Walt Disney, the creator of my favorite place in the universe, once asked a simple question: “Why do we have to grow up?”
“I know more adults who have the children’s approach to life,” he once said. “They’re people who don’t give a hang what the Joneses do. You see them at Disneyland every time you go there. They are not afraid to be delighted with simple pleasures, and they have a degree of contentment with what life has brought – sometimes it isn’t much, either.”
Everyone who knows me knows I am utterly obsessed with Disney World. I’ve admittedly been there 19 times, and even went on the Disney cruise line once. This tends to surprise people, since in everyday life I am not especially childish or even optimistic. But there’s something about Disney World that I’ve always loved. Now, I may never have seen the ruins of Pompeii or Bahia Bustamante in Argentina or even Paris, but I know for a fact that Disney World is the best place ever. Besides, who needs to travel all over Europe when Epcot Center has all the countries you could ever need, all within a few feet of each other?
Part of what I love about Disney World is the fact that it’s okay to be a kid. In a time when it seems everyone is in such a rush to grow up and the pressures of college, jobs and thinking about the future weighs heavy on my shoulders, Disney World offers an escape.
And Walt Disney, for all the flaws he might have had (not to be discussed here), knew of these pressures and wanted to create a place where growing up and doing “what the Joneses do” didn’t matter (Okay, maybe he wanted to make some money too). The parks may all be fabricated and not “real,” but they allow me a chance to be a kid again. They allow me a chance to remember the times when all that mattered were the “simple pleasures” like going on Splash Mountain five times and eating chicken fingers with apple sauce at the Orlando Applebee’s and where the biggest downer was having to wait in line.
That is why, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve chosen Disney World, not Punta Cana or Miami or some other place where everyone just wants to be half naked and drunk for a week, for my spring break destination. And for anyone who has a problem with that, well, me and Mickey Mouse will gladly fight you (with smiles!) about it.
