It’s Joy! A couple of weeks ago at Epcot I experienced something that really bothered me. I was sitting on a bench near Journey Into Imagination With Figment. Joy was out in the field, interacting with a group of excited fans. All of a sudden a man in the line for the ride very loudly said, “But you don’t even know if Joy is a woman. It could be a man inside that costume”. There were at least a dozen children who were close enough to hear him.
I’m not naïve. I know that Disney hires people to pretend to be our beloved characters. But that’s all thinking with my head. When I’m at Walt Disney World, I see things with my heart. That’s why, as a (mumble mumble) year old woman I will get just as excited about seeing Winnie the Pooh as I did when I was a child. I’m not looking at a costume. It’s Winnie the Pooh.
Walt Disney World is all about suspending disbelief. That’s why you can pilot the Millennium Falcon or float down the Na’vi River. If you allow yourself to believe, you will find yourself riding in a minecart while the Seven Dwarfs work. You can even blast off to space in several different ways! Talk about an escape.
We all need a break from reality from time to time. Walt Disney World allows us to have just that. It’s fun to be able to suspend disbelief in this stressful world. I just hope that people won’t ruin it for others, the way that the man at Epcot could have done. He needed to learn how to suspend his own disbelief; or at least keep his mouth shut.