{"id":8772,"date":"2016-03-10T08:23:20","date_gmt":"2016-03-10T13:23:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/?p=8772"},"modified":"2016-03-10T08:33:43","modified_gmt":"2016-03-10T13:33:43","slug":"8772","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/8772","title":{"rendered":"Not What It Used To Be"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>While staying at the Walt Disney World parks I would make extensive use of my \u00a0annual pass. It basically gives you freedom to wander around the parks without worry about \u00a0when your tickets expire or which park you&#8217;re allowed into that day. So if I was staying at Boardwalk I&#8217;d start my morning with a walk down the path to Hollywood Studios&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/hollywood-studios-walk-sm.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-8774\" src=\"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/hollywood-studios-walk-sm.jpg\" alt=\"hollywood studios walk-sm\" width=\"600\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/hollywood-studios-walk-sm.jpg 600w, https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/hollywood-studios-walk-sm-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"> \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;and make my way to The Writer&#8217;s Stop to get my morning coffee and a danish. \u00a0The Writer&#8217;s Stop is \u00a0a nice little coffee shop\/bookstore tucked in a corner of Hollywood Studios, themed as a studio writer&#8217;s lounge\/hangout.  \u00a0And now it looks like they&#8217;re going to close it, another one of my favorite places in WDW, to make way for more Star Wars stuff.  \u00a0I can&#8217;t really blame them. Star Wars is hot right now. It&#8217;ll bring the tourists in&#8230;and the money.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m probably not going back to Walt Disney World, largely because it&#8217;s not as much fun if I have to remember the fight I had with a certain someone every time I go back. But there is also this, and I discussed it the other day \u00a0with a co-worker who is also a big Disney fan: it&#8217;s feeling less and less every year like Walt Disney&#8217;s World, and more like Disney Corporation&#8217;s World.<\/p>\n<p>I think when I started going <a href=\"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/2316\">back in 2008<\/a> I was just seeing the last fading light of Walt Disney&#8217;s influence on the parks. It was something special to me because I&#8217;m old enough to remember watching TV when Walt Disney was still alive and when I walked into Epcot that first time it all came back to me. But in the years since they&#8217;ve bought Star Wars and they&#8217;ve bought Marvel, and while those are all fun things they&#8217;re not necessarily Disney things. I don&#8217;t think that much matters to the boardroom anymore. Those of us who still remember Walt Disney are getting old.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s still the Rolls Royce of theme parks. The nearest competition can&#8217;t even come close. But I wasn&#8217;t a theme park kinda guy back in 2008&#8230;I only got talked into it by <a href=\"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/1064\">a certain someone<\/a>, and then, to <a href=\"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/3496\">my surprise and delight<\/a>, only dived in because <a href=\"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/2329\">I remembered Walt Disney<\/a>. I don&#8217;t need to keep coming back anymore, if it can&#8217;t at least still be his theme park.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" src=\"http:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/images\/disney_moon.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"321\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While staying at the Walt Disney World parks I would make extensive use of my \u00a0annual pass. It basically gives you freedom to wander around the parks without worry about \u00a0when your tickets expire or which park you&#8217;re allowed into that day. So if I was staying at Boardwalk I&#8217;d start my morning with a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[145,148,157],"class_list":["post-8772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-a-life","tag-the-america-that-was","tag-the-old-man-chronicles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8772"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8772\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}