Ask Miles Davis. Ask Louis Armstrong, Dave Brubeck or, well, anyone really. Nothing plucks at the heartstrings like the songs of Disney. Whether they are the soundtrack of film or family, a smile and a song let you whistle while you work, making Disney music an integral part of your world, and everybody knows it.
Ask millions of people, two mice and me. Disney lands are more than you think. There is magic in the air, this is true. There is childlike wonder and troubles forgotten. There are melancholy sighs and moments of pure joy. But deeper still, there is love, from the corny to the romantic and the layers found between. And always, the songs that they are playing.
Surely, Walt Disney must have known what he created. He must have strolled those streets and understood what he had done. Walking the lands of Disney, lit by stars and lanterns and backed with an endless soundtrack of memories and promise, is a box step of pure romance, slowed only by our respective pace against the sights that we are seeing and a constant want for churros.
You get lost there, and you find yourself where you least expect it. Perhaps your mind wanders to the girl on your arm, and suddenly you are bent on one knee, sweating in a Foo Fighters t-shirt, flanked by a castle, surrounded by streams and bound with beds of roses. It happens.
It is a place of magic and fairy tales that engulf you with every breath. For a brief time the lines between your life and your dreams blur and become one. You are drunk without drink, although you may have had a few, and it spreads, this pureness of a moment, with rapid race and loose abandon.
It is as if you have been picked from the grind of daily routine and placed within your favorite movie, alongside the dreamers, the stars and the occasional sports winner. It feels right. It sounds like you mean it. And it smells terrific. You belong. Everything you did before your arrival was but a stepping stone to get you there, the meaningless gains meaning in the making of your moment. You are reminded of plans you once had and who you thought you would be. For the first time in forever, you feel pretty good about everything.
There is romance there, a souvenir for the soul, and like all things worth begetting, love is love is love is love, and then the smaller hands that you’ll be holding—your montage in a sentence.
And through it all the singers keep singing, softening the sounds of family and firework, like Walt had intended, and still the wishes in the air are the thing that you are breathing. If you can consider such a moment as romantic, and I like to think that you can, then follow the happiness, one step at a time, to the place where Disney takes you.
Be sure to leave your footprints everywhere.
