Two words that I have heard countless times over the years hit me differently last week.
Disneyland’s 70th birthday on July 17 provided the park an opportunity to replay Walt Disney’s opening-day speech from 1955, including the line, “Disneyland is dedicated to the ideals, the dreams and the hard facts that have created America.”
“Hard facts.” Those words caught me this time. Over its 70 years, Disneyland has evolved to feature more and more fictional stories from Disney’s studio catalogue. But that does not mean that Disney no longer deals in the hard facts of the world around us. As Mary Poppins sang, “A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.”
Fictional characters and narratives can help people learn the lessons of hard facts even when people are unwilling or unable to consider those facts directly. But Disney itself will need to confront some hard facts of its own if Disneyland is to endure for another 70 years.
One hard fact that Disney has adapted to is America’s demographic change. Disneyland opened in the middle of a baby boom, when demand for family entertainment stood at an all-time high. Today, birth rates have been declining, yet Disney has built its audience by charming generations of adults into holding onto the wonder and whimsy of childhood. The company also has embraced and included cultural traditions beyond European fairy tales, helping to increase Disney’s appeal around the world.
Yet other hard facts continue to challenge Disney. Over the past 70 years, America’s wealthy have become richer at the expense of the working class, making a Disneyland visit a tough sell for many families. Various discounts and pass programs have helped, but taking advantage of those requires advance planning that some families simply do not have the spare time to do.
Disney also ought to be concerned about disturbing trends in childhood development. Today’s tech companies are more often selling addiction than providing the entertainment and occasional education that publishers and broadcasters offered past generations. Growing up with tablets rather than books and toys is changing the way that children are learning and developing, to the frustration of many educators.
Disney is making a lot of money selling content that is displayed on those tablets. But the company needs to remember that its core product is not content or theme parks. It’s family togetherness. If more and more families cannot afford to visit Disney, the company eventually will suffer the loss of its cultural relevance. If families come to prefer spending more time interacting with mobile devices than with each other, the Disney that Walt founded forever will be lost.
Tablets and mobile devices are not going away. But Disney needs to use its remaining industry influence to craft ways that these devices can promote reading, working with others and a desire to explore the Earth around us rather than inhibiting all that.
Disneyland promotes itself as the happiest place on Earth. But the hard fact is that might offer no appeal to new generations if they grow to prefer living in their own, isolated worlds.