2. Disney World
To open the scene, I am sitting in the dark next to a friend in a seat for two, which is connected to a track. We’re no longer moving. The rest of the animatronic universe around us is continuing along its course. The sound of the spooky ghouls and threatening skeletons in hats or whatever continue to play over the loudspeaker on rotation, cycling through their mechanical salutations. Many of these older rides at Disney World have a very vaudevillian tone. They depend on visual illusions that have nothing to do with CGI or any technology more modern than simple electricity. I like seeing the white drapery of ghosts blowing in the wind of a fan or noticing the stretched canvas under a projection. These old rides have a smell, too. Fifty years worth of people being drawn through this space. A comforting mustiness.
Where our ‘Doom Buggy’ has stopped, it’s fairly dark. I’m not being subjected to living busts or rats dancing—I can’t entirely remember what’s in there. The malfunction is pretty restful.
It’s our second day at Disney World. I caught a glimpse of my damp, frazzled reflection earlier as we boarded the monorail to the Magic Kingdom, and said, “I look really sloppy.”
My friend Steven politely didn’t reply. It had rained that afternoon and evening, and we got there after dark. There’s a lot of infrastructure for getting around Disney World and they try to keep the mood light so it feels less like commuting to work. To get to the monorail, we needed to take a trolley and it was pretty wet. One woman complained to the trolley operator that her seat had “blood or a melted candy apple” all over it. We rolled our eyes, hoping she’d shut up and get in already.
In the Haunted Mansion, I’m seated with my hostess, Eryn, who has been navigating the entire Disney experience on our behalf after getting us free tickets, plus recommending the very necessary and not free skip-the-line passes on top of those. In the next car, Steven is with his husband Greg. The last vestiges of energy have left me and it’s perfect, because I don’t have to do anything while trapped on a ride. Adventure calls to our spirit, it stimulates the imagination, but it can be very hard on the body. I am tired.
Most of us experience the catharsis of adventure through TV, film, books, and when we can afford it, amusement parks. Obviously, amusement parks are the most expensive of these options because they offer an immersive simulacrum of what adventure is like. The other very important component baked into the cost is safety. Actual adventure is not safe at all. Most stories we consider tragedies begin as adventures, because in real life, we don’t know hand-to-hand combat, we’re not part of a merry band of travellers, and if you jump off a bridge into an open truck bed to escape a villain, you will almost certainly die.
In the Haunted Mansion, you’re spending a little time inhabiting the supernatural world, one which is more funny and cool than scary. Actual encounters with the supernatural are quite terrifying, I think because they confirm we’re made from more than meat. I know some people reading will have never had these experiences or adamantly disavow them, but not me. There’s things out there and they are not friendly. However, they do not live in the Haunted Mansion.
As I’m writing this, I’m finding I don’t have much to say about Disney World. It is a surreal, phony, unique place, and yet I think it’s still like a lot of other things right now in that it is getting too expensive and difficult to enjoy. My trip there may not have even been in the spirit of my “new things” experiment because I have been to Disneyland, which is a much smaller version of the same experience. I do remember that when I was at Disneyland for the first time in my early thirties, I was surprised by how magical it actually was, how quickly I got swept up in all the costumes, cotton candy smells, glittering Americana, and cartoon set pieces. On our first day at Disney World, I wondered why it felt so decidedly un-magical, and realized it was because we were in the newish Star Wars section of the park, which doesn’t look like a fairy kingdom. I’m sure it’s exhilarating for super fans of the franchise, but if you take a step back, Star Wars world looks like a warehouse in a desert. Very bleak. Waiting in line in a hallway filed with fake pipes and wires was grim. Without the shiny plastic whimsy, it really just seems like everyone is having kind of a bad time, especially the families these sorts of parks are supposed to be for.
When I was a kid, I was a poor candidate for amusement parks because I was easily frightened by the unexpected. I did get taken places like Coney Island or Ocean City, where you could ride bumper cars or play mini golf or get terrorised by adults in giant dog costumes at a much lower price point. These memories are much grittier than anything Disney, even the places designed to look gritty. I’m glad I have them, but I don’t recall being particularly excited about these trips either. Which makes me think about Disney Adults, the subject of an enormous amount of discourse. Honestly, it’s not that weird to be obsessed with Disney as an adult. It’s now very common for everyone to be a Something Adult. Like I said above, many of us are experiencing our dreams of More through media. We’re encouraged to make our consumption of that media into an identity and when our identity is criticized, we lash out, even if it’s over something completely stupid. Entertainment is a comfort in a harsh world, but it’s not the same thing as actually living and shouldn’t carry the same weight. But it does, because we don’t do our own adventures anymore.
In the real world, I’m often too scared of the repercussions of taking chances. I don’t climb actual mountains, I don’t strike off into enchanted forests (also real), and I worry very much that taking risks will have unpleasant consequences. Even on a regular old roller coaster I often shut my eyes to get through it.
The ride started again, eventually taking us to the mirrored wall that reveals a ghost seated beside you in the booth, an impish creature made from lights who playfully threatens you, the living, before letting you off scot free. The only alarming thing about it was seeing myself reflected, face tired and drawn, shoulders slumped into my rumpled hoodie.
There you are, I thought, and one day you’ll be gone.
Is this all too dark? Perhaps. But here’s what we did next. We went on the Magic Carpet Ride and I got very high in the air and kept my eyes open. We shared a singular Dole Whip Ice Cream, which I know is beloved by Kylie Jenner in a brand partnership kind of way. And as we walked past Cinderella’s Castle, a duck flew up into my face and I laughed so hard I almost threw up. I do not think the duck was employed by the park. It just lives there, which is actually the craziest thing now that I’m considering it. To the duck, Disney World is just the world.
I think about this essay on Disney World in The Baffler by Sarah Marshall on a semi-regular basis, it’s really fascinating:
When Disney World opened in 1971, it was not only accessible to working-class families but was run by union workers who earned a living wage. The first signs of change came in 1980 when Disney launched the Magic Kingdom College Program, hiring two hundred interns to live in a mobile home park called Snow White Village and apprentice in the art of theme park management. At the time, Ross Perlin reported in Guernica, “unions made a handshake agreement over the tiny pilot program, understanding that it would relieve full-timers during the year’s busiest periods. But they have been powerless to stop the program’s massive, year-round expansion.”
Until recently, Disney’s college program interns were required to live in Disney housing, which they were also required to pay for, meaning it was not unusual for young cast members to find themselves unable to afford food and basic living expenses with whatever pay they had left, which could amount to significantly less than minimum wage. Disney World, then, is also a company town not much different in some ways from those owned by softwood sawmills of the South in the 1910s.
Marshall mentions The Florida Project, an interesting movie about the world around Disney that stars Willem Dafoe:
Unfortunately, everything I have found interesting about Disney is kind of a bummer, but there is a lot of upbeat content about the place to find elsewhere if you are looking for a palate cleanser. And I will leave you with the eternally hilarious image of Emma Watson acting alongside Dan Stevens in his Beast suit.
More positive content to come!!
I am so enjoying this series. What will Aimée do next?!