Magic

MagicWRITTEN BY ADAM OSBORNE

Aboard the train to Disney Tokyo I felt like I was floating, and not just because my body was being held aloft by the strangers who had packed in after me. I squeezed my mother’s hand through a stranger’s armpit and craned my neck to check on my father and sister, flashing them a grin. Despite being squished against a railing, they smiled back. The doors opened and we tumbled out, sprinting towards the park.

Standing at the entrance, my excitement was fit to burst like pus from a zit. Despite my old age, this my first time at Disneyland. The line to get in was shorter than expected, but we soon discovered that was because all of Japan was already inside the park. Somehow, we could move around– most of the time. Sometimes we could even see, a vast improvement from our experiences in Tokyo. We decided, worst case scenario, we could just fling our limp father through the crowd like a bowling ball.

Upon entering, we were glad to see Disney too was governed by the golden rule of theme parks: enter and exit through the gift shop. We would start shopping immediately, if not for a colourfully lit fountain that demanded my attention: a multi-tiered spinning contraption that played a jingle proclaiming the park’s 35th Anniversary and shot lasers. Every tier of the fountain held a different incarnation of Mickey. This year’s limited-edition Mickey Makeover featured bold experiments with shape and colour, which is to say it was viscerally ugly. Despite this undeniable fact, I felt compelled to buy a plush of him. Fortunately, the sixty-dollar price-tag persuaded me otherwise.

As my focus broadened, my vision was barraged by merchandise: keychains, pins, mugs, hookahs, chew toys, you name it, they had it. If you wanted to, you could have replaced your entire kitchen with anniversary-themed memorabilia. The anniversary fought for dominance over the shelves with the Christmas event in such a violent display I only narrowly avoided getting killed in the crossfire.

I fled the shop having made a single purchase: the obligatory gendered mouse ears, only to discover the anniversary had seeped into every element of the park like a fart in an unventilated room.

As I tended to my wounds, the masterpieces of music that were Mickey and Friends covers of Christmas songs invaded my ears. Just as I began to ponder why the songs were in English, the floats rounded the corner, enchanting me with their flashing lights and moving pieces, carrying Mickey and Friends and white princesses with them. Wait, white princesses? I scanned the floats as well as the elves and snowmen dancing around them. The people were all white as artificial snow. You might think of this as a strange train of thought, but it was jarring. Outside of this park white people were rare as car-crashes. I wanted to give Disney the benefit of the doubt—there is no Japanese princess after all—but seeing as Moana just came out, you would think they would at least shoehorn her in. I was reassured by my sister that this was only the first parade. For lunch, I had a chicken calzone that makes me feel nauseous to this day. At the time, I’d been craving something western, sick of slogging through seas of ramen. But now I understood: a poor imitation of something western designed purely to pander to a white audience was never going to be as good as something authentic but possibly monotonous.

Our next stop was Fantasyland. I spotted a hedge maze in the distance and was reminded to keep my eyes peeled for an Alice and Wonderland ride, my favourite Disney property. I’ve always found the movie a refreshing break from the tedium of Disney’s heteronormative storytelling. I was tricked, however, as the hedge maze in the distance existed purely to provide the illusion of scale.

We queued instead for Snow White’s Adventure, a beautifully constructed two-minute recreation of the classic film with a mere sixty-minute queue. At least I think that’s what it was, I can’t say I remember the ride.

Another parade had already begun by the time the ride was done, so I did the only logical thing: I scoured it for people of colour. My sister thought she spotted Aladdin and Jasmine, but it was difficult to confirm because they, understandably enough, were on the floor. There were only so many floats after all. If Huey, Dewey, and Louie didn’t have a float each, the fabric of the universe would likely tear apart. After the parade, the park was emptying out: at this point only half of Japan remained. We took the opportunity to go on one last ride: the Pirates of The Caribbean cruise. I had never been interested in the franchise, but I was enticed by the manageable ten-minute wait. The ride saw us floating down a river past a luxurious lantern-lit restaurant, under bridges dappled with pirate animatronics serenading us with tales of treasure, and between ships ablaze, cannons firing. As I looked up to the starlit sky, I could hardly believe the ride was enclosed in a building. In some Christmas miracle, the ride time even surpassed the wait.

As our boat came to a stop, I only had one stipulation, and a small one at that: all the women in the ride were being chained up and sold as sex slaves. Apparently, Disney’s sanitation of the inappropriate and its embrace of fantasy doesn’t allow for women pirates. What can you do?

As we were pushed out of the theme park by thronging masses, feelings tumbled through my stomach like a bad chicken calzone: excitement, disappointment, discomfort, nostalgia, pain. I tried to reach inside myself and separate them, but they swirled too quickly, mixing until they were entrenched within each other.