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JPG Magazine: Is this the Happiest Place on Earth? Really?

April 15, 2008 at 1:13 pm · Filed under Disney, Theme Parks

On a recent vacation to the West Coast I ventured to one of the World’s most beloved, and for obvious reasons unnamed, Theme Parks in Southern California. After an hour or so I became fascinated with the lack of enthusiasm on the faces around me. While waiting near a ride to take pictures of my friends as they drove by in a tiny yellow car I decided to snap some random shots of other people driving by.

It quickly became clear to me that most of the people around me were here because of some sort of cultural obligation to have fun. Just one in a long list of “not to be missed” experiences that Americans feel the need to indulge in.

As part of my experiment I began to take pictues while walking past crowds of people going the other direction. I just held up my camera and snapped.

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Posted by Ricky on April 15, 2008 at 1:13 pm · Permalink

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6 Comments »

loosetoon wrote @ April 15th, 2008 at 5:22 pm

Hilarious!

Dave wrote @ April 15th, 2008 at 6:26 pm

Too funny. Maybe living in SoCal makes DLand an obligation. Similar random shots in the Magic Kingdom would show manic Easterners attempting to do EVERY SINGLE ATTRACTION before bording the bus back to MCO.

Louise wrote @ April 16th, 2008 at 12:26 am

DL isn’t nearly as much fun or as relaxing as other disney parks……..

Greg wrote @ April 16th, 2008 at 10:51 am

ehhhh. Just strikes me as a bunch of pretentious SoCal “artists” with a digital camera wanting to so how much better they are than the common cattle. Random pictures of anyone anywhere chosen specifically can be used to make any point you want. Where’s all the ‘random’ pictures of someone smiling? Or a kid hugging a princess? I’m sure they could use random pics of a lottery winner at the presentation ceremony to show that he was unhappy about the money. Or random pics of Ricky at his Dream Job to show he was bored of the whole thing. And “DL isn’t nearly as much fun as other Disney parks”???? What??? What do you possibly base that statement on?

upe wrote @ April 17th, 2008 at 7:41 pm

well, the articles point is that americans can be upset even in the happiest place on earth. yeah. its hot, crowded, expensive, and DL is more a local park than WDW which means people are probably bringing their real lives with them. But if you start looking at things in 1/500th of a second, there’s plenty of non-smiles in every situation.

as a photographer, i can’t object to the guy taking the photos - if he’s not bothering people - but publishing them with permission is a bit…..disingenuous. especially if its a highly cropped zoomed in photograph. i’d hate for a photo of me to show up on some website after I’ve been to MK, during spring break, for 10 hours. george clooney in a tux, I’m probably not

Experiment_626 wrote @ April 18th, 2008 at 12:04 pm

I’ve read similar “analyses” by others who obviously don’t “get” Disney theme parks. I’ve read all sorts of pop-pschology garbage about why we go to theme parks, particularly Disney parks, that always take as a given that we certainly don’t do it because ENJOY it. I’ve even read essays by people where they describe visits to a park where they actually state falt-out that “Certainly nobody here was having any fun.” I mean, if you don’t get it, fine. NOTHING is right for everyone. I’m sure some people are there and not having fun. But I’m smart enough to know whether I am having fun, and if I weren’t enjoying myself on some level, I don’t think I’d have spent literally thousands of dollars over the last 10 years returning to WDW over and over again. I’m not a glutton for punishment, and even if I were, I could get that much less expensively off property.

I don’t think the article’s point is that people CAN be unhappy or uncomfortable at Disneyland. The point certainly seems to me to be that Disneyland isn’t any fun, and people are there because they feel, on some level, that they’re SUPPOSED to be there, and are just deluding themselves into thinking otherwise. How arrogant can you get?

SSB