The Long Arm of the Mouse

I've written before about the heralded arrival of the Disney Channel here in Istanbul. This fall saw the frenzy rise even further for the European premiere of "High School Musical 2". Those wacky kids from West High (or is it East High - I can never remember) are at it again, this time there are lots of hi-jinks at the local country club. Same old story - the privileged kids spending their summer swimming and golfing and the middle-class kids working to save money for college. They've even translated one of the songs into Turkish and play this painfully sappy video of a guy and a girl singing while strolling through the famous sites of Istanbul. Of course they play it over and over and over again. Did my friends and I act this ridiculously when Grease or Footloose came out? I can't remember but I'm sure we didn't, right...

But the Mouse has reached into our house in other ways. Friends have recently returned from their half-term break trip to Disneyland Paris (or EuroDisney as I think it was once called). Apparently, we are one of the few families who haven't ever been to Disney.

Darcy seems to think that it's her birthright as an American to go to Disney. "But Mom, EVERYONE has been there but me!" I've heard on more than one occasion. And I'm not adverse to going, and enjoy a theme park as much as anyone else, but there were just always other places we wanted to go more (at least Matt and I wanted to go more) and I always figured we would go to the one in Florida some day when we were back in the States. Now she's worried she'll be too old to enjoy by the time we move back. Lucas has now joined in on the chorus of the unfair.

I never thought of EuroDisney until recently. It seems weird to me to consider going to a place that looks to recreate various parts of the US - there's the Santa Fe southwest hotel, the New York high-rise hotel, the Santa Barbara beach hotel. And I'm not sure if they'll get "It's a Small World After All" sung in French, but will it really matter? Buzz Lightyear in Europe looks the same as Buzz Lightyear in the US, after all. And, I guess, in the end, this is one of those trips that is purely for the small people in the family.

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