"Disneyland is also a place of total passivity. It's visitor's must agree to behave like robots."
This quote from the Eco reading that we discussed in class really makes me think a lot about Disney and all the "magic" I grew up with and still love today. I have been to both Disneyland in California and Disney World, right here in Florida and in my experiences at these parks, I never really stopped to think about the highly constructed environments I was in. We don't really make our own choices as visitors in Disney, although the magical atmosphere makes it seem like we do.
Also, with this idea of a constructed environment, I really grasped the concept that we talked about in class today that suggests that Disney feeds us a more real reality than our actual reality. Through technology, Disney provides us with this idea of perfected reality that our imperfect nature cannot provide to us.
I think of the geyser example again here because the artificial one that is controlled by a timer was more pleasing to the family than the real, natural geyser was because it did not shoot out water when they were watching. The one on the timer, of course always delivers to families that desired pleasure of watching water shoot out of the ground when they want and expect it to do so.
I have actually stayed at Disney's Wilderness Lodge, that has the timed geyser outside near the pool. I remember my younger sister looked up the times that the geyser goes off on her ipad because every time we walked by it, it never spouted the water like we expected it to. The website said, "The 120' Geyser spouts every hour on the hour from 7:00 am to 10:00 PM Walk from the lodge to the back of the pool and there is a walkway to Watch the Geyser. Be sure to look for the rainbow which sometimes joins the show." With this new knowledge we actually went outside to see it and as expected, it went off right on the hour, we didn't even have to wait.
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