California, Disneyland, United States

A Disneyland Au Revoir
A retrospective of our visits over five years of Leon

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It’s no secret my spouse is a bone fide Disney adult; I sometimes joke that he’d wanted a kid so he could continue his Disney reveries. Some of it is coming of age as a Millennial, a generation less cynical and more open to popular culture than my own sometimes-snarky Gen X (though many of us, including me, rejected a lot of that cynicism). 

At the same time, Millennials were kids during the Disney Renaissance, that late-1980s-through 1990s era where the studio put out a suite of celebrated animated films concurrent with significant theme park expansion. As for me, my sublime-appreciating parents had always been enchanted by the studio’s offerings—and as an outspoken nerd from way back, I welcomed the growth and expansion of the company, as they welcomed Marvel and Lucasfilm under their wing, along with Winnie-the-Pooh, the Muppets, along with their classics (and a few not-so-classics; we’re still trying to pretend Operation Dumbo Drop didn’t happen).

Our first visit with Leon was when he was barely a few months old, right before pandemic-era lockdowns came into effect. As the world reopened, we began excursions to Orange County, and soon made the pilgrimage down there a regular occurrence. Over the years, we’ve brought along (and made) friends, more than a few of whom were fellow Disney adults; met up with extended family members; and generally gotten to know the California parks inside and out as they completed their most recent waves of expansion. I probably know the location of every bathroom in those two parks.

Disney Adulting

The Disney theme parks elicit seemingly at least as many opinions as there are guests. Elite types disdain them as hoi polloi schlock. Multitudes more are alarmed by those rising prices, twinned with reminiscences of the halcyon days of $99 annual passes. And all of us want to do practically anything to avoid lines.

So what’s a Disney Adult parent to do?

Mathew, true to form, figured out all the hacks, and even did some TikToking about it a bit ago. Basically, the key to the parks is this: do whatever you can to arrive early, preferably just as the park opens. Although there will be other hordes there for rope drop, as it’s known, it’s still scant numbers compared to the numbers you’ll see later in the day. Knock out as many rides as possibly early on, then you can slow down and do other activities later in the day.

The same is true for dining: sit-down Disney restaurants aren’t really all that different price-wise from equivalent restaurants elsewhere, and though their quick-serve is on the pricier end for what it is, it’s often of higher quality, with generally good options for vegetarians and vegans. But here too, a trick: tables at most of the in-demand restaurants are snapped up almost immediately when reservations open up. That’s typically at the sixty-day mark, early in the day here on the West Coast. Glad I have an early-rising spouse.

There are also Lightning Lanes (once upon a time a similar such offering, FastPass, was free, but nowadays it’s no longer) to skip the lines. For those with bigger budgets, a stay at a Disney hotel (there are only three at Disneyland, but many more at the Florida parks) traditionally offered up to an hour of early access to the parks, but looks like that perk’s going away soon as well. Other buy-in-bulk options include annual passes for park admission, or even joining Disney Vacation Club, a point-based timeshare option that’s so popular that they have no need for those cheesy timeshare presentations; occasionally, a DVC contract even sells for a higher price than when bought. Arbitrage never looked so magical.

“I watched him grow up at Disneyland”

Looking (with some mistiness) at photos of past visits, I’m not sure if we’re living out a cliché. But then, clichés exist for a reason. It’s the stuff Mad Men character Don Draper talks about in that first-season finale, pitching the Carousel slide projector to the folks at Kodak. He mentions a sentimental bond with the product, which is exactly the way so many Disney adults and kids feel. Sure, it’s a product, but it’s made by artisans who care deeply about their craft, telling stories as timeless as the myths and legends on which they’re based.

Then there’s nostalgia, Don Draper says. Delicate, but potent. The Disney parks try to fulfill the greatest aspects of travel: it’s ability to bring people together through shared, novel experiences. Its a carousel, literally and figuratively, allowing us to travel the way a child travels. Bringing us back to a place where we know we are loved.

Although we’ll be taking a hiatus from the park in Southern California, the title of this piece hints at further adventures—Disney and otherwise—yet to come.

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San Diego, United States

From 2021: Leon’s First Plane Ride

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After more than a year of pandemic lockdowns, travel finally opened up again in summer, 2021. Before Leon started preschool, we headed out on our first-ever trip as a family. Here’s a missive to him I wrote that night as the sun went down over San Diego Bay:

June 25, 2021

Dear Leon,

Today was a momentous day for you, at least in the life and worldview we hope to impart: your very first airplane trip. It’s only the first leg of a bigger journey, and it’s just to an overnight stopover still in the same state we live in, you were born in, and have yet to leave (though if all goes as planned that’ll be changing tomorrow).

Sometimes I wonder if you’ll wonder why travel is so big to us both, to your Daddies. On the surface, it seems kind-of pointless, right? Emitting all this carbon into the atmosphere (something that’s a big issue in our time and no doubt will be even bigger when you read this) to have logistical hardships (lost luggage, missed flights, you name it) to only temporarily visit places that have been photographed, rendered, and discussed innumerable times. Why bother?

I’m already hopeful that you know what the better answer is.

