We are going to do things slightly differently this week. Instead of giving weekly updates on my projects, I want to talk about one of my recent expeditions.
If there is one dream that all kids in the world share in common, it is to go to DisneyWorld. Little did I know, but this dream was going to come true for that kid in me very soon.
It has been over 2 years since I first landed in the US and visiting Disney World has always been on the top of my list. However, I have never found the right time to do so. Somehow, the stars aligned this week and before I knew it, I was on a plane to Florida.
Before going to the parks, I knew that I had to do my research. Finding out which rides to go to first, which ones get the longest queues, the times of the day with the longest wait times, and all the events happening during the day. I wanted to know the park inside-out even before I entered it. I was prepared, maybe even a bit more than necessary.
I was visiting Disney during a time when the better half of the country was going to be there as well. Efficiency was going to be key if I wanted to make the most of my time there.
But as you might expect with any great plan, things never go according to plan :) What came next could only be described as a wild ride (pun intended).
Fasten your seatbelts and please pull the yellow strap for a final check, we are about to embark on a journey to the ‘Most Magical Place on Earth’.
The Good, The Bad, and The Magic ✨
Day 1: Magic Kingdom
If there is any one park that is synonymous with the Disney World “identity”, it is Magic Kingdom. Coming back here after 12 years, I was excited to rediscover everything from a new perspective—quite literally.
Stepping inside the park and looking down Main St at the Disney Castle, I felt a little underwhelmed. I was expecting it to be much taller! The last vantage point I had seen it from was that of an 8-year-old, of course I remember it being taller then!
Nevertheless, I was excited to finally be at the place of my dreams. I had a strategy on how to tackle the park and avoid waiting in long queues, and I couldn’t wait to immerse myself in the Disney Experience, one which I call ‘The Disney Effect’.
Trust me, it is very real. Side effects may include an increase in tolerance for spending, levels of patience, and a tendency to impulse buy. Here I was with 50,000 more people all wanting to do the same things as me—enchanted by the spell Disney casts the moment you set foot in the park.
When you are inside these parks, there is nothing else in the world that can distract you from them. It is a whole world in itself.
However, the spell wore off me quite early. I found myself trying to look under the veil, beneath the spell that it casts on its guests, questioning why some things were the way that they were. Were the people who worked here actually happy?
There were parts of the park that I felt disappointed with, mostly because the ideas felt outdated. Creating a ‘Tomorrowland’ is a double-edged sword because the definition of tomorrow is ever-changing. The ideas that it was built upon might have been exciting during that era, but they no longer capture the imagination of today’s new frontier.
I was no longer a kid in a park, but a rational mind meticulously analyzing everything that it stood for and what made it what it was.
The economics of these parks blew my mind. Magic Kingdom has an average footfall of over 50,000 people every day! Managing that crowd, feeding it, and keeping it entertained 365 days of the year is no small undertaking.
There are so many smart decisions that Disney has made over the years to be where it is today. It has doubled down on the definition of convenience and incorporated it into all it has to offer, from state-of-the-art parking garages to seamless mobile app integration inside the parks. The experience is optimized for convenience.
They can charge high prices and still sport some outdated rides because people keep coming back. It is the same reason why Apple can charge $1000+ for a phone—people keep buying it at record numbers year after year.
As long as Dinsey has more stories to tell, they are going to keep getting the people that they need at these parks.
My expectations and outlook changed drastically after a day at Magic Kingdom. Being too strategic and rushing between rides took away the fun of stumbling upon random things. Something had changed over the years— I was no longer fascinated by the people in costumes but by the experience that this place offered. With the day coming to a close, the kidult in me was ready to explore the next frontier.
Day 2: Hollywood Studios
On day 2, I had a very important realization: Disney is not in the business of selling tickets to a theme park, but of selling an experience. And this rings truer than ever for this park’s biggest attraction: Star Wars.
Disney has outdone itself with Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge1. It surpasses every fan’s expectations, delivering the illusion perfectly. While you are there, you forget everything about yourself and become part of something bigger. You become the very story that you love.
There is something surreal about getting the chance to be inside the stories that you have grown up watching. Who wouldn’t want to feel like a Jedi fighting the First Order or Han Solo captaining the Millenium Falcon? It is every fan’s dream!
