The
religious pilgrimage, whether a medieval hike to a site of a miracle,
service in the Crusades, or a required journey to Mecca, is a
life-changing, transformative experience. The trouble and expense of
such a journey makes it a once-in-a-lifetime experience for many. Does
this sound a bit familiar? People say that every family should take
their kids to Walt Disney World in Orlando at least once, even if you
must save for years to do it. Scholarly studies have been done in 1980
and again in 1989 about how WDW resembles medieval pilgrimage sites,
whether that was planned or not.
Pilgrims to Disney
World do not have to spend months trekking to Orlando, but the approach
to Disney sets the park apart from the space of normal life. To reach
the Magic Kingdom requires a journey of many stages. Travelers must pass
through private land, on highways owned by Disney, where all signs of
the normal world are replaced by signs from Disney World. After parking,
visitors make their way, perhaps by tram, across the vast expanse of
asphalt to the ticket gates, where they gain entrance to the park. Even
after that, though, their journey has one more step: they must take a
special form of transportation, either ferry boat or monorail, to the
entrance of the Magic Kingdom.
That's just getting there.
Read about other features of the park that correspond to religious pilgrimage sites
at Atlas Obscura. I've been to Walt Disney World three times, but the
one trip with two young children was both transformative and something I
never need to do again.
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