Since I was a child, I think I could tell that theme parks were one of the most important things in my life. I visited the parks in Orlando when I was 3 in 2000 (yes, I experienced the Millennium Celebration and saw those weird-ass puppets).
Some concrete memories I have from that trip are:
Screaming and crying when I found out for the first time ever, at Sea World, that dolphins have TEETH.
Sitting on the Peoplemover with my big brother.
The Lights, Motors, Action!: Extreme Stunt Show at MGM (I had never seen cars do That before and was really scared). My dad took me to the front of the stage after the show and talked to one of the performers from the show because he really liked racecars, as some dads do. I was just relieved the performer made it out alive. He signed my autograph book.
Sitting on the floor at the Bear in the Big Blue House live show and seeing all my favorite guys up in front of me– probably the most excited I’ve ever been in my life.
Some other memories I have from that trip were constructed based on photos and journal entries1 I have from it, and my mom telling me things like how I was crying after we got off of The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh because I didn’t want it to end.
In the last few years, I have found myself being moved to tears very often by movies, music, everything. Yes, we have all heard the “theme park movie” discourse (love you, Marty), but have we ever considered that theme parks…can be movie?
Here is the thing: theme parks are art and I am extremely moved by them.
THINGS THAT MAKE ME CRY/HAVE MADE ME CRY AT THEME PARKS
it’s a small world - Magic Kingdom/Disneyland
I simply do not trust or believe people who think “it’s a small world” (or animatronics in general) is “annoying” or “creepy”. Mary Blair is one of my favorite artists, and this is a visual and sensory spectacle. Every time I go on this ride, when all of the dolls of the world are in the same room and you can hear each individual one sing as you float past them…I can’t help but cry. The dolls and costumes are so intricate, the song is so beautiful…it’s so over for me.
The launch on Tron: Lightcycle Run - Magic Kingdom
I have been watching ride POV videos of Tron: Lightcycle run since it opened in Shanghai in 2016. I’ve never really had that much nostalgia for Tron as a franchise. I saw Tron: Legacy at my tiny local movie theater when I was 13 and although that was my only time watching it, it really just stuck in my brain for 14 years. The visuals go hard. The score goes fucking crazy.
I will be honest, after 7(!) years of preparation, when I finally walked up to the ride in person for the first time in Orlando in 2023, I was like, very terrified? The most concerning part about this ride to me was the seat and restraint design. I love rollercoasters, but I will not go on ANY rollercoaster. I need to feel SECURE. The Lightcycle Run bike restraints are literally the craziest things I’ve ever seen. You are laying on your stomach, head forward, and essentially just locked in by your calves and over your back (? I’m actually not sure how the fuck it works, which is the scariest part).
After the very long queue that you need to wait in after waking up at 7 AM to wait in a virtual queue to get a chance to wait in that actual queue, there is a visual trick where you’re “entering the grid” that literally made me gasp. The sheer scale of this loading area is overwhelming. I was absolutely shaking when I was locked into the bike and almost crying. The train of bikes pulls into a mirrored hallway and it LAUNCHES you headfirst. I realized that this was feeling I’d never felt before in that specific position, it’s like being shot out of a cannon headfirst downwards (?), and that sensation alone moved me to tears (I guess if you have been shot out of a cannon before, this ride won’t really impress you that much??). The launch rules, everything looks gorgeous, the ride is fine. I want to be on it forever.
THE lift in E.T. Adventure - Universal Studios Orlando
E.T. is of course, one of my favorite movies, one of my favorite movie scores, one of my favorite rides. I always feel a little silly talking about just how special ride is, simply because all I can say is that “it feels like riding the movie”, and the Universal Studios thing is “Ride The Movies”.
There’s something really magical about how atmospheric and peaceful the queue and loading area is, but also that through the pre-show video, it has been established that E.T. and Steven Spielberg are canonically close personal friends.
