P.S. disneyland can also be tiring and some of those kids look worn out not bored.

The wildest parts of Disneyland are underground, and are about as extensive as the above-ground portion seen by visitors. It’s how they whisk people away who are being thrown out for some reason, such as issuing primal screams during a journey to the heart of the id or something, and if necessary there’s a cute Disney-themed holding cell or two down there too (with little Mickey Mouse® heads on the wall, which was painted an aggression-reducing pink). Or so I hear.

Still, we couldn’t shake the feeling that it was a fundamentally-evil place, and that feeling also manifested when we checked again with a few grams of mushrooms during another visit. A lot of modern crowd-control technology was created and developed by Disney (like the “cattle chutes” that wind back-and-forth wherever lots of people frequently wait in line), which allow being whacked out of one’s mind while being gently guided to the next attraction without incident.

The only way you know you’re leaving one attraction and entering another is that you pass through a happy gift shop and then end up in another exciting cattle chute. It’s a perfect architecture of control; the infrastructure itself is designed to physically prevent and psychologically dissuade visitors from stepping out of bounds or engaging in undesirable behaviors. The whole place is a paper-thin shiny facade of promised “Perfect Moments” (a la Spalding Gray) that obscures the fact that it’s a nearly-perfect Panopticon of surveillance and control; there are cameras everywhere (that were installed many years before Total Surveillance was cool) and they’re being actively monitored, probably to facilitate responding to ‘incidents’ such as the many suicides that occur there every year but are seldom talked about, or keeping an eye on the occasional primal screamer/drunk redneck/sketchy gangster. For myself and those with me, the feeling that the Wizard behind the curtain was always watching never went away, and from previous experience I knew that if someone steps even a millimeter out of line then literally seconds later a group of large and angry-looking men appear out of nowhere and make them disappear (like Magic!) into the tunnels. But I still think Space Mountain on acid was worth it; we actually achieved what Disney is trying to sell, so for a few hours we were the happiest people wandering around the happiest place on Earth, smiling like idiots as we wound our way through the cattle chutes making mooing noises and causing parents to hold their children closer.

I guess the Disneyland experience can be whatever we make of it as long as we maintain the proper external facade and make no sudden or suspicious movements; except for the marketing hype and higher density of gift shops it’s really no different than any other built environment.

Disneyland is fun. And honestly, the pictures aren’t at all accurate representations. The only one that is an accurate representation is the child sleeping. And children sleep because parents don’t want to go home yet. They paid 80 bucks a head to bring their kid(s) to Disneyland and they’re not going to leave early.

When I’m in line for rides, I’m always getting bumped by kids playing and bouncing in line.

After a while, kids get tired and want to go home but parents don’t want to because of the money they spent.

Maybe something a little different would make the point better. Maybe juxtapose images from Disney’s advertising of kids with magical wonder in their faces, with images of real kids in the real-life equivalent of those ads. That might have made the connection more obvious. As it is, I just don’t understand how pictures of bored kids in line is supposed to critique Disney’s marketing angles.

This isn’t like when people come into a racism post and start whining about how it’s really no big deal. This point was either too subtle or not adequately explained, and left us genuinely wondering why it was posted. I don’t see the questioning comments as defensive.

First, as anxious as Disney is to market Disneyland as the happiest place on earth (or is that DisneyWorld?) parents may be EQUALLY anxious to buy that image — and (re)sell it to their kids. Because sometimes you need to promise your kid something extra special, offer some out of the ordinary reward, and even if as adults we know that Disney is just a commercial theme park and shallow consumerism, we sometimes need something more ‘showy’ than just quiet quality time with Mom and Dad. Bogus build up is the parents’ ally here as often as not. Agreed, the required pilgrimage to Disneyland is not quite as spiritual as say to Mecca or Chartres Cathedral, but that’s what you get in capitalist society.

Second, the major problem, as identified in previous comments here, is that many parents (myself included until I figured it out) is that having paid like a billion dollars to get to Disneyland, parents damn well want to get their monies worth. And that is often incorrectly interpreted as ride every ride in existence till the kids puke and pass out. Once a family figures out to build some breaks into the day, Disneyland does get a lot happier.

If Disneyland wanted to increase quality of experience, they would do well to include “quite moments at Disneyland” into the promos a bit more so that parents could give the family occasional break from too much fun.

Third, I sympathize with Victoria’s complaint that many of the comments seem defensive and lack a sociological understanding. But Victoria, surely analyzing the comments is itself a big part of what sociology instructors/researchers get out of this site. What we see here is a strong assertion of the value of delayed gratification, a significant underpinning of the belief in social mobility and meritocracy. If one pokes a sociological critique at some icon of American culture and does not get a defensive response like “this is the stupidest post ever” or “that’s just the way things are” then you haven’t really offered a critique of hegemonic beliefs. If you offer a critique and everyone goes, “Oh, now I see it!” you must not have cut very deep!

And racism.

Here’s a website that list 7 racist Disney cartoons:
http://www.ranker.com/list/seven-racist-disney-cartoons-or-disney-racist-cartoons/etriplett

For those who don’t wish to (or find it difficult) to vist that hyperlinked site, here are the titles of those films listed by that commenter (I’m not sure if these titles are in any particular order or not)

1.Fantasia
2.Dumbo
3.Song of the South
4.Peter Pan
5.Lady and the Tramp
6.The Jungle Book
7.Aladdin

-snip-

I’d also add that the films “The Princess And The Frog”, or “The Lion King”, but maybe that’s just me.

And I’m glad that Disney was finally embarrased into giving a “reasonable” settlement to the descendants of Soloman Linda, the South African man who composed the song “Mbube” (better known as “Wimoweh” and “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”)…

This blog, as I read it, is engaged in social *critique* (as is the field of sociology in general). Folks seem to respond to it as social criticism and respond defensively. (“So? Kids are bored sometimes. What’s the point?”)

The point (in my view) is to shine a light on (or “critique”) how “happiness” is packaged and sold as a commodity. The pictures aren’t a criticism of Disneyland (as in, “See, kids are bored at Disneyland. Disneyland claims it’s the happiest place on earth. Therefore Disneyland is a liar!”).

Now, sometimes while I am reading I get bored or suddenly do not feel like reading. You might even say that sometimes I have moments where I don’t think reading is fun right now. So I sigh and do something else.

Does that mean that I do not like reading and do not find it fun?