"The Horror! The Horror!"
"The tranquil water-way leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed somber under an overcast sky--seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness."
Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness was on my mind as we made our way from one attraction to another at Disneyland. Your first assumption is that the Magic Kingdom is all sweetness and light, but it is decidedly not. And that realization really hit me for the first time on our most recent visit.
I've been to Disneyland dozens of times as a visitor, but for some reason I never noticed all the death and darkness around. The first thing that clued me in were the skulls. They're everywhere! Snow White's Scary Adventures, Haunted Mansion, Pirates of the Caribbean, Jungle Cruise, Indiana Jones Adventure, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, Peter Pan's Flight... There's even a giant skull rock at the Disneyland Hotel's Neverland pool.
If it's not skulls, it's scares. The Matterhorn features two appearances by a ferocious demon-eyed Abominable Snowman. Mr. Toad's Wild Ride actually concludes by sending you to hell, complete with blasts of hot air and a meeting with Satan himself. Alice in Wonderland is like some sort of freaky LSD trip.
There's only one truly innocent ride in Disneyland -- It's A Small World. But the case could be made that cruising through room after room of singing dolls is actually kind of creepy.
Don't get me wrong. I love every ride at Disneyland, and so do my kids. We went on every one of them last week. Some of them more than once. Haunted Mansion, three times... Big Thunder, four times... Pirates of the Caribbean, six times. We all had a blast being scared and bedazzled by the sights and sounds.
Of course, as you get older you start to think that the best ride is in the little circle at the end of Main Street, next to the statue of Walt and Mickey. There you can find a lovely green bench, from which you can comfortably sit and watch the crowds go by. The way tourists dress and act can be scarier than anything else you see in the park.
Labels: Disney, Disneyland, scary, vacation
Permalink posted by Idaho Dad at 12:32 AM
5 Comments:
Hey, I noticed that about main street, too. The tourists have a sort of desperate, I-want-it-all feeling.
Great post! I would love to take Little Princess there one day.
We skipped most of the scary and too fast stuff at WDW, but even though the 5 year old son was hesitant, he liked the Haunted Mansion and Pirates of the Carribean, just not enough to do either a second time.
My 16 year old daughter had to point out the fact that we were in hell on Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. I guess I wasn't that observant. Not only the rides, but all Disney movies have that "dark side" to them. In fact, we had a Disneyland guide book with us that described Snow White, Pinocchio, Peter Pan, Mr. Toad's Wild Ride etc., as the "dark rides". Snow White, Peter Pan and Mr. Toad's Wild Ride were the original three.
great photo.
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