Leveraging this childlike amazement for this universe, this attraction is able to make kids and adults fall in love with art, engineering, and masterful storytelling. No detail is too small. From referring to phones as “data pads” to the designs of cafes and bathrooms, everything serves a purpose to keep up the illusion.
One of the most important lessons came to me from a droid shop. While I was there, I saw young kids being excited about engineering and learning about RC droids. I saw a way to make kids appreciate engineering and immediately knew that this is what engineering should be about! You should be learning how to build things and play with them! A day spent playing with something that you have built can do more to fuel your curiosity than a day spent taking classes ever could.
With popularity comes demand. The one thing that bothered me the most was the absurdity of waiting times. There is something about a good wait that makes you enjoy the ride even more. However, there is a sweet spot after which the wait just becomes ridiculous. There was no part of me that could justify waiting in a queue for 2 hours for a ride that barely lasted 2 minutes. This math didn’t make sense in any universe!
Standing in queues for long hours gave me a lot of time to think2. I wondered, “How can these queues be better structured to reduce wait times? What can you do with so many people stuck in the same place for 2 hours? What are the problems that you can solve together?”
I felt uncomfortable with the inefficiencies in the system and seeing so much wasted potential. What is something worthwhile that people could do while they wait?
It was a fun problem to think about, but not as fun to experience.
Despite these waits, I was able to cover the park in its entirety. It is also because I wasn’t traveling with a kid or a family to look after3. From Pixar to Star Wars, Hollywood Studios brought it all together in a sweet package. It was the one that truly stole my heart.
Day 3: EPCOT
This park stands out from the rest because it was never intended to be a theme park.
EPCOT, which stands for “Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow”, was going to be the most dynamic and advanced city ever imagined—making it one of Walt Disney’s most ambitious projects. It was envisioned to be a living, breathing city of the future—never complete, always evolving and changing with time. However, things changed after Walt’s premature death.
Today, EPCOT stands as a mini representation of the world, sporting countries like Morrocco and Canada to Italy and Japan. It brings the world together in a 1.2-mile radius, with the EPCOT Ball tying it all together.
Regardless of which era you visit this place, the EPCOT Ball will never cease to astonish. It is the most timeless piece designed and constructed at this park.
Spending a day here helped me develop a vision for the future. I discovered a certain beauty in the diversity of culture and people. It makes you realize how incredibly small the world becomes when we are all together.
What makes us so special as humans are our differences. Yes, you read that right. Our differences are the key to bringing us together. What we need more is acknowledgment and acceptance of the fact that we are all different from each other. Striving toward homogenization hurts more than it helps. Global peace can only be truly achieved by accepting these differences and finding a way to move forward with them.
We were never meant to be one homogenized society, and we shouldn’t try to be either. Our strength lies in our diversity. Each and every one of us has centuries of traditions and culture imbibed in us. From the way we dress, to what we eat, to how we celebrate, and to the way we talk. I find the idea of a homogenized modern society to be quite distasteful and repelling.
However, this is a difference between acceptance and taking that generalization too far. The creation of stereotypes can also hurt communities, which is why it is important to take things on a case-by-case basis. Mutual understanding and respect can circumvent these differences and provide a way to move forward.
The more accepting we become of each other and our differences, the more peaceful our society becomes. Different cultures will have different traditions. This doesn’t make one wrong from the other.
You are a byproduct of centuries of societal evolution. Conforming to modernist ideas only takes away a part of who you are. The key to world peace is acceptance, not homogenization. Acceptance is the key to tolerance.
Diversity needs to exist. In fact, it should be celebrated. It is what makes us so unique as human beings. We are all members of Spaceship Earth, each with a special role to play. Embrace it.
I wish everyone could come here and see the beauty of our planet and its people. We forget that the world is so much bigger than what we see in our everyday lives. There is a certain beauty in knowing that and learning from the people around us.
Day 4: Animal Kingdom
Animals are the most amazing creatures on this planet. It is surprising how little we think about the sheer diversity of creatures that we share this planet with. We have organisms living in almost all biospheres and climates—hot, cold, underwater, and tropical.
Their biology is so absurdly different than ours. From bats and tigers to giraffes to dolphins. Observe them long enough and it feels like you are looking at some alien creatures.
