I recently returned from a voyage to the apex of American consumer culture. The place is about as opposite to FIRE as one can get. A place where money flows like a smooth yet powerful river in one direction. A place where fanatics roam around freely displaying their allegiance to “the” corporation with tattoos, branded clothing (including custom homemade shirts), and accessories of all sorts. It’s Disneyland of course, the happiest place on earth.

So here it is. Here’s my report, maybe rant is the better word, of Disneyland vs the FIRE adherent.

Once FIRE has tainted and taken root in the mind, it’s hard to see things without a personal finance filter. In other words, it’s hard not to judge others who spend like the world is going to end tomorrow. So at Disneyland, silent judging was the order of the day. My family spent two days in Disneyland and California Adventure, a day a park, while on a trip down south to visit family in LA. I was able to use my Hilton Honors points to secure a free stay at a hotel within walking distance of the parks. Tickets cost a total of $1100 bucks for a family of four. And I spent $256 on food and snacks inside of the park.

The parks were packed. I couldn’t deny that there was a heavy dose of mob mentality in the air. A sort of frenzied and intoxicating spending lust caked the atmosphere. Akin to how malls used to be during the holiday before Amazon and Covid changed how shoppers behaved.

To have witnessed the consumer fever that takes place at Disneyland with my own eyes, of course, means that I’m not completely innocent. To even buy a ticket to Disneyland, you cast off orthodox adherence to FIRE principles, there’s no way around that. The only saving grace is to be self-aware of what is going on. I mean, what’s that cliche saying: to know thy enemy is to know thy self.

Self-aware I was. I felt a curious sense of guilt about judging how others handle their money.

It’s none of my business. Really, it’s not.

Yet I watched and judged at Disneyland. Fighting between a sadness for these middle class folk shoving their credit cards at a $82 billion dollar company, and the schadenfreude of not participating in the dumping of my hard earned cash to help fuel a company that owns America.

This is how it works, right? It’s this panic buying mania that fuels the American economy and will help me on my way to FIRE as corporate profits, and their stocks eventually rise. (Except for DIS at the moment. As of this writing the stock is having its worst year since 1974. Time to buy!).

Disney is a huge company. It employs some 220,000 employees. Owns near $203 billion in assets. Watching the company at work, sucking the lifeblood of its loyal consumers one turkey leg and Mickey Mouse shirt at a time, was as if I were witnessing a slaughter. A slaughter of the wealth of the middle class by a juggernaut tank. Disney was a shepherd leading its flock to the wolf den. The evil queen with a poisoned apple to share.

Who did I think I was judging in this manner?

I really did need to get off my high FIRE horse.

Did I think I was somehow better than those people gorging themselves because I wasn’t joining in? The truth is, I was taking part in this corporate worship alongside everyone else. Simply by being there. I was a part of the crowds of people. Even if I didn’t partake in the mad rush to buy, I felt the intangible allure of buying things, of living in the moment and surrounding myself with others who were consuming. If there wasn’t food to buy, there were clothes purchase, or ticket enhancements upgrades to be bought.

It was almost as if being there wasn’t enough. Once there you had to buy in order to participate in the “fun”. The hive mind takes over and it stops being about the destination and becomes about getting as much as you can while being there.

The rides are just a small part of the belly of this consumer beast. There’s more to it. For many hardcore fans, this is like a pilgrimage to a sacred site, where homage must be paid. This is what Disney’s consumer culture is all about. This is a decades-long strategy on the part of the Disney Company to dominate the American consumer. A campaign to influence Americans that their leisure time must be accompanied by Disney. And during that leisure time, Disney sure let’s us know that buying, consuming, and owning things is the only way to really have fun.

It wasn’t till I visited the park recently that I began to ask myself: What exactly are consumers consuming here at Disneyland?

Well, here I’ll turn to a quote that summarizes what Disney has done much better than I can:

…the power of Disney lies in its ability to make itself an object of desire, the pleasure of which is to be found only in the construction of the desire, not in its possession.

Eleanor Byrne & Martin McQuillan in Deconstructing Disney

Parents, whether knowingly or not, are training their children that worship of a corporation is normal. They train their kids that vacation and family time involves visiting the “land” of their favorite movies and shows. They train their children that to have a good time, we must pay for it. And pay dearly. At Disneyland, it’s all about spending vast amounts of money in the name of showing how much you love Disney to others.

At times it feels more sinister than that.

There’s an eery dystopian feel to the forced cheeriness of the happiest place on earth. To the smiles and helpfulness of the ‘cast members’, to the adults who enter the park with no kids, to the illusionary nature of everything. All of it feels a bit too forced. A bit too divorced from reality.

It may sound like I’m judging Disney and Disney fans quite harshly.

I am.

But I both judge and respect those who love Disney and worship their corporate god with no shame because they own it. They own it more than any other consumer that I’ve come across…except maybe sports fans.

So I turn the mirror onto myself.

