Hong Kong Disneyland and the art of childish things

Hong Kong

At the turn of the 20^th Century it became fashionable to treat children different from adults. This started a trend towards the commercial celebration of events and culminated in the year 2008 to a complete and utter celebration of our sweet littilies every moment. And why do we do it? We do it to nurture the child inside ourselves, this is why we take them to theme parks, feed them shitty fast food by the gallon, all they can eat; and buy buy buy, consuming all the way down that pathway called love!

Today we took the children to Disneyland, the great denizen of all things plastic, tacky and ‘magical’. I don’t know if Hong Kong is an especially different Disney experience from the others dotted about the world, but I couldn’t help but notice the child to adult ratios, which were tipped heavily in favor of Chinese late adolescents and adult couples lavishly nurturing their childhood selves.

Disney has tapped a goldmine in Hong Kong, so close to China; the glamour, animatronics, evening parade and Pyrotechnics are awesome and shockingly tear-jerking emotional; as only Disney can be. In fact because of a friend of mine who can be a terribly lame script-writer I have coined the phrase (that’s what I’m claiming, try and stop me) ‘that is SO Disney’, whenever his dialogue becomes sappy; and sappy it was. I found my self shedding a tear when Iggy got up and joined in the dance routine with a Chinese Troy Bolton, lead actor in High School the Musical 1, 2 and 3 (Goddess help us all). Then the children ooohhhed and aaaahhheeed the fireworks display and Halloween parade, yes we were there to celebrate Halloween. More about that later…

Quinn turned to Hamish and I, and said ‘this is the best birthday present ever’ and I must say that Disney gave me a towering parenting moment in the giving and consuming stakes. I had always hoped to more than that as a parent but this gushing pleasure and delight is what I secretly wanted from them, Hamish and I both hoped for that.

But what happens now? How do we up the anti so to speak? It seemed a great idea to use the opportunity of my conference in Europe to take the children on a learning experience around the world, but now I fear it has helped to elevate their feelings of boredom and disinterest in every day life. So many children living their lives through interactive computer games, intensely stimulating television and every bleeping, blinking, ringing singing kind of toy; children can play with each other for hours on their DS and not say a word to each other. So now we head home, amused, satiated for travel, exhausted, closer than ever and keen to wear different clothes than we have worn every day for two months. One of Iggy’s favorite things to do while we have been away is to play with Zac via Skype, he is dying for a real connection to his world, I hope the love he shares with his family and friends will overcome his feeling of boredom with the mundane reality of just living.