The Roar interviewed junior Matthew Sims, who suffers from a crippling Disney World addiction.
How many times have you been to Disney World?
I’ve been 19, but I’m going again in August, so that’ll be my 20th time.
What is your favorite ride?
I started a new tradition. My new favorite ride for me is Haunted Mansion. It’s not a scary ride, they fool you, nobody screams. It’s just a little kiddy ride. It’s really fun because [I] just scream as loud as [I] can the entire ride. People are just like ‘Who the hell is that?’. You hear people getting off of the ride and they are like ‘Was that you? Who was that?’. It’s just funny to watch.
The slogans for Disney World are “The happiest place on Earth” and “Disney Parks | Where Dreams Come True”. How are these true for you?
For me, it is the happiest place on Earth. It’s a place where you can get away with anything pretty much, as long as it’s in the rules. You can be stupid, as stupid as you want, and you’re just having a great time because people are like ‘what the hell are you doing’. It’s pretty good. You just have a great time doing that, so that’s why i have a good experience with Disney every year. Dreams sometimes come true there, but for the most part dreams don’t come true there. If you look around you, most of like the other people are always fighting each other. They are always like ‘I wanna ride this ride’ and that looks so miserable. And then you get the obnoxious parents who don’t even care about their children, and their child is just crying in the corner. That’s not a dream, that’s bad.
Sims uses his knowledge of the park’s security cameras to pose on a ride.
How do you find new things to do during each visit?
So, whenever I go to Disney, I have to find something new to do. You know what the rides are, you know what’s going to happen, but you don’t know what you are going to do on the rides. I remember one year, my goal was to find every single security camera on every ride, and wave at them. It worked pretty well. I’m pretty sure the security guards were just laughing [at me].
Have your frequent visits ever caused any conflict academically?
I skipped three days of school to go to Disney this year. So I couldn’t exempt finals, I guess that kinda hurt me a little, just a teeny tiny bit.
Do you plan to continue going as an adult?
I’m still going to be going a lot. You never really outgrow Disney unless you’re one of those boring people. Some rides are built for teenagers, but that’s not really why I go. I plan to go in the future, and hopefully when I’m out of college I hope to work there too. I want to become an ‘Imagineer’, that’s what they call the people who work at Disney and create the rides. It’s a professional job at Disney. I could be an accountant or a mechanical engineer.
This article was truly insightful and entertaining