Like is not a strong enough word for how I feel about Disneyland. I LOVE Disneyland. I love it like it’s my firstborn child. I love it with the fire of a thousand suns. I love it I love it I love it. I grew up with my family making yearly trips to the Happiest Place on Earth, and once I got older my mom, sister and I got annual passes and went all the time. Going to Disneyland is like a mini-vacation from real life. We’d just go to eat dinner or walk around, not even to go on a ton of rides (although the rides are fantastic as well).
Part of what makes Disneyland so amazing to me is just the immersive, all-encompassing world it creates. I love detailed, comprehensive worlds and aesthetics in anything in life, whether it’s a television show, or a restaurant, or a book. I love to escape into this place that seems completely removed from the real world, that seems magical and real and far away. At Disneyland, no matter how many times I go I can find some new detail that makes me so happy to be there. It feels like a real world, away from the real world, if that makes any sense. Everyone needs an escape, and Disneyland is mine. It’s a place where everything is beautiful and fun and magical and real world problems just slip away. It’s really difficult to put into words how much Disneyland means to me. I have so many memories there growing up, markers of my entire life, and they’re completely woven into the fabric of Disneyland in my mind.
Now that I’m in New York, I miss Disneyland like crazy. The last time I visited LA, I went with my entire family (yes, even my Dad) to Disneyland and took about 60 million pictures with my Diana F+. I feel like these photographs really capture what I love about Disneyland, and how colorful and magical it is.
I also took a ton of video on my iPhone with a Super 8 app, so I cut it together into a little movie:
It was really fun watching through all that footage again. It made me homesick! Also it was hilarious listening to my family’s conversations in the background. At one point I’m like, “This would make an awesome little post on my blog!” and at another point I’m like, “If I cut all of this footage together with some sad music it’ll be, like, totally poignant.” Case in point right above, folks.
