Safe space interrupted
THEME PARKS WON’T BE THE SAME FOR A WHILE. WE MUST PROTECT THEIR WORKERS.
ON Thanksgiving, I made a decision that was in direct opposition to what my gut instincts told me to do: I went to the Disneyland Resort to dine at Disney California Adventure.
It was the fourth time I had dined out during the pandemic — solo twice before, and once on a date, the latter the result of a complex calculation that I made in which the risks of continuing to be alone, as well as the risk of infection, both seemed to pale in comparison to the potential of the person I met. (Sadly, the relationship went nowhere.)
In times of stress, anxiety and depression — and 2020 has been all of that and more for so many of us — it’s often comforting to visit a familiar place, a place that can take our mind off of reality, if even for a brief moment.
I’ve long tapped Disneyland to fill that role. And so, for the first time since March I found myself inside a Disney theme park, a place I frequented often prepandemic and anticipate doing so again someday. That someday, however, feels further away now than at any point during the last nine months.
To be sure, I had a lovely time at Carthay Circle, one of the resort’s finest restaurants, and I was happy to see some familiar staff. But my time at Disney California Adventure — where only the park’s main drag was open for shopping and eating — felt tentative, a half-step everyone was taking in an effort to will ourselves into false comfort. The next day I felt a sense of sadness that the parks were being used in ways they’re weren’t intended — as a mall, and with a wait staff trying to dance away from those without masks.
And now, amid the most dangerous COVID-19 surge yet, plus a new stay-at-home order, even those scenes can’t happen. Downtown Disney has again been limited to retail and takeout only, and neighboring theme park Knott’s Berry Farm is halting its holiday food-tasting event. But neither, to me, felt like a way forward in this moment in which local, state and federal leaders are still contradicting themselves, unable to create consistent messaging for public health or business stability.
At Knott’s and Downtown Disney I watched guests wait until the last moment to mask up even though staff members at both parks have been exemplary in the effort to keep people distant and masks above the nose.
I was relieved, for instance, when the wait staff at Carthay instructed diners to stay masked at all times, except when taking a drink or a bite. And I was simultaneously annoyed that the dude two tables away from me interpreted this as meaning he should never once lower his beer below midchest.
The 100-year-old Knott’s Berry Farm, which had been creative over recent months with ticketed food events and entertainment, as well as the 65-yearold Disneyland, have long represented the shifts in Southern California leisure culture, presenting idealized versions of a cinematic past alongside cultural pastiches and, especially at Disneyland, an optimistic vision for where we have yet to go. Yet that leaves the present. I spent four hours on the recently opened Buena Vista Street in Disney California Adventure. About 90 minutes was at the Carthay. During the rest of my visit I tried to capture some semblance of why the parks mean so much to me. It wasn’t possible, despite the Disneyfocused social media personalities who argue the opposite by posting Instagram images of themselves holding a corn dog. I spent much of my time sitting near the Soarin’ Around the World exit, in part because there were few people there, and because this was as far as Disneyland allowed guests to go.
I also chose this place because it gave me a view of the monorail tracks, once a pitch for a transportation system that could have offered a solution to Southern California’s car-culture fate, as well as a tree-filled path that leads to some of the park’s most exquisitely themed areas, deep into the winding national park influence of Grizzly Peak and the Route 66 love letter of Cars Land. While I couldn’t explore, this spot reminded me of what Disney’s
DISNEY California Adventure’s normally bustling Buena Vista Street reopened for takeout and shopping. parks do best — create a sense of curiosity as we wander among what is essentially a large-scale sculpture installation.
The more trafficked areas of Buena Vista Street simply saddened me. Guests were encouraged to line up to visit the shops on either side of the street. I didn’t join them, since I currently refuse to go indoors anywhere that isn’t my apartment. In nonpandemic times I can spend an hour or two traversing Buena Vista Street and its offshoots. Whether it’s a monorail track overpass that nods to the Glendale Boulevard-Hyperion Avenue bridge or architectural nods to Frank Gehry and Hollywood’s Crossroads of the World, it’s a small crash course in SoCal stylings with an emphasis on Los Feliz and Hollywood.
Due to physical distancing requirements, none of that is really possible at the moment. It’s still a Disney theme park but it’s muffled, and the tens of thousands of layoffs, many of them affecting Disney’s theme park divisions, say more about the company’s confidence of a rebound in the near future than any public statement.
Since Walt Disney World reopened this summer — no rules in Florida! — many of us have heard time and again that the parks feel safer than just about anywhere else. That’s true, in a sense. Just this morning my building’s security guard refused to wear a face mask while getting me a delivery package, making me fear my own apartment complex more than I did Knott’s or Downtown Disney.
But the fact that people at theme parks can be compliant means little when outside the gates all bets are off. So before I left Disney California Adventure, I strolled back to that bench in Grizzly Peak and looked up at a monorail track, knowing no monorail would come.
Of course it wouldn’t. No one right now appears to have any interest in offering a symbol of a better future beyond vague promises that most of us may have access to a vaccine in May or June (fingers crossed).
So as Knott’s closes and Downtown Disney recedes, it’s simply another reminder that we’re failing as a nation to protect those who work at the parks. But the guests who enjoyed them? We’re not losing anything. The ability to walk in largely unopen parks amid a winter in which COVID-19 cases are spiraling turned these spaces into symbols of defeat, a shrug that simply said, “This is the best we can do.”