Our first trip to Disney was in 2001. I (Michael) sent in a image collage to a local charity. We were asking for money to help us buy a wheel chair van. We never did get any help with that but we did tug on the heart strings of a local “make a wish foundation” and they sent our family (at that time only Gina, Niko, and myself) along with two friends for a week to Disney World. To be honest, I thought I was going to hate it. I’m trained in critical sociology, have a general distaste for consumerism and the waste that our society generates as a result, but I have to admit I was impressed, not so much because the experience was all sophisticated and haute, but because of how they treated Niko. The employees of Disney World really made us feel welcome and at home, which is something I have to say we don’t really experience a lot of. It takes a lot of extra effort and struggle for a family like us to get around, and even get into, other people’s lives and people typically don’t want to have anything to do with that. Can’t blame people. These days, we are all on the treadmill until we die and we’re lucky if we spend enough time with the family.
We’ve been back to Disney world a few times since then. We’ve even taken our newer family additions (Tristan and Vayda) and plan on another trip or two before the kids get too old to feel the magic. I’m still fairly critical of Disney. It does, after all, feed us all intellectual pablum, never broaching difficult social topics, and always presenting a fantasy world image of diffuse social love and widespread family function when in fact the reality is rapidly moving in the opposite direction (e.g. high rates of mental and physical disorder, high rates of depression, skyrocketing dependence on pharmaceuticals, kids chemically straitjacketed into compliance), but nevertheles it’s a great experience for the children. The joy our son Niko experiences, and the smiles you see on the eyes of all the children, are enough. The rest will work itself out in time.
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