This ride, similar to my experience with “it’s a small world”, is the kind of thing where I just need everybody to sit tight, don’t talk, let me dissociate and experience this.
There’s one moment in this that I think is the closest you can feel to physically being in a movie– you’re riding your “bikes” up and down the hills, being chased by revving cop car engines and stuff, and then…there’s a swell in the score and you fucking lift up and fly and go over a hill and there is a miniature city underneath you, and it just all comes together in a way that you can truly only describe as cinematic.
But then the ride gets really fucking wacky and I feel so ridiculous for crying as we enter the extremely humid Green Planet. It’s 90° and all of the animatronics look like a threat.
Indiana Jones Adventure - Disneyland
Anybody who knows me knows that since I was very young, Indiana Jones has been my one true love. It was my dream to go on this ride for literally my whole entire life— I knew about it from obsessively watching Travel Channel specials on the mechanics of the ride vehicles and stuff. When I finally got to go on it for the first time in 2022, I simply cried. The score in the queue, the pre-show where Sallah tells you “It is unlike anything you have ever experienced, I assure you”...he’s not lying. The ride is almost 30 years old, and it simply could’ve opened yesterday with how incredible it feels.
Every time I go on this, I immediately want to go back on, not for the thrill, but simply because I do not want to be outside of that environment. This, however, is very difficult, because the ride breaks down at least once an hour.
THE JAWS RIDE - (RIP) Universal Studios Orlando
My mom forced me to go on this when I was 11 even though I was really scared and she gritted her teeth and said “we’ll sit in the back of the boat, nothing will happen” and of course, the shark animatronic literally only popped up in the back right corner of the boat, right next to where I was sitting. I had my eyes shut so tightly and was crying the entire time. The fake boat skipper has a GUN. It was so terrifying. I want to go on it again right now. So. Badly.
[The last 3 rides I’ve discussed are Spielberg/John Williams joints. Really makes you think.]
The Main St. USA music loop - Magic Kingdom/Disneyland
Music from Hello, Dolly! will ALWAYS make me cry. So when I’m walking with a group of my friends or arm in arm with Sean or with a group of friends and the breeze carries an instrumental of a song that is simply about how wonderful it is to dress up nice and go out into the world and have a great day with the people that you love (Put on Your Sunday Clothes) through a bunch of balloons and there are some bubbles floating along with it, how can I not cry?
Also, the Main Street arrangement of Married Life is so wonderful. Another song that will never fail to make me cry, even in the new tiki-ish arrangement that Michael Giacchino just put out (great album).
Walking into Super Nintendo World for the first time - Universal Studios Hollywood
I’m going to sound like a real cornball really quick. There’s something extremely magical about walking into a space that has been so familiar to you your entire life and it’s physical and it’s MASSIVE. The sightlines of this are kinda genius, it is literally placed like, in a pit in the corner of the lower lot of Universal Studios Hollywood and when you’re in it, you can’t see much outside of it. V immersive.
When you enter through the warp pipe (the sound alone while you’re in the pipe…emotional) and out of Peach’s castle, you literally just need to stop and take in the SCALE of it. Phew.
After that it’s so stressful. Like, so stressful. Because it is literally placed like, in a pit in the corner of the lower lot of Universal Studios Hollywood, there is only one entrance and one exit.
I am very excited for it to come to Epic Universe in Orlando next year(!), and I fully expect to cry on the Donkey Kong coaster. I love Donkey Kong Country, and I simply cannot believe there is a rollercoaster that exists that’s based on one of my favorite/least favorite video game levels of all time.
The launch in Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind - EPCOT
I may be a Marvel h8r, but I have to admit, I do have a soft spot for Thee Guardians of the Galaxy. I don’t know if it’s the period of time it came out in my life, or if it’s just that I have a very strongly held belief that we should just let Bradley Cooper go absolutely fucking nuts behind a mic/in front of a camera/behind the camera like, once a year (unfortunately, he does not reprise his role as Rocket Raccoon for this ride footage and voiceover).
