Disneyland: The Horror

I was born in Phoenix, Arizona, and remained there until my parents divorced in 1977. This made Disneyland (or Bisneyland, as I called it then), a favorite vacation, because we could drive there. It was like a family-friendly Las Vegas.

I think it was on such vacations that I first became terrified of sports team mascots and costumes in which the wearer’s eyes are concealed from view. If eyes are the window to the soul, the person inside the creepy costume might have a really putrid one and I would have no idea. This has always been bothersome.

My parents tell me that when the Disneyland characters would come up and try to hug me, I would run screaming, red ringlets bobbing behind me, cold sweat of fear beading my tiny brow. I did not want those freaky creatures touching me. Animals were not supposed to look like that and I knew it. They were unnatural. Creepy.

(I would later add ventriloquist dummies to my list of horrible things to avoid, after my cousin Amy told me that hers would sometimes talk to her at night from within the closet. And clowns because, well, look at them. Sheesh. Who decided clowns were a good idea?)

I have an early, mildly traumatic memory associated with the mouse-shaped helium-filled balloons from Disneyland as well, because I brought one home from our vacation there, and my Aunt Carolyn popped it. She was jokingly chasing me around the house, threatening to pop my floating rodent with a lit cigarette and whoops! It really happened.

(Yes, chasing a little girl with a lit cigarette. Ah, the seventies. Nowadays you’re a monster if you smoke within twenty feet of a child, but back then we kids were trapped in seatbelt-less cars with chain smokers faster than you can say “emphysema.”)

To get me to stop crying, she promised me she’d get me another Mickey Mouse balloon. Every time she came over to our house from that point on, I asked her about it. “Have you gone to Bisneyland to get me a new balloon yet?”

She never got me a new balloon. I never trusted her again. She was in it with the monsters in the mascot costumes, as far as I was concerned.

As I got older, I realized I still had this fear of people hidden in costumes. It was completely irrational and pointless, but aren’t most fears, really?

I remember in college, going to a grocery store with a friend. As we crossed the parking lot, I stopped dead in my tracks when I spotted a Kool-Aid Man hovering around the entrance. Big, round pitcher, eerie smile painted on, not a real eyeball in sight. There could be anyone or anything inside there, man.

He was greeting people, but might as well have been eating people, for the way it made me feel. I suddenly realized that my heart was pounding and I was sweating, adrenaline pumping, poised for fight or flight.

I was shocked to find that this childhood fear I giggled about was still very real. The funny Disneyland anecdotes my parents would tell about their non-trusting little girl versus the big cartoon characters were more than stories. I was now a grown woman having a ridiculous reaction to some person trying to make a dollar in a humiliating way. Logically I knew this, but emotionally, I believed that huge pitcher with legs was full of the cherry red blood of children.

I could not go into the store that day.

My friend thought I was being ridiculous. I did too. Didn’t change a thing.

Later, when confronted with a giant sandwich outside of a sub shop, I would be unable to get out of my car and enter the restaurant. There was no coupon in the world worth having to touch the hand of the Sandwich of Death.

A boyfriend aware of this phobia, upon spotting someone in a mascot costume standing roadside to promote a business, liked to cross traffic lanes to try to get my passenger side as close to the creature as possible. Screaming ensued; windows were rolled up; sometimes I’d have to duck down as far as the seatbelt would let me and cover my head. This was highly entertaining for one of us.

I’ve been thinking about this lately because I now have a child of my own. My son will be four this winter, and we have been invited to stay with California friends next summer, which would make a trip to Disneyland inevitable.

I am wondering how my son will react. But mostly, I am wondering how hard it will be to hide my own fear from him.

So far I have hidden my fear of the dentist from him by making his father take him. Not a very impressive display of parenting on my part, but my son loves the dentist.

I also recently managed to hide my “nervous flyer” feelings from him so well that I actually convinced myself to stop being afraid, mid-flight to Phoenix. While the metal tube in which we were encased was racing through the clouds, I tried to make my son see it as miraculous, rather than scary, and ended up believing it. My son even told me he wants to be a pilot when he grows up, the first declaration of the sort to come out of his mouth.

I’m hoping that a trip to Disneyland will have the same effect. I’ll be so busy trying to make it a positive experience for my child that I will face my fears and get over my illogical phobia of costume-clad creatures once and for all.

Or I will flip out and finally attack one of them.

Either way, it will make a good story, right?

It’s sniffing your delicious head, little boy. Run!