Anyone who follows my general social media feeds should know that I went to Downtown Disney with my Mom and sister today.
It was nice to get out of the house for a serious outing for the first time in at least a week, outside of that night where we went to dinner in Santa Monica. Not sure I’d count that as being a serious outing in the same vein as going to Disney, particularly the day after Christmas.
While I’m not exactly sure whether that proximate timing to the holidays is responsible for this portion of the experience, it was interesting to see a new metal detector/bag check station outside the entrance to Downtown Disney:
Maybe it isn’t new and I just haven’t been there in a while. But either way a bit of the magic goes away when you have to think about the necessity of this sort of thing so early into the experience.
Luckily that magic is more than made up for by the wonders of Disney-branded capitalism. Everyone’s favorite kind!
My family was over in Anaheim looking into a present for my sister’s birthday tomorrow. After watching Wreck-It Ralph 2 a second time, she decided she needed one of the Disney Princess pajama shirts — particularly Tiana’s New Orleans’ themed shirt.
Obviously the best place to look for that sort of thing was the source, the Mickey Mouse clubhouse of infinite profit.
To make an extra long story short, we didn’t wind up getting that shirt. We also didn’t get the equivalent hoodie sweatshirt version.
Instead we spent a little more time at different stores around Downtown Disney. Like the LEGO store, which I have to admit becomes less fun the older I get simply because of how much more expensivethe sets get.
Also because they had this model of the LEGO store as a display within the store and it was 2 meta 4 me.
While we were in that store I also made what I’m progressively considering to be a mistake by taking part in this ‘which LEGO mini figure are you?’ display:
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a sweet little idea. You stand in front of the board, put your hand on the scanner and it gives you a (presumably) random figure. I can only assume the display is meant for a far younger age demographic because of how low it was to the ground.
But still I thought it could be fun. Found out that I am apparently a Buckingham Palace guard LEGO man.
The only issue is, now I’m 100 percent convinced that all of my privacy is officially gone. I’ve given up my fingerprints to the mouse.
If he didn’t already have them from when my Dad worked for Disney I suppose.
Thus I figured I had nothing left to lose. So we had lunch, then went back to the painting shop that we wandered upon first arriving. Our initial time through was the progenitor of this Tweet:
It was a funny ha-ha joke, but at the same time I was super serious. This painting strangely enticed me when we saw it.
I guess it isn’t really that strange. Look at the thing, it’s god damn beautiful.
Gotta give a shout out to the artist, Brittney Lee, who works at the animation studio. Because you definitely made a fan of me today.
As well as a fan of my sister, who bought a print of hers featuring swing dancers with dresses based on different areas of the park.
But wouldn’t you know, she got lucky because it was her birthday and bought the ~$45 full-size print. I wasn’t quite as willing to dump $500 on the fully-framed painting.
Instead I got the post card version and bragged about it in a follow-up Tweet.
My friend Juan made fun of me for still supporting the mouse in spite of the fact that I was making taunting about not supporting him…
Which is true.
But.
Uhh…
I still really like this piece so I was willing. They already had my fingerprints, so why not?
Turns out my nostalgia totally can get gouged for all it’s worth.
That seems like as good a message to end this off with as any. No matter how strong you believe your spirit to be, always know that Mickey Mouse can and will find a way to pierce deep into the heart of your desires.
Merry day after Christmas, America.
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