I recently finished watching the rather fascinating Defunctland documentary on Disney's Fastpass (link), and something has been stewing in my brain since then.
I [currently] can't be arsed with Disney.
I'd love to do all the Disney parks - I think they do genuinely look fantastic, and are clearly world leading parks. I've visited Disney twice - Paris in 2002 on a family holiday, and Shanghai in 2018. I thoroughly enjoyed both trips, but I remember Shanghai taking a significant amount of brain power during the day to make sure I did everything I wanted. Thankfully that park was still fairly new, had relatively long hours, and I was on a solo trip, so I was able to take good advantage of 'head left at the start cos everyone goes right' and the single rider queues to end up having a great jam-packed day, but it didn't have much of that spontaneity that I like in a park visit. Paris in 2002 was a four day family trip, so little stress for me (dunno about my parents), and we were very easy going with the whole thing.
I've been to Florida in 2006 and 2019, and California twice in 2013 and once in 2019, and each time I've looked at the various Disney parks and thought... "ughhh, no I just can't be arsed". I know I'm missing out on some of the best ride experiences out there, but I just can't imagine having to have my day planned out like that. It feels to me like there is so much planning involved, that so much ride anxiety would follow - I find myself always turned off by the whole idea. Especially when I want to take my partner - my favourite days at "big" parks in the last few years have been those where everything is much more relaxed - and I think that'd really appeal to her too, and so Disney is always the first of the plans to get dropped.
The trick would be, of course, to go to these places often enough that you're not going to be bothered about not riding x-y-z this time, but then that also involves a lot of commitment (and money!) that I keep finding I'd rather use elsewhere!
I'd love for someone to tell me it's all bad-press and it's really not like that, and that I should just get stuck in, but I think the stress would always build up for me unless there was a sea-change in how days out at these parks are perceived. I think I'm rambling now... you get the idea.
Interestingly, while thinking about this Disney was the only one that sprung to mind - although that's a massive blanket description of ten-something parks in total. I'll add another post if others occur to me.
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So I wonder, which parks are out there that you should be dying to do, but just... don't care about? I'm not talking about "can't be bothered going all the way to Inverness for the +1" type trips, I'm talking about proper, serious parks with significant reputations.
I [currently] can't be arsed with Disney.
I'd love to do all the Disney parks - I think they do genuinely look fantastic, and are clearly world leading parks. I've visited Disney twice - Paris in 2002 on a family holiday, and Shanghai in 2018. I thoroughly enjoyed both trips, but I remember Shanghai taking a significant amount of brain power during the day to make sure I did everything I wanted. Thankfully that park was still fairly new, had relatively long hours, and I was on a solo trip, so I was able to take good advantage of 'head left at the start cos everyone goes right' and the single rider queues to end up having a great jam-packed day, but it didn't have much of that spontaneity that I like in a park visit. Paris in 2002 was a four day family trip, so little stress for me (dunno about my parents), and we were very easy going with the whole thing.
I've been to Florida in 2006 and 2019, and California twice in 2013 and once in 2019, and each time I've looked at the various Disney parks and thought... "ughhh, no I just can't be arsed". I know I'm missing out on some of the best ride experiences out there, but I just can't imagine having to have my day planned out like that. It feels to me like there is so much planning involved, that so much ride anxiety would follow - I find myself always turned off by the whole idea. Especially when I want to take my partner - my favourite days at "big" parks in the last few years have been those where everything is much more relaxed - and I think that'd really appeal to her too, and so Disney is always the first of the plans to get dropped.
The trick would be, of course, to go to these places often enough that you're not going to be bothered about not riding x-y-z this time, but then that also involves a lot of commitment (and money!) that I keep finding I'd rather use elsewhere!
I'd love for someone to tell me it's all bad-press and it's really not like that, and that I should just get stuck in, but I think the stress would always build up for me unless there was a sea-change in how days out at these parks are perceived. I think I'm rambling now... you get the idea.
Interestingly, while thinking about this Disney was the only one that sprung to mind - although that's a massive blanket description of ten-something parks in total. I'll add another post if others occur to me.
-
So I wonder, which parks are out there that you should be dying to do, but just... don't care about? I'm not talking about "can't be bothered going all the way to Inverness for the +1" type trips, I'm talking about proper, serious parks with significant reputations.
