Too old for Disney? Is there such a thing?

Certainly not. Disney films are made to be oriented towards families, not just little children. There are things you can get out of Disney movies only as an adult, subtle nuances hidden behind the kid-friendly characters and songs. Certainly Disney World and Disney Land are not for little kids, considering the amount of rides that you can only ride if you’re above a certain age/height. Without sounding judgmental about a person I don’t know, in my opinion your mother just needs to tap into her inner child a bit more.

No friggin such thing.

I am 31 years old, and I go to Walt Disney World and/or Disneyland 3–4 times a year.

I, in fact, just surprised my 15-year-old half sister yesterday on her birthday by telling her I’m taking her to WDW this July.

Your mother is very very wrong here.

If you think you can stand the fallout, why not suggest that she is too old, and that you’d be happy to take the younger siblings with you.

The ironic thing is, my mother is a Disney employee, working for “Radio Disney”, but you know, they never seemed to have much of the “Disney Spirit”, they act a bit too strict…

@CyanoticWasp Yeah, I don’t think she’d take that very well… She has convinced herself she is permanently 23 years old :)

Your mother is insane.

@Arp Can you really blame them though? With the amount of criticism Disney is liable for…. If they broadcast the wrong thing, they’ll get phone calls from millions of parents saying they’ve poisoned their children’s minds. It would be nice if all Disney employees could have the “Disney spirit” as you say, but unfortunately in this day and age that is probably impossible.

But that’s another issue.

@Arp last time I checked, 23 is still older than 15.

Now freakin way! My parents are retired, 75 years old and go there every other week! They love the place!!

I am 29 years old and just took my fiancee to Disneyland for Valentine’s day. I still go at least 3 times a year. You are NEVER too old for disney.

Yes. And, it starts now.

Take the mature route- print out things (from Disney’s website) of things you want to do when you go and show her. Tell her how excited you are to go and give her reasons to take you. Ask her if you can help plan the trip because you want to help.

A lot of times parents see the attitude of a teen as not caring- when in fact they do care but show it differently because they’re trying to appear older than their age. So buck that trend and get excited.

If you still enjoy it, you’re not too old for it. If you really want to go and money really is the issue, tell her you’ll help pay for it (babysit, cut grass). Or tell her to stay her 40 year old ass at home.

At the risk of making @ParaParaYukikot cringe, I don’t care for disney much, but I digress too.

I am with gemiwing. Start selling your mom on the idea now. Letting her know how you can help and be a part of the family. If that still doesn’t persuade her I am wondering if she might have some other possible reason.

Geez, @gemiwing, if you take a “mature route” you play right into her hands.

I think you need to sulk, pout, not talk to her for days on end… that sort of thing.

Almost 36 year old woman here. I have a year pass to Disneyland. I’ve already been 3 times this year.

No way! Disney rules.

Also some of it is quite dark and mature, at that. I know I woulda had nightmares if I was 8 when The Hunchback of Notre Dame came out.

As a scotsman would say “it Disney make sense” attitudes like this.Where fun is concerned there absolutely should never be any restrictions because of a persons age.Why the fuck should there?

@Symbeline The Hunchback of Notre Dame is my favourite Disney film.

@Leanne1986 Yep, same here. Mulan comes as number two, and Aladdin is three. If I had to choose, that is.

I’m 20 and I’ve been to Disney World in the Magic Kingdom at least 30 times. You are never too old for Disney, if that’s your thing. Sometimes you just need to take time out of your busy adult life and be a kid again, and if that means playing along with the goofy Disney fantasy world, so be it, and have fun.

I like Disney. I never loved it.

