Disneyland: The Best And Worst Of America
It’s easy to find the over-the-topness of Disneyland. It’s just too much: the carbon footprint, the waste, the fluorescent soda, the rampant consumerism, the crowds, the obese scooter riders. But then there’s also these six reasons to push past your stereotypes:
1 At the women’s bathroom in Toontown, I am washing my hands at the sink when I notice a young girl, maybe 10, in a white hijab (a Muslim nylon head and neck covering) standing next to an older woman in a burqa, probably her mother, looking in the mirror. She is setting her Mickey Mouse ears over the hijab and a dimpled smile lights up her face. The woman in the burqa gives her the thumbs up. Where else can you get that?
2 It’s A Small World still makes me teary.
3 Disneyland breathes imagination, and out-of-the box thinking. I think being there helps leak that creative spirit into all corners of your life. There’s always something new. And California Adventureland is all new to me!
4 Coming from homogenous, liberal white Boulder, the diversity at the Park is profound. Under the scorching California early spring sun, this is the American melting pot. It appears that every skin tone is represented. There are people we meet in line from all over the world: a grandmother from Australia said she doesn’t go more than five years without visiting, honeymooners from Toronto and scores of neighborhood LA-area Latinos that come each day after school. Sometimes it’s important to get a dose of mainstream America, keeps it real.
5 For a sliver of time, you remember viscerally what is was like to see this place as a kid. Growing up in Northern California we made a few pilgrimages south in our “Little Miss Sunshine” orange VW bus. We followed Highway One through Big Sur, visited Hearst Castle, and stopped for swimming in the Pacific. But the end game of these car trips, in my eyes, was Disneyland. We didn’t stay at the Disneyland Hotel but instead at the Good Sam’s campground which was scraped many, many years ago. I can remember in vivid detail the lollipops, the nausea after Space Mountain and watching my name being stitched into the Mickey Mouse ears at the Mad Hatter.
6 Just recently, my nine year-old was going through a rough patch, and I spontaneously decided that what was needed was an “alone trip”. Just the two of us. To the happiest place on earth. It’s hard to support something that’s so counter to the way we try to live. But sometimes you do things for your kids just because. Because you know it will bring the same sense of magic that it brought to you. Because you need to leave home to get perspective.
