Happy Place: Living the Disney Parks Life

by Scott Renshaw

Overview

What if the childhood day you remembered as one of the most magical of your life became every day of your life?

In Happy Place , Scott Renshaw explores the phenomenon of Disney theme park super-fans, and the unique connections they build with places known to most people only as occasional vacation destinations. Along the way, Renshaw meets a pass-holder who has visited Disneyland for one thousand consecutive days, another who has taken more than three thousand rides on his single favorite attraction, and even to some who have managed to turn visiting Disney parks into their job. Happy Place is also a personal journey to find out what happens when an infatuation with the parks turns into a relationship. Is that relationship always full of joy, or—when nostalgia collides with the realities of a corporation running a business—can it sometimes turn to frustration and disappointment?

Happy Place isn't the story of a place. It's a love story, about the kind of love that emerges when "happiest place on earth" becomes more than just a slogan.

Scott Renshaw has been Arts & Entertainment Editor and film critic for the Salt Lake City Weekly newspaper since 2002, with film reviews appearing in alternative newsweeklies in ten states. Over a twenty-year career as a professional writer and critic, he has received awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and the Association of Alternative Newsmedia, and has contributed writing about Disney parks to the website IndieWire. This is his first book.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781941629291
Publisher:	The Critical Press
Publication date:	11/15/2016
Pages:	250
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

Scott Renshaw has been Arts & Entertainment Editor and film critic for the Salt Lake City Weekly newspaper since 2002, with film reviews appearing in alternative newsweeklies in 10 states. Over a 20 year career as a professional writer and critic, he has received awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and the Association of Alternative Newsmedia, and has contributed writing about Disney parks to the website IndieWire . This is his first book.

Read an Excerpt

1
ATTRACTION REWIND

On November 20, 2014, I grabbed the earliest possible shuttle from my Walt Disney World resort hotel, planning to get to the front of the queue waiting for the Magic Kingdom's admission gates to open. You don't make your first ever visit to a brand-new-to-you Disney park every day, and there was no way I was wasting a minute on useless nonsense like sleep.
I was in Orlando for Attraction Rewind, a weekend convention sponsored by the official Disney fan club, D23. For two days, Disney parks enthusiasts would be treated to programming and panel discussions with a decidedly nostalgic focus, covering beloved but now-defunct park attractions and entertainment, as well as the 50th anniversary of Walt Disney's involvement in the 1964 New York World's Fair. It was an occasion that encouraged attendees to look back with fondness on places and attractions they knew and loved from decades gone by. But for me, it was also a chance to look at the Disney parks with new eyes. I was visiting Orlando for the very first time. Nostalgia had no hold on me here.
Since I only knew California's Disneyland, small differences were jarring even while I was waiting to get in: the waterfront approach to the park on Seven Seas Lagoon; the welcome show and countdown to park opening with costumed characters arriving on the train; even the words “Magic Kingdom” instead of “Disneyland” on the railroad station's façade. Once inside, there were more small moments of disorientation, from the size of the castle to the Adventureland sign I didn't see in its expected place on the left side of the central hub. I knew this place, but I didn't really know it. It was familiar-ish.
I paused a moment at the hub of the Magic Kingdom to take it all in, and what I took in was size. It was a sensation that carried with me throughout my visit, realizing what was possible in Orlando that simply wasn't possible in the relative space constraints of the Anaheim resort. The walkways were wider; the queues were more detailed and creative than simple chain switchbacks; there was so much more to explore in every area. I quickly gave up the foolish notion that I would be able to see everything, and allowed myself to see what was in front of me.
This would be the way I would always think of my first experience of Walt Disney World: As a rush of first impressions. It was the exhilaration of an adolescent infatuation, where everything was dreamy and swoony and I just wanted to write my initials together with Magic Kingdom's on the inside of my textbook: “S.R. + M.K. 4EVER.” I was crushing on the Magic Kingdom, and I was crushing hard.
***
Deb Wills—the lithe, energetic, spiky-grey-haired 60-year-old founder and editor-in-chief of AllEars.net, one of the earliest websites dedicated to Disney fandom and the Disney parks—came at it from a rather different perspective. While she's been experiencing Walt Disney World for 40 years, her love of Disney magic traced back to a time before she ever stepped foot in one of the parks.
As we sat at a table in Cosmic Ray's Starlight Cafe in Tomorrowland, Deb talked about growing up in New Jersey, seeing commercials promoting the creation of Walt Disney World. Before the Orlando resort even opened, she and her family attended the 1964/1965 World's Fair in New York, where Walt Disney was involved in the creation of four major attractions: "it's a small world"; the Carousel of Progress; Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln; and the Ford Magic Skyway. “I rode 'it's a small world,' and I wanted to go on it over and over,” Deb recalled. “But you had to pay for each ride, and we didn't have a lot of money. And I remember going with my great-aunt on the Carousel of Progress, and she flat-out refused to believe those were robots. Just flat-out refused. The dog was not a robot, those people were not robots. That stayed with me a long time.”
It wasn't until the 1970s, as a recent college graduate living in Maryland, that Deb made her first visit to Walt Disney World, accompanying disabled adults as part of a vacation program. Her love of the Disney parks continued to grow through the 1990s, just as another technological development was beginning to grow. As the youngest person in her office during the mid-'90s, Deb was the one willing to take a dive into learning how to use the computer, which indirectly led to discovering websites while surfing the Internet during lunch breaks. “I found my first Disney website—and it was only two pages,” she said. “I dreamt about it that night: 'There's people out there like me that just have this burning in their heart for Disney.'” By January 1996, she had launched AllEars.net, beginning at first with including menus for park restaurants, “and then it just evolved, evolved, evolved,” Deb added.
Nearly two decades later, Deb is in a position to visit the parks more often than she ever did when AllEars.net first began. After retiring in 2011, she moved to Florida—just 20 minutes away from Walt Disney World—and the website became her full-time job. Yet with the timing of that move has come another evolution that Deb perceives in the parks, one that can be a challenge to those who have loved them for so many years.
“The culture has changed,” she said. “Lately, it's been harder [for me] to find where the magic is."
Part of that change has been exemplified by the launch of the controversial, expensive MyMagic+ program, which involves wristbands for park visitors and the strong suggestion to plan one's schedule of attraction visits and dining choices weeks—sometimes months—in advance, a strategy far more appealing to tourists than locals considering a spur-of-the-moment visit. Walt Disney World fans also lamented the decision to close the Maelstrom boat ride in the Norway Pavilion at Epcot, and replace it with an attraction themed after the popular movie Frozen. Deb's own anecdotal observation of fan reaction to changes like this is “kind of like the country [as a whole]: On every issue, it's pretty well split.
“But I get my magic mojo back by talking to people, meeting people who are here for the first time. I get to see it through their eyes, see it through kids' eyes. That's what's special. And there's so much history here. There are wonderful cast members here who want to keep the stories alive, and that's the good thing. So that's the real balance: between the stories and … the bean-counters, basically.”
Recognizing that split—and responding to it—is a challenge for a website that caters both to tourist visitors and hard-core park fans. “I try to look at it from a guest perspective more than not,” Deb said. “We try not to be critical and nasty, but we try to have objective reviews. If something's not good, we'll say [so]. … We try to be a planning and news site, tell people objectively what's going on, and balance the good with the bad.”