About

Worth Coming Back

There’s a specific feeling I get when I walk into a Disney park. Not excitement, exactly, though there’s that too. It’s more like something easing. The outside world, with all its problems and noise and things I should be doing instead, recedes. Main Street is playing its music. Someone nearby is deciding between two flavors of ice cream. Nothing is required of me except to figure out which Lightning Lane to grab next, and maybe which snack to try first.

I’ve felt this since I was eight years old, seeing the castle for the first time walking into Magic Kingdom with my family. I still feel it now. The parks haven’t lost it for me, and I’ve had more opportunities than most to lose it.

Cast member, then corporate, then back through the turnstile as a paying guest. That arc isn’t something I planned. It’s just what kept happening because the answer to do you want to go back? has always been yes.

Author portrait
Disney College Program alum Magic Kingdom
Corporate Disney
Annual Passholder Walt Disney World
WDW, Disneyland, Disneyland Paris
Non-local 3–4 visits per year
Kilimanjaro Safaris
Then
Riding it at eight with my family, eyes wide with wonder at every new animal we saw.
Now
The same ride, now layered with the memory of being twenty and riding it with friends from work.
Tower of Terror
Then
Refused to ride for years. Waited in the gift shop while my family went without me.
Now
Took several visits before I could genuinely enjoy it. I now really do.
Dinosaur
Then
Never once been on it. Had no desire to go.
Now
A friend got a behind-the-scenes tour and made it fascinating. I rode it every visit after.

What the college program did was add another layer to memories I didn’t know could get deeper. This is what keeps bringing me back: not just nostalgia, but the way the nostalgia keeps accumulating. Every visit adds another layer to the ones already there.

I am, by any reasonable definition, a Disney adult. I think that term has gotten away from us a little. All I mean by it is that I enjoy Disney and the parks for myself, as an adult, separate from any children. That’s valid. For me, for you, for anyone who’s ever sat on Main Street and felt something ease in their soul and wasn’t entirely sure how to explain it to someone who hasn’t.

I don’t have kids. When I’m at Disney, I’m there for me. Which, honestly, is plenty. I follow Disney news closely enough to know they added Bluey content in Hollywood Studios. It just has nothing to do with my experience there, so it doesn’t come up. The questions I’m actually turning over are things like whether the individual Lightning Lane for a specific ride is worth it right now, which signature restaurant I’d send you to first, and what I’d do differently on my next trip. That’s what this is.

What you’ll find
1.Real opinions on what's worth it and what isn't.
2.Things I've changed my mind about after going enough times to actually know.
3.What I'd tell you over a glass of wine at the Nomad Lounge.

The stories are real. The opinions are mine. The Annual Pass is current.

“Advice from the friend who actually knows.”