COMING BACK TO LIFE
A CALIFORNIA ADVENTURE FOOD AND SHOPPING EVENT IS AN APPETIZER TO A WIDER REOPENING OF BOTH ANAHEIM PARKS
Southern Californians are ready to get out in the world, and it shows. As cultural institutions from cinemas to museums to theme parks slowly reopen, we stop by a Disneyland party, talk movies with Hollywood players and get a look at signs of new vitality all around.
FOR MUCH OF the last year, the phrase “return to normalcy” has been drummed into our heads. What will it look like, feel like and — a pressing concern amid the ability of COVID-19 to strip us of our core senses — taste like?
In Southern California, one of the clearest symbols of just how much time has been lost to the pandemic — at least one that doesn’t immediately evoke the more personal and horrific life-and-death effects of the virus — has been the fact that Disneyland Resort’s two theme parks have been closed for more than 375 days.
Although some may roll their eyes or grimace at the price tag that comes with much of what Disneyland has to offer, the fact remains that since 1955 Disneyland has reflected, disseminated and remade America’s pop art, placing our country’s myths alongside the company’s take on classic fairy tales. Before 2020, an unplanned, non-weatherrelated closure of Disneyland had been such an abnormality that it had happened just three times in the park’s 65-year history. Due to some combination of American capitalism and humanity’s desire to be enveloped in fantastical stories, Disneyland has managed to survive multiple wars, civil rights movements, economic downturns and nearly every societal trend, change or tragedy.
Disneyland’s two Anaheim parks are now scheduled to reopen April 30, allowing the original, which stands as an export of Southern California leisure that has spawned parks in Florida, Paris, Shanghai, Tokyo and Hong Kong, to admit a fraction of its full guest capacity through its gates. Although the past 12 months have taught us to prepare for the worst and expect sudden changes, the increased rate of COVID-19 vaccinations, as well as a decline in local case numbers, has at long last provided a sense of optimism.
Normalcy? Not yet, but when
Disney California Adventure opened its gates March 18 to a fraction of the park’s die-hard fans for a food and shopping event, what had before felt tentative now felt somewhat relaxed. How much of that sensation comes from steady improvements in the pandemic or the hug-like feel of well designed artistic space is a complex equation. But Disney’s parks, whether you go often or are dragged along as part of a forced outing, are the stuff of ritual, places of now long-standing traditions that even without their rides turned on are invitations to play at a more idealized version of ourselves.
The A Touch of Disney event, which runs through April 19 and sold out online in just a few hours even though tickets were $75 apiece, is the first time since the parks’ closure just over a year ago that guests have had the full run of Disney California Adventure grounds, save for the completed but not-yetopen Avengers Campus. Although