Now Disney Lands Fort Wilderness is cool. It is Disney for campers. Lazy campers. :-)

I’ll tell you, when I was 17, my parents took me to DisneyLand in Anaheim, and I have to say, as a teenager, I was into thrill rides, and really they didn’t have a ton in the way of thrill rides, and the best rides they had you had to wait 2 hours in line (of course this WAS in August). However, DisneyWorld doesn’t even compare to DisneyLand, with the multiple parks, Epcot and all the other wonderful things there, I can’t imagine ANYONE not having a blast. But if you’re talking DisneyLand, I sort of formed the opinion that you could have fun as an adult taking your younger children or you could have fun if you were younger, but if you were a teenager and roller coasters were your main reason for going to a park, then maybe they’d have a point. It sounds to me like maybe your parents are having a little trouble affording the trip this year and they were floating an idea in hopes that maybe you were “at that age” between when amusement parks were fun from a child’s perspective and when they’re fun from a parents’ perspective…some teens are just “too cool” for that kind of fun, and maybe they figured it was worth a shot. Tell them that last time you went you loved it and you’d really feel left out if you didn’t get to go but your siblings did. Maybe they’ll find a way to swing it or maybe they’ll do something else they can afford to do for the whole family.

@ChazMaz Where the bears don’t shit in the woods,pooh!

They shit in the woods. But there is staff that sneaks around when everyone is sleeping and cleans it up.

No kidding that place is uncanny. It is spotless, including the bathrooms and you never see any workers.
No bugs, perfectly cut grass. Olympic size pool, out door movies and sing alongs. Herds of deer, Gators and every nigth there is a firework display over the lake.

You can get a cabin, pitch a tent or bring the camper.

Now that is my idea of Disney.

They maybe automative workers like on the movie westworld.Now that shit would be uncanny.

I was going to say Westworld. That is exactly what I think about.

@ChazMaz Fucking Yul Brynner bearing down on your cabin with a feather duster & a bucket.Shit, i’m outta there in a heartbeat.

@ucme on the other hand, Miss Kitty with the feather duster alone, and I’d be hanging out the “Do Not Disturb” and “Do Not Wake for Meals” signs, both.

@CyanoticWasp Brilliant we’ve moved from Disney to porn via Yul Brynner.Genius,only on fluther & they said variety was dead.

What? No way! No one’s ever too old for Disney

I don’t believe I’ve ever gotten the charm of Disney—except possibly the Mouseketeers. Does this mean that I grew out of it at around age 12?

For the longest time, I knew exactly how a Disney film was going to go from the first minute of it. Recently, however, I saw a movie I actually thought was good. Who knew? Never been to the theme parks; never want to go. I don’t like their corporate culture, either. All in all, I’ll just give them a pass.

@wundayatta Please tell me that “Go to disney” is one of the things mentioned in “101 things to do/see before you die”, because even if you end up thinking it is a rip off, you can still say you went. Plus, I don’t really think you will find it bad at all.

@Arp What would I do? I don’t enjoy the rides (they make me sick). I absolutely hate standing in long lines, especially in the sun. I don’t like mock ups of real things in the world. I prefer to see the real thing. I don’t like staying at hotels. So tell me, what would I like at a Disney park?

No way! Since childhood, Disneyland has been my annual birthday spot of choice and I can’t imagine giving it up anytime soon and I’m way past 15yrs old.

@wundayatta nothing you just said applies to Disney. It’s obvious you’ve never learned anything about it, and are just assuming it’s an overgrown Six Flags.

* There are shockingly few thrill rides. The attractions are almost entirely slow moving. ie, shows in which you move from scene to scene, not rides.
* Almost none of the lines are outdoors, and if you’re not an idiot (ie, you don’t go during the busiest time of the year, you get there early, you use FastPass), you won’t wait in lines longer than 15–20 minutes.
* There is far more “real world” there than you think there is. Animal Kingdom leaps to mind.

Not liking staying in hotels simply means you don’t like vacationing, period, and is therefore not relevant to a conversation about Disney.

Of course not, those films created are timeless. Save for the lame ones.

NEVER!.. ever ever ever ever ever! I will always love cartoons, Disney and Belle will forever be my idol <3 I will always keep this part of me 7 years old so I never forget the days of being carefree <3…. I will, however, never watch Bambi again.. watched it in Kindergarten and became so upset and disturbed that my teacher thought my parents we’re being abusive at home O.O

I love being in the park, and I am over 50.
Maybe your mom just has money issues. Maybe you can help her somehow.

No way,Goofy!

