Yuku free message boards

I have noticed something unusual since my arrival in Southern California. Whereas in Florida to love Disney is to be weird, in SoCal to love Disney is to be cool. I grew up in the only family I knew of that had annual passes to WDW. If I talked about my many trips with my friends, they would ask me when I was going to grow up (speaking about high-school days, of course). The only cool thing was Pleasure Island, and even then it was considered a pseudo-nightclub after Universal's Citywalk opened. I think WDW did a good job at isolating itself from the local Orlando community, both physically and socially. In the average Floridian's mind, WDW is a place that is too expensive with no "real" rides and mediocre food, all completely unfounded. There is a faction of Floridians who moved solely to be close to WDW; my comments obviously do not apply to them.

With this in mind, I initially kept my Disney-love undercover as I made new friends here in Malibu. My room has a modest selection of two Disney images (a Hall of Presidents attraction poster and the D23 Archives print that came with the membership), and the only Disney movie I brought with me is my bootleg Song of the South, since I can Netflix just about anything else. However, something strange started to happen. First, I would talk about my trip to DL last week as something I was interested in as an employee of the Company (oh, and I was a bartender who happened to work at Disney, not a castmember who used to pretend to be a butler, skipper, and pirate). That would lead to the person responding with how much they loved DL, regardless of who I was talking to. Then, the conversation would grow with the person introducing me to someone else as "this guy worked for Disney," followed by that person telling me how much they loved DL. Finally, after this happened on numerous occasions, I asked my Californian roommate why everyone around here seems to love Disney. He simply said it was cool in SoCal to go to DL. And, I have noticed that Californians know cool. They exude cool, as if it was a vital biological function!

I am enjoying the new-found acceptance of my borderline-unhealthy interest in all things Disney (it may be the only cool thing about me!), but I definitely can relate with the Disney-hating that happens just about everywhere else.