By playing a game in the park, I was able to learn a lot of facts about different animals. Do you know where Flamingos get their pink color from? From their diet. It mainly consists of shrimp, which is rich in beta-carotene, leading to their skin literally changing color as they grow older. Or do you know how bats are able to hang upside down while asleep? Their muscles are designed such that they engage their claws when relaxed, creating a locking mechanism—similar to a ratchet. These are things that you don’t normally think about, but what make the physiology of these animals so magnificent.
There are innumerable lessons to be learned just by studying nature. A lot of what we have today was inspired by these creatures, from planes to velcros. And this is not a new idea. It is a very specialized field of study, called Biomimicry, looking to get inspiration to solve everyday problems using the most powerful tool that we have: evolution.
You don’t realize the kind of diversity that exists in this world until you see it with your eyes. I think there is still a lot we can learn from how nature has evolved over the years—many secrets to uncover and questions to ask. From the balancing act of an Ostrich’s long neck to the efficiency of photosynthesis, there is SO much that we still don’t fully understand.
I left with a sense of wonder, a lot of questions, and a warm hug from the chipmunks.
Day 5: Universal Studios
This was undoubtedly the most thrilling of all the parks. If you only care about rollercoasters and nothing else, this is the park that you come to. There are many things that set it apart from Disney. Some might say that it lacks a common theme, yet there is still a lot I learned from the day I spent here.
Safety. The more thrilling a ride gets, the smaller its margin of error. They absolutely cannot afford to have a tragedy on their hands. By erecting a ride with upside-down loops and fast motions, they are taking a gamble. Nothing becomes more important than the engineering behind it. Any oversight and you are gambling with people’s safety and lives.
Making a theme park is a MASSIVE undertaking. You are dealing with thousands of families and small children every single day. I cannot imagine how stressful it can get for the people holding the strings for the rides.
The machines at these parks are running non-stop—12 hours a day, 365 days of the year. No machine is immune from a breakdown, which is why maintenance and upkeep is the key here. Thankfully, that level of safety is still maintained today and life-threatening accidents are not a very common occurrence at these parks.
It is funny how the things you notice change with time. As a kid, I remember being spellbound by all the characters I would find here. Today, the engineering and storytelling behind it were what impressed me the most. However, I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t happy to see Spiderman while I was window shopping at a comic book store.
Just as I walked outside, I spotted a guy wearing the same t-shirt as me. As you can tell, he was very happy to see me.
Learning Spanish
¡Sección sorpresa! Mientras esperaba en la fila, pude seguir aprendiendo español en Duolingo. Las lecciones nunca termina!
(Surprise section! While waiting in lines, I was able to continue learning Spanish on Duolingo. The lessons never end!)
Photo of the Week
Trips like these take you out of your bubble. When you live in the same place for too long, you get used to staring at the same set of pixels. You convince yourself that you know everything there is to know about life because, for you, the entire world has been contained in that small set of pixels. Traveling to new places helps take a step back and look at another section of the tapestry of life. You meet new people, have new interactions, and are tested on your ideas of a good life.
Lifting the curtain behind a place that I looked up to gave me a certain sense of comfort and contentment. It truly is a special place when you look beneath its veil of fantasy and focus on everything that it tries to accomplish.
I found happiness among strangers, solace among characters, and peace in nature. I go back with memories that will last me a lifetime, and I cannot thank enough everyone who made it possible.
Spending a week amongst Disney’s greatest creations, I learned the potential of one’s dreams. I wondered, “What would Walt Disney build if he were alive today?” He was not shy of dreaming big. He had a purpose and vision for his life and the world.
By immersing myself in his world for a week, I found ways to pursue mine and share stories with many others in the process. I discovered the magic, my greatest strength, and a guiding light within me.
This week was a dream come true, one which will continue to inspire me in the time to come. Time to spread some Pixie Dust.
Abracadabra,
Aaryaman
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How Themes Parks have mastered queue line and the ability to manipulate your sense of time:
The Ingenuity of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge
I gained a lot of respect for the parents who take the bold step of coming to these parks with their kids. I can tell that is certainly not a vacation for them.
Aaryaman Patel aka The Kidult