Let’s put it this way…
I love going to WDW and DL. I really do. It is something I look forward to a great deal. But it’s fake, it’s not real. It’s smoke and mirrors, and there is nothing wrong with that. It’s perfect, actually.
But the list of some of the places I have been in the last 20 years kind of put WDW and DL to shame.
Washington DC, where I visited blocks and blocks worth of museums, monuments, Arlington cemetery, and not far away from there are the battlefields of Gettysburg, Williamsburg and Fredericksburg, where thousands of men died fighting during the Civil War
The Black Hills of South Dakota, where Mount Rushmore resides along side miles and miles of underground caves.
Yellowstone Park, one of the most beautiful places on earth.
The beaches of Normandy France, where men from the US, GB, Canada, Poland, France and other nations assaulted Hitler’s Atlantic Wall in the effort to liberate Europe. Not far from there I saw the town of Bastogne, where men from the 101st Airborne Division held out against a numerically superior foe that surrounded them in the dead of winter.
In northern California stand trees that are hundreds of feet tall and thought to be the oldest living things on our planet. Seals and whales are easily seen and heard from the beaches in this area.
In the country of Belize, I hiked through a jungle, ate wild bananas, and rode an inner-tube on a river through caves.
Las Vegas, where I gave up blackjack and craps (I figured out I helped build a few hotels out there) and began playing poker in the mid 1990’s. The highlight coming when I got to play in a WSOP event back in 2003.
A cabin on a lake here in my home of Colorado. Just sitting watching the sun come up and doing…nothing.
See, all those things are real…I can reach out and touch them. They all have meaning to me. My trips to Disney with my family mean the world to me, and I am always drawn back there time and time again. But I don’t even know how my life would be fun or exciting if I hadn’t experienced those other things. There is a meaningful life outside of Disney…trust me.