At 25, I know all the things that an average 25-yearold
should know and I even know things that I technically
don’t really need to know. As in, some tidbits of
knowledge I have are needed to survive in this world
and others aren’t important for day to day life. But
knowledge itself, in my opinion, can be categorized
into three categories. There’s the obvious categories
of things you know and things you don’t know,
but there’s also the category of ‘things you know but
struggle to explain.’ And it is under this category that
I place my relationship with the concept of nostalgia.
So, I do understand the concept of nostalgia. But I
wouldn’t be able to verbalize/explain it to you without
looking up a dictionary definition first. And, according
to Merriam-Webster, nostalgia is “a wistful or excessively
sentimental yearning for return to or of some
past period or irrecoverable condition.” And now that
I know what nostalgia is, I am going to tell you about
a nostalgic experience I had last week.
The idea to make a tidbits centered around nostalgia
came to me when I was at Costco. I was waiting in
line at membership services to ask them about their
healthcare—adult life—when I noticed a giant Disney
World poster. The poster had the iconic Cinderella
Castle with four of the well-known Disney characters
standing in front of it. And I got to tell you, that did
something to me y’all. Like I got emotional. Just by
standing in a grocery store and waiting in line, all I
did was see that picture and I was instantaneously
transported back. Back to when I was a child and
even an adolescent and would take trips to Disney
World with my family. And it was then, that nostalgia
hit. 99 percent sure that it was this wave of nostalgia
that caused those emotional feelings to well up in me.
Because I LOVE going to Disney World. I mean
I’m sure I would find it great fun going alone, but I
would never want to. I enjoy going with my family way
too much. When I was a child we used to drive the
12 hours to our destination—and would do so while
singing songs, eating snacks and freaking out with
excitement every time we got closer to Lake Buena
Vista (where the park is located) and saw the Disney
related billboards and recognizable monuments. We
also had a tradition of always stopping at this Disney
store approximately two to three hours away from
the actual park location. This store had all the Disney
goodies to make your heart sing and had two
giant statues of Mickey and Minnie at the front of the
building. We would always stop there, take pictures,
look around the shop and then continue on the road.
This was the first piece of Disney World we would
come across on our 12 hour drive and, believe me,
that awoke our excitement like nothing else.
We always spent at least a week at Disney World
(WDW), sometimes up to two weeks, so we could
spend an entire day at each park. Our favorite park to
go to was Magic Kingdom because it had the most to
do. As a young child, I loved meeting all the characters.
I can still remember my first trip at age two. I met
up with so many of the characters and princesses,
and then—since there was no one in the vicinity—I
got to spend a good 30 minutes with Mickey and Minnie.
And, at age two, they were my FAVORITES and
that time I got with them was a two-year-old Trishna’s
dream come true.
The older I got, the less interested I became in
meeting the characters and more interested I was
in going on the rides. My interest in the rides itself
came at a natural progression based on my age. The
younger I was, the more tame rides I enjoyed. My
first favorite ride at Magic Kingdom was It’s A Small
World and I soon progressed to liking rides like Big
Thunder Mountain Railroad, Splash Mountain and so
many more.
Of course, that’s only for Magic Kingdom. And there
are three other parks in Disney—not includ ing
the waterparks. My second favorite park
is EPCOT, because I love the Test Track ride
and I love visiting the different “countries”
situated around the park. Following EPCOT
is Animal Kingdom; with Expedition Everest
and the Lion King show taking the cake
as my most favorite parts of that park, and
coming up at the end is MGM. It’s not that
I don’t like MGM—because I do, don’t get
me wrong—it’s just that there isn’t much to
do, apart from shows. There are rides, but I
don’t like rides that go upside down or are
too fast, so there are very few rides I can go
to at that park.
Along with the theme parks, we would
often visit the waterparks. Blizzard Beach
was our favorite, but we also enjoyed going
to Typhoon Lagoon. Considering that
we spent many days at WDW, we would split up our
visits to the parks over several days and break up
these trips by going to the waterparks in between.
Since the majority of trips took place in the summer,
except for our most recent trip in 2012 which we took
in December, those days in the waterpark were very
welcomed. Oh, and if you were wondering, we did not
go to the waterparks in December. I think they were
closed, anyways.
And last, but not least, was Downtown Disney.
There are no rides at Downtown Disney, but the magic
of WDW is still there. At Downtown Disney there is
a GIANT Disney store called World Of Disney. Like
imagine any Disney store you have seen and then
double the size. Got that image in your head? That
isn’t even big enough. In fact, World Of Disney is so
big, that my words won’t even do it justice. I’ll put in a
picture for you to see it size. And the products! OMG
the products! From toys to books to stationery to candy
to anything you want, you can find it there. It’s just
wall to wall, top to bottom, filled with Disney stuff. I
bought my very first diary from that store. It was an
Eeyore one. I still have it and love to go look at it from
time to time and see the type of stuff I wrote as an
eight-year-old.
So that’s it for this week Thanks for reading and I’ll
see you all next week!
Photo Credits: Quotemaster.org, & Wikipedia
