You’ve probably heard about a group of people called the “Disney Adults.”  A Disney Adult is a super fan of anything and everything made by the Walt Disney Company, as well as someone who outwardly expresses their fanhood to world.  The reason some people have singled out this group by giving them a label is because a large part of what the Disney Company produces is primarily meant for younger audiences, and a Disney Adult seems to be out of line with the target audience for their products.  To outsiders, seeing this group expressing themselves through their Disney fandom comes across as bizarre behavior, making a lot of them feel like there is something wrong with Disney Adults.  But, being a Disney Adult is not any different than most other fan communities out there.  One of the reasons it seems that Disney Adults are being singled out and in some cases ridiculed is just because of the sheer enormous reach that the Disney Company has on our culture.  In reality, fan culture has reached maximum level within human culture in general, built up over decades of blockbuster entertainment in film, television and music and spread even further throw the internet.  The rise of the Disney Adult community has been a result of this new era of pop culture being brought to the mainstream and having fans brought together through online spaces.  A lot of people who grew up with certain forms of entertainment are more and more likely to retain that fanhood well into their adult years and beyond.  That’s why you see more people these days gleefully showing off their identity as a fan.  But there are many critics who look at this as something insidious, particularly with communities like Disney Adults, who outsiders think are behaving abnormally for someone their age.  Like all fan communities there are good and bad people among the Disney Adults, but the fact that some people find the very idea of there being a community like that at all being a negative is absolutely a very closed minded way at looking at it.

I should stress this from the outset that I myself would probably fall under the Disney Adult category.  Disney Animation was the first thing that I ever latched onto as a kid, and it’s followed me throughout my life all the way into adulthood.  If you have been following this blog over the years, you can tell that it still fills a big part of my life, given my reports from the D23 events in Anaheim and my many editorials, reviews, and Top Ten Lists based around the House of Mouse.  But, as I’ve grown older, I’ve also let in a lot more influences enter my life from all corners of cinema.  My favorite film isn’t even a Disney film anymore, but rather one made by Columbia Pictures; that being Lawrence of Arabia (1962).  But, even as I’ve branched out, Disney still holds a special place for me.  How that translates into me Disney Adult?  Well, my encyclopedic knowledge of the Disney Company’s history is extensive, and I do exceptionally well with Disney based trivia.  I’m also have every Disney and Pixar Animation film in my home video collection; and I’ve repurchased many of those same titles with every format.  I’m also a Disneyland pass-holder and a D23 club member, and I attend many Disney related events in the Los Angeles area, including the already mentioned Expos.  But, where is my bar in Disney fandom.  I’ll confess I do have blind spots when it comes to the company’s history.  I know almost nothing about most of the Disney Channel Original Movie library, nor do I watch any of the programming on that network as well.  I also am not afraid to call Disney out when they do something that I don’t like, such as their heavy reliance on remakes and sequels in recent years to cash in on nostalgia, as well as some of their anti-labor practices, especially towards their theme park employees.  I’m also a fan that doesn’t outwardly show off their fanhood.  I don’t wear mouse ears when I’m in the parks and I only own a couple of T-Shirts with Mickey Mouse on them, which I also hardly ever wear.  I’m subtle with my fandom, but I also don’t look down on those who choose to be more outwardly expressive with their love of Disney.

When I visit Disneyland, I do see the phenomenon of Disney Adults playing out in front of me.  There are a lot of adults who dress head to toe in Disney gear, and many are doing so alongside their children as a fun little thing they bond over, but there are adults without children who do it too.  And these are adults of all age types getting deep into their fanhood.  I’ll see people as young as college age all the way to seniors in their mobile scooters proudly wearing their Mickey Ears and lining up to collect that newly released souvenir popcorn bucket.  I’ll see just as many enthusiastic fans of all ages at club events as well, especially at D23.  And there is variety in the Disney Adult community, with other fandoms now being added to the mix like Star Wars and Marvel.  People of all walks of life: race, gender, sexuality, you name it, Disney Adults is a big tent community.  Are there bad apples in the group?  Of course, just like any other.  I’ve read accounts from former Disney Parks employees that they’ve had some bad encounters from Annual Pass Holders who felt entitled to special treatment and often took their frustrations out on them.  Internally, these bad apple park guests have been dubbed by some parks cast members as “Pass-holes.” Also, there is a part of the fandom that unfairly uses their privilege as a pass-holder or member to horde special event merchandise, making them unavailable to the casual buyers, and some even do this as a means of re-selling those souvenirs on eBay or other online marketplaces.  But these are less fans and more opportunists than anything, often taking advantage of fans who are less privileged than they are.  This also gets into another downside of this fandom, which is that some will become too deeply involved in this kind of fan culture, and it will cause them to spend outside their means, which is where the predatory practices of the re-sellers becomes a major problem.  And this goes to another issue that people can have with Disney, even amongst fans.  Disney, like most other corporations, wants to milk as much money out of their customers as possible, and that’s why they don’t put much effort into the oversight of this re-seller market and in some cases fan the flames of the situation by creating false scarcity.  This isn’t indicative of the fandom as a whole, but it does show that there are indeed some problems that need to be addressed, amongst fans and also with Disney itself.

