What Kind of Day Has It Been

I grew up in a small Western New York town called North Tonawanda. I lived there until I graduated high school in 2002, and I distinctly remember that — somewhere around my teenage years — the county in which North Tonawanda was located placed signage at the county line to greet visitors and natives alike. The signs, despite the county being small, looked more formal than homemade, and I remember distinctly what it said. “Niagara County. We’ve Been Expecting You.”

What I remember most is finding this sign intensely disturbing. I presumed that it was meant to promote something akin to being a Good Neighbor, to being inviting instead of foreboding. But the font style, the fact that “We’ve Been Expecting You” was placed in a smaller size below the county name, and just that phrase by itself made it all feel like something out of the Twilight Zone.

Which brings us to this video.

Now, to be fair, this video is a minute-long ad that didn’t quite set social media on fire today for its “Welcome Home” theming. But it strikes the exact same tone: well-intentioned as all get-out, and also incredibly, incredibly disturbing.

It’s easy to mock Disney for reopening the Walt Disney World Resort to anyone brave enough to visit right now. It’s easy to mock Cast Members for acting excited to go back to work. It’s easy to mock the theme-park vloggers who visit the parks on opening day (including those who end up leaving early because the crowds were ill-advised about how to social distance outside the Magic Kingdom).

And listen, I get it. I get why people on social media are mocking these folks. It’s not that these are incorrect targets, as much as they’re not the biggest target.

Let’s hit the pause button. So the Magic Kingdom is open for business. Why is it open for business? It’s because Disney, being a business first, needs to make money and the theme parks are a huge part of their revenue. Why, in the middle of a pandemic, is Disney laser-focused on making money this way? Because that’s the only way they’re going to make money. Disney is a shark. Disney needs to keep moving, or it will die, because — and here’s the key — no one is coming to help them or its Cast Members.

I’m sure many Cast Members are glad to be back in Adventureland, overseeing the animals at Animal Kingdom, and so on. I’m equally sure they’re very glad to have a steady paycheck again. One of the various economic stories during the pandemic has been the grim reality that some people are getting more money on unemployment than they get at their actual jobs. In Florida, the story is grimmer: people applied for unemployment and didn’t get anything. Why? Because the governor of Florida is — from all accounts — just the absolute worst.

It’s easy to blame Disney, but in this specific situation, they’re just as trapped by the whims of the state and national government as so many of us are. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has seemed especially callous in his public responses, let alone the sight of low-wage workers struggling to get by when the state’s unemployment system seems designed to not work.

Cast Members may or may not be excited to work again. But I’m sure they’re happy to get paid again, because life in America is so cruelly designed to make it impossible to survive without a weekly paycheck that barely covers your costs.

It’s easy to mock the people at Walt Disney World this week. (And listen: I sure as hell wouldn’t be visiting right now. But that’s me.) Not that Disney isn’t a monolithic corporation that makes mistakes a lot. They do, and they are. And despite the one tweet this week telling me to lay off Christopher Nolan for wanting to have Tenet arrive in theaters this summer, damn the consequences, and attack Disney instead, I’m willing to criticize them. When they deserve it. At this specific moment, my ire’s directed elsewhere.