Peter Pan syndrome is real, and you’re most likely to experience it during a Disney theme park visit. Suddenly, you’ll regress to childhood and feel the euphoria of guilt-free pleasures.
Sure, some of your friends will never understand. They’ll even sardonically ask you whether you’re vacationing at Disney again. They just don’t get it. Disney is a judgment-free zone where you can do anything you want, no matter how ridiculous it may appear to outsiders. Here are a bunch of things that adults shouldn’t love at Disney…but we do!
Character meet and greets
Image: DisneyYou’re never too old to love Mickey Mouse!
If anyone questions this fact, they should spend time standing in line at Disney character meetings. They’ll watch fully formed human beings suddenly shrink to child-size as they laugh and play with the most recognizable of all cartoon characters.
Nobody cares that cartoons aren’t real or that the costumed character is another adult pretending to be an imaginary creature. The sentiment is simply that overwhelming. Disney character meetings are the ultimate in fan service.
Building a droid or lightsaber
Image: Disney
Whether you prefer a droid or lightsaber or have the cash for both, you’ll relish that same childhood fantasy. For $100-$200, you can replicate the lightsabers and droid from your imagination when you would run around outside the house and terrify the neighbors.
Getting wished a happy birthday
Image: HarshLight, Flickr (license)
Ah, the buttons. At some point, Disney officials decided that everyone should know when someone celebrated a special occasion. They started handing out buttons to guests, and these gaudy, oversized accessories became a form of personal identification at the parks.
While wearing a button, you’re telling the world that it’s your birthday or anniversary or engagement. And cast members pay attention to such notifications. They’ll wish you a happy birthday/anniversary/engagement. Somehow, it’ll make you feel taller and more important. It’s a form of validation that you’ll only find at Disney theme parks.
Pushing all the buttons
Image: DisneyWhen you’re young, no sane person wants to get on an elevator with/after you. Everyone knows that kids love pulling that one super-annoying prank. You know the one where some brat hits all of the buttons on the elevator and then leaves, forcing everyone else to wait while the lift stops at each floor. Yeah, nobody likes that kid.
At Disney, the situation is different. Imagineers want you to play with the buttons. When you’re participating in group-based attractions like Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run and Mission: SPACE, turn all of the knobs and switches.
Who knows what that lever is really meant to do? You may even discover a secretive left for the inquisitive. For example, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad’s line queue harbors a secret. You can blow something up! At Disney, you relish these child-like experiences that your parental figures told you not do. Mickey Mouse encourages you to be yourself and push all the buttons!
Rushing to the next ride
Image: DisneyThink back to when you were young and at a theme/amusement park or carnival. You wanted to do as much stuff as possible before your unforgettable day of adventure ended. That ticking clock felt like your mortal enemy, the thing stopping you from leaving out your heart’s desire.
When you’re at Disney, you circle back to those days. You know that you have limited time during your vacation. You want to see and do everything while you’re there because you never know when you’ll be back. So, you’re on the clock from the moment you arrive.
You rush between attractions – never running since that’s illegal at Disney – hoping to find something with that dream combination of short wait-time and maximum fun. You never run to that three o’clock conference call with accounting at work, but you will power walk all the way across Magic Kingdom if you know that Splash Mountain has a 15-minute wait.
Wearing Mouse Ears
Image: DisneyRaise ‘em up! You know that you want to rock the Mouse Ears!
The Mickey Mouse Ears Hat phenomenon dates back to the 1950s. Back then, the Mouseketeers from the Mickey Mouse Club all wore them, causing kids to want to mimic their role models. Amusingly, Roy Williams, the Mouseketeer who looked 45, was the one who invented them. And he really should have patented the concept.
Mickey Mouse Ears Hats are far and away the most popular consumer purchase in the history of the parks. While they were initially quite basic, they now come in all shapes and sizes, and many an Etsy store is predicated on original Mouse Ear designs. Whenever you wear these hats, you feel like you’re a part of Disney. It’s certainly not a hat you’d ever wear to work, and that’s why it’s such a satisfying form of apparel-based escapism.
Playing at Tom Sawyer Island
Image: DisneyQuestion: When’s the last time you played in your backyard? Or any yard? When can you remember playing at all like you did when you were a kid? Imagineers recognize what you’ve lost, and they give it back to you at Frontierland.
When you head to Tom Sawyer Island, you’re effectively traveling back in time. You’re resetting your adult clock and becoming eight-years-old again. You’re on a giant playground owned and operated by Disney.
Here, you can wander through dark caverns and look at spooky lights. You can walk through a forest and admire streams. You can explore in a way that only children can. When you’re on Tom Sawyer Island, you’ll feel young again. You may even reminisce about the dread you once experienced when your parent(s) would tell you that it was time to come home. When you’re in the moment here, it’s just like when you played until dinner time as a kid.
Overacting in a play
Image: DisneyDid you act in plays when you were a kid? I don’t mean to brag, but I sang the theme to Grease during my fifth-grade play. Then, my voice changed, and any dreams of pop stardom died a gruesome, southern accented death. But I digress.
The point is that whether you were Emily/George from Our Town or Shrubbery #3, you were likely in a play back in the day. And you relished in the process of bringing your Hollywood dreams to life, if only for a day.
At one Disney attraction, you can once again become a movie star for a while. Enchanted Tales with Belle casts members of the audience in roles from Beauty and the Beast. You’ll never thank the academy for your star turn during this attraction, but you’ll still adore putting on a show in front of your family members.
Pin Trading
Image: DisneyI’m going to let you in on a secret. Pins are cheap. You can buy your own. In fact, you can buy dozens of them. When you’re at Disney, however, the situation somehow seems different.
Suddenly, you crave these cheap little baubles. You can’t get enough of them and want more. You will do anything that can to add to your hoard. This newfound urge will drive you to ask cast members whether they’re willing to exchange pins with you. Thankfully, they are!
Disney stocks some of its cast members with tradeable pins. You may even uncover a few rare ones that aren’t supposed to be available anymore. And when you score one of these, you will get the type of high that you haven’t had since you got the perfect birthday gift as a kid.
Somehow, buying your own pins away from Disney parks isn’t the same.
