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I'm going to ramble, inspired by CP's observation, so forgive me for stating the obvious, but I'm new here:
Disneyland is an ideal - to some it idealizes the past - their own past, the country's past, the shared past of countless childhood stories, legends and tall tales. It is also an idealized future - a sparkling, enthusiastic look toward a better world - the Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow that was promised to us a generation ago, and never came to fruition - not all the way.
(I'm still waiting for my jetpack and the moving sidewalk in front of my Monsanto house, complete with a rooftop landing pad for my hovercraft.)
And the N word. NOSTALGIA.
When Walt dreamed up Disneyland, he designed the park around his boyhood - Turn of the century Main Street, the Frontier legends that entertained him as a boy, the fairy tales, and adventure stories, the World's Fairs with their utopian visions of a shiny new world...
Disneyland was Walt's personal nostalgia machine that struck a deeply resonant chord with an impossibly large segment of the population.
Half a century later, Disneyland is our Main Street - our nostalgic heroes and icons are no longer coonskin-clad statesmen and freckle-faced boys outsmarting Injun Joe - our icons are cartoon characters, movies, theme park rides. Walt remembered tales of swashbuckling pirates from his youth - we remember the thrill of hearing "Dead Men Tell No Tales" right before the once terrifying waterfall descent into the place where dream, memory, fantasy, and nostalgia all happily intersect, and for a fleeting moment, we are 5, 7, 10 years old again.
That is why it works on so many levels.
We bring the magic. Disneyland, by its own masterful design, is a series of happy triggers that unlock real emotional responses - and often release dormant feelings in people of all ages.
Disneyland allows its visitors a chance to not only connect with themselves, but with each other. That is what you have all been saying, in one way or another - that to each one of us, Disneyland is a vessel of infinite human emotion, our mirror reflection, our tallest Peter Pan shadow that never grows old, and (stopping short of bestowing it with God-like power) a Mecca, a Jerusalem, a holy place for nerds, geeks, and the friends of the friendless.
That being said, if the UN ever partitions the DLR like Jerusalem, they can take the DCA half.
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