The Disney World experience: 50 years on, visiting theme park remains a rite of passage

This is a commentary by Mark Murphy, a local author and physician. He is a longtime contributor to the Savannah Morning News

It has been an astonishing 50 years since my parents first took me to Walt Disney World.

We stayed in the Contemporary Resort, a hotel which enthralled me because the sleek, futuristic monorail zoomed right into the hotel. I remember the nightly laser light shows out across Bay Lake, and the paper ticket books which defined which attractions you could go to by designating them as A through E-level attractions. The best rides were the E-ticket rides, which included two of my favorites: The Haunted Mansion and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

The cost of the whole book of tickets was a whopping $5.95 (to which was added the subtext “A 10.95 Value!”).

There was no Epcot in those days. Disney World consisted of the Contemporary and Polynesian hotels, the Magic Kingdom and the monorail that linked them all. Space Mountain, the iconic indoor roller coaster ride, would not open until 1975.

My first visit to Disney World was exhilarating in many respects. I had grown up watching the Wonderful World of Disney, the iconic network television show which aired (“In Full Color!”) on Sunday evenings. Like many people worldwide, my childhood had been shaped by Disney animated films like “Snow White,” “Bambi,” “Dumbo” and “The Jungle Book.” And when our family ventured to Orlando in 1972, my parents, in an unusual show of trust, allowed me to venture into the Magic Kingdom by monorail each day unaccompanied, just so long as I returned for dinner each evening.

I’ve made the trek back to Disney World over 20 times since then, both with friends and family. There were adolescent trips with the youth choir of my church, visits with friends from college, and the requisite holidays Daphne and I made with our own children when they were young.

But this year, we took our first Disney vacation with Violet, our granddaughter.

'The Mouse is going to get his money'

The experience has changed a bit since I first stayed at Walt Disney World a half century ago. The swampy, relatively modest complex from 1972 is now a 27,000-acre behemoth (twice the size of Manhattan) with four theme parks, two water parks, 36 themed hotels, a camping resort, several golf courses, over 300 restaurants and a mammoth outdoor shopping and entertainment center, Disney Springs. It employs over 77,000 people and has over 58 million annual visitors, making it the most-visited amusement park complex in the world.

Moreover, the Disney organization, its parent company, is a multi-tentacled kraken, with ownership of ABC, ESPN, National Geographic, the Marvel and Star Wars franchises and Pixar animation, among other things, with annual revenues of $83 billion — more than the GDP of over 70 different countries, including places like Costa Rica and Belarus.

The cost of a Disney vacation has gone up a bit, too.

Today, if a family of four takes a four-day, three-night vacation at Walt Disney World, stays at a standard Disney property hotel and gets four three-day park hopper passes, the cost including food expense (but without merchandise) could easily top $6,000. As my friend Ryan Wanamaker says, “The Mouse is going to get his money.” A visit to Disney World these days can be an exhausting exercise involving huge crowds, pushy people, overpriced food and aggressive, in-your-face merchandising.

Disney Inc. has taken a few body blows of late. It has had a few films which were busts, has handled the ongoing U.S. culture wars poorly, and recently had to replace its CEO, Bob Chapek, by bringing former CEO Bob Iger out of retirement to combat plummeting stock prices, which dropped 41% this year.

But I must admit something here: Despite all of this, there something a little bit magical in this old place.

Disney magic lives on

We were accompanied on this trip by my son Chris and his wife Abby, my granddaughter Violet, my son Josh and his wife Katie. And while the crowds were as crazy as ever, the food incredibly expensive and the accommodations pricy as hell, there’s something to be said for seeing one’s granddaughter, dressed as Princess Aurora, waving excitedly to Mickey and Minnie Mouse in a parade before turning to you and exclaiming, wide-eyed, “They’re real!”

That single moment made it all worthwhile.

Each time I come to Disney, I swear I’ll never return. But deep down inside, I know I will.

You see, every once in a while, we all need just a little bit of magic.

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Disney World visit with child reminds why theme park is magical place