There’s no questioning that Disney is amazing. Fun? Yes. Entertaining? Definitely. The Most Magical Place on Earth? Highly debatable.
I’m going to get some flack for this article. Haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, as Taylor Swift would croon.
Post-trip
“Well, Mom,” half-shouted my daughter across the aisle, tucked and buckled into her plane seat. “Disney was amazing.”
“Yep,” I responded, yanking trail mix from my backpack—one of 32 leftover snack vouchers we’d traded in before leaving the resort.
“It was amazing…but it wasn’t ´The Most Magical Place on Earth’!”
“I totally agree.” I chucked a bag of mickey mouse-shaped pretzels across the aisle. “I totally agree.”
The Disney Doctrine
You’re probably thinking, Hey, Jen, what’s your beef with Disney?
Here it is: Disney’s brilliant marketing gurus have planted a notion—almost as strong as religious doctrine, really—that all good and worthwhile parents must bring their children to the Mecca that is Sleeping Beauty’s Castle.
Somehow, from souped-up mascots (which my kids whispered, “are kinda creepy, really”), and puke-invoking roller coasters, a ‘need’ has been created. Good on them. Disney World in Florida gets over 58 million guests a year!
As a child, we didn’t drink the Disney Kool-aid.
My parents occasionally slipped out of their small business handcuffs for the weekend, yanked our decades-old, 12-person canvas tent from the depths of the barn, and took us to Sand Hill Park.
Blissfully ignorant, I’d never dreamed that a vacation could involve crossing an international border, fireworks every night, or a timeframe longer than three days.
As an adult, the idea of visiting Disney morphed into something bigger than simply not wanting to go. To me, I was refusing to collude with this idea that Disney = the must-do vacation of a lifetime.
Anti-Disney to the core, I pledged to never, ever take my children. My ex hadn’t felt the same way. On a few occasions, he had broached the subject of seeing Mickey in person. Usually at night, in bed, when my eyelids were beyond drooping.
“If—and that’s a big IF—we ever go,” I’d drowsily respond, “I’ll be by the pool with a pile of good reads while you wander the endlessly annoying lines of the park with our kids.”
The Change of Heart
However, hard-held ideas were revised when my then-47-year-old husband was diagnosed with the same Alzheimer’s that had shattered his mother and ended in her death the year before.
Suddenly time was important. Making memories and checking off bucket list items were paramount.
“Never” transformed into “It better be now”. So, yes. We went to Disney.
The Compromise
My compromise? We went to the Walt Disney World Marathon Weekend in January 2020.
For almost two years leading up to that, I woke up at the crack of stupid, found weird ways to avoid chafed thighs, and tore my toes through half a dozen running shoes. I was determined that while my hubby checked Disney off his bucket list, I would get to check The Dopey off mine.
Isn’t Dopey one of Snow White’s personal servants biggest helpers, you might ask? Yes. And it’s also the name of an event that questions a runner’s sanity. It consists of: 5km on Thursday, 10 km on Friday, 21.1 km on Saturday, and 42.2 km on Sunday.
You roll out of bed at 2:30 to get to the bus stop. You shiver your way into the corrals to hear the gun blast at 5:30. You charge through the finish line and return to your room before your family even knows you’ve left.
And then you fill your face with protein, ice your knees, and spend all day accumulating 40,000+ steps as you scan Fast Passes and hold your kid’s head as they almost-puke on a few rides.
Why the Big Deal?
“We believe in our idea: a family park where parents and children could have fun—together.” Walt Disney
No doubt about it, we had a blast. Everything was clean, organized, and overloaded with detail. Disney doesn’t cut corners. Nothing is shoddy.
Emmanuel Detres explains that “Disney’s historical reputation for quality and service is one of its strongest assets. Over decades, the company established a brand that guests equate with excellence and seamless experiences”.
The races were no different: Animal Kingdom workers lined the routes with live animals we could stop and pet. Elsa danced across a parade float, drizzling snowflakes from her spot on an overpass. Every few kilometres tables were lined with enough bananas to overfeed every creature in The Jungle Book.
What an experience.
Even still, as we wandered on our last day, me limping and leaving trails of lactic acid throughout Epcot, our kids both asked, “Why is Disney such a big deal?”.
“Hmmm.” I really didn’t know. Looking around at the arguing, sighing, sniveling, ice cream-covered faces surrounding us, I wondered how many had spent their life savings (or gone into massive debt) to be there. We, too, had swiped the credit card, knowing it would be a few months before it was paid off.
In case you’re wondering: according to the Los Angeles Times, 18% of Disney visitors have gone into debt to be there.
“I think,” I stared around at the international spots showcased in Epcot, “that for some people this highly contrived space is all of the world they will ever see.”
Epcot Treasures
Disney is incredible. The real world is even better.
In the China Pavilion, my husband and I shared memories of glass floors in Shanghai’s Oriental Pearl Tower and Beijing’s black-from-smog skies. We recalled elbowing our way through the Imperial Palace, Tiananmen Square and sections of the Great Wall of China.
While my family snacked on Epcot gelato I talked about how my friend Misty and I had straddled our backpacks on the Ponte Vecchio and spent half of our daily food budget on Italian ice cream tastier than this.
Dining on fish and chips, overlooking the dusk-darkened water on one side and a giant teacup on the other, my husband and I shared memories with our children of our honeymoon in Scotland. Sitting on a bench and staring as fog made a nearby bridge disappear, we had unwrapped fish and chips from a slab of newspaper.
Suddenly our White, Middle-Class Privilege boxed me upside the head. We had been to most of these countries represented throughout Epcot in real life. Of course, the mock-ups weren’t “magical” for us.
It’s all POV
In the air space on the way home, I concurred with my daughter’s “It’s not ‘The Most Magical Place on Earth’”.
Because I have seen other, more magical places. And so has she.
I have lounged on Thai beaches, post $5 massage. My feet have trodden the spots where Vlad the Impaler spiked his victims’ body parts. As a family, we have been swimming amongst pufferfish, stared up at the Gateway Arch on Christmas morning, and sweat our way up Grouse Mountain in British Columbia.
Together we have been to many, many Magical Places.
And how can Disney ever beat those memories?
I’ve always loved a healthy back-and-forth. Go ahead and tell me your thoughts below.
