Rejuvenile by Christopher Noxon

Author:Christopher Noxon [Noxon, Christopher]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780307351777
Publisher: Crown
Published: 2006-06-20T05:00:00+00:00

What Drives the Disnoids

In that moment, I got the feeling I’d stumbled into a basic truth about the adult appeal of Disneyland. Gary didn’t say his collection was complete—he said he was complete. This seemed significant, but when I pressed him to explain, Gary shrank back and gave me a puzzled look. The pin was rare, he said; he was glad to have found it. He was complete. Simple.

Indeed, calm satisfaction, not wild ecstasy, best describes the optimum emotional state of Disney enthusiasts like Gary. He and his pin-trader friends will, when pressed, talk about the childlike feelings of magic Disneyland gives them, but in truth they don’t seem all that happy about the Happiest Place on Earth. But of course they are—it’s just that their happiness is less about play, freedom, and excitement than contentment, completion, and safety. Their good feeling is rooted in an article of faith: Disneyland, like all Disney parks and unlike any other amusement park, presents itself as a world, one that mimics more pleasant parts of the real one, but without its infinite complications and vast possibilities. It’s manageable. You can, without too much effort, master one part of that world—Collect the pins! Own the merchandise! Learn the history!—and in so doing, join a group of like-minded settlers on a patch of make-believe that has been crafted, packaged, and contained for your pleasure. (Disney storytellers excise the darker bits of European folk tales, just as the cogs and pulleys of the park are hidden behind decorative scrims and security personnel are disguised in themed costumes.) Disneyland is at once vast, containing entire “lands,” mythologies, and characters, and at the same time limited and inviting and knowable. It’s a small world, after all.

It is just this quality that holds certain Disney enthusiasts in such a viselike grip. Gary and Anita are dedicated, but they are not among the hardest core of the Disney enthusiast crowd. Disnoids, as they are known among park employees, are those fans of mysterious means who buy annual passes and who visit the park five, six, even seven days a week. While others drift around the park in a haze, Disnoids tend to concentrate on one favorite area or attraction. Some spend their day riding the Haunted Mansion, again and again. Some are devoted to the Matterhorn. Others are specialists in Disney napkins, flyers, and other “paper ephemera.” One woman visits the park every day to ride the Indiana Jones Adventure ride (employees gave her a crystal bowl on her thousandth ride). When not at the park, they collect Disney figurines and animation cels and watch Disney-owned TV channels.

Not that all Disnoids are alike; just as Gary and Anita love the parks for different reasons, some revere the parks for their history and mythology, while others love them for their “magic.” This magic may be manufactured, but enthusiasts don’t seem to mind, as long as it does the trick of transporting them back to a wide-eyed, wondrous state they associate with childhood.

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