“You realize it’s a cult, right?” My friend likes to say about the Walt Disney Company. For a kid who didn’t go until he was eighteen, it is hard to truly understand what makes Disney so magical. I grew up watching the films, singing the songs, and going to the parks; I even wrote my Common App essay on Walt Disney World. As I have walked around the Disney parks, now twenty years old, I get to look at it from a new set of eyes. I’m not a kid, swept up in the magic of it all, and I am not a parent, watching the joy on my child’s face. I am a snarky, half-cynical twenty year old, but somehow the magic still gets me.
I was on Star Tours with my dad and, as Finn came on the screen, myself and the little boy next to me yelled “Finn!”. While we both may have been yelling because John Boyega is an incredibly handsome dude, which is progressive for a six year old, we were undeniably swept up in the fun of it all. At 6, 20, and 50 years old, the entire car of people was yelling, laughing, and even applauding, as C3PO led us through the galaxy. We aren’t students, or accountants, or teachers, or hedge fund managers within Disney’s gates; we’re people who have all wished and dreamed. We see ourselves in these beloved characters and within the parks we get to see our dreams play out.
I stood with my parents and one hundred strangers at a screening of a few Disney-Pixar short films and as I heard the collective “awws” of the crowd as each film went by, I realized that our differences out in “the real world” didn’t matter in the world of yesterday, tomorrow and fantasy. I knew I wanted to tell the stories that brought us all together and made kids, both big and small, cheer when they saw their favorite characters (even if it’s because they’re handsome). It is the stories of the Walt Disney Company that unite us and inspire us and that is what makes Disney so magical.
Walt Disney is credited with saying “The real trouble with the world is that too many people grow up” and maybe he is right, but I think the real trouble is we forget that we aren’t that different after all. We all have the dreamer inside of us and we must let our hopes and wishes run wild, just as dreamers do.
