More booze in the Magic Kingdom!

I certainly understand why Disney is doing this. That doesn't mean I like it in any way.

I know that DLR and WDW are operating more distinctly these days, but it does seem to give a lot of credence to the rumors that DL's Star Wars land will have alcoholic beverages

 

I couldn't care less about alcohol being served in the Magic Kingdom table service restaurants. Like in Paris, theses restaurants are too expensive for the quality offered.

If they would open a nice bar inside the park or offer beer and wine at counter service too, that would be incredible news.

 

I definitely do not like it. And I hate the thought of it at Disneyland.

 

May I ask why? Disney serves alcohol all over WDW or DL? I have never understood that, and especially not with table service restaurants. I just can't image having a nice dinner or lunch with a disgusting coke, even if the quality of the food in a themepark can't be compared to real good restaurants outside.

 

I just have never wanted to drink at Disneyland. And I hate the folks running around with beers in DCA.
It is just my opinion and feelings. I do not expect everyone to agree. I just feel like Disneyland is a place
where there should be no alcohol. And for 60 years it has been that way.

 

I don't drink so I could care less if DL has alcohol. I just hope it doesn't lead to stupid people getting hurt because they are too drunk to ride attractions.

What I can't stand is the moronic hipster that has to vape all over the park.

 

I feel like I should have a stronger reaction to alcohol being sold in Disneyland - but I don't'.

Heck, they've been serving drinks in Club 33 for years, albeit, not publicly, but it's been there.

I don't feel like it's the end of Disneyland.

 

I see. That opinion is totally fine.

I don't mind alcohol in the parks and since I will not visit DL or WDW so soon again, I don't care that much. I'm just glad that our home park DLP serves beer and wine. There's nothing more relaxing than having a glass of beer at Cowboy Cookout BBQ and enjoying the live music and the atmosphere.

 

It's weird that in 2017 you can smoke in designated areas of Disneyland, but a glass of wine with your dinner is strictly prohibited.

 

I think there are many children who get few opportunities to have a day with Mom and Dad where they are not buzzed or worse. I would be OK with wine at a sit down dinner but I would hate seeing beer on main street.

 

Walt very specifically wanted Disneyland (or at least, portions of Disneyland open to the general public) to be alcohol-free. He didn't want his adult guests inebriated in front of the kids. The policy, like Thomas Bramwell Welch's 1869 invention of Pasteurized grape juice, and the Prohibition movements that culminated in the 18th Amendment, all grew out of the dichotomy inherent in a country settled partly by religious nonconformists and partly by people looking for a good time, and reflects the fact that we've got an awful lot of people who avoid alcohol like the plague, and a lot of people who drink specifically to get drunk. And until DLP opened, and made a compromise to accommodate French culture's wine fetish, even though Epcot and so forth served wine, no theme park designated a Magic Kingdom ever served alcoholic beverages to the general public.

Personally, (and as the "dry, post-1990" Graham Kerr said of his use of dealcoholized wine for cooking, this is MY choice) I find absolutely nothing the slightest bit pleasant or appealing about consuming ethanol. I don't like the mouth-feel, and I like the pharmacological effects even less. Indeed, I have never understood why anybody would want to deliberately dull one's senses when enjoying good food and/or good music.

I lament this development. Over the past 17 years, every single one of my visits to WDW has been during the Food & Wine Festival in Epcot, and this year, in ways that did not seem to have been the case on any previous visit, it seemed more like the food and wino festival.

 

Exactly!!!!

 

Not only do I not drink, I don't really find much amusement in the antics of those who have had too much to drink.

In my family, New Year's Day was always a bigger deal than New Year's Eve, in part because the closest relatives who drank were great aunts and great uncles, and in part because it was my maternal grandmother's birthday. So we always had my grandma's birthday dinner in the evening of New Year's Day, and pretty much didn't do much of anything for New Year's Eve, other than maybe a few minutes of tape-delayed-for-the West-Coast Times Square coverage (I think at one time, Johnny Carson cut to it).

