Disney World for adults
Maybe I like being a grown-up too much, said Lauren Lipton in Condé Nast Traveler. Even after learning that a third of all visitors to Florida’s Walt Disney World are adults with no children in tow, I couldn’t fully give myself over to the “world of illusion” that the entertainment company has created in a 40-square-mile theme park. Not that my recent weeklong stay was unpleasant. A three-hour mini-safari seemed “authentic enough to me,” a tour through grasslands and wetlands occupied by real giraffes and lions. And I’m not immune to the appeals of luxe dining, a world-class roller coaster, or a chance to glimpse the park’s subsurface, employees-only tunnels. But the whole “litter-free, poverty-free” mini-universe feels like “Fantasy America, the America we all wished we lived in.” Are those chirping birds a recording? Is that petunia smell pumped in through hidden ducts? I could ask a passerby, but so many of them are paid actors.
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