I haven’t been to Disneyland in 20 years or more. For quite a stretch of years, though, I was a regular visitor there.
Back then, when I was a kid, Disneyland was a surreal paradise. There was only one true border on the earth, that between Disneyland and the rest of the world. Our annual trip to Anaheim from northern California was the highlight of the year. My dad, amped up on a NoDoz pill or two, would drive through the night while us kids slept, drifting into slumberland aided by the hypnotic sounds of the tires on the road and the unobtrusive drone of the engine, as well as the comforting sound of our parents quietly conversing.
When our family finally pulled into the Disneyland parking lot the next morning, we (us kids, anyway) were rarin’ to go: after having a quick snack in the car, we would inchworm our way through the queue, get our book of tickets, and enter a fairy-tale, make-believe world of fantasy and adventure. It truly did feel like a magic kingdom. Crossing the dedisneyfied zone from the everyday world to one of bliss was literally a dream come true: between trips there, I would often dream (both during the day and at night) about our next trip to Disneyland. The atmosphere of the place, the thrilling rides, the sense of inhabiting a kid’s Shangri-La, were all extremely delightful.
Every once in a while there would be a new ride (Pirates of the Caribbean, Space Mountain, Splash Mountain, and Big Thunder Mountain Ride to name a few), and we were eager to try them out right away. Some old favorites eventually went the way of New Coke, but for the most part, our favorites were perennials. Those that have left behind the strongest positive impressions are, in no order whatsoever:
The Animatronic Abraham Lincoln
The Mark Twain Riverboat
Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride
Autopia
Pirates of the Caribbean
Jungle Cruise
The Matterhorn
Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse
Monsanto House of the Future
Submarine Voyage
Mine Train Through Nature's Wonderland (Southwest Desert)
America the Beautiful (Circlevision 360)
Disneyland Railroad: Grand Canyon Diorama and Primeval World
But, unlike Peter Pan and other contemporary celebrities who shall remain nameless, I did eventually have to grow up. Disneyland helped me to do this, in fact, when I experienced a shocking epiphany as I was a passenger (for the umpteenth time) on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride.
Up until then, the ride based on Kenneth Grahame’s excellent book The Wind in the Willows had all seemed quite authentic to me—in fact, during my first time on the ride, my mom had to hold me back from jumping out of the Toad car when we got to the point where there seemed to be a train on the track coming toward us—a strategically placed flashing light above the rail on which our conveyance moved and a recording of a train’s warning blast made an imminent epic crash appear inevitable. On the many-years-later epiphany-producing ride, though, I noticed for the first time . . . wires or cables strung here and there off to the side (“backstage”), connected to pieces of mechanical and electrical machinery. The veil was lifted, the Emperor was discovered to be naked as a jaybird, and the man behind the curtain stood revealed as a charlatan pulling levers, pushing buttons, and squawking through a voice synthesizer (so to speak).
Disneyland was never the same to me after that. I wouldn’t say I became jaded, exactly, as I took my kids there many years later, but the bloom was definitely off the rose. Dorothy said, “There’s no place like home”; remember, though, that Thomas Wolfe taught us that You Can’t Go Home Again; but then again, he also wrote Look Homeward, Angel.