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Hilarious review of WDW
Apr. 22nd, 2019 04:07 pmhttps://kotaku.com/a-newcomers-take-on-disney-world-1834218483/amp
Read the whole thing, regardless of how you feel about the narrator’s perspective. It is amazing.
For reference purposes - in case you teleported here without ever reading anything else I have written in this blog - I go to WDW 2x per year, spring and early November, except when I replace a trip to WDW with a trip to DLR (and that one year when I went to WDW 3x). When I was growing up on the West Coast, I went to DLR several times, and to DLR a couple times as a young adult pre-kids. I honestly would have to sit down and work at it to figure out the total number of trips, but it has to be over two dozen by now.
I remember all the trips, including the earliest, obviously, some in more detail than others. By at least the fourth time I went when I was a kid, I was a whole lot more interested in piecing together backstory, how the rides worked, figuring out all the in jokes stenciled into the windows of Main Street. I spend a LOT of time puzzling out the titles of the books in the library of Mr Toad’s Wild Ride. I’ve read a bunch of academic monographs about Disney including more than one full length biography of Walt.
What I have no particular recollection of was ever thinking that any of this was _for me_. Ever. The author of the above piece has this amazing fascination with how the illusion is created. I don’t think I have ever even realized this was supposed to be an illusion of something Just For Me. I mean, even when I realized how good Disney was at dealing with food allergies, I thought of this as an amazing wonderful thing a giant corporation did for its customers that I could benefit from. It did not feel like it was _for me_.
I go to Disney because it is wacky and wonderful and super fun. A wacky, wonderful, super fun commodity experience. When I see my name, or my daughter’s name on the screens in the line for Expedition Everest, I am super excited to get to participate in Mass Customization. When I watched The Lion King show, I was focused on all the safety features built into the handoffs in the acrobatics, in exactly the same way that P!nk gamboling in the air at TD Garden was fantastic, crazy, circus fun. This is not _for me_.
Is it supposed to feel like that? I mean, the author thinks it is. I had — honest to Goddess — no idea.
ETA: And are there other things, paid for experiences, wtf, that are supposed to feel like they are Just For This One Person, that I had not even realized were supposed to feel that way?
ETAYA: For further reference purposes, when my friend J. calls on my birthday — every year — to sing me Happy Birthday, I know that that is For Me. I also know that he does it for other people, too. That in no way detracts. I know it is For Me, because J. and I are old friends, more like brother and sister, than like friends. For Me does not come from the special-ness of the event. It comes, for me at least, in the context of the relationship. And I cannot possibly have a relationship with a giant corporation the way that I can with an individual person.
Read the whole thing, regardless of how you feel about the narrator’s perspective. It is amazing.
For reference purposes - in case you teleported here without ever reading anything else I have written in this blog - I go to WDW 2x per year, spring and early November, except when I replace a trip to WDW with a trip to DLR (and that one year when I went to WDW 3x). When I was growing up on the West Coast, I went to DLR several times, and to DLR a couple times as a young adult pre-kids. I honestly would have to sit down and work at it to figure out the total number of trips, but it has to be over two dozen by now.
I remember all the trips, including the earliest, obviously, some in more detail than others. By at least the fourth time I went when I was a kid, I was a whole lot more interested in piecing together backstory, how the rides worked, figuring out all the in jokes stenciled into the windows of Main Street. I spend a LOT of time puzzling out the titles of the books in the library of Mr Toad’s Wild Ride. I’ve read a bunch of academic monographs about Disney including more than one full length biography of Walt.
What I have no particular recollection of was ever thinking that any of this was _for me_. Ever. The author of the above piece has this amazing fascination with how the illusion is created. I don’t think I have ever even realized this was supposed to be an illusion of something Just For Me. I mean, even when I realized how good Disney was at dealing with food allergies, I thought of this as an amazing wonderful thing a giant corporation did for its customers that I could benefit from. It did not feel like it was _for me_.
I go to Disney because it is wacky and wonderful and super fun. A wacky, wonderful, super fun commodity experience. When I see my name, or my daughter’s name on the screens in the line for Expedition Everest, I am super excited to get to participate in Mass Customization. When I watched The Lion King show, I was focused on all the safety features built into the handoffs in the acrobatics, in exactly the same way that P!nk gamboling in the air at TD Garden was fantastic, crazy, circus fun. This is not _for me_.
Is it supposed to feel like that? I mean, the author thinks it is. I had — honest to Goddess — no idea.
ETA: And are there other things, paid for experiences, wtf, that are supposed to feel like they are Just For This One Person, that I had not even realized were supposed to feel that way?
ETAYA: For further reference purposes, when my friend J. calls on my birthday — every year — to sing me Happy Birthday, I know that that is For Me. I also know that he does it for other people, too. That in no way detracts. I know it is For Me, because J. and I are old friends, more like brother and sister, than like friends. For Me does not come from the special-ness of the event. It comes, for me at least, in the context of the relationship. And I cannot possibly have a relationship with a giant corporation the way that I can with an individual person.