The Punning Pundit

The Bad
I'll start with the bad so I don't seem shrewish when I gush later. Everything you've heard about Disneyland is true. They are an evil corporation that exists solely to part there customers from their customer's money. Disney uses slave labor to produce their animation, and when they fail to come up with good concepts themselves, they imitate the worst parts of Microsoft by buying up good companies to do it for them. Disney has changed our legal code in such a way that perverts the very meaning of our constitution for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many. Oh, and Disney uses the souls of small children to power their machines...

The Good
All of this is irrelevant at Disneyland, however. The place is clean. The Capitol area of DC wishes it were as clean as any given part of Disneyland. This is your admission dollars at work...

The staff is helpful and friendly. I was tempted at one point to ask where an ideal spot for a quickie would be, confident that the staff would be right there with a map and a condom. When I ran this idea past my girlfriend, however, she gave me a look. So much for that...

One part that shocked me utterly, once I noticed, was the dearth of unhappily screaming children. Scratch that. There was exactly 1 unhappily screaming child. It happened 5 minutes after I mentioned this lack to my GF that one showed up. I am not unconvinced that the friendly, helpful staff didn't provide one for me just because I seemed to be requesting it...

It is the shear ease with which Disney seemed to do everything that really caught my eye. The Restrooms, water fountains, and garbage cans and recycle bins were all placed exactly where I needed them, every time I started thinking that perhaps I needed one...

The Disney
The thing that impressed me most about the park is that at every opportunity Disney had to miss a trick they failed to do so. The company may misconceive a project from the beginning, the company may be imitating someone else, but by the gods, when they do something, they think about every detail. In Disney California (a misconceived idea), they have a Bay Area section. The trash cans here say "keep our bay area clean". It is a small detail, and one easily overlooked, but Disney didn't...

Disney has a couple of parades every day. And if I don't want to see them, Disney makes it easy to miss. Only Disney could arrange their park in such a way that they have a parade down the main walk way, but manage to not at all disrupt the flow of non-parade foot traffic. The amazing thing is that they manage to do this every day...

That is the key to the Disney experience. There is an illusion being created, and Disney does everything within their power to make that illusion as difficult as possible to see through. The fact is that they manage to succeed brilliantly. No matter what else can be said of them, the Disney corporation does what they do very well...