My husband and I went to Disney for our honeymoon. We had an incredible time! He doesn’t like rides and I was slightly pregnant (haha), so we skipped almost all of that kind of thing. Each day was packed, and we had the best time. Neither of us has ever been a Disney fanatic, either. I don’t think you’re ever too old for Disney. There really is something for everyone.

I am too lazy to scroll up and see who first suggested this, but I agree that you should offer to find a way to help cover the costs. Even if you can earn enough money to cover your plane ticket, that might be a big help. Good luck, and I hope you get to go. I think it’s pretty sad that your mom would consider leaving you behind. I’d either take all my kids or put the trip on hold for another year. :(

No such thing as too old for Disneyland, but there are other considerations like price and the length of the lines.

I don’t think you can ever be to old for anything Disney. It brings out the kid in everyone!

I haven’t read all the responses yet, but maybe she has money troubles you are not aware of. Could you get a part time job to pay your own entrance fees?

I’m 43 years old, as of today, and I still like to watch “Bedknobs and Broomsticks” and “Mary Poppins” several times a year. They’re just about my most favorite Disney creations, ever. When it comes to many things Disney, I’ll always be a kid at heart in my own way.

There id no such thing. However, it might just be an excuse because they can’t afford you. Go to the Disney site and see if you can do the Work a Day Win a Day program. You do volunteer work for a free ticket.

I know people in their 50’s and 60’s who buy season passes to the park. One goes nearly every day.

@Jeruba, my husband and I go to Disneyland once or twice a month. He does it for me more than him, but he enjoys the passes because we can go for a few hours instead of all day.

@Jeruba This is my first year with an annual pass. I love being able to just go for a few hours. I plan to have a very happy year.

@tinyfaery, i bet we’ve been there at the same time before ;-)

Gosh, I hope not! I haven’t been yet!

Your 15, why would you want to look at people dressed up as Donald Duck?! Yes I think you are maybe too old.

@Dibley you’re 31, why can’t you spell correctly? Age is clearly meaningless.

You know its funny, almost every high school I know of has their senior trip to Disney, and Universal.

Disney is a great place for all the sheep of the world to vacation.

@ChazMaz Well put!
Although, you gotta hand it to all those “sheep”... They endure the unpleasantness of visiting crowded theme parks and overpriced snack stands for a few hours of entertainment!

If having enjoyed a trip to Disney makes me a sheep, then BAA BAA BAA! I’d go back again in a heartbeat. You can feel sorry for me and my ovine companions all you want, but we’ll be too busy eating fantastic food at Epcot or sightseeing at Animal Kingdom to feel sorry for ourselves. :P

@MissAusten “ovine”, if anyone cares.

haha fixed it, thanks!

@MissAusten In spite of my comment (which was in jest, of course) I greatly enjoyed my family trips to Disney, Animal Kingdom and Epcot. I also absolutely cannot wait until I have a chance to visit the new Harry Potter theme park.

@ParaParaYukiko the Harry Potter thing is Universal Studios not Disney… But it seems cool anyway!

@Dr_C True, true… but it’s still awesome!

I actually feel sorry for people who do not see all the pure enjoyment all around them at theme parks. Their world must be very bleak, indeed. If the only thing to see was a person dressed up like Donald Duck, that would be fun, just to see the wonder on the faces of all the little children, and on the faces of the rest of the family enjoying their children’s delight.
But the truth is, there is joy and delight in every corner of the park, from the employees who are trained to put on a happy face, to the trinkets we can look at.

When I was a teen, I went to Disneyland. We didn’t have much money in those days, so I learned not to ask to buy any of the items, but only look. I told my sister how much I loved one thing I saw, and someone nearby buy reached over and gave me the money to buy it. The park is full of joy and pleasure for those who have the eyes to see.

I never went to Disneyland and certainly never wanted to. I could understand maybe under 5’s wanting to go, but older children and adults, can’t they find something adult to do?

@Dibley
They go to Universal Studios, maybe.
How are we defining ‘adult’? Wine tasting?

@Nullo Just a grown up.

