Scott Renshaw - Happy Place: Living the Disney Parks Life

At its heart, this book was born of envy.

Oh, sure, there was love, too. Always love. You gotta have love. But yeah, there was envy. Bone-deep, undeniable, unquenchable envy.

I was born and raised in California, migrating steadily northward over the course of thirty years from my birthplace of San Diego, through Orange County into the San Joaquin Valley, and eventually to the San Francisco Bay Area. And throughout that time, there was Disneyland, which feels as though it has always been a part of my memories.

As a child, there were family visits with my parents and brother where the first glimpse of the artificial-snowcapped Matterhorn from Anaheims Harbor Boulevard would produce a surge of adrenaline that we were here, we were finally here. In my tweenage years, my brother, closest cousins, and I engaged in early experiments in independence, as we took off through the park to find our own adventures and meet up with our parents later in the day (and this was some thirty years before it was possible to keep track of one another by cell phone, which meant that standing in line for Space Mountain without adults felt like the most exhilarating kind of freedom). I celebrated the end of high school there at Grad Night 1985, and then the end of college four years later, with my best friends and significant others of the moment. I visited in the early nineties with the wonderful woman who would become my wife, and again a decade later with our children, watching them get their first picture taken with Mickey Mouse. I remember songs that were playing on the radio when the family car entered the expansive pre-Disney California Adventure parking lot (Close to You by the Carpenters), and songs I saw played live at Disneyland (Hungry Wolf by X). Memories are Disneylands unbreakable souvenir, and for me they spill into dreams and into days when I need to recall times of renewal and transition, or moments of pure bliss.

Its not easy to come out of the closet as a nearly fifty-year-old Disney parks junkie. The assumption is that once youve reached a certain age, these Magic Kingdoms become something to be endured rather than enjoyed. You do it for the children or grandchildren, perhaps, gritting your teeth all the while, but you certainly shouldnt find the experience too enjoyable. Such an admission carries with it a variety of other assumptions about ones maturity, sanity, or, maybe, just plain creepiness.

Yet, there it is: I adore Disneyland. It has never, ever ceased to enthrall me, and by all logic, this should not be the case. Those who know me well can attest to the fact that there are few things I hate more than being in massive crowds, and that one of those few things is waiting in lines. The Disneyland experience that frustrates so many visitors appears to have been designed on a dare to create the kind of day that, under almost any other circumstances, I would do everything in my power to avoid.

Instead, it has become a slightly obsessive facet of my personality. The end of one visit generally finds me lamenting how long it might be until the beginning of the next. One trip even became reality because my wife, as she went through a job search, promised we could go to Disneyland if and when she got hired. And no, Im not too proud to admit that such an anecdote makes me sound vaguely like a six-year-old; I also agreed to move from California to Utah only if my wife promised that I could have a puppy. (True story.)

It would be easy enough to attribute my love of Disneyland to simple nostalgia. Indeed, it would be silly not to acknowledge that theres at least a little of that going on, even as the place now officially called the Disneyland Resort has evolved and expanded to become something radically different from the way it looked in my 1970s childhoodditching the old-school lettered ticket books and adding the Disney California Adventure sister park on the spot where I once remember my mother pointing out which Disney character silhouette marked our parking place.

But I think theres also something more fundamental going on, something that has never happened in trips to other amusement parks. The older Ive gotten, the more Ive appreciated the way Walt Disney planned his park as a thoroughly immersive experience, with the entire surrounding world shut off from view. To enter Anaheims Disneyland is to experience one of the most ingeniously designed anticipation-building machines ever created. On the esplanade between Disneyland and Disney California Adventure, classic tunes play over the speakers, from Song of the Souths Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah, to Toy Storys Youve Got a Friend in Me, to the fanfare from Star Wars. From the entry gate, very little of the park itself is visiblejust the Mickey Mouseshaped flower beds beneath the tracks of the Disneyland Railroad, part of the high landscaped berm that hides the rest of the park from the outside world. Disneyland entices you: Theres something amazing in here; you know you want to see it.

Once youre through the turnstiles, tunnels on either side of the entry plaza are lined with attraction posters teasing you with all the amazing things ahead. Those tunnels also offer the first glimpse inside the parkthe turn-of-the-twentieth-century styled storefronts and picturesque Town Square of Main Street, USA. The world begins to slip away as you move down the nostalgic, sentimentalized thoroughfare, while straight ahead lies the breathtaking landmark of Sleeping Beauty Castle. From the hub at the end of Main Streetwhere the various lands become the spokesyour days opportunities spread outward in every direction. You can visit the Wild West of Frontierland, the jungles and exotic mysteries of Adventureland, the whimsical storybook delights of Fantasyland, or the futuristic thrills of Tomorrowland.

It takes mere moments to recognize Disneys genius in fashioning this place, and building it not just around rides but around themes. The layout alone trains you to accept, step by step, that youve entered another world.

Its a world that, for me, sometimes seems very far away.

In 1997, my wife and I made that puppy-bribed move from Northern California to Salt Lake City, escaping the expensive, crowded Bay Area for new opportunities. This city and this state have been remarkably good to us, allowing me to find work as a full-time journalist and film critic, and providing a beautiful, easy-on-the-cost-of-living place to raise a family.

It also happens to be a not-entirely-convenient location from which to stage quick jaunts to Disneyland. This presents... a challenge.

On a late summer day in 2014, when I was wondering how long it would be until Id be able to make my next Disneyland visitnot even a year removed from the most recently completed oneI was poking around Disney parkcentric websites. I found the stories of Brent Dodge and Jeff Reitz, both of whom had managed epic streaks of more than a year attending Disney parks and/or resort properties every single day. My first reaction was, Why in the hell would anyone do that? And it was instantly followed by, Those lucky sonsabitches.