Sally: former Disney-Mom, expert trip-planner

I'm posting this today on the eve of my departure to Florida. June 11th–July 1st I'll be in Orlando, FL, living with two Furry friends—Robin and Mallory—while I spend as much time at Disney World as I can. I'll be making photos and conducting  research, looking at Disney World as a mirror/contrast to Furry culture. I'm excited to use my patreon as a place to blog and share my thoughts along the way. I'll be away from my computer this whole time, so I won't be able to share much finalized/edited photo work, but expect lots of writing, sketches and behind-the-scenes content.

Pictured here is my friend, Sally, who has been a kind of base-control assistant in planning this Disney project. She has also been a generous and thoughtful interview subject. She has told me a lot about her own experience falling into (and out of) Disney World fandom, and has offered her strategic expertise to aid my efforts to plan my Disney with maximum efficiency.

We met through a mutual friend over drinks near the start of the new year. While hanging out, I mentioned that I had just submitted my Disney project grant proposal to my university. This led Sally to tell me about her "Disney Phase" that came out of her (self-labeled) mid-life crisis. She told me about falling in with the (seemingly Mean-Girls-esque) Disney "Marathon Moms"—women who convinced their husbands to pay for trips to Disney World, on account of the Disney World Marathons that they were training for (and definitely not because they wanted to get away from home and go drink at the resort bars in lala land). She told me she felt restless after retiring from her job as a librarian to become a stay-at-home mom for her two kids. She told me she dyed her hair blue during this phase too.

After I found I was awarded with the grant, we planned a visit over coffee to talk more about her story, and more about how to win at Disney vacations. We met up at a very pinterest-able brunch spot in near downtown Albuquerque. When Sally generously offered to pay for my meal, she flashed me her credit card, sparkly lime green with an image of tinker bell on the front. 

Over brunch, Sally told me more about what she liked about Disney World. She told me she liked Disney, but she wasn't really obsessed with any one story or character. What she really liked was the park, and even more specifically, planning the trips to the park. For Sally, Disney World is a chaotic space that one could easily get lost in. She is up front about her anxieties around big crowds and public spaces. But underneath the chaos of Disney World is a system; one that can be understood, planned around, and game-ified. What Sally enjoyed was researching the traffic flow of the park, figuring out how to beat it, building a plan that cut through the seeming chaos. 

Over subsequent visits we looked together at Sally's previous trip itineraries, and also at the websites she used to make her plans. One website, which Sally has offered me the login to use in my trip, allowed you to look at all the parks on any day of the year, to see what the predicted crowd size would be at each park. Once you selected a park, you could form a list of attractions you want to attend, input the window of time for your visit, rate your walking speed (1 to 5), do you have fast passes? do you prefer less waiting in line? Or less zigzagging around the park? and other factors. Upon entering all the information, the site would then spit back the most objectively efficient park route, utilizing buckets of data points about ride-popularity, wait-times and general crowd habits. 

I'm not sure how much I'll be able to build a tight schedule for each day I spend in the park, but I am fascinated by the possibility of turning a day at Disney into a SWAT-level-of-planning fun mission. Sally has offered her services as a call-on strategist for my trip, I am sure there will be a moment where I'm lost in the overstimulation of the park and a Sally call might be what saves me.

There is definitely more to share about Sally's history with the park, and why she left her hobby behind. But, I think this post is running way longer than I expected! I'm looking forward to sharing more stories, my own and from the folks I meet for the project, throughout my time in Florida. Stay tuned here for those posts.

Thanks Patrons!

-TB