Walt Disney, Destroyer of Worlds
February 27, 2023
This year marks the 50th Anniversary of Walt Disney World® Magic Kingdom. Fifty years. That’s apparently how long it takes to colonize another civilization and make it ripe for complete surrender. If we humans ever have the opportunity to brush up against another race from another planet, set the nukes aside. Their services will not be needed. Just outsource the project to The Walt Disney Company. They will subdue the rival civilization bloodlessly, through sheer force of cultural commerce, and in fifty years, the other side will have willingly surrendered all of its riches, talents, identity, and dignity. They will lay it all down at our feet. Why fifty years? Well, that’s how long it took for our own American civilization to arrive at this point.
The last time I went to Disney was last week. It was also the last time I went to Disney. And by “last time,” I mean the Final Time, like, that was the end, I’m not going back. Shut it down. I arrived at this conclusion at Monday, 2:35 p.m. ET, when I was saving a spot to eat lunch, hot dogs and tater tots, on a garbage pail. Yes, saving a spot, because this was the most inviting place to eat as far as the eye could see. These are the rocks against which all Disney Vacations inevitably crash.
The previous Last Time I Went to Disney was in 2012, which also happened to be my first time in that hellscape. I never went when I was a kid, which put me in the minority of our middle class community, even in the 1980s. When we went on the 2012 trip, I had three kids under ten and my wife was seven months pregnant. It was August. We were there because we were already going to be in Florida for other reasons and we understood this to be a thing respectable people did. I should have known something was up when we landed at the airport in Orlando and instead of independently travelling to our hotel, like grown-ups, we were rounded up and placed in a winding line—to get on a bus to the hotel, if I recall. I blocked a lot of stuff out.
But what I do remember was that during Day Four, our last full day at the resort, after three days of “park-hopping,” or whatever the hell you want to call it, we were somewhere in the bowels of the Animal Kingdom, and some “show” apparently just ended nearby. My wife was leaning against a tree in a rare shaded spot, a fake tree as it turned out, as the doors in the tree blew open and a billion people emptied out into our immediate path. Five hundred million of those people were riding scooters, likely for the first time in their lives. At that moment, my wife broke down crying and said to herself, “so many smelly people.” She denies that she did this, but we have told and retold this story many times since that episode. What is important here is that, at that moment I swore that we would never step foot on a Disney property ever again. Or anyplace else that had custom corporate logo pancakes, or a monorail, or “characters,” or a meal plan.
As a side note, I had had my own private Come-to-Jesus the day before, when, in the late afternoon on Day Three, while the kids were swimming in the pool at the Polynesian Resort, the alarm went off that there was lightning in the area and that everyone had to get out of the water. Everyone scattered away, but I kept my toe in, just in case there was a quick way to get out of Day Four. Shut it down.
Here is the interesting thing about Disney. As time passes, as the years go by, everyone convinces themselves that they actually had fun. That it was good, at least good enough. That it might not have been the best time ever, but it was a defensible personal choice. It is a fascinating psychological phenomenon, a refusal to admit that you made a horrific personal and fiscal mistake. If you squint, you remember the fireworks over the castle, and maybe your daughter smiling with the Princesses, but block out the adults crying. Block out the fact that you spent your one week off there instead of, oh, anyplace else. The opportunity costs are off the charts. It is one of the great delusions of modern society. Similar to the delusion that Mickey Mouse the character has ever done anything funny, or remotely interesting. The ears are a corporate logo, an indicator of a commercial source, and that’s it. You know, like an apple with a bite out of it, or a hammer and sickle.
So there we were last week, ten years later, and the kids are all older, but we have a ten year old, the child from the womb during the Animal Kingdom meltdown. Does he remember the meltdown? Who’s to say? The reason we were going was solely to take him, the youngest, to Disney for the first time, because the older three had already been there, and fair is fair. Fair for whom? Who’s to say? One of our older sons, he’s 18 now, was planning to join us. We even bought him a ticket, but he abruptly cancelled that morning and said he all-of-a-sudden needed to be back at school for something important, and that he could no longer join us on our day trip to the Magic Kingdom. That is what we call a flashback. His reaction was the same as if he just remembered that Goofy molested him. Did Goofy actually molest him? Who’s to say?
Our decision to revisit Walt Disney World was also partially based on a certain sense of unfinished business. Maybe the reason we didn’t like it the first time was the being pregnant? Or the August? Maybe if we went on a 75-degree sunny day in February, everything would be fine.
