Kunsler was Wrong...

For English class, we were asked to read another chapter from Kunsler's book. In this, he spent the majority of it bashing the wonderful Disney World. When I was 7, I went to the "Most Magical Place on Earth" for the first time. It was incredible! I'll never forget flying over and seeing the ivy Mickey Mouse head, walking through the Golden Gates, and soaring through the air on the roller coasters. Kunsler says that it's a week in Hell for adults; but my dad was in Orlando on business, so me and my sister (who is 9 years older than me) got to explore the parks by ourselves. My dad came one day, but the most fun I had was running around with her, even the waiting in lines. It was nice to have him there, but I especially loved being with my sister and getting to know a whole new community. It was incredible, we got to meet the princesses, the classic disney characters (Mickey, Minnie, Chip & Dale, Goofy, and everyone else), and the characters from the movies that we grew up watching (that I still loved watching at the time). Like I said, it was magical. My whole point in explaining this isn't to convince you that Disney World is a magical place, I'm sure you already know that. My point is to tell explain why Kunsler is wrong.

He says that even the experience of waiting in lines makes the entire park horrible for children, I was a child, it wasn't horrible. The waiting in lines made the experience all the more enjoyable. It made the wait fun because we would look at people and giggle, and talk about the rides that we had been on and the one that we were about to go on, and all the rides that we still had left to go on. When we were bored, we would pull out maps and route out where we were going and what the "quickest" way would be to go to them. It was incredible, those are some of the best memories of my childhood, and even my pre-teen years. I went almost every year for eight years. I loved every minute of it, and there isn't a day that goes by that I don't wish I could go back to Disney world, to the "Most Magical Place on Earth." Because, to me, it truly is the most magical place I've every been. Disney World makes magic real for children, it makes them believe that things can happen, that elephants can fly, than pirates still exist, that princesses are beautiful and kind and have fairy godmothers. Disney World takes children to the highest hopes of their imaginations. I know this because that's what it did to me.

We've learned about sprawl, and suburbia, and all the horrible things that it causes; but no one ever talks about the good things. The good things are that it creates places like the Mall of America, Six Flags, Orlando Studios, and Disney World. These places were created because of the land and the revenue that they could offer for the states in which they are located. Personally, I like to believe that the visionaries behinds these modern civil engineering marvels had a different goal in mind: to make kids happy, and to restore their belief in magic.

keep believing,

Texas_Girl [Katy S.]