To outsider observers, being Disney Adults seems to come across as a bit like a cult.  But, this is a very narrow view of what the community is actually like.  The bad apples aside, there is a lot of harmony and fun to be had when interacting with other fans, no matter the age group.  What a lot of people seem to mistake about the Disney Adult community is that they think this is Toxic fandom.  What I observe in circles at Disney events like D23 is the very opposite of toxic.  Everyone is open and welcoming in those spaces, and it’s a place that brings people together regardless of how strongly they feel about any given aspect of the Disney company.  This is honestly what most fan based meet-ups are like, from comic and anime conventions to simple table top game groups at your local comic book and hobby store.  True fandoms want to bring more people into their orbit and you’ll find so many people eager to share their time with outsiders and hopefully find common ground.  When a fandom turns toxic is when they practice gate-keeping.  Beware any fan who tells you that you have to follow certain rigid rules or believe the way they do in order to be considered a true fan.  There are the odd Disney Adult who looks down on others because they don’t have the same fan bone fides as they do.  But this is a very, very tiny minority of the people that I have encountered amongst the Disney Adult community.  Some of the best discussions I’ve had at D23 were when we were all just waiting in line to get in.  I get to share all my thoughts about what I liked and disliked from Disney in the last couple years, and the people I shared that with did the same, and never once do we ever shame each other for thinking differently.  Unfortunately, if you live in an always online world where toxic fandom seems to reign, these kinds of positive conversations never get to be seen, and it leads many so-called “fans” to position themselves as being authority on what constitutes a good and bad fan.  This is where the idea of Disney Adults being a toxic group of cult like man-children has taken fruit, from these online spaces that feed on negativity, and pass judgement from afar without looking at the community from a grounded point of view.

Disney Adults are not the first to face this kind of scrutiny from critics.  Many years prior, another devoted fanbase was also looked at as being abnormal.  They were called Trekkies; a term referring to hardcore fans of the beloved sci-fi franchise Star Trek.  Star Trek was a mainstream hit television series from the 60’s that everyone was familiar with, but over the years it’s fanbase developed into something far more elaborate than what most other pop culture phenomenoms had seen.  Trekkies began to show off their fandom by appearing at fan conventions in costumes based on the show.  People were giving the Vulcan hand gesture to each other, and quoting lines like “Live long and prosper” in their everyday life.  Some even went as far as to learn the entirety of the Klingon language, and could converse with other Trek fans in that language fully if they wanted.  Back when the Trekkie community was beginning to become a larger presence in fan circles, many outsiders found a lot of this extreme fandom a little unsettling, believing that this was cultish behavior.  For a while, Trekkies were looked down upon.  A lot of critics would falsely assert that Trekkies were lonely and friendless, and probably virgins as well.  A famous Saturday Night Live sketch, in which Captain Kirk himself William Shatner appeared, had the actor speak in front of a group of Trekkies, telling them to all “Get a Life.”  This condescending attitude towards Trekkies changed over the years however as not just Star Trek fandom became more mainstream but also fan culture as a whole.  Now, people of all walks of life proudly declare themselves a Trekkie, including even some heads of state.  And fans of all sorts of other popular culture properties likewise freely express their love for the things they are drawn to.  It’s all part of the cultural shift over the last couple decades, where what was considered the lower artforms like comic books, TV shows, and video games are now getting more recognized as high art.  It’s no longer childish to be considered a fan.

But, some will still associate extreme expressions of fanhood with immaturity.  At the moment, the Disney Adult seems to be the type of fan that many people spotlight as the epitome of immaturity.  One complaint that I hear a lot is that many people consider adults without children visiting Disneyland as a sign of creepy behavior.  It follows the misconception that spaces like Disneyland are meant for families with children only.  Disneyland, nor any other theme park for that matter was never meant to be just for kids and their parents only.  Walt Disney himself scoffed at the assertion that his company only made stuff for children.  Walt intended for his movies and his theme parks to be for people of all ages; as he put it, “the young and the young at heart.”  The reason Disneyland exists today was mainly because he wanted to share in the fun with his own children, and not just watch them have all the fun on the rides.  That’s the great allure of all the best things that have come out of the Disney Company; they remain timeless, and you never grow out of it.  But the best thing that has come out of this multi-generational appeal is that the community of Disney Adults has grown out of it.  Just like Trekkies and many other fan communities, Disney Adults have found fun together through their own modes of fanhood.  At Disneyland, there are special fan organized events that have risen up over the years, such as Dapper Days where people dress up in retro, dapper style clothing when they visit the park.  Disney doesn’t put on these events, but they allow them to go on within their parks as long as the fans don’t break any park rules.  One such event, the annual Gay Days where LGBTQ Disney fans gather at the parks, became such a big deal each year that Disney itself embraced it and now they organize their own Pride Event in the park alongside the unofficial Gay Days that fans put on.  Sure, theme parks are a great place for families to vacation and have fun together, but adults who are there by themselves are just as deserving of having fun there too.

