With all due respect, I don't see what these demonstrate other than the fact that it's a bummer to wait in a long line.

I agree with @Sadie. Sure the lines are a bummer, but there is a lot of fun to be had there, I think.

Not that Disney isn't worth some criticism, plenty can be said about gender roles and consumerism....

90 mins of queueing for 90 seconds of fun. Now that's how to make a profit!

This is the story of life in general: there's much more unpleasantness than pleasantness. It's selective memory and imaginary narratives that we tell ourselves to make it feel otherwise. And this is what these kids do, with the guidance of Disney marketing. If in the end they think it was a worthwhile experience, then why argue?

While I have not been recently, my childhood memories of disney are that there was significantly less waiting in line compared to, say, the local roller-coaster park. Additionally, the lines were much more entertaining, with thematic decorations and sometimes video or audio stories that played while you were waiting instead of acres of metal turnstiles in the hot sun which you commonly see other places.

I think you can find a photo opportunity of a young child looking bored, tired, or cranky pretty much anywhere.

But my anecdotal experience is that disney does do a pretty good job with this aspect at least.

They could wait 5 minutes for a 2 minute roller coaster that's an absolute blast, or they could be at home waiting five minutes for a shitty school lunch.

What? No, waiting in line isn't fun, especially if you're 5 years old. Take a picture of the kids on the ride, or eating a sugary treat, or meeting Mickey Mouse, and the majority of them aren't bored (because these kids don't even look unhappy, just bored and tired).

I think waiting in line is a positive part of the experience. First off learning to shut up and wait is a skill kids may be losing with tv's in cars and handheld gaming devices getting better and smaller. Second it's a good opportunity for kids and parents to talk, as scary as a concept that is.

They never show the true emotional and physical dimensions of standing most of the day in lines with thousands of other irritated children and teens... all who have succumbed to the same empty sales pitch and visual ads that only promise a way to find happiness. Of course, if we were more honest about things in America, the whole house of cards would probably collapse fairly quickly.

the best memory I have of Disneyland is a huge explosive fight my siblings and I had with our father who screamed at us that we can't do this or that.

I agree that these pictures really just look like candid pictures of idle moments. However, I will say that the one time I was in Disneyland as an adult, I did see a lot of miserable kids (mostly tired/overstimulated little ones who were out and about too long, because mom/dad wanted to get the most out of their expensive trip). The way the park places stores (often diverting people through them if they want to get somewhere during a parade) also contributes to some complete meltdowns, so I get where she's coming from... the pictures just don't capture it very well.

The photographer was intentionally focusing on kids in line. As well as the blog that these photos come from is titled "Waiting is the hardest part" these pictures show that waiting in line is not all that fun, not the park itself.
My own personal memories from Disneyland are of having a good time, although with lots of waiting.

"I’ve always thought it was really interesting how companies that sell “fun” (theme parks, obviously, but also places like casinos and dance clubs) do so by downright insisting “this is what fun looks like!” “There are flashing lights! Fun! There are bright colors! Fun! There is happy music! Fun! This is what fun looks like and you are having it!!!” "

I sincerely don't understand this critique. It seems completely logical to me that a company oriented towards amusement/recreation would market its product as "fun". What exactly is the alternative? And if the experience they are selling is centered around flashing lights, bright colors, happy music, etc. (and I would say Disney's theme park experience is centered around these things) then why wouldn't they emphasize that in their ads? At the very least it's honest.

Most everything that can be said about this post has been said by others. There are very few experiences in life that are wholly fun from start to finish, especially if said experience is a day-long affair as visiting a theme park usually is. Just because kids get tired or because there is downtime spent waiting in line doesn't mean the experience isn't overall fun for kids. Is Disneyland fun every single second you're in the park? Obviously not. Is Disneyland fun for every child or person that visits? Obviously not. But I'm not sure what is of sociological value in pointing that out. It seems like such facts would be glaringly obvious to just about anyone with any lived experience.

Here is a short video we shot a while ago on the same subject:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6qhtz8tMI0&feature=player_embedded

As Someone once said, "Life is just one damn thing after another and then, you die."

So?

This is a really stupid post.

Of course you can find instances of people, particularly hyper kids, bored at Disneyland while they wait in line. This isn't groundbreaking and doesn't shed anything new on Disney.

Maybe you could have talked about the many tragedies that have occurred at Disneyland. Or talked about how Disney uses sweatshop labor to produce many of its products. Or how Disney reinforces gender roles. There is so much potential here!!!

Instead, this focuses on something extremely trivial and obvious.

You are not allowed to bring food into those amusement parks nowadays, except for baby food (at least the last time that I was in Universal). Now, it's not like they check, but the goal is of course to sell their own food. My most visit memory from Universal was the tired children whining and making tantrums on the floor from too many attractions, things to buy, things to eat, etc. However, I think it really depends on how one brings up their kids (and their age, and if they don't have ADHD or any other problem).

One of my favourite hobbies is reading. I really loved getting engrossed in a great book and diving right into the world that the author has created, and I find it really fulfilling to finish a good read.

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?

Sometimes the comments here leave me so frustrated.

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!").

A couple of points:

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!

As a Southern Californian and Disneyland annual pass holder, I would like to say that Disneyland is different for everyone. I am a die-hard Disneyland fan and I go at least once a month.

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.

It wasn't until my early twenties that I enjoyed visiting theme parks, and even had a blast while waiting in line. What I discovered makes this possible, and what these kids are obviously lacking, is a few tabs of LSD (disclaimer: I don't advocate hallucinogenic ego-loss in public to anyone, but it's worked wonders for me). Space Mountain becomes a mythic journey to the heart of the id and Mr. Toads' Wild Ride was... well you just had to be there. The "It's a Small World" song still drove us all nuts, of course.

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 the happiest place on earth. It doesnt say that everyone that goes there is happy. Disneyland creates a kind of magic that some people choose to except and others choose to discard. If you have the magic in you then you can understand that it can easily be the happiest place on earth.

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

This article is nit-picking to the extreme.  The picture of the sleeping child on his fathers' shoulder is probably very content.

Well, as a child I was completely fascinated by all the lights and the music at Disneyland, and I have to admit, every time I go there (not to sound cheesy) it is a whole new experience.  Yes, I can really connect to these pictures since I myself get really bored waiting in line for hours and hours for a ride that may only last five minutes, but I mean, it is worth it. Maybe "happiest place on earth" may not exist but to me Disney is pretty close to it.

maybe the problem is that they are marketing what "fun" looks like and that's not the reality of what is fun about disneyland. idk how much fun that place would be all by yourself. it's the company of your friends and family and the time you spend with them. of course it's the attractions as well, but there doesn't need to be flashing lights and craziness the entire time for it to be fun. 

I've been to Disneyland more than 50 times in my life and never had a bad time! I have traveled extensively and to me it IS the happiest place to go. In 1970 my husband (now deceased) and I honeymooned there. Yes, it can be expensive and tiring. Kids are really good to go for the first couple of hours and then its the parents who want to get their money's worth and make the day a marathon. I enjoy the luxury of an annual pass and go by myself to reenergize every week I can. I don't go on many rides anymore, but I love listening to the music, relaxing by the water features, and striking up conversations with people from all over the country. I love the colors, and marvel over the architectural and botanical achievements at every turn. Certainly not all my friends enjoy Disneyland, but to each their own!

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