Doing The Disney 12 Step

Hello. My name is Gwyndyn, and I'm addicted to all things Disney. I can't get enough. Give me Disneyland, Disney World, Disney movies, music,trading pins, paintings, t-shirts, rides, fireworks:  I'll snort it, smoke it, mainline it. I am a Disney junkie, and there is no cure. And man, am I glad.

My first happy memory is of Disneyland. I'm probably about 4 years old. My mouse ears are a little too big, and keep tipping to one side. I have in one hand an enormous pickle. I smell popcorn, hear the Dapper Dans singing, and watch the Main Street trolley go by. I want to pet the horse, but my hands are too full of pickle. It's that wonderful Disney dilemma...so much to do, to see, to eat, to listen to! Where to start? The beauty of Disney is that there are no bad options...there's magic everywhere you look, around every corner.

Disney dilemma: there is so much everything, and so little me...

I was very lucky growing up...my parents had a membership to Club 33. I remember my 7th birthday party, held in the private dining room of Club 33, with Tigger and Pooh in attendance. Every book I've read states categorically that the audioanimatronic buzzard in the the private room was never in operation, but I swear I remember it singing me happy birthday.
 

"Happy birthday to you! Are you going to eat all that, or can I have some?"

I remember riding the Skyway to Fantasyland, feeling the cool chill of the Matterhorn as we passed through, listening for the roar of the Abominable Snowman. 

It's not the Abominable Snowman that scares me, it's the yodelers

I remember riding the Submarine Voyage for the first time, worried that I wouldn't be able to hold my breath long enough, but ultimately not caring if I could or not. It was Disney, it was magic, and I was going to enjoy it to the hilt even if it killed me.

I remember that first plunge into the darkness of Pirates of the Caribbean, eating dinner in the Blue Bayou with the fireflies blinking and the clouds wheeling overhead. I remember my first fireworks over Sleeping Beauty's castle, the swans swimming in the moat, me perched on my father's shoulders and wishing with all my might that the magic in the sky would never end.

 I remember the paddle boats on the lagoon of the Disneyland Hotel, the ducks wandering through Frontierland, the deep whistle of the paddle wheeler on the Rivers of America. The electrical parade. Trying to eat an outrageously huge turkey leg. Riding the railroad into the Primeval World and demanding a pterodactyl of my very own.

Night on Pterodactyl Mountain

These are the things that defined my childhood, the memories that I go back to again and again. It was those trips to Disneyland that sustained me, that kept me going when times were bad. (And there were a lot of bad times. Outside of Disney, my childhood was far from idyllic, but Disney gave me hope.)

I've been to Disneyland hundreds of times, to Walt Disney World several times. It never gets old. It never gets stale. I'm 44 years old now, but whenever I walk through that entrance tunnel onto Main Street, I'm 4 years old again with all of the magic still in front of me.

When you wish upon a star, sometimes dreams really do come true.