly if they are in that period of what child development experts call “magical thinking”). Seeing things through their eyes, their imaginative lenses, you gain an insight into their sense of wonder and awe. You can’t wait to introduce them to new experiences that you think they will enjoy.¹ Pirates of the Caribbean is a different kind of adventure when you remove all the insouciance that one accumulates on the path to adulthood.

I’ve always marveled in general at the Disney experience. Almost everything in their parks is fine-tuned to give you the best impression possible. The attention to detail at Disney World reminds me of those workspace profiles where you can explore someone’s desk and nothing is out of place. No cables anywhere to spoil the aesthetics, and everything is positioned so deliberately. Cast members travel from place to place via secret tunnels. Care is taken in even the tiniest of details to ensure that when you are in Frontierland, you feel like you are on the American frontier (soft drinks and the availability of other anachronistic food items aside).

Some of that magic may be fading, though, as Disney pushes aside the continuity of themes to make way for the considerations of their commercial intellectual property. Disney is changing its flagship park at Disney World, The Magic Kingdom. They are shortening the Rivers of America, which anchor the early American history and Frontierland areas of the park, to make room for a ride that capitalizes on the popularity of the movie Cars. Garrett Martin notes the impact for Paste Magazine.

Theme parks aren’t just about rides and attractions. When done well, all design elements of a park—its architecture, its interior design, its soundscapes, its natural beauty, and, yes, its attractions—work together to further the theme and, most importantly, create the unique identity and charm of a park. The Rivers of America is so fundamental to what Disney’s so-called “castle parks”—of which the Magic Kingdom is one—are trying to do that one without a river wouldn’t even feel like part of the same tradition. It wouldn’t just lose an invaluable feature that makes the park more pleasurable, it would lose a fundamental part of its identity.

There are other alterations afoot, including closing Muppet Vision 3D, a favorite attraction when we last visited. The Muppet hijinks in 3D present themselves as exactly what is needed to make the technology enjoyable. The Great Movie Ride, which was another favorite, and had a unique concept, has already closed.

Another big concern that may diminish the overall value of the Disney pilgrimage is the rising cost of visiting the parks (NYT gift article). The costs haven’t just gone up, as commensurate with inflation, but many services that were traditionally free now come with a charge. For some, like the FastPass ride reservations system, the amount charged is difficult to predict.

For years, Disney offered visitors FastPass, a free service that allowed them to effectively hold a reserved time slot to ride an attraction without having to wait in long, winding lines. The park replaced it with a paid version in the fall of 2021. The cost of a FastPass can vary depending on the ride, theme park and time of year.

Some services, such as shuttles for transportation, have gone from a flat fee to a surge-pricing model, instead. Good luck budgeting around that sort of variability. Some aspirational park visitors have looked at the expense relative to trips to national parks or even Europe and decided that Disney just wasn’t worth it.

Then, of course, there are the shameless add-ons in the parks (some of which have been around since I can remember). Graeme Wood recounts some of these as a Disney neophyte traveling to the park during peak-Covid.

A cast member offered to take my photo in front of the castle, and she extended to me an electronic device on which I could tap my MagicBand, so copies would automatically upload to my Disney account. “Smile,” she commanded, and before I could ask her how she could tell through my mask whether I was smiling, she added, “With your eyes. Smile with your eyes.” She was referring to the “Duchenne smile,” named for the 19th-century French neurologist Guillaume-Benjamin-Amand Duchenne, who discovered that if you electrocute someone’s face just right, you can jolt him into smiling, but you can still tell the smile is a fake because a real one makes crow’s feet beside your eyes. I crinkled my eyes hard. The results look somewhat convincing, but I can’t say for sure because Disney has watermarked the photos, and will charge my MagicBand $69.99 for clean copies. In one photo, to increase the fun, Disney digitally added a snowman named Olaf, a bucktoothed simpleton from the Frozen franchise, to prance next to me.

Wood’s observations should elicit a knowing, if not rueful, smile from those who have been regulars at Disney World.

Disney Existentialism

Another aspect of the Disney experience that Wood writes about in his piece is the pseudo-religious framework in which the entire operation resides. To put it charitably, I have always been a bit suspicious about religious conservatives’ disdain of Disney, but there is some aspect of the fervor that the brand evokes and its messaging that makes me somewhat uncomfortable. Wood refers to Disney as a religion and trips to Disney World as a pilgrimage.

Of course, few visitors to the park describe it that way, and I am confident that the family with cross tattoos believe that Jesus and not Donald Duck is their redeemer. But if you ask them about love, they will tell you about Beauty and the Beast. If you ask them about growing old, they will tell you about Up. If you want to know about overcoming adversity, they will ask if you have heard the good news about Aladdin. If enough of your imagination consists of stories like these, authored by (or filtered through) the Disney corporation, then what else is Disney World—where these narratives are ubiquitous and glorified—but a place to nourish your soul in a time of famine?

It’s certainly not that I have a problem with the feel-good narratives that the company produces so much as I shudder to think of them taking a place of primacy in the hearts of the faithful. Their simplicity and ties to crass commercialism make me reticent to spend too much time and mental energy in the shallow embrace of their comfort.