For a lot of adult fans of family friendly entertainment, a major reason they are drawn to these things is because of the way that it helps to soothe the soul.  For a lot of adults, these types of fandoms are an escape; a way of holding onto something they cherish at a time when life can be hard.  We work long hours and have to deal with the hardships of growing old and seeing a lot of the things that we took for granted suddenly turn into a problem.  When things like that happen, it becomes therapeutic to cuddle with a stuffed animal that you kept since childhood, or re-watch that cartoon you liked from years back that brings back warm memories.  It’s more than just finding comfort in nostalgia; it’s keeping a part of you grounded in the things that make you happy.  Sure, people can sometimes take nostalgia too far and become obsessive with it.  But for the most part, being a dedicated fan of something that was special to you in childhood is not a signifier of immaturity.  A person is not regressing into a childlike state just because they still like things from their childhood.  If anything, fandoms are showing a remarkable amount of complex ingenuity in how they go about showing  their fandom, particularly in lengths they go in contributing to the economy.  There are adults out there that are perfectly willing to spend lots of money shopping for toys on eBay that they remember having when they were young.  Also, a lot of toy companies cater just as much to adults as they do with children.  LEGO produces special lines of model sets just for the adult crowd alongside their ages 3 and up toy sets.  Also, the Funko company sees the majority of their sales coming from adult collectors for their vinyl figure dolls.  It’s a positive sign that the culture no longer looks down on fan communities but instead is actually finding ways to cater to them.  You will still see the occasional YouTube channel try to shame one fan base over the other as a means of stirring controversy as clickbait.  But, in general, adult fans of cartoons and the like are just as mature as any other group.  From CEOs who have action figures displayed in their office to a construction worker who spends their break time playing Pokemon, every adult has that little piece of their childhood they hold onto for comfort in their personal spaces.

So, while Disney Adults are currently finding themselves ridiculed by corners of the internet, they should not be discouraged from continuing to love the things they love.  If anything, they have been unfairly maligned for the perceived sins of the Disney Company itself.  Sure, Disney has it’s fair share of things to be scrutinized and condemned for in it’s history, but none of that should reflect back on the people who still consider themselves devoted fans.  A lot of these Disney Adults are aware of the bad things that happen in the orbit of the Disney Company, and you will find that a good many of them will be among the first to express their displeasure at what Disney has done.  It doesn’t make them any more or less a fan as a result.  Disney Adults are not naïve people, nor are any other fan communities like the Trekkies or several others.  I’ve seen it myself as a Disney Adult, with Parks fans in particular always being suspicious whenever a ride gets replaced at Disneyland or any of the other theme parks.  What I don’t see in the Disney Adult fan base is immaturity.  If anything, there is actually a greater showing of sophistication coming out of the Disney Adult community than I have seen with most other fandoms.  Disney Adults are well informed and active, often showcasing a wealth of knowledge about the entertainment industry as a whole, framed through the lens of Disney.  With my own positive experience within this fan community, it has allowed me to avoid judging other fandoms that I am not a part of harshly.  I am far from being a devoted fan of the Star Trek franchise and will probably never become a Trekkie myself, but I would never begrudge anyone who was one themselves.  In fact, I actually do admire the Trekkie community itself, even as I don’t understand it.  And that’s what fan culture as a whole should be; free of tribalism.  Even when we don’t belong to a certain fan community we should never look down and shame anybody who does belong.  There are so many worthwhile fandoms to be a part of, and in many cases you might find a community that actually helps to make your life better as a whole.  I’ve been a fan of Disney since childhood, and it’s given me a great many memories to cherish, like my first visit to the Disney Studio Lot in Burbank when I was 12, or the many times I’ve gone to the D23 Expo and met other fans just like me.  The best part of fan communities is finding that you are not alone and that there are many people out there who will share that enthusiasm with you.  So, this Disney Adult hopes to convince many of you out there reading this that you should be proud of the things you love, even the stuff that makes you come off as a little childish.