@Dibley
I was using ‘adult’ as an adjective. :\

It’s personal taste, I would not want to go and Mickey Mouse and co, was never like that as a child. I realised it was a cartoon and knew what cartoon meant.

@Dibley
...You honestly think that anybody over the age of four had trouble in that department?

@Nullo No, not at all, that’s why I can’t understand why anyone would want to go to Disneyland.

@Dibley I think you are confusing “Magic Kingdom” with “Disneyland.” Magic Kingdom, the park with the big castle, sounds most what like you are describing. My husband and I hardly spent any time there. The other parks have a huge variety of things that appeal to adults, even adults who have never been big Disney fans. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with not seeing the appeal of a popular tourist attraction, and if you don’t have any desire to go there, that’s fine. It just seems like you imagine it to be different from the way it really is.

@Dibley You’ve never understood why anyone would want to go there, obviously because you’ve never bothered learning anything about it. You have made the assumption that the Disney parks are nothing but people wearing Disney-character costumes and amusement park rides. Your assumption is 100% incorrect, and therefore your opinion, while understandble coming from that assumption, is invalid.

@MissAusten I think you meant “confusing ‘Magic Kingdom’ with ’Walt Disney World’”. WDW is in FL, four parks, two water parks, 20+ hotels, 5 golf courses, shopping & nightlife districts, etc. Disneyland is in CA, is two parks, three hotels and a small shopping/nightlife district.

lol See, the confusion is contagious! I can never keep WDW and Disneyland straight!

@MrItty Excuse me for breathing but I thought this was a question and answer site, so all answers are valid. Why would I want to learn about something I have no interest in?

@Dibley No, not all answers are valid. If someone asks you “Why is the sky blue” and you reply “I hate the sky so I don’t care that it’s green”, that’s not a valid answer.

“Why would I want to learn about something I have no interest in”... I don’t even know how to answer that. It makes no sense. How can you be interested in something without first knowing something about it? Education comes first, interest may or may not follow. Not the other way around.

@MrItty But I don’t want to learn about fantasy world, it isn’t what interests me. You obviously enjoy it and get pleasure out of it, fine, I’m not knocking you, we are all different. I was simply giving my opinion on the question. I don’t like Disney!

@Dibley No, you don’t like what you perceive Disney to be. Since your perceptions of Disney are wrong, you don’t know whether or not you like what Disney actually is.

@MrItty Ok, you are very passionate about it, but not everyone has to like it. I am one of those that don’t. sorry!

@Dibley it’s okay not to know Disney parks. It’s okay to know them and hate them. I suppose it’s even okay to not know them and still hate them.

What seems silly, though, is keeping up a running thread that keeps getting back to ”... this is how I feel and I can’t understand why anyone would feel any differently”. To an extent, @MrItty is doing the same thing… but in this case he’s right.

@CyanoticWasp WTF? I don’t give a shit if everyone loves them, I am saying I do not, I do not like them! Why do a lot of people on this site not allow anyone else’s opinion unless it is the same as their own. It’s bull shit.

You people in Europe have my type of Disney Land/World.

It is called Holland and Denmark. ;-)

@ChazMaz As always, great answer and by the way I wouldn’t go to those places either…....wait for it!!!

@Dibley – Why would you not go to those places?

@ChazMaz Don’t know, never appealled to me I guess. I would if they had Formula 1 races there but other than that I don’t really want to visit.

@Dibley I don’t care if you have a different opinion than me. That is not what I’m trying to get at. I know plenty of people who’ve been, and/or researched them, and decided “Nope, not for me!” That’s all fine and good.

What I’m trying to explain is that your perception of the thing you claim to dislike is wrong. Let me try an analogy. Someone asks your opinion on Catcher in the Rye. You say you don’t like it because you’re not a fan of baseball movies set in Iowa featuring ghosts of dead baseball players. Is someone being wrong to correct you and tell you that Catcher in the Rye has absolutely nothing to do with Field of Dreams? Or should they just say “well that’s your opinion then, guess that’s fine!”?

I wouldn’t mess with her if I were you.