Then, while I had my part-time job at an ice rink that doesn't even exist any more, I volunteered to take the New Year's Eve shift, supervising a rental by a large church group that didn't drink (they just skated and played broomball). Eventually, with seniority, I was allowed to serve as acting manager, because none of the actual managers wanted the job. The church group might not have shared my views of what it is to be a Christian, but they were nice people, and I had more trouble with my fellow employees (in particular, getting them to pick up a broom and a lobby-box, and make appropriate sweeping motions, nothing I wasn't doing myself) than I did with the church group. And I was spending New Year's Eve surrounded by people who were having fun, while just as sober as I was.

Eventually, that got old, and I began, as a Passholder, spending New Year's Eve in Disneyland, again, because it was a place where people were having fun while just as sober as I was. But a little over a decade ago, DL began to grow really crowded on New Year's Eve, and one New Year's Eve, I found that DL had already gone to full lockdown (for a time, I don't think they were even allowing re-entries) by the time I'd arrived, and I was unable to make my dinner reservation at the Blue Bayou, and spent the evening wandering around DCA and DTD, with most of the restaurants that looked good to me already booked solid (I ended up getting a plate of pasta at the pizza joint in Paradise Pier). That was when, between the fact that I was no longer reaching the break-even point on my pass (and attempting to do so was keeping me from visiting a lot of other worthwhile places, and had been for years), and the fact that I strongly disagreed with some politically-motivated ABC programming decisions, led me to finally decide not to renew my pass.

I've always had plans to get another pass, at some point. But if DL ceases to be an alcohol-free zone, that could be the final nail in that coffin.

 

I was at a wedding once and after I was kicked in the shins by the mother-of-the bride on the dancefloor and the bride's sister had scratched my daughter's chest trying to wrench the bouquet away from her and the father-of-the-bride had stepped soundly on my foot (all had been imbibing liberally); I decided that while I am not intolerant of alcohol and am certainly intolerant of drunks.
People enjoying a glass of wine with dinner would not be a deal breaker for me; having to stand in line with someone drinking a beer and breathing on me and talking way too loud (as has happened to me many times at DCA) would mean I am no longer be experiencing the Magic in my Laughing Place.

 

"Should we even care one way or another?"

We go to Disney theme parks in general to experience Walt's vision, we go to Magic Kingdoms in particular, out of all Disney theme parks, to experience that vision in its purest form, and we go to Disneyland in particular, out of all Magic Kingdoms, to experience it in a place that, even decades after his demise, still has his fingerprints all over it.

If we stop caring about Walt's vision, or if the Park management stops caring about it, then what's the point of going to any Disney theme park? We may as well go to Knott's (which, the last time I was there, had almost completely lost Walter Knott's vision), or to a Six Flags park, like Magic Mountain (I was there ONCE, for my elementary school's graduation trip, over 40 years ago [pre-Six-Flags], and found it to be the most incredibly boring place I'd ever been to. As I recall, the most interesting thing there was some sort of safe-cracking arcade game [if you opened the safe within the time limit, you found a souvenir token inside]; I think I spent most of my time in the observation tower, simply because it was June, in Valencia, CA, and the observation tower had the best air conditioning in the park). Or a Universal Studios park (I considered a visit to Universal Hollywood, a few years ago, and opted instead for the Paramount Studio Tour: a real tour of a working studio, not some theme park recreation of one).

Yes, we are perhaps a bit more mature about ethanol than we were 50 years ago. But only a little bit. And the notion that any amount of ethanol could possibly "sharpen" one's senses sounds about as ludicrous as the notion that there are essential nutrients that can only be properly absorbed if dissolved in ethanol, or that smoking marijuana makes a musician play better.

 

I really don't like it. I do like to have a few drinks while on vacation at WDW, but I don't need to have them in the Magic Kingdom. When I want to have a few drinks I will go to Disney Springs or even Epcot.