William Bragg

Author's Note: all the author's proceeds from the sale of this book is going to benefit the Make-A-Wish foundation.

Oh my, Disney is my Constant

Sometimes it hits you like a ton of bricks…a revelation so mind blowing that you don’t quite comprehend how you could have missed the signs in the first place. It all started one spring when I was heading out to Southern California to attend college graduations for two of my nieces. Of course, my first stop after departing LAX was the Disneyland Resort. I decided to walk the ten minutes from my hotel up Harbor Drive to the entrance gates, and I started thinking about my love of Disney and how it had fit into my life. Walking gives a person time to think, and the memories and connections to the past and the present were flooding through my mind. It was at that moment that I had a sudden realization: Disney is my Constant (yes, just like Lost—Damon Lindelof would be so proud). My wife didn’t like that thought too much, so I asked her “to go with me here,” as I walked her through my reasoning (she would later smile and tell me she could see it).

Before we begin, for those who aren’t familiar with the show Lost or the concept of a Constant, Lostpedia describes it as such: when a consciousness travels back and forth through time, it needs a constant to latch on to. A constant is an object or person that exists in both periods of time that the traveler deeply cares about and could recognize.

For the first 26 years of my life (born in 1967), I lived exactly one hour from my front door to the Disneyland parking lot (yes, back when it was a lot and not a parking structure). I can remember, as a four year old, running back and forth between my two grandparents coordinating a visit to Disneyland for the day. My grandfather would pull ticket books (we would always hope for some left over E-Tickets) from past Disney trips out of a drawer, and bring them with us as we loaded into the old station wagon to make the journey up I-5 (obviously, the best part of the trip was the competition to see who spotted the Matterhorn first). After a full day in the park, my grandfather would always have us meet back up at the Carnation Café for dinner right before the parade. A few years later, as an elementary school student, I thought about how my mother would annually pull us out of school in the early afternoon for “Military Nights,” and we would stay until midnight with practically the whole park to ourselves. My best friend, Robert, who I would lose at the age of 42 to brain cancer, and I would canvas the park, repeatedly riding our favorite rides over and over again (our record for Space Mountain was five straight trips).

Fast forward to the teen years, the family trips were intermingled with visits with friends (without any parental oversight). My first “all day” date with my first girlfriend was to Disneyland in December 1984. We actually shared our first kiss on a park bench at the end of Main Street…I still smile every time I walk by it. I realized that as I had grown the park had matured and changed along with me. Gone were some of my old favorites from my younger years, such as, Adventures Thru Inner Space (I can remember riding this one with my grandmother when it broke down for 15 minutes) and Rainbow Caverns Mine Train, only to be replaced with new favorites like Star Tours and Big Thunder Mountain.

My adventure took a drastic change when I became an Uncle. Now I got to show Disney to new members of the family: young, impressionable, and wide-eyed. I made a promise to my nephew and my nieces (yes, the same two that I was now coming out to see graduate) that upon graduation from Kindergarten, I would take them for a one-on-one trip to Disney. What a fantastic way to celebrate such an accomplishment, even 20 years later, I can remember the look on their faces as we would explore the park, meet characters, and watch the parades (one niece even asked me if I had ever seen the Electric Light Parade when we happened upon it).

The next phase on my time continuum came when I took my girlfriend (who would soon become my wife) to Disneyland for the first time. I had already been in the Air Force for five years, and I now lived in Texas. On our trip to California, of course, our first stop was Disneyland (with my family—her first time meeting them). A new globe like structure stood near the entrance to Space Mountain, but in order to get to the globe, you had to make your way through water that would shoot up. Unfortunately for her, she got sprayed before we could make it to the globe. Lucky for me, she shrugged it off. It was at that moment, at Disneyland, that I realized that I would make her my wife one day. We were engaged about two weeks after our first visit. Can you guess where we spent our honeymoon five months later? If you answered, Walt Disney World (my first visit) then you are a winner! What a terrific way to start a life together (we even bought a timeshare in Orlando on that visit…and still use it).

A couple of years later, we found ourselves at Walt Disney World again, but this time we had our four month old child with us. We couldn’t wait to share the magic with her, but for this trip we brought her side of the family along for the ride. I had the opportunity to share Disney (and bore them a bit with my Disney knowledge) with my new family (we loaded nine people into a three-bedroom timeshare). A son would join the mix a couple years later, and he was indoctrinated into the Disney family also. Our family adventures have included multiple trips to Walt Disney World, annual passes to Disneyland (I was stationed in California for four years, and even though we lived three hours away, it was fairly common for us to make the trek for the weekend), and last but not least, a couple of Disney Cruises. These days, my beautiful teenage daughter loves to draw Disney characters…we have an entire room dedicated to her work.

While stationed at Minot AFB in North Dakota, Disney even found its way into my college studies. For my master’s degree in Business Management I wrote a 100 page paper on case study of Michael Eisner and Disney. Yep, even from the frozen tundra of the great white north, my focus was still on all things Disney.

A few years ago, the Air Force sent me on a one-year unaccompanied (no family) tour to Izmir, Turkey to work for NATO. What’s a man to do when he is 5,000 miles away from his family and his home…well, you focus on what makes you feel close to your family and home…and for me that was Disney. I discovered a whole new world of Disney on social media. Listening to podcast about Disney, like WDW Radio, I was reminded of the great times that I had shared with my family and friends. Reading books (got to fill the time when you are away) and articles about Disney, reignited my love and respect for what Disney had become to me. I was also able to plan our inaugural Disney Cruise and a week-long Walt Disney World vacation. They can take the man away from Disney, but they can’t take Disney away from the man!

So why have I bored you with all of this information, and how does this make Disney my Constant…same question my wife asked. The way I see it, Disney has always been the one thing that connects my past, present, and future. After joining the military 23 years ago, Disney is something that I can point back to and relate it to a time or experience in my life. It bridges the gap between my grandparents and my children (my kids love to hear about how Big Al was my grandmother’s favorite). It takes me back to a time where I would spend numerous adventures with my best friend, and allows me to fondly remember him. I smile every time I see the park bench that I received my first kiss or the water globe where I realized that I had finally found “the one” for me. It’s something I can share with my kids, a tradition, and a way of life that perhaps they can share with their kids and tell stories of how they used to go to Disney with me.

So welcome to my Disney time continuum. I hope you have as much fun utilizing this book as I did writing it. Have fun building the memories that will last a lifetime, and then some.