@MrItty If it would make you feel better, then please, tell me about Disneyworld or whatever world and then I will tell you again, that I have no interest. I don’t like football, I don’t want to learn about it first, I have no desire to learn about men kicking a ball, to know that I already have no interest. I was using football because I live in England and we have football, sorry if you don’t like that either.

@Dibley; Disney World has the Richard Petty Racing Experience where you get to drive real cars.

@Judi Oh, that sounds amazing.

@Dibley glad to. And your analogy is actually perfect, because it’s obvious that you actually do know enough about football/soccer – you know that it involves men kicking a ball. That’s a lot more than you know about WDW.

In addition to the amusement park rides and people-dressed-as-characters that you seem to think is all there is, there is also:

* Fine dining, including the only AAA 5-diamond ranked restaurant in Florida
* World class resort hotels
* Spas and fitness centers
* Watercraft rental, including everything from jetskis to private yachts.
* Performances by the world-renowned “Cirque Du Soleil”
* The Richard Petty Driving Experience, in which you either ride-along or drive your own real honest-to-goodness NASCAR car
* 5 championship golf courses, including two that are part of the PGA tour
* A variety of outdoor activities, including horseback riding, parasailing, tethered hot-air ballooning, and fishing
* Safaris, in which you drive through free-roaming African wildlife
* Broadway-calibur plays
* Scuba-diving in the world’s largest salt-water acquarium.
* And of course, parades, fireworks, and nighttime extravaganzas

Those are off the top of my head. If you can honestly say that NONE of any of that appeals to you in any way, I have to ask: “What exactly do you enjoy?”

Then there’ Aerosmith Rockin’ Roller Coaster, my favorite in the whole world. (I have been on a lot.)
my hubby even went Scuba diving in the Epcot tank.)

@MrItty I can say that 4 of those up there interest me and you are right, I wouldn’t have associated them with Disney. But, and I’m not trying to annoy you, you could do another package holiday with those thing and cut out the disney.

@Dibley I’m sure you could. But with all of that, can you at least understand some of our frustration with the concept of being “too old for Disney”? Can you at least ammend your stance of “I don’t know why anyone over 4 would want to go there”?

Did we mention Pleasure Island? An entire park dedicated to night clubs where every night is New Years Eve?

@Judi PI closed down about 18 months ago. :-(

Ok, how about this. I can understand children wanting to go there and it is good for parents who are not so keen because there are plenty of other activities to make it a good holiday all round. I really can’t do better than that.

@Dibley <sigh> I’ll take it. :-P

@MrItty If I had kids and they wanted to go, I wouldn’t be so miserable about it because I could at least go and get pampered while they do the whole Disney thing, and I really am getting too nice now, so I’m leaving.

@Mritty,
did they put something se in it’s place? I’m so sad, even though I don’t drink. :-(

@Judi The island itself is still there, but all the nightclubs on it are closed. To my knowledge, the only one that’s yet been filled in is a new restaurant called Paradiso 33 or something like that. It’s in the building between the Adventurer’s Club and the Rock ‘N Roll Beach Club.

For nighttime entertainment at WDW now, I generally head over to the Boardwalk and go to Jellyrolls Dueling Piano Bar and the Atlantic Dance hall which, I guess, are two more things I could have included in my list to @Dibley :-P

NEVER

You are too ‘old’ to go when you don’t think it would be any fun. That’s a fact. I have seen people there who look like someone held a gun to their head and forced them to come. I wish they wouldn’t even be there. It detracts from the overall enjoyment.

@Dibley
Ve hav vays to make you like Disney! Bring in the laughing gas!

You are never too old for anything as long as you enjoy it.

NEVER, NEVER, NEVER, NEVER, NEVER!! I just went to Disneyland in June with my 30 year old son, my 26 year old son and my 16 year old granddaughter. The older I get, the more fun it is. I wanted to go so bad as a child but my parents would never take us. I am the only one of my siblings that has ever been (how sad!) and I have been 6 times so far. Each time I had to take myself, though.

I just spent New years eve and Jan 1st at Disneyland with my Fiancé, mother and sister!
I also renewed my annual pass, and ran around the place like a 5 year old boy