Being an avid sports fan, I would be hypocritical to feel as though I were somehow above this cultish, corporate kowtow behavior. I do indeed have a San Francisco Giants tattoo on my right arm. I’ve spent good money on World Series tickets. I’ve spent $800 dollars for a single ticket to an NFC Championship game (before FIRE of course), where I entered an enclosed environment with set prices and waited in long lines, and mingled with other fanatics sporting tattoos and clothes worshiping their consumer culture idols.

I revel in the electric atmosphere of the mob hive mind during a live sporting event. Salivating at the thought of having my team win and getting lost in the experience. And this is an old human tradition, was the Roman coliseum not built for this same experience?

I was also introduced and indoctrinated into the sports world as a young impressionable boy. This tradition was passed on to me by my dad and older family members. San Francisco Giants and Forty-Niners were the teams I had to support. There was no choice about it. Having fun was watching the big game. My time after school was spent at baseball practice and playing little league. Then collecting baseball cards and attending games. Now I’m a loyal fan, a switch I find hard to shut off even in my ever long quest for more frugality.

Even now I find myself telling my girls that they must root for the forty-niners. The tradition is passing itself on without me even truly being aware of what I’m doing.

What I’m saying is that being a sports fan is no different than being a hardcore Disney Consumerist. It’s actually the same thing.

Here’s another well known disconcerting fact, Disney owns ESPN. It owns the biggest sports media outlet in the United States.

But it of course doesn’t stop there.

It owns ABC. Twentieth Century Fox. The Muppets. National Geographic. Marvel Studios. Star Wars (lucas film). Pixar. Searchlight Studios. Hulu. FX content. The list is much longer, but you get my point.

But dammit Marvel and Star Wars. It’s as if Disney has purchased my childhood.

I remember fondly reading X-men comic books and trading them with my friends as an elementary school student. I remember renting Star Wars on VHS and watching them over and over religiously as a boy. I remember reading old copies of National Geographic and wondering and dreaming about the far off places they wrote about. And I won’t get started about the Muppet Babies and the Muppet movies…

And now all of that is swallowed up by a single company. What do I look back to now? To reminisce and get some 80’s nostalgia I must now pay Disney for a dose of things I grew up loving. If I want to show my kids what I loved, I now have to go through Disney.

They’ve come to monopolize American culture, seemingly unnoticed by their biggest clients. And even if noticed, most consumers would only shrug at the fact that a single company has so many fingers in their pockets and minds. Where is the FTC in all of this? Can there not be an anti-trust case here? Why does one company own so much of what Americans watch and spend their free time doing?

But maybe that’s as American as it gets.

The growth of a single company into a monolith by swallowing up the competition. I have to ask what that does to creativity in our media. What it does to the cost of consuming streaming services and movie content we get?

Look, I’m not the biggest Disney fan, as you can tell. I grew up watching Disney movies. I’ll probably go back to Disneyland some time in the future. I’ve owned stock of DIS in the past. And continue to do so through VTSAX.

I don’t think Disney is evil or bad. I don’t think there is some deeper conspiracy or any of that bullshit nonsense that seems to run rampant these days. All I’m saying is that we should be weary when so much of our leisure content is coming from a single media company. When one company controls so much of what we consume I’m not sure it’s a good thing.

So to the question I asked earlier:

What does the American consumer get in return for their allegiance and submissiveness to the American company? What does Disney offer us?

Escape.

Escape from what? The grind and rigors of daily life? Who wouldn’t doesn’t pay money to forget about their problems for a little bit?

Financial Independence is hinged critically on the idea of escape.

Addicts and those who live on the street are infatuated and consumed by the idea of escape.

The American workforce marches dutifully towards the weekend each week. Towards the short-term escape from our 9-5 (where we can indulge Disney on that time off).

Anyone who wants something different than what they already have is seeking an “escape”. Its pursuit is the source of discontent for many of us.

I know escape is what I want. I want a change. I want something out there. A future that has yet to be realized, where I’m not tethered to a job and giving up my free time of the best years of my life to only pay bills.

This want for escape, it’s so tantalizing, especially now that there is a path to that place. The path of investing and saving. The path of FIRE. That is the escape for me. Does that make me any different from someone else who chooses to escape in a different manner? No.

And so for two days I “escaped” from the disciplined path of FIRE.

I escaped from my constant stomach-tightening worry of overspending, of the markets, of recession.

I escaped from my disdain for Disney and consumer culture.

For a few moments, when I wasn’t caring, I bought overpriced pretzels, ice cream for my kids, and waited in long lines living through my children’s giddy anticipation, I found a certain happiness that flutters around the edges of excess. Its intoxicating allure filled my mind with enough of the idea of escape, that for a time I needn’t ever find real escape. I didn’t need to look further than the moment. Everything was right here for me.

I’d found what I’ve been looking for. Found what I didn’t know I’d been searching for all along; the happiest place on Earth.

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What do you think? Are you a Disney fan? A Disney stockholder? A proud anti-Disney FIRE adherent?

Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year. Hope everyone got what they wanted for x-mas and sure hope we get a better year in the markets in 2023.