Day: January 13, 2015

Saw this young man dancing in a water shower in the new section of the Magic Kingdom. Made me smile and smile.

Art and Betty live in Texas, they have been married for 53 years and the only place they wanted to go to celebrate was Disney World. There seem to be as many older people as kids when I look around, these two got a big ovation in the dining room at our hotel. They said they were heading right for the Magic Kingdom.

More than the rides or atmosphere or whiz-bang attractions, what has always drawn me to Disney was the person, Disney himself. He was an authentic genius, a passionate creative, a flawed human being. Hard to imagine what he and the mouse have done together, the legacy they left.

I wrote about him many times when I was in newspapers, when I was at Rolling Stone or Wired. I love Disney World, but it is an overwhelming and chaotic place as well as a fascinating one. It is a triumph of imagination and marketing, the latter beginning to overwhelm the former at times.  I see it is becoming a stressful place, especially for parents with small children as they try and navigate the cost, the crowds, the special ticketing and reservation arrangements designed to handle to enormous crowds and very long lines.

Disney drew from the great fairy tales of the world and offered his view of them to kids, his successors practice synergy, the link between TV, movies and toys. Their marketers create their own tales, the old ones are slowly vanishing from the parks.  Disney’s creativity was individualistic and idiosyncratic, the new view is corporate and timid. Disney is often invoked here, but make no mistake about it, his creative shadow is getting pretty thin.

At least a half-dozen times – once on  a three month national magazine assignment – I’ve come to Orlando to try and figure out Walt Disney’s complex relationship with technology, and the ways it is reflected here. And it is reflected everywhere, from his dream for Epcot center – abandoned after he died at the age of 65 – to his beloved Carousel Of Progress, which he built for the New York World’s Fair and then moved To Disney World to his Jetson-like People Mover, a shallow evocation of the future.

As much as anyone in modern history with the possible exception of Steve Jobs, Disney shaped our understanding of technology and our visions of the future. It shows in the way Disney World was built, in his tragically failed visions for EPCOT, in his naive understanding of the power of technology and his inability to gauge the future. There is no Tomorrow in Tomorrowland, Disney World’s orphaned corner. He thought space was the future, he never imagined the digital revolution.

Walt Disney saw his life transformed by new technologies – heat, running water, electricity. He worshiped technology, he thought it would transform the world into a better and safer place. It seems more complex than that, I am sorry he never got to grapple with the Internet.

Disney was an artistic and marketing genius, and he understood children as well as anyone in the arts ever has. This week, I hope to use my time here to write a bit about Disney’s sometimes brilliant and sometimes tragic view of technology, this is the place to go and see it I am not up for navigating massive crowds, fast passes and massive lines, we’ll get on the rides we get on, and relax and read and ponder (and eat) the rest of the time.

It is so good to be warm, we left upstate New York in the middle of the night, it was – 10 degrees in howling winds.  I am glad to be here with Maria, is is warm, and the place is fascinating, stimulating. I love watching  the place evolve, even as I have mixed emotions about the way it is evolving.. It has  become more complex, expensive and crowded by the year,  more than even Disney could ever have imagined. But it is still a wonder of the world – with pools and beaches and hot tubes – and I am eager to explore it anew, I see new things every time I come.

We got up at 3 a.m. to get here, and walked eight miles today, and i already have my first blister. Getting up at 5:30 to go see some animals at the Animal Kingdom. They offer early hours for people who can’t handle the crowds during the rest of the day. Time to sleep.