I was eight years old when I embarked on my pilgrimage to Disney World.

As a lower-middle-class true-born New Jerseyan, it was my birthright to go at least one time as a child. In my young mind, I was bound by duty to conduct thorough research before being bestowed the honor of venturing into a boundless world of castles, princesses, and magic. 

Weeks before the trip, I rummaged through old bins and junk drawers throughout my house in search of Disney artifacts. Dust-covered VHS tapes, and unboxed DVDs littered with scratches and scuffs, were to me, the uncovered remains of Disney’s golden age. I watched and rewatched, and went to bed each night to footage that filled me with promises of what Disney World was all about. 

Giddy and restless with anticipation, even the three-hour flight to Florida from Atlantic City was seemingly endless. However, no matter how much I craved for it to be everything that I had wished – how much I needed to see what everyone else saw – I was never afforded any magic.

Instead, I was greeted at the Orlando Airport by the rearing face of consumerism in the armpit of America. From the terminal to the park itself, there was no escaping the shoulder-to-shoulder congestion of sunburnt flesh herding to purchase Disney paraphernalia.

Despite all my research on this supposed kingdom of magic, Walt Disney World was merely a purgatory of waiting in line after line fuelled by obligatory happiness and stale churros. My juvenile articulation in conjunction with the charm of being a South Jersey native chalked this experience up as a lesson of, “We should’ve just gone to Great Adventure,”— at least Six Flags has some decent roller coasters.

But as an adult, I now wonder: Why in 2008, during The Great Recession, would middle America financially burden themselves with such mediocrity? 

Needless to say, it came as a shock to me when I heard of the ever-so-quirky millennial verbiage of people branding themselves as “Disney Adults.” These grown folks glittered in mouse ears, costumes, and toys became a personal symbol of willful ignorance and toxic positivity. 

Even the beginning of The Walt Disney Company, in 1923, is rooted in a facade of wholesomeness, masking the divisive nature often reported about Walt Disney.

Fairy tales such as, “The Three Little Pigs,” 1933, originally featured The Big Bad Wolf disguised as a stereotypical Jewish man; adorned with an enlarged nose and Yiddish music playing while trying to convince the pigs to open their door. “Song of the South,” 1946, is criticized for being a racist romanticization of slavery, while both were produced by the hand of Mr. Walt Disney himself. 

Despite conjecture regarding reports of anti-semitic claims against Disney, he has an uncomfortable amount of coincidences that tie him to nazism. One instance taking place a month after Kristallnacht (or the Night of Broken Glass), Disney welcomed Leni Riefenstahl, nazi-propagandist and film director, to Hollywood. Even comparing cinematic work and giving her a tour of his studio. 

This report was backed by Steven Bach’s biography on Riefenstahl, titled “Leni: The Life and Work of Leni Riefenstahl,” where he quoted her as saying “[it] was gratifying to learn how thoroughly proper Americans distance themselves from the smear campaigns of the Jews,” in reference to her time spent with Disney.

To this day, nearly six decades after Disney’s passing, fans still excuse the company’s selfish and unethical practices just as they did in the past. 

In recent decades, The Walt Disney Company has been buying, merging with, and acquiring other major film and television companies, including but not limited to Fox, Marvel Entertainment, and the ABC network. 

This makes it nearly impossible to avoid profiting the company. Effectively narrowing down the voices that shape our society through film and television and leaving few but their own on a mainstream scale. Through lobbying and public complacency, this company has been allowed land rights comparable to the power of government municipalities according to the 1967 legislation Reedy Creek Improvement District (RCID) and gained unprecedented dominance over the media industry. 

Ultimately signaling an untouchability, and sending a message that they are above the limitations of other corporations. 

Yet still, “Disney Adults” not only continue to openly support The Walt Disney Company but do so proudly. Essentially, selling out both their social responsibility and the integrity of the U.S. free market economy in their pursuit of licking the yellow boots of a fictional mouse named Mickey — all in the name of petty nostalgia. 

Regardless of how hard this conglomerate’s public relations team works, Disney’s acts of public service and attempts at diversity will always come off as disingenuous virtue signals because of the company’s pattern of unethicality. 

The values of friendship, community, and doing right by others often perpetuated within Disney films are clearly left in the writing room.

Most recently, in 2023, Jeffrey Piccolo filed a lawsuit against Disney alleging his wife died due to the mishandling of food at one of their amusement parks. Disney’s now withdrawn statement claimed no liability, citing Piccolo’s 2019 signage of Disney+ terms and agreements as the reason for their absolvement of responsibility.  

This tone-deaf and egregiously dismissive argument, regardless of withdrawal, should serve as a tall tale to future generations that corporations like Disney do not care about you. 

They don’t even care about their own Disney Channel stars. As experts in exploiting impressionable children, they take young actors, throw them away once their shows are over, and leave them with no real acting skills they can take anywhere else.

Just look at Skye Jackson’s “Gossip Girl” audition. 

Not only do they exploit children, and child actors, but also young adults. 

The Disney College Program is marketed on Rowan’s website as a program that “allows you to gain on-the-job experience with a world-renowned company,” a boiled-down way of saying you’ll most likely be serving food, working in retail, or selling tickets. This “internship” is more of a seasonal Indeed job listing, than the “unique” experience it perpetuates. 

On top of this, candidates must pay a “non-refundable program fee upon acceptance of their offer” according to the Disney Website. Making the whole experience another “magical” fallacy of being a socially ethical company.

Proving yet again why being a “Disney Adult” is irresponsible, and that this company is, was, and mostly will always be, downright evil.