Seriously Though, What Is The Deal With This Fandom?

At the base of the sprawling magnolia tree out in front of Pirates of the Caribbean is a massive ship's anchor. I am very sorry not to have a photo I can show you, because it's quite striking. It appears to have lain there for quite some time—the tree is slowly enveloping it and the metal is rough with corrosion. Oddly enough, the anchor's rope is still attached, in perfectly fine condition, and if you follow it up through the branches of the tree and then over, you'll find that it originates from...

...Tarzan's Treehouse. Which was, of course, built from the wreckage of a ship.

This is one of those Disneyland details that I find absolutely enthralling—a literal connection between two entirely different attractions in two different lands, whose only real point of similarity is the presence of sailing ships. There is an excellent symbol-logic to it: the one thing these two attractions have in common, the thematic bridge between them, also serves as a physical bridge between them. It's almost mystical, isn't it? One can easily imagine a dream-scenario in which the themed lands are more profoundly separated than they are in fact, with no linking walkways, but the anchor rope remains and serves as the functional bridge between New Orleans Square and Adventureland—a reward for those daring enough to walk a tightrope or swing hand-by-hand underneath. What other surprising connections might or should exist in such a fanciful version of the Happiest Place on Earth?

Are you with me so far? Now for the real question. Why is no one else talking about this stuff?

Notes on the Fandom: Clichés and Axioms

I adore Disneyland like little else in my life, but I have to admit that the fandom can be...difficult. For me, at least. It's a thing apart from every other fandom I have ever gotten involved with, probably because it's based on a fixed location rather than a piece of easily reproducible media, but my area of concern today is the way the discussions tend to go.

I'm only “active” on one Disneyland discussion forum, that being the one on Micechat, and the scare quotes are because I rarely find it in me to join the conversations there. They're just...so...repetitive. Trip reports (not much to add there), news items, requests for advice from people about to make their first visit (others have usually gotten there long before I see the thread), and the ever-popular debates about the sorts of attractions Disney should add to their parks vs. the sorts they do add.

That last category of conversations are the really frustrating ones, because they have possibly the highest potential for fruitful discussion, but the lowest actualization of that potential. Most of what I see is factions of people arguing past each other. As is usually the case when people are more interested in waving their opinions about like magic talismans than actually communicating with each other, there are certain stock phrases that appear over and over. Today I've chosen to highlight four that I think are especially poisonous and would be discarded by a wiser fandom. I've been guilty of using some of them myself.

Some of these clichés and axioms, I would like to banish from the overall conversation because I disagree with them, others because I feel they convey my own positions badly. But we would be better off without all of them, as a general rule, because they are less thoughts than substitutes for thought.