This ride has a soundtrack that alternates between 5ish songs that are timed to start as you launch, mostly just fun 70s-80s bops. I had been so excited to ride this and in the back of my mind I was secretly like “If I get Conga by Gloria Estefan, I will be very upset”.
Reader, I cannot even describe to you with words how I felt as I was shot backwards into space as Everybody Wants to Rule the World by Tears For Fears began to play. I was laughing, I was tearing up, it was just gorgeous. I want to feel like that all the time.
(The ride runs on a virtual queue system in which you can only enter the queue once per day. You are only allowed to ride this once per day unless you pay for a “Lightning Lane” to ride it again. Yes, I did that later that evening. And I got Conga).
Flight of Passage - Animal Kingdom
I never thought I’d be the type of person that literally just like, cries at James Cameron movies, every single one, but here we are. I was kinda indifferent towards Avatar until I went on this ride for the first time in 2020 (yes pre-Covid), but now I affectionately refer to Cameron as “Big Jim” in my head, he’s my uncle who is the most divorced man who has ever existed.
Flight of Passage is kinda just like POV, you are in Avatar, but there’s something about like, feeling the motion of it and hearing that fucking score that absolutely kills me. Similar to how I feel about the E.T. ride, the physical motion of it and the score just create this like, emotional arc? I don’t know how to explain it. It is just deeply moving.
I think Big Jim should make a ride of every one of his movies.
Eywa has heard me.
Watching The Great Movie Ride in VR - YouTube
Did you know that within the last 10 years there used to be a theme park ride that ended with Robert Osborne encouraging you to watch Turner Classic Movies? I did! And I never got to go on it.
When I was a kid, I had a book called “Birnbaum's Walt Disney World for Kids, by Kids 2005” that I got from a yard sale (it was well after 2005, so there was a lot of outdated information that I could not confirm because I didn’t have much internet access at the time). Even though I did not go to the parks, I would read about them obsessively. The Great Movie Ride specifically always fascinated me because:
I could not believe there was a massive boat ride inside of a movie theater (I wasn’t aware of the concept of facades/show buildings).
(Correction: I have just learned it’s not a boat ride. This is new information to me.)
Indiana Jones was involved, of course.
The kids that wrote the guidebook warned that there was a very scary scene in it with an Alien that they closed their eyes during! (There was a fucking Xenomorph in a Disney park. I would like to see it.)
The Great Movie Ride was gone before I got back there after “getting into movies”, but I honestly don’t know what it would be like now or what refurbs it would’ve faced (there were already ridiculous clips from Disney/Pixar/Star Wars movies shoehorned into the reel at the end that stuck out like multiple sore thumbs). It may sound ridiculous, but sometimes I watch POV and queue tour videos of The Great Movie Ride and it makes my heart kinda ache. One time, I had the idea of watching a ride POV in VR. I stuck my phone in a cardboard VR headset thing and turned my headphones volume all the way up. Big mistake. Huge. When it ended and I put the phone down, there were tears just streaming down my face.
It feels really strange and silly to mourn…a theme park ride that I’ve never met. I am grateful for people who document things like this (except if you’re vlogging near me in a park I’m gonna be really annoyed) but even though we have so much high quality archival footage of things like this, there’s absolutely no way to capture a feeling. To me, a theme park ride, more often than not, is the sensory experience of being in a movie. And I just want to be in a movie. :)
Going to a theme park again soon. I’ll let you guys know if there are any new tears.
omg felt every part of this soooo much! mary blair deserves respect! i cry on indy/flight of passage/rise of the resistance/soarin (mostly music related!)/main street at the end of the day/most fireworks (when the music is good). i’m so sad every day that LA doesn’t have the ET ride anymore. i went once as a little kid and it’s a faint but precious memory 2 me.
small world number one i knoooowwwww that’s right!!!