The Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland Park.
Disneyland Resort / Christian ThompsonAt a time when people haven’t been inside Disneyland in almost a year, and many others are choosing not to travel to Walt Disney World as the pandemic continues, there’s a new way for people to connect with the parks that's never been available before.
It’s all just one download away.
When someone told me that the official Disney Parks TikTok was worth checking out, I was skeptical. More than that, I dismissed it out of hand. With my status as an “elder millennial” and my already excessive screen time, I avoid new social media at all costs. I had Snapchat on my phone for about 24 hours before an exasperated intern at my old job, trying and failing to explain the point to me yet again, said “yeah, you probably shouldn’t use this.”
But then one day, there it was, a video of something I had been dreaming of for years: the secret suite inside Cinderella Castle at Walt Disney World. I watched that TikTok probably 20 times in a row. Unlike the infinite scrolling of Instagram (a platform that’s years older but has only slightly more users than TikTok at this point), TikTok's videos are on an infinite loop. As soon as the narrator says, “And when it’s time to check out, we’re not going to give you the boot, but we’ll give you a glass slipper,” the video loops back to the beginning, showing the pumpkin carriage inlaid mosaic on the floor of the hallway as you enter the room.
Each time I watched, I searched the edges of the frame for something different, like the twinkling night sky painted over the oversized soaking tub near the “throne room” in the bathroom. Access like this to the suite, originally built as Disney family lodging and opened to outsiders in 2007, hasn’t been available before this. The suite is unrentable — there are rumors Disney has turned down upwards of $40,000 for just one night in the room — and is very rarely accessible to the public save for a handful of invitation-only tours.
All it took was that one video, which instantly went so viral that it got a feature in Travel + Leisure, for me to see that the Disney Parks TikTok is doing something different from the normal Disney content on other platforms, which typically feels polished with corporate approval. That TikTok video clips off the end of the last word as it loops back around, and the narrator is very clearly a regular person and not someone who has spent years in elocution classes.
But that’s also why it works. Vulture has called TikTok “the best medium for our absurdist present,” making the argument that usage of the app has exploded over the past year because the content is necessarily raw and unpolished, made mostly by regular people who are stuck at home. “What other medium truly nailed the essence of 2020’s mania?” Zoe Haylock writes. “No sanitized, COVID-bubble production set could capture the vibrating anxiety, unrelenting boredom, and contagious creativity that quarantine bred” the way that the platform does.
The Disney Parks channel launched this past September, and has that same energy and creativity of regular users. Just after launching, a user commented “send someone to check on the ducks at Disneyland,” and the response was a video of those ducks living their best lives in front of Sleeping Beauty Castle and splashing around in the lake in the middle of Disney California Adventure. What followed shortly after was a clip showing the horses of Disneyland doing costume changes at the Circle D Ranch. (They haven’t reported on Disneyland’s cats, but we know they’re fine, too.)
Since then, the channel has shown videos of how the legendary beignets at Ralph Brennan’s Jazz Kitchen are made, and given a tour of Walt Disney’s apartment over the fire station in Disneyland, where a lamp is always on in his memory (which yes, has been on while the park has been closed.)
Something as simple as a video recorded in October of someone’s Mickey Croc-clad feet walking up to the castle in Disneyland – something no one else can do right now – has been viewed over 275,000 times.
The one channel serves all of Disney’s parks, so there are also videos of newborn animals at Disney’s Animal Kingdom, like this week-old baby giraffe, and a preview of the forthcoming Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure ride in Epcot.
But there’s an evolution happening here that’s interesting to watch, and it goes beyond showing off whatever the seasonal churro is on Buena Vista Street. (It’s fluffernutter right now, and you really should try it.)
There is an audience on TikTok that is vastly larger than American home television viewership. According to TechCrunch, 6 million American households canceled paid TV in 2020, bringing the number of subscribers to just over 31 million. There are over 800 million users on this platform. So while I wasn’t expecting to see Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski’s “We’re going to Disney World!” video, a 2021 iteration of what used to be the most iconic of all the iconic Super Bowl commercials, it made sense that it’s on TikTok. A lot of viewers who added plays to its over 300,000 views, like me, wouldn't see it any other way.
— Sorry, Disneyland: Making me a 'legacy passholder' won't make up for ending annual passes
— Disney is finally updating its problematic Jungle Cruise ride at Disneyland and Walt Disney World
— Why Disneyland will get an Avengers Campus, but Disney World won't
Get insider access to all things Happiest Place on Earth, from historical deep dives to trending park news and beyond. Sign up for our Dispatches from Disneyland newsletter here.
