The Magic Kingdom awaits home-school weary moms and dads

By Ed Goldman

For 12 months-and-change, they home-schooled their kids while trying to home-work (their jobs). Then, moments after their kids returned to brick-and-mortar classes, the schoolyear ended and they were right back home again. And bored, of course. (Baby boys born as a result of sheltering in place should be named Ennui. Spoken aloud, it sounds a bit like the French Henri—pronounced onREE. But the parents will always know better.)

Anyway, it shouldn’t surprise us that the recent reopening of Disneyland was a mixed blessing. While it meant mobile moms and dads would get to change the scenery for a few days, they also recognized they were likely to be re-cooped up with their offspring—in a car or on a plane, train or bus; in a hotel room or RV camp; and, upon reaching their destination, on nausea-inducing, spinning-teacup rides.

I was at Disneyland the second or third week it was open in 1955. My family flew to California from New York for a vacation, both to visit my dad’s family and to do some reconnaissance on what it might be like to move there three years later. That’s when my dad would retire, at age 42, after 20 years as a firefighter. Apparently, they liked what they saw—though it would end up taking my mom years to adjust to living in a place where you drove two blocks to do your shopping. In the East Bronx, where we lived, we walked everywhere.

The hats were huge because Fess Parker wore one when he played Davey Crockett on a three-part episode of Walt Disney’s Sunday evening TV show, also called “Disneyland,” on ABC. (Not long thereafter, Disney took the show to NBC and rechristened it “Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color.” And not long after that, Parker wore the exact same outfit to play Daniel Boone in a long-running, non-Disney series of the same name. For more of my fascinating history of television in the 1950s and ‘60s, pour me a third martini. After the fourth one I can still do “Ya Got Trouble” from “The Music Man.”)

She was so excited, in fact, that when we entered the parking lot, she bubbled over with joy just looking at the aisle markers, all of which featured a big drawing of a Disney character. “I love Disneyland!” she announced. And in that moment, my wife and I realized if we turned around and went back home, without any of us setting foot in the actual park— and without our forking over a great deal of money—Jessica would still feel she’d had an amazing experience.