I say that, because, as I see it, travel provides that vital, personality-augmenting effect on one’s brain that practically nothing else can give. The feel of another place. The smells, the different light, the people going by. No two places are alike, and you can never really see it all. That’s what makes every experience in a different place from where you live a vital, arresting fragment of existence.

But still, there’s something the endless categorizers and taxonomies of the human persona point out: some people dig that, drink it in deep, let the air and aura of other lands fill, and broaden, their souls. They crave new experiences and hunger to learn from them. And then there are others, those for whom novelty triggers stress. Those for whom travel is viewed as an extravagance, a pointless errand, something both scary and not needed.

Since the day you were born I’ve wondered and worried: is Leon going to turn out like that?

Obviously, it’s not for me to say whether such a path is the best one for you. Nor do I believe that kids come out of the womb pre-cooked, with all their personality traits set for life. Believe it or not, such a view is still prevalent in our time. Sure, I’d rebut, there are some currents and dispositions that must come pre-loaded in our physiology. But what you do with them, how you nourish them, is equally if not more vital.

I saw it today when we got to the airport, then you stepped on your very first airplane—just a Regional Jet, to be sure, on a short-hop flight. Still, you demonstrated the trait that fills me with hope and that you’ve possessed since the moment I’ve known you: an unceasing curiosity and fascination about, well, everything. Watching you look out the airplane window as we were on approach to San Diego (a great first airport to arrive at, by the way, surrounded by buildings and city till the moment you land) was one of the more joyous moments we’ve shared in the twenty or so months you’ve been alive. I know that sound you make, a spirited squawk, whenever you see something you find great and fascinating.

You made that sound a lot today.

You’re not going to remember this trip. Too bad, since it marks a return to something: a reunion of our extended family, one I myself am still getting to know; a welcoming your grandparents to their new home base—though if their history is any indication, it won’t be their last (hint: they share the travel bug); and a return to the old life we all knew before this ludicrous plague took over the world only a few months after you emerged into life.

For me, though, that’s the biggest return of all: a return to exploring the world, to getting out there and having those new experiences so often cited in the writings of Frank Herbert, Mark Twain, and Anthony Bourdain. We’d been hoping to start this new, epic cycle in all our lives—traveling the world as a family—for some time now, and it’s my hope that this is, to paraphrase Humphrey Bogart, the beginning of a beautiful adventure.

Happy trails, kiddo.

Love,

Daddy David

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United States

Wander the Rainbow is now Rainbow Wanderers

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Fifteen years.

It was that long ago, in June of 2010, that I nervously stepped into a taxi from my little place in San Francisco’s Potrero Hill, headed to the event at a Castro Street bookstore to herald the release of the first-ever book-length anything I’d ever written.

Platitudes about timespan notwithstanding, what strikes me most about those days, when the book and the trip it was about were happening, was the youthful notion that after, say, one’s thirties, all the big life transitions were done. After all, most of us are settled at that age: married, owning first homes (well, once upon a time), having first kids, all set in careers. Life’s future tragedies—the passing of a parent; the failure of a marriage; a massive socio-economic shock—often seem distant, or abstract.

Or as Elastigirl from The Incredibles put it, “we’re superheroes… what could happen?”

Of course, as the years roll on, many of us discover that’s a blend of hubris and horseshit.

Maybe it’s a by-product of these fractured times, but it seems for many the years that follow the freewheeling thirties are anything but placid these days. Future tragedies move into the present. World events move in unpredictable directions. All those best-laid plans go up in smoke.

Perhaps most surprising, then, is what emerged for me out of all that tumult: after decades of both figurative and literal wandering, I finally did settle down, just in time for my adopted homeland to legalize same-sex marriage. Together with my husband and associated creatures, we set about doing two things I never would have imagined for myself that evening when I got into that taxi—or that earlier evening almost two years before, where I boarded my first flight across the Atlantic in two decades: become owners of a single-family home, and welcome a child into our family.

Perhaps least surprising to those who’ve been through it: these supposedly banal journeys of domestication were no less of a whirlwind than the times that came before. The home purchase turned into a multi-year adventure, as we got caught in the winds of San Francisco’s housing, construction, and affordability crisis. We made it out OK, and the house turned out gorgeous, though in pandemic times we were forced to make some big changes once more.

The little one’s arrival was on a whole other level: on top of the usual life-changing clichés about the arrival of kids in one’s life, the whole thing came amid other professional and personal stuff that frankly could merit an entire blog and book of its own (maybe someday). Oh, yeah, and then that little thing called the pandemic happened in the middle of it all.

Yet, through it all, we made a pledge to Leon: as descendants of families of nomads, one thing would always remain a focus in our lives.

Travel!

And so, this project evolves in a fresh, new direction: the continuing voyages, in Star Trek-speak, of a whole family of travelers. Maybe a bit like The Incredibles after all. The cast: me, onetime queer backpacker and child of overseas immigrants; and Mathew, son of two military kids, accomplished global explorer, and master logistician.

Join us as we bring Leon, now five, and help show him—one more Disney reference incoming—a whole new world.

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