So on a 75-degree sunny February day last week, the four of us embarked on a day trip to the Magic Kingdom. Actually, five of us. We were in Florida with the family dog, and brought Ouzo along to spend the day at the Best Friends Pet Hotel, which we had feverishly booked the night before, including emailing photographed vaccine records to ensure smooth entry.
We were staying at a house two hours away from Orlando. The morning of the trip, we left at 7:00 a.m. The dog shit all over the car at 7:20 a.m. For some reason, we did not regard this as an omen at all. After we were done negotiating with the carnies at an I-95 rest area for cleaning supplies, we resumed our journey.
We promptly paid for Genie plus, and reserved Lightning Lane passes for Space Mountain. The fact that I just wrote that last sentence is an embarrassment and a blight on my character. No self-respecting adult should ever have to write those words, utter those lines, or think those thoughts. Of course I already knew this. So why was I diving back, driving headlong into the prison logic I had once foresworn?
Once you plan your day at Walt Disney World, you willingly abandon yourself, your Cartesian starting point of a functioning mind with consciousness and a will. You are no longer the subject. You are the object. You are an instrument in an unrelenting and unmerciful corporate machine – not just a consumer, but a speck of corn meal. A candidate for the daily churn for profit. How much can The Walt Disney Company squeeze out of the Howard family today? Let’s strap in and find out. Cue the Underpants Gnomes.
Here’s a summary of our day at Disney. The dog hotel was excellent. By far the best part of the day. Top notch. The highlight of our day was checking in on Ouzo over the App. In fact, in a complete 180 degrees of expectations, out of everyone in the family, Ouzo is the only one of us who did not experience permanent trauma that day.
Here’s how they get ya. You pay to park (standard $26, premium $50, what’s the difference, does it fucking matter?), drive onto the lot, take a “Tram” to the front, and then take the “Monorail” into the park. You don’t ask any questions. Did Ivan Denisovich ask any questions on the way to the Gulag? There are millions of people around you at all times. I know it’s fashionable to judge them, as if you’re not one of them. It is one of the great coping mechanisms people employ in situations where they have been abased. Not me. The fact that I have an acute sense of the humiliation of this experience does not make me better than anyone. If anything, it draws me closer to my fellow man, as I know that we are all in this together.
Eventually, you get through the turnstiles, where they fingerprint you for some reason, and convince yourself that, “I’m here, finally, there’s the castle, pretty cool.” And then you get to the castle, take your selfies, make the first left and you’re in someplace called Adventureland. Which is a place devoid of all adventure. And fun. And God. And you end up waiting 60 minutes for the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, which is not actually a ride at all, but a place to sit in the shade while you acclimate to the mammalian preference for cool and dark places over bright and hot places. Welcome to Disney!
And then an hour later, you find yourself in a 75 minute line for something called the Haunted Mansion. I say 75 minutes because they measure lines at Disney in minutes. That sounds less bad than the actual One Hour and Fifteen Minutes baking in the sun for the five minute opportunity to watch more mannequins. Animatronic mannequins, but mannequins nonetheless. The only time I smiled all day, besides watching Ouzo on my phone, was when I recalled the Itchy and Scratchy Land episode of the Simpsons, once again spot-on in its brilliance and decades ahead of its time.
You get to the “ride” and convince yourself that it’s okay because it’s no longer 1000 degrees, but it’s not remotely worth the wait. You don’t think the hot sun in February also sucks? And who the fuck are the characters in the allegedly “Haunted” Mansion? You begin to long for the familiarity of Johnny Depp on the last equally shitty ride.
The reality dawns pretty quickly, well before noon. This is no place for any self-respecting adult.
It is not until the afternoon, especially on a one-day excursion, when the wheels are prone to come off. And they did. This can happen abruptly when the only thing you planned in advance, the thing that was going to anchor our afternoon, the ignominious Lightning Lane reservation for Space Mountain at 3:15 p.m., goes up in smoke when you get to the ride and it’s closed for technical problems. And Splash Mountain, which was literally the only other ride I remember enjoying from ten years earlier, was shut down as well. Forever, it appears. This is when you start muttering above your breath, “Walt Disney can suck my dick.” And people look at you funny, but not in a way that they don’t get it, more in a “no shit, bro, is this your first time here?” kind of way.
