Living Replacement Therapy, by Jenny Bahn

A few places on Earth really terrify me. Most of them are in Orange County. Malls, miniature golf, etc. Communities become a dizzying pattern of tract homes and smooth asphalt; large roads lined with vibrant nonindigenous grass leading to one of twelve local Starbucks and a maybe a Neiman Marcus depending in the median income of the area. The tract homes cut into brown hillsides. Kids ride bikes. Parents work in things called “Corporate Parks.” The further away I get from city centers, the newer things become, the more pleasantly sterile things seem, the more everything appears to be bland, the more I long for a past I never experienced.

Disneyland, as it happens, is also in Orange County. It is a place that I have been coming to for years, starting at the age of six. I participated with joyous aplomb. I’d kiss the outside of the giant Mickey Mouse suit. Cinderella and I took pictures together. Until recently, I had no qualms with the place. In fact, I was full proponent of this magical little world of make believe.
But just last week, for the first time in my entire life, Disneyland actually creeped me out. I’m not saying that the physical park rubbed me the wrong way; I’m saying that the process of the park irked me. It’s been decades since I actually felt the real magic of Disneyland – the wide-eyed, unbridled imagination of my youth. Although I have to say that it’s not just me that’s changed. The Disneyland is not the Disneyland Park of yore. To me, it feels a bit like something else these days.

As I walked around the park this time – feeling bigger and more adult than usual – I saw a multitude of grown adults, their season passes hanging around their necks, bedazzled with so many themed pins that you couldn’t see the nylon necklace below. The participants in this enthusiastic and obsessive clan had effectively turned a functional item into a showy park passport. My reaction wasn’t one of jealously but utter wonderment. Did these people ever travel? Like for real? It’s not to say that seeing the globe and visiting Disneyland are mutually exclusive, of course. There are just only so many vacation days the average Joe and Joanne gets off. At a certain point one has to ask themselves, Disneyland or Whistler?

I’d be more reluctant to judge if Disneyland wasn’t so expensive. As a child we used to wait until we had filled an entire Arrowhead cooler bottle up with change before we would commit to going. If you think filling a five-gallon plastic jug up sounds like a walk in the park, you’ve never done it. Watching the pennies stack against the nickels, both jammed against the occasional quarter and dime, was excruciating. The sluggishness in which the metal inched its way to the mouth of the bottle was enough to kill me.

Eventually, we’d make it. Dad would cash in thirty pounds of change for a couple hundred-dollar bills and we would high tail it to Disneyland. Once we were at the park, we didn’t buy the park food. Lunch was had in our brown and tan truck camper, prepared and packed at home for a fraction of the cost. At that point in my parent’s financial lives, it wasn’t Disneyland or Whistler. It was Disneyland or rollerblading in our driveway.

If Disneyland was expensive back in the late 80s, it’s extortionary today. One trip to Disneyland now costs a family $69 for adults and $59 for kids. Parking recently jumped from $10 to $14. Each modest, greasy meal averages at $10 apiece if you’re not getting a drink. By the end of the day, you’ve probably blown $400. That’s assuming you didn’t indulge in ice cream, trinkets, beach towels, more ice cream, etc. In a word, it’s an extravagant financial commitment.

I’m not one to dictate how other people spend their money, but over the course of their lifetime, those season passholders have donated thousands of dollars to dear old Walt. As I sat in the Tiki Tiki Tiki Tiki Tiki Room listening to the mechanized clacking hinges of bird beaks, I wondered if half of these people would ever even go to Polynesia. And when the fake thunder and rain clattered against the plastic windows behind me, I also asked myself if anyone here might actually find themselves stuck in a hut, rain beating against the thatching…in real life.

Although I never thought of Disneyland in this way before, as I was too caught up in the sophomoric escapism of my childhood, I now realize that it really was at the forefront of our current daily obsession with virtual reality. It paved the way for the craving to be in a place, without really being in a place. I never thought of Disneyland as being detrimental to our sense of selves and our place in the world, but when viewed within the context of today it seems to be no better than Wii Bowling or Dance Dance Revolution. What ever happened to actually getting gutter ball after gutter ball or having your forearms ache from swinging around nine pounds of polyurethane? What happened to dancing in a tent, nervously waiting for someone to ask you to the floor? What ever happened to living?

I refuse to denounce Disneyland in its entirety. Walt Disney was the originator of turning imagination – the intangible contents of a brain – into a 3-D miniature world. Disneyland is amazing for children because it makes accessible to them things that they are otherwise unable to access. They can drive a car, fly over London, and take a boat tour through Africa. The sensation it stimulated in me as a child was priceless and cannot be accessed as an adult, for good reason. For anyone childless, over the age of twelve, or not under the influence of psychotropic drugs, Disneyland evolves into a strange anathema for actually experiencing the world. And that prospect terrifies me.