WHEN THIS NIGHTMARE ENDS, I’M GOING TO DISNEYWORLD!
The pandemic has given us all a lot of time to think about what we’re doing with our lives and examine our choices. Life comes at us pretty fast — one minute you’re 5 years into a worthless art school bachelors’ degree, playing beer pong in a shithole apartment in Ukrainian Village; the next, you’re knee deep in invites to bridal showers, baby showers, and surprise 40th birthday parties.
During this forced lull, I have been doing some serious soul searching about what I, in my early 40s, actually want to be doing with my one wild and precious life. And I’ve figured it out: I want to be the Bill Bryson of theme parks.
If you’re not familiar with Mr. Bryson, he is an American-British travel writer who specializes in humorous, insightful nonfiction about his life spent visiting different countries and tackling adventures such as hiking the Appalachian Trail. I want to do what he does, but for amusement parks and destination resorts where the mountains are fake but the neck tattoos are very real. As I’ve sat at home for many months, dreaming wistfully about all of the things I miss from pre-covid life, I’ve found myself yearning for a day at Six Flags Great America. Yes, I miss restaurants and live theater and museums, but I really miss theme parks, and perhaps one could say they are the perfect encapsulation of everything I desire from the Before Times. Where else can you find fine dining, live performance, simulated thrills, beloved characters and all their accompanying merchandise, plus Dippin’ Dots?
I miss theme parks so much that I snapped with reality for a second and purchased a 2021 season pass to Six Flags Great America, amidst covid closures and bracing winter temperatures, because that’s how much hope I need in my heart right now. I’m staking my dreams on a near future in which we cast off our no-longer-necessary masks as we skip towards the line entrance for Raging Bull, clinking our holographic souvenir cups together in a joyous toast.
I have vivid memories of the first time I ever rode a roller coaster. It was the day of my eighth grade field trip to Six Flags, an annual tradition for the graduating class. On the morning of the trip, my entire being vibrated with anxiety. I was scared of roller coasters — their height, their speed, their upside-downness, their tendency to be overrun with terrifying teenagers. I was a cautious, risk-averse child; if I came of age in the 1950s I probably would’ve been like, “whoa maybe we should slow down on this whole reckless phonebooth-stuffing craze.”
However, I was equally afraid of being judged by my peers, and there was nothing more humiliating than all of your classmates thinking you were a giant baby. It was time for me to buck up and step into teenagerdom by finally riding a roller coaster. I put it off for hours, filling my day with things like the Ferris Wheels and boardwalk games, but my friends grew antsy and impatient with my stalling tactics. Even my teacher took their side, encouraging me to just give it a try. With my classmates tugging the sleeves of my nylon windbreaker, I took my place in line for the Demon.
In 1993, the Demon was an intimidating steel coaster, decked out with smoke machines, multiple upside down loops, and a 90-ft drop. My teeth chattered with nerves while we waited in line. I tried to distract myself by focusing on the Looney Tunes cartoons playing on the waiting area TVs, but the sound was drowned out by the rattling cars and terrified screams of passengers soaring over our heads every 3.5 minutes. Like death, our turn was inevitable. A teenage operator not much older than myself performed the safety check on my harness. Once everyone was locked into the machine of our demise (I was sure of it), we rattled forward, inching up the incline one cog at a time. There’s that brief moment of hangtime at the peak of every coaster, as your car transitions from pointing upwards to downwards, when your stomach tries to leap out your mouth and your butthole clenches, and you can suddenly see beyond the park limits and the sprawling parking lot and the toll booths for the Indiana Skyway probably, and the scream your soul has been holding in since the moment you were born hurls out of your mouth. Then you fly down that steep drop and realize it’s a metaphor for every hard moment of your life and you’re halfway up into the loop-de-loop before you’ve braced yourself for the next shocking hurdle. I was instantly hooked on the delicious anticipation, the fearful trembles, and that moment of release, when the g-force takes over and your body floats inside the sweat-soaked steel cage that is the only thing preventing you from launching onto the pavement. Once I had a taste, I couldn’t get enough. The rest of high school was Season Pass City, population: me.
My love of theme parks goes beyond the thrill rides; I am obsessed with the entire ecosystem. A day at a theme park is a day spent witnessing a cross section of humanity. I yearn to once again stand in line for a ride sandwiched between an adult woman wearing a denim jacket embroidered with the Tasmanian Devil and a couple of tweens making out to the musical stylings of the Venga Boys drifting softly from a hidden speaker. I want to know where the mascots drink after work, feeling light and free after shedding the weight of their plush suits and full day’s worth of customer abuse. I want to write an entire 3,000 word essay about the cashier in Hogsmeade Village who rang up my Ravenclaw t-shirt and spoke to me as if I were their newest star Quidditch player. I want to understand what combination of excessive sunshine, vacation brain, Coors Light, and hubris leads a person to walk into the fanciest sushi bar in Disney Springs and request a table while wearing American flag swimming trunks.
Douglas Copeland once famously said “Adventure without risk is Disneyland,” and hey, I get it. My unabashed love of theme parks may surprise those who know me. But as someone who also once lived in Las Vegas by choice, I am intrigued by the concept of manufactured entertainment. Even though I know about the subliminal messages, the fresh cookie scent pumped into the promenades, the multiple focus groups whose brains were picked so the suits know exactly which nostalgic buttons to push, I surrender to it. I was a child of the 80s raised by VHS tapes and basic cable, so if I see an Electric Light Parade with Mickey Mouse leading in the way in all of his earnest glory, I’m gonna tear up a little. It feels nice to occasionally trade my snarky cynicism for a cute pair of Mouse ears.
A post-pandemic world is going to need a quick influx of joy. We’ve been starved for adventure, and perhaps a manufactured, sanitized version of a land where nothing goes wrong and churros are available every 15 feet will be exactly what we need. Just as Bill Bryson became the voice of the everyday American middle-aged man who’s made their dream of hiking the Appalachian Trail a reality, I believe that I can be that guide for those asking questions like “Anaheim or Orlando?” and “Why does this menu have 30 pages and 10 of them feature Guy Fieri?”
So here I am, universe. Let’s see what this manifesting business is all about. To any editors, agents, and travel companies reading this — please know that I’ll even take part of my payment in Dippin’ Dots.
Originally published at https://heauxsmag.com on February 10, 2021.
