My late Aunt Mary, who was a bohemian of the Gitanes-smoking, sloe-eyed sort that escaped postwar America by hopping a third-class steamer to Paris in 1948 with a worn copy of a Colette novel under her arm — which is to say, a member of the most sophisticated and most cynical generation ever — was so disgusted by the artificial, happy-clappy, happy-ending vision of reality peddled by Hollywood that she would huff and puff audibly in the dark of the cinema if a trailer for “Benji” came across the screen. She didn’t just loathe Walt Disney; Walt Disney was beneath her notice. Lionesses don’t concern themselves with the bad taste of sheep.
I fully understood where my Aunt Mary was coming from on matters of cultural, intellectual, and artistic discernment. I have always been an intellectual snob myself. But Aunt Mary was born in 1927 and I am a member of Generation X; my ideas about fun and art were formed in the 1970s, by punk rock and Pop Art and John Waters. I’ve never had any problem thoroughly enjoying trash and candy. And I don’t mean enjoying them in an ironic way, I mean enjoying them. This is one of the best things about Gen X: We give ourselves full permission to appreciate reruns of “The Love Boat,” as well as Bomb magazine. That’s what punk was for: raising up the plastic and the neon. Low culture is not low, high culture is not high.
All of which is just my elaborate self-justification for having taken my children on Disney vacations in Orlando not once but twice.
The first time we fell into Mickey’s mouse trap, Nettie was 6 and Teddy was 4.
I’m fortunate enough not to have any pernicious addictions to any mood-altering beverages or pharmaceutical drugs — I don’t even have wine with dinner, and marijuana has never agreed with me — but if there were a 12-step program for moms who waste too many hours, days, weeks, and months over-intensely researching insanely intricate vacation plans, as a form of emotional escape, I’d be the backslider who refuses to get help. I’m a vacation planning addict (as my Aunt Mary was before me, come to think of it), and the Disney trip of 2013 was when I hit rock bottom.
The addicting thing about Disney World is that it is as complex and elaborate an alternate reality as a video-game artificial universe like World of Warcraft or Legend of Zelda. (Those are probably the wrong examples of video game realities, but you know what I mean.) Disney World is 47 square miles and its lore, arcana, shopping opportunities, and entertainment options are as kaleidoscopic and multiplicitous as those in a dream in which you find yourself locked inside a department store overnight with free rein to take and eat whatever you want. For a novelty-seeking personality, Disney is an endless, breathless, endorphin-releasing White Rabbit chase.
It’s all gamified. There are more than 200 restaurants at Disney World, for example, and access to the ones you want to sample involves strategy and foresight. Do you want to eat roast lamb shanks beside the Koutoubia Minaret of Marrakesh in the Morocco Pavilion, or do you want to try the HippopatoMai Tai cocktail in a souvenir tiki skull mug at Trader Sam’s Grog Grotto? You have to get an app and compete for a reservation with all the other wild-eyed parents. If you’d like to eat banana-stuffed French toast with Snow White, Jasmine, and Aurora inside Cinderella’s Royal Castle, you need to wake up at 6 a.m. exactly 60 days out from your desired date (if you are staying in an off-site hotel) or 70 days out (if staying in a Disney hotel).
I realize I’m not making this sound very appealing.
I enjoyed the chase. Having used sneaky tricks to secure the best room at the Polynesian Village Resort allowed me to secure the right table at Cinderella’s Royal Table for the first breakfast seating, which meant we were able to waltz onto the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train roller coaster without waiting even one minute when the rope dropped at 8 a.m.
Lunacy.
The 2013 trip actually was wonderful, despite the fact that I had to be a severe martinet and drive my family onward like it was Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in order to keep them on schedule with all the perquisites and special reservations I’d snagged through my obsessive Disney-mom-ing game play. Yes, we gobbled the white-chocolate-covered Zebra Dome desserts at the African-themed Boma restaurant. Yes, I faxed a note hand-written by my first grader to a special, hidden fax-phone number and scored an upgrade to a fireworks-view room at the Polynesian. Yes, Teddy was subjected to the sheer little-boy horror of dining with princesses under the heraldic banners of the vaulted dining room in the castle. Yes, we sang along with Elsa and Anna from our seats in the front row at “Frozen Singalong Celebration.” Yes, we skipped every goddamn line by scouring crowd-level calendars and mastering the FastPass apps. Yes, we could see the lights of the sea monster and see the whale float past in the Seven Seas Lagoon’s Electric Water Pageant literally from bed.
When it comes to encouraging little girls to wear princess outfits, in theory, I’m against it. But I admit I’m still not sorry my daughter had the chance to have a Tiana makeover at the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique and, afterward, tea (apple juice in a teacup) with Rose Petal, a magical rose from Aurora’s garden who had come alive at Disney’s Grand Floridian resort. I’m glad she got to do that. Teddy got a plastic knight’s shield and sword that he swung to keep the princesses away.
We did go into debt for all that.
The New York Times reports this week that 45 percent of families with children under 18 who make the trip to Disney do go into debt for the trip: “For a family of four, the cost of a one-week trip to Disney can range from $6,463 to $15,559, not including flights or souvenirs.” Although I participated in this madness, I did draw the line at souvenirs. No one needs a plastic Goofy-head sippy cup.
On our second and last Disney foray, in 2016, I overheard a pair of moms talking about Donald Trump outside the Plaza Ice Cream Parlor on Main Street U.S.A. “I really hope he wins,” said one normal-looking blond mom to the other normal-looking blond mom. “I really hope he wins,” said the other. That was the end of Disney for me. I looked around at the spending Americans as the ragtime piano man played “Jolly Holiday” from “Mary Poppins” and men in boater hats and candy-striped vests circled up around the flagpole for the “flag retreat ceremony,” and it all came back into focus, like waking from a hookah dream.
My daughter last year wrote an interesting short analysis of Main Street U.S.A. for one of her history classes up at boarding school, pointing out that Main Street U.S.A. could be critiqued as a visible representation of “the master narrative” (that is, the shared narrative of a culture that explains the world through a whitewashed and sanitized lens that reinforces existing power dynamics). I guess I raised her right, after all, despite charging the indulgence of that fireworks-and-water-parade-view room at the Polynesian resort on my credit card.