By Jamie Stapleton
A year ago, I made a slightly judgy comment about Disney adults at a holiday dinner. I don’t remember the words, but I remember the vibe. Polite chuckles. Mild superiority. The quiet satisfaction of believing I had taste. The moment meant nothing. Until it didn’t.
The truth is, I never disliked Disney. I always liked it. I just believed there were cooler places to vacation. Disney lived in a separate category. Fun, but not aspirational. Not the kind of trip you led with if you wanted to sound interesting. Last year, we were deep in our cultured era. Europe. Wine. Conversations with a family traveling Switzerland for a month with their kids. They radiated that effortless nomadic confidence that makes you briefly reconsider your life choices.
Disney wasn’t beneath us. It just felt like its lack of exoticness didn't justify its cost.
Then January arrived, and we had to decide whether we were actually doing this Disney World trip we’d talked about for years or letting it fade into “someday.” I booked a call with a Disney travel advisor, mostly out of curiosity. I was direct.
“We love travel. I love planning travel. Disney is expensive. Convince me,” I said.
I told her we didn’t want to spend thousands of dollars just to be waiting in long lines the whole trip. If we were doing Disney, it needed to be strategic. Efficient. Worth it. She explained how, for a fee, she builds touring plans, manages reservations, and turns a Disney trip into a well-run operation. I was convinced. I needed to make this magic happen for my kids. We booked the Polynesian early—it’s one of the original Walt Disney World hotels—and we felt very decisive. At the time, I didn’t realize that was the first step down a much deeper rabbit hole.
In February, I blew out my knee playing basketball with my daughter. One surgery turned into two. Weeks stuck in bed. Too much time. Too little momentum. I worked through recovery, but I was restless. I’m a joy seeker by nature. I need something to build. Something that feels productive and fun, and Disney planning became that thing. I fell hard. Strategy videos. Queue optimization. Touring logic. Dining reservation warfare. The Disney planning ecosystem is vast, detailed and unapologetically intense.
I was a cat falling into a well of catnip. I love an efficiently planned anything, but there was more to it than that. Around the same time, I had started pulling back from constant news consumption. I was tired of carrying the weight of things I couldn’t fix. Disney was joyful. Disney was something I could do and control. Then one afternoon, I watched a video of Happily Ever After, the popular fireworks show at the Magic Kingdom. Just a video. On my phone. And I teared up. That was the moment I thought, “Huh, that’s new.”
We took the trip. It was a trip of a lifetime. My kids loved it. The whole family loved it. Expertly planned, amazing memories. At various moments during the trip, my daughter gave me a look that said, “This feels slightly out of character for you.”
My husband now, lovingly, refers to me as a Disney adult. What surprised me wasn’t that I fell hard into Disney. It was that I stopped needing to justify it. I had let go of an unnecessary filter. I had ranked Disney lower in a hierarchy of what counted as interesting travel, and once I dropped that, the experience opened up.
Disney adults aren’t hurting anyone. They aren’t unserious. They aren’t avoiding reality. They’re choosing joy in a world that rarely offers it freely. I’m not declaring this some grand healing experience. I’m still figuring it out. But something softened when I stopped needing my interests to prove something.
The final irony is that this journey nudged me toward becoming a travel advisor. It clarified the kind of trips I want to help people plan: thoughtful, well-designed, joyful on purpose. I still love Europe. I still love discovering places that feel tucked away and interesting. I just stopped pretending that liking Disney somehow cancels that out.
So did I become a Disney adult? Probably. And I'm embracing it and not shying away from it.
Jamie, what a delightful story! I love how direct you were with the Disney coordinator and how magical the event was for you and the family. Yes, even as we grow older, many of us are still kids at heart!