Images of Main Street: Disney World and the American Adventure

When Dean Koontz wishes to evoke an image of innocence to contrast with the horror and dread in Watchers, he introduces a shared love for Disney characters between the intelligent and good dog, Einstein, and his equally intelligent but evil nemesis, the Outsider. In fact, this shared love for Mickey and his friends saves Einstein from the murderous Outsider, originally named "The Other," when the sight of a Disney home video box softens his heart and leads him to show mercy on his intended victim for the sake of their common memories. These memories were their only happy ones when they were experimental animals in a National Security Agency facility. As schmaltzy and sentimental as this summary may be, the use of Disney characters works in the book just as it does for the millions of people who share the dream of Disney's Main Street U.S.A. of a pure innocence where the mischief of Huey, Dewey, and Louie are boyish fun in contrast with the lurid headlines that greet us daily. The entire Main Street experience is designed to evoke nostalgia for an Age of Innocence. In fact, there are a number of Main Streets at the Disney properties, each tapping into a different era and range of emotions: the colonial period, the frontier, and "the future," for example. It is pointless to murmur that these depictions are romantic fantasies, for that is indeed the point. Moreover, this very fantasizing reveals a great deal about the special relationship Americans have with Disney and the manner in which Disney has managed to bring American cultural fantasies to life, externalizing the almost inchoate romantic images of the people. Indeed, at times this Disney-influenced version of reality has resulted in criticisms from the right as well as the left. The action of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1997 resolving to boycott Disney "because the Walt Disney Co. was providing health care benefits to companions of gay employees" and its "hosting of homosexual theme nights" is a case in point (Book of the Year 199. Disney owns those people who bought their image of America and then used that image against them. It is instructive to examine some of these various Main Streets in Disney World and compare them with a British view of America's Main Street at the American Adventure amusement park in Ilkeston, Derbyshire, England, near Robin Hood's Nottingham and Sherwood Forest. Main Street, U.S.A., Disney World "Disney occupies a special place in the American landscape and culture," states Michael Pollan; Few companies are as skillful at making places, at shaping the physical environment to affect our behavior. Disney's theme parks deserve credit for helping to keep alive not only a large part of America's vernacular architecture but, on Main Street, the very experience of walkable streets and pleasing public spaces-this at precisely the time when Americans were abandoning real Main Streets for their cars and suburban cul-de-sacs. (58) Getting to Main Street U.S.A. for most visitors is an adventure in itself. In addition to the months or years of planning and dreaming to visit the secular Mecca that Disney World has become, there is the trip from the parking lot or ticket and transportation center to enter the park itself. Others have written of the park's controlled environment and Walt Disney's determination not to have the area around Disney World be spoiled by other commercial ventures. Part of that plan is Disney's desire to rouse the sense of a journey from the mundane to the magic in their "guests."" For most guests, there are two choices in reaching the park from the ticket and transportation area: the monorail or the steamboat. Experienced guests, many of whom have gotten tired of the time it takes to leave the mundane and experience the magic, look quickly at the lines to the monorail and then to the steam boat's dock to note whether the boat has just left or is arriving. …