In defense of the Disney Adult

For too long derision of the Disney Adult has gone on unchecked. The world has been all too eager to sneer at the oblivious saccharine happiness of the woman – for it is always a woman – who dares to freely enjoy the most magical place on earth.

It’s easy to place the blame for the ills of modernity on this mouse-ear-bedecked scapegoat, for she embodies all the cringing mannerisms of the aging millennial, from their too-insistent sincerity to their generational refusal to put away childish things long after childhood has passed them by. Despite sharing their normative age and sex, I too have always counted myself among the haters, defining myself against type. “Not like other girls,” I said. “Not like other millennials.” Until this week.

My best friend, an Anaheim native, urged me to take a quick detour to Disneyland Paris on our trip to France Wednesday. “You’ll love it,” she said. “You have to go at least once in your life.” I couldn’t argue with that. Nor could I argue with the visuals: two days straight of Parisian wine and cheese primed my spirit, and the first glimpse of that perfect pink castle spiraling over the plains of the French countryside melted my heart even further. The moment I put on the Minnie Mouse ears (€25 a pop, as easy to find as air), I was transformed. Forty-minute lines were now opportunities. The park was my playground, crying babies nothing more than angelic moppets.

We bought Mickey-shaped jambon beurres and I googled the lore for the Phantom Manor ride, which had an elaborate backstory adapted to the taste of the French. Everything here was cuter, better, more refined. I purchased a €10 bucket of pink cotton candy and stood in line for half an hour before entering the “It’s a Small World” ride, a ten-minute confectionary spectacle of darling little multilingual animatronic children in sombreros and kimonos singing sweetly of peace and unity. “It IS a small world after all,” I sobbed, a newly minted globalist, as we left and headed straight to “Frontierland,” the American West-themed section of the park. “How charming!” I exclaimed at all the French families puttering around saloon doors and taking pictures with Woody the Cowboy, “They really love us.”

Disneyland may be the realm of those who have gone gently, but Disneyland Paris offers new opportunity for the open minded, the patriotic and anyone who wants to recenter their divine feminine spirit. It is possible to retain dignity and embrace joy; it is possible to be an adult without “adulting,” and it is possible to enter into the spirit of manufactured magic without losing your softened soul. I am in Disney, but not of it.

Toward the end of the day, physically and financially exhausted but spiritually revived, my friend and I walked past a section labeled “Princess Pavilion” that advertised a 90-minute wait to meet Cinderella. “Do you think I’m a Disney adult?” I asked my friend. “You’re not in that line.” She replied. That makes all the difference.