Not Going To Disneyworld

One of the rites of passage for families with small children in the US is the visit to Disneyworld. I know this because other parents tell me this, along with exhortations like “You have to go there at least once – the kids love it!” As you may have figured out by now I’m not a big believer in peer pressure and my typical response is “Fuck off. I’m not going – it’s expensive, tiring and shit.”

Yes, I’ve heard people respond that I won’t know what it’s like unless I’ve been there, but that’s a completely specious argument. I won’t know what it’s like to put my dick in a meat grinder unless I try that either, but I have enough of an idea that I’ve crossed it off my list of things to do when I’m bored. Disney is shit for lots of reasons. I hate the squeaky-clean artificial niceness of it all, thinly veneering a voracious money-grabbing machine designed to fleece you of as much cash as they can get off you. I hate queues at any time and the idea of queuing for days, surrounded by armies of fat spoiled children and fatter dumb parents fills me with fucking dread. I hate Orlando airport and their complete disregard for your time as they force you to stand in interminable, badly organized lines for security. And I just don’t get the attraction of staring at some spotty teenager dressed up as a giant mouse. Fuck’s sake – it’s pathetic!

Disney is like the Emperor’s New Clothes – everyone colludes in telling each other that it’s wonderful, and if you point out that, in fact, it’s a completely ridiculous waste of time and money, people look at you like you just uttered heresy. It’s like boring married people always going on about how good it is while secretly envying their single friends, but desperate to persuade themselves that they haven’t just wasted thirty years of their lives.

I was watching an episode of America’s Funniest Videos a few weeks ago, along with my daughter (since she, too, enjoys videos of involuntary testicular trauma involving skateboarders) but it became apparent that this episode was just an extended and very dull advertisement for Disney. They wittered on endlessly about how wonderful it was down there – well I’m sure if you’re getting paid to stand around while dumbasses in costumes wave at the camera it’s just peachy, but it pissed me off so to the point where I just turned it off.

The secret of Disneyworld is making people unhappy – the whole myth depends on persuading large portions of the population that they would really be missing out of they didn’t go. The key to this is getting to your kids – after all, no parent in their right mind would ever consider going if they didn’t feel like they needed to do it for their kids. So Disney targets kids and instills in them the “want” to go, and the feeling that they are “deprived” if they haven’t been. It then works on the parents with guilt – how could you withhold from your children of the experience of a lifetime? But it’s all bollocks. They just want your money.

The American Girl doll catalogue is exactly the same kind of guilt-marketing. You should buy the overpriced doll, Then buy all the others with their individual historical significance. Then buy all the outfits. Then buy the books about the dolls, because heaven forbid that kids should actually make up their own stories. And finally, when you think you’ve bought all the crap that you can afford, fly to Chicago and visit the American Girl store. This crap comes through the mail and when it arrives it is designed to convert a perfectly happy kid into one who now is unhappy because they don’t have all this stuff. Personally I’d wipe my arse on it if only they printed it on less shiny paper.

So I’m not going to Disneyland this year, or ever, not even if you paid me. I’d sooner take my chances with the meat grinder…


Copyright 2007 Edward Bison