The starkest reality about Disney is that this is not a low-brow bargain vacation. The money you spend on Disney can buy a legitimately excellent vacation, literally anywhere else. A vacation where you can even eat dinner sitting down! With a few superficial exceptions, Disney does not seem to reward its patrons by class – we have all been flattened into the same thing. The gentleman with the turkey leg is not saving money. He’s getting ripped off like the rest of us. The theme park and resort business for The Walt Disney Company made $28.7 billion dollars last year. That’s it?! It seems like it should be much more.
There’s a weird undercurrent to the festivities at Disney where people are consciously aware that they are paying a premium price for something that is objectively not premium. I suppose there is a certain relief in taking a selfie with an officially-licensed character in a sanctioned theme park as opposed to the same costume worn by an infringing migrant in Times Square. Instead of being offended by this, it seems as if everyone is okay with it – they even seem to appreciate the intellectual property monopoly at the core of The Walt Disney Company’s business model, as well as the logistical nuances of running this money and soul-sucking people-moving enterprise. The daily engineering challenge of funneling a hundred thousand humans into one place is something that surely would have engendered great envy in the heart of any card-carrying Bolshevik. There were lots of ironic t-shirts – “Most Expensive Day Ever” – which is clever, but when you see the tenth one, it becomes less of a badge of individual rebellion, and more of a shirt that Disney wants you to wear. Let’s admit it. You didn’t do anything all day that The Walt Disney Corporation didn’t want you to do.
Why is it that Disney gets a free pass for providing an experience that is abjectly disproportionate to the cost? If Delta cancels a flight, people start to riot. At Disney, the only ride worth a damn goes off line for the day and there’s an eerie calm in Tomorrowland – a quiet oasis, in fact, the only place in the park with no people. Who has time to gripe when you could be waiting 135 minutes for the Seven Dwarfs ride (that’s Two Hours and Fifteen Minutes of Human Time, folks). Hey, look, credit where credit is due. I said I would never go back. I went back, spent $1,000 for the tickets and another bunch of money on bullshit and bad food, and I did so willingly. No one twisted my arm. Te Salute. Humans are creatures who enjoy the illusion of freedom, and man if that wasn’t the least “free” ten hours of our lives. And yes, I agree, it is genius to manipulate thousands and thousands of people to converge at the same place each and every day across multiple parks, many of whom probably don’t really want to be there, and provide just enough “something” to give us the fuel to rationalize the expense of time, energy, and money. A rationalization that is so enduring that every ten years you decide to give it another shot. It’s a strategy that has taken this company fifty years to perfect.
Since this is America, many people are fond of crafting an Apologia for Disney based on their admiration of the cool business logic of the Disney theme park business. Is everyone out there a DIS shareholder? Are we at the stage of capitalism where we can genuinely admire getting fucked by a corporation? “Wow, I just spent $70 to eat tater tots and a boiled hot dog next to a garbage can, and then my ice cream melted all over my hands in seven seconds. It’s amazing how bad these guys are fucking us right now. Impressive.” You’re on the other end of a business dealing, everyone, one that advantages only one side. Disney’s theme park and resort business generated $7.9 billion in profits last year. Profits! The other side – us – will keep getting squeezed and churned in the cogs of the machine until, after the relentless passage of time, we will inevitably reach some undefined end point.
What is that end point?
I don’t know. What I do know is that the end point will not be decided by the free will of any of the objects in that daily spectacle that is Walt Disney World. I know that no one will complain. No one will resist. It will all happen seamlessly. The giant Epcot ball is more appropriately conceived as a crystal ball, looking forward into the future fate of Humanity. And what fate does the crystal ball hold? It’s a little hazy, but let’s just say it shows one civilization as the conqueror, flush with the spoils of its exploits. And another civilization that doesn’t even know it’s been defeated, wearing mouse ears.
Postscript: When we were walking out of the park, exhausted and angry, I reserved myself one last pocket of outrage, a moment that served as a microcosm of the day. We all missed Ouzo, and were excited to pick him up, so on the way out we bought him a little stuffed animal – Sebastian, the lobster from the Little Mermaid. It was just a few inches long, the small size. It cost $26. But what set me off was not the ridiculous price, but the label affixed to this tiny toy – which happened to be longer than Ron Jeremy’s penis.
So insane and unnecessary and so typical of the corporate legal hegemony that we had been immersed in, that I just had to laugh. Never again, I reiterated. If I could I would buy a decal for my rear windshield: Never Again, next to a set of mouse ears.
