To print this page, select "Print" from the File menu of your browser salon.com > Mothers Who Think Aug. 22, 1999 URL: http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/1999/08/24/yesdisney Disney rocks! Forget the long lines, the schlocky toys and the canned music. Disneyland will always be the Magic Kingdom for this lifelong Mouseketeer. - - - - - - - - - - - - By Lisa Moskowitz I don't remember my first Disney experience. I rode through this rite of childhood in a baby carrier on my dad's back, gurgling and snug. A big hairy head blotted out most of the Magic Kingdom; the occasional white-gloved, honk-nosed Disney character pranced along the periphery. So if I couldn't really appreciate it, why were we there? My parents wanted to go. They were both 27 at the time -- young Angelenos; I was 3 months old. It was June 1969 and the wonderful world of Disney consisted of a single theme park -- Disneyland -- just down the road in Anaheim. It was a day trip, a quick jaunt. An easy invitation to act like a kid -- even if you weremarried and a new parent. My mom's favorite ride was the Mad Tea Party, so that was our always our first stop. You sit in enormous teacups that whirl violently around and if you really want to make yourself sick, there's a wheel in the middle you can turn that will spin you even more. When I got a little older, my mom took me on that ride and I almost threw up. She sat across from me in the cup, laughing like crazy. To me, Disneyland was the neighborhood theme park. Even after we moved overseas, to countries where Disney didn't own every child's imagination, I visited Disneyland every year, during our trips back to the States. This was in the '70s, when Mickey, Minnie, Donald and Goofy were the mainstays of the park. The place was a palace of '50s nostalgia by then; Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Snow White were already historic relics. Nothing ever seemed to change or to need updating -- not the rainbow-colored construction-paper flowers of It's a Small World nor the fake hairy pirate's leg dangling over your head as you sailed through the archway in Pirates of the Caribbean. As an adult, it's this sameness that pulls me through Disney's gates. I know which rides I want to go on and that I'll want a piece of peanut-butter-chocolate fudge. I'm still awed by the parade, teeming with characters from my childhood. But when I look around, I see the kids clamoring for the more recent characters: Mulan, Pocahontas, Tarzan. As soon as a new movie is released, its animated stars appear on Main Street, in Disney stores, on Broadway. Kids sing Disney theme songs ad nauseam and beg for the latest stuffed toy or action figure It's this commercialized fanfare that makes parents dread the trek to Disney these days. Add in the cost of expensive daily passes and the prospect of hyper kids running amuck among the stockinged legs of big-headed make-believe characters and you've got a ripe situation for short fuses to blow. A perfect excuse to skip Disney altogether. So don't go. Especially if you're going to blow. Last time I visited Disney World, in Florida, was in May, and I saw a terrible thing, a very un-Disney thing. It was a hot, humid day, steaming and brilliant. I was standing in line at the snack bar, deciding between the Donald Duck orange ice pop or the Mickey Mouse-eared chocolate-covered vanilla ice cream stick, when I heard a sharp voice behind me. A mother was reprimanding her young daughter for dropping a soda. Nothing spilled, since the bottle hadn't been opened yet. The child was startled, wide-eyed and silent. She bent down to pick up the soda, her mother's words still fierce. I was shocked. "That's wrong," I said rather loudly to no one in particular. "This is Disney World. You can't get mad at kids here." The woman heard me and looked up, surprised, maybe even embarrassed. I was a little embarrassed myself. After all, I was being a busybody, casting aspersions on a sweaty, frustrated woman who was probably consumed with far deeper issues than a dropped soda. Still, I didn't want her messing with my -- or her daughter's -- memories of Disney. This was supposed to be a place where parents chill out, reveling in their children's joy, and kids run around like lunatics, magically protected from pedophiles, injury, food poisoning and kidnapping; a place where no one ever gets lost without being found. I figured this cranky mom was an aberration. But when I told my tale to a colleague, she matched it with a disturbing story of her own. During her visit to Disney with her two young sons, they went to one of the must-attend Disney character breakfasts. Anticipating the arrival of Mickey and friends, one child became overly excited. When the characters finally arrived, he bum-rushed them, giddy and wild. Unable to keep him under control, his mom trussed him up in one of those child-leashes, the ones with a harness and plastic coiled lead. I can just imagine this poor kid, arms flailing as he's snapped back by the leash, just out of reach of Simba or Ariel, maybe even Mickey himself, hot tears spilling down his puffy toddler cheeks, wailing. That'll be a whopper of a Disney memory someday, one for the therapist's couch. These days, the worst-behaved people at Disney theme parks are the adults. Maybe they're pissed they had to shell out all that cash or that they gave in to their kids' whining in the first place. But maybe it's something more than being forced to consume. Disney is a kid-centric universe. Real world rules don't apply: Kids feel empowered, but adults may feel debilitated. To me, the greatest thing about Disneyland was that I could choose the rides I wanted to go and go on them as many times as I wanted. Nobody stopped me. No one said no. As adults, we look for instructions, guidelines, advice. Someone to tell us how things are supposed to be done. Apart from the Kodak photo-opportunity signs instructing you to point and shoot and the occasional warnings that pregnant women should avoid certain rides, Disney is rule-free. Even if you've read all the guidebooks and planned for the perfect Disney experience, there's no telling what your kids might decide they want to do. A friend of mine calls Disney World a freedom zone, one of those places where kids wrest free of the adult world and experience an independence that breeds imagination and responsibility. He recalls visiting Disney World when he was 11. The highlight of his trip was driving a mini-speedboat by himself in one of the lagoons. "I remember what it was like when the adult world let me go, totally, at young ages like that," he said. "I could really take my world into my own hands." He assured me that as soon as he recovers from all the "corporate patriotic programming" Disney lodged in his brain at the time, he'll go back and ride those speedboats again. When I asked my friends, all around 30 now, to tell me their Disney memories, most of them gushed: a first kiss in the Haunted Mansion; a chance meeting with Cher and Chastity Bono on the Dumbo the Flying Elephant ride; getting high while sailing through the Pirates of the Caribbean; hiding out in Sleeping Beauty's castle. These experiences remind them that freedom is as much the domain of adults as it is children. Disney lets adults do grownup things -- with the playfulness of kids. So the only way to really enjoy Disney as an adult is to be like a kid. For me, it's the nostalgia of the place that lets me let go. In this Never-Never Land, I am a princess and my biggest issue is deciding whether to eat the filet mignon (hot dog) or the polenta (nachos). I don't have to ponder the merits of kissing frogs (men) or battle an evil sorceress (boss). On the stroke of midnight all my dreams will still be intact (no deadlines) and when I'm ready to go home, I'll leave the same way I came -- in a beautiful glass coach (beat up Integra). Being an adult has its advantages. Going to Disneyland is one of them. salon.com | Aug. 22, 1999