In an earlier post, I wrote about how the effort to ‘keep up with the Joneses’ had resulted in many young people nowadays going into debt in order to try and match and even exceed the lifestyles that they saw their peers boasting about in social media. It appears that people are also willing to go into deep debt to satisfy their desire to repeatedly visit Disney theme parks which are very expensive, even though they are not children nor have children. Amelia Tait writes about these people who have acquired the label of ‘Disney adults’.
So-called Disney adults have become a subject of online fascination, with many people now questioning how much it costs to be one.
…In June of 2024, the loan-comparison website LendingTree surveyed more than two thousand Americans and found that almost a quarter of Disney visitors had gone into debt for a trip. According to the survey, Gen Z-ers like Ashley were the most likely to take on Disney debt, which corresponds with a boom in young adults visiting the parks—either by themselves, or with friends their age—despite Disney World being a place stereotypically catering to families. Still, a high percentage of Disney debtors are parents: among the seventy-seven per cent of survey respondents who said that their children had visited a Disney park, forty-five per cent reported going into debt for a trip, with parents of young children owing an average of almost two thousand dollars. Anecdotally, the figures shared in forums and on social media can climb much higher; one couple told a YouTuber last year, for instance, that they’d taken out a roughly seventy-thousand-dollar loan partly for Disneyland trips.
…AJ Wolfe, the author of “Disney Adults: Exploring (and Falling in Love with) a Magical Subculture,” argues that Disney debt is distinct: for some of the most loyal parkgoers, there’s an addictive, almost competitive aspect to it. This is partly because of merchandise collecting—“There are people who just need that souvenir, the next item in their collection of bags or ears,” she said—in addition to status-seeking in the Disney community. She believes that there is a “hierarchy” of both collectors and visitors, so that people feel compelled to return to the parks to impress others and earn their “elder” status. “I compare it a lot to church,” she said.
…In recent years, the cost of a Disney vacation has risen sharply: a single-park Disney World day ticket surpassed two hundred dollars for the first time, in 2025, and in 2021 Disney began charging for previously free amenities such as airport shuttles and skip-the-line ride passes.
…For the most devoted fans, Disney has engineered an ecosystem of financial entanglement that goes far deeper than park tickets or merchandise, which keeps the magic—and the debt—perpetually compounding.
…Perhaps unsurprisingly, many adults who have accumulated Disney debt seem to be chasing a feeling from their childhoods. Davidson said that visiting the parks takes her back to a time when she had fewer worries: “It’s the nostalgic feeling of what brought you joy when you were little and you didn’t have the stressors of adult life,” she said. (Never mind that Disney debt ends up adding to those stressors.)
The article describes a 39-year old woman who has already visited Disney World more than a hundred times.
I recall as a child in London being taken by my parents to Battersea Park and riding the roller coaster known as the Big Dipper. As parents, we took our children to amusement parks in Ohio such as Cedar Point and Sea World. But those were all local, one-day trips, not that expensive. Also they were just one-offs. Our children did not express a burning desire to return nor did they express a desire to visit Disneyland or Disney World so we never did. I do not recall there being great peer pressure from their school friends to do so. Then just last month my daughter and son-in-law took my grandchildren to Disneyland. I did not join them because I hate crowds and waiting in long lines but they seemed to have had a very good time.
Amusement parks can be fun. I can see why people, with or without children, visit them. Some of the adults who go enjoy the thrill of rides that makes them plunge from great heights or swirl them around violently, and the parks keep adding new rides to draw them back in. But many of the Disney adults described in the article are going over and over because being there somehow gives them a sense of security and well-being. It makes one wonder what is lacking in the regular lives that it is in this highly artificial world that they feel ‘at home’.
What is particularly disturbing is when it becomes a form of addiction that results in people going into deep debt to repeatedly satisfy that need or, worse, to compete with their peers. It may not lead to financial problems as dire as those associated with the recent rise in gambling addiction but it can still be serious.
I just read somewhere that it’s cheaper to fly to Japan and go to their Disneyland than it is to visit Orlando.
I grew up watching the Donald Duck/ Chip and Dale cartoons (Mickey was not my favorite) and later TailSpin/DuckTales/Rescue Rangers. Donald Duck was superseded by Uncle Scrooge (Thanks, Don Rosa). So I was probably more enthusiastic than my children -- But there is an almost complete absence of these characters now so i was disappointed My children preferred Universal over Disney anyway.
i went to an amusement park for my bday last year, went on some rides with and without my nieces for the first time in ages. not even disney but more than i’d prefer to pay; my brother paid for it. still, cool to get endangered for entertainment instead of everyday traffic.
I once went to Disneyland Paris decades ago. The long queues/waiting times reduced the fun considerably.
My grandparents took me to Disneyland when I was around eight years old. I remember being far more fascinated by the aerodynamics of the giant metal machine that took us there than anything on the ground in California.
I find it an odd kind of addiction. More common things to which people become addicted cause a physical change that gives a dopamine rush, or even, with gambling, the thrill of possibly getting a pay-off apparently gives the rush.
I’ve never head of peple becoming addicted to a sense of security and well-being. Are there any other things that give people that sense, to which people have become addicted? I don’t see why, if people want those sensations, Disneyland would be unique in satisfying them.
And, I find Disneyworld an odd way to get that much of a boost in security and well-being. Is it nostalgic enjoyment of the joys of childhood? Because, most people do that, but they have other ways to do it.
But anyway, acquiring the deep debt is a problem, as Mano says.
Does this “addiction” exist anywhere outside of the US of A?
Do not underestimate the fear in daily urban living, nor the strength of the release when you trust your immediate environment to be safe.
Now that Disney has pretty much abandoned the idea of making their own movies and TV shows, and instead just scour the planet for whatever IP they think they can acquire, slash costs on, and then shove down the throats of humanity, I don’t think I would enjoy Disneyland anymore.
I do like the Walt Disney Family museum in The Presidio in San Francisco which is not owned by Disney Corp. Walt was an S.O.B. and a racist and a misogynist, but he knew how to tell a story and he always tried to put storytelling ahead of profits.
I used to live in Orange, CA, not far from Disneyland. The company I was working for paid to re-locate me and my family from Chicago. I arrived a couple of months before my family and lived in a short-term apartment complex in Anaheim a few blocks from Disneyland. The street life in front of my residence was quite hinky, with sex workers and drug dealers in plentiful supply. Perhaps by now this street has changed.
Anyway, every night Disneyland had a fireworks display that I got to watch from my apartment building’s parking lot. That was fun.
But as for Disneyland (I called it Disneyline) itself, I am with Mano. Crowds, long lines to go on a ride -- not my thing.