A year ago I could not have predicted that, in the span of 2021, I would have visited every Disney theme park in the western hemisphere. …

The Disney Renaissance, according to most, ended after the release of Tarzan in 1999. The following 22 years have been a strange era in Disney animation, with the sad death of hand-drawn cartoons and the rocky entry into 3D animated films, along with the transition from the Eisner/Katzenberg/Roy E. Disney…

I don’t remember when I learned what it was, just the question. “Is it Red Shirt Day when you’re going?” I was a junior in high school in Florida, stumbling out of the closet. I’d been lucky to find myself in a group of friends that mostly — if not…

Note: this was written very quickly, and therefore doesn’t have as many links or pictures in it as usual. Usually I have a few days to write something and can get all that together, but today… well, today was special. I wasn’t planning on writing this yet, I really wasn’t…

In the late part of 2020, I decided to rebrand my already-rebranded Substack blog to be Parks and Contradiction, where I could write my thoughts about the history and design of theme parks, places I spent most of my childhood going to and most of my adulthood obsessing over. …

Let’s talk about the balloon guy. You know: that balloon guy from Instagram. His stuff gets shared a lot, here’s an example: Yeah, that guy! …

Or: what I do to justify my Disney+ subscription — Note: I will be updating this ranking with each new Pixar movie that comes out. As of this issue, I’ve just seen Luca, in June 2021. Around this time last year, as I was getting settled into perpetual lockdown, I decided to fire up Disney+ and rewatch all the films…