News Main Street Photo Supply Co. Being Replaced By Plaza Point Holiday Shoppe

[mickEblu]

I'd say a huge portion of the male CMs at least are gay. Had an old guy with purple nails helping me at the information stand last time I went.

 

[lazyboy97o]

Let's try it from another perspective, @DisneyExpert - would you want someone else explaining their views on human sexuality to your kids before you did?

How do you stop kids from seeing other people? Absolutely no public displays of affection of any sort?

 

[EPCOTCenterLover]

I'm not saying this. Nor am I hinting at extremes.

 

[Californian Elitist]

It's each parents choice how they want to do things. Mine never had any sort of conversation with me about gay people.

But the first time I heard about the concept of it, I was definitely confused.

Sexuality concerns both heterosexuality and homosexuality.

 

[TP2000]

Okay. But y’all seem to be triggered when it involves people of color, the LGBTQ+ community, people from various religions other than the Christian one, etc. What’s that all about?

It's called the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community now. Try and keep up, it's not 1958 any more.

Aside from her ability to time-travel, and the suspicious ability to spend huge amounts of money to circle the globe on a small town shopkeeper's salary, the weird thing about this is that she has to be Puerto Rican. She can't be Black?

The Midwest and Plains States of the early 1900's did not have a sizable Hispanic population, nor did it have a sizable Asian population. But there were white and Black folks by the millions.

If they need to create fake shopkeepers that no one will ever see or hear about ever again after the press release, it seems to me that the shops of California Adventure are ripe for the picking to have Latino ownership. But Main Street USA? It just makes no sense. It makes it laughable, not notable.

It would be like not using a Creole woman to own a shop in New Orleans Square, and instead claiming that it's a Korean lady that owns the local kitchenware shop. And try her Kimchee Gumbo!

 

[lazyboy97o]

I'm not saying this. Nor am I hinting at extremes.

It’s not an extreme. You’re concern seems to be children seeing certain types of situations. Why is seeing that in a picture or diorama different than seeing it actually happen in real life? What is it about a media representation that makes it different and requiring explanation?

 

[Disney Analyst]

I understand some of your frustration because I have gay family members and friends. That said, parents still need the right to teach their children when they determine they are ready. They know their children the best. Not Disney or anyone else. If they do it poorly or out of time, they deal with the consequences. Part of us all living in harmony and learning from each other is considering others point of view. Thanks for thoughtfully considering mine as I consider yours.

I appreciate your kind response, but I think part of the issue is people having the mindset that it's a big deal, or a big conversation, that will somehow change their children so it must be approached cautiously or in the right time.

The conversation is that people love each other, and you may see them out and about holding hands, and being together. It's simple, it's easy.

And the world is changing, we will be out and proud more then ever. In real life, in media, at Disney.

 

[Californian Elitist]

It's called the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community now. Try and keep up, it's not 1958 any more.

Aside from her ability to time-travel, and the suspicious ability to spend huge amounts of money to circle the globe on a small town shopkeeper's salary, the weird thing about this is that she has to be Puerto Rican. She can't be Black?

The Midwest of the early 1900's did not have a sizable Hispanic population, nor did it have an Asian population. But there were white and Black folks by the millions.

If they need to create fake shopkeepers that no one will ever see or hear about ever again after the press release, it seems to me that the shops of California Adventure are ripe for the picking to have Latino ownership. But Main Street USA? It just makes no sense. It makes it laughable, not notable.

It would be like not using a Creole woman to own a shop in New Orleans Square, and instead claiming that it's a Korean lady that owns the local kitchenware shop. And try her Kimchee Gumbo!

I already said I would drop this, but I’ll respond this time. Pretty much nothing about Main Street USA is historically accurate. If you’re going to be concerned about a Puerto Rican fictional character on fake Main Street, be concerned about everything else as well.

Tokenism is annoying, but some of you seem upset for other reasons. I’ll leave it at that.

 

[TP2000]

What's also interesting here is how Disney has made it very clear that these Inclusion! stories that are almost impossible to spot were put in there to reflect the woman who designed the store in 2021.

The manager of decorating stores at Disneyland is a Lesbian, with a wife who is Black. So she got to decorate the store with pictures that look like her and her wife ice skating. And a script writer from WDI wrote a fake backstory that used the Lesbian manager's mom, whose maiden name was Toro, to create a fake Puerto Rican proprietress that owns the shop and has discovered time-travel.

A middle manager responsible for shelving units and plastic flowers now gets all that power?

What if the next refurbishment of Luigi's Rollickin' Roadsters is led by an Irish maintenance manager? Does the ride get changed from Italian to Irish?

What if the lighting designer assigned to upgrade Pirates of the Caribbean to LED lighting is Mormon and doesn't approve of all that debauchery and drinking in the ride?

What if the next refurbishment to paint and replace carpeting and drapes at The Plaza Inn is led by a Project Manager who is Vegan? Does the fried chicken go away?

 

[TP2000]

I already said I would drop this, but I’ll respond this time. Pretty much nothing about Main Street USA is historically accurate. If you’re going to be concerned about a Puerto Rican fictional character on fake Main Street, be concerned about everything else as well.

Tokenism is annoying, but some of you seem upset for other reasons. I’ll leave it at that.

The real small towns of midwest America circa 1905 were rather miserable, especially by our modern and very coddled standards. Dirty, muddy, dingy, full of bad smells and flies, with very little color or whimsy.

No one walks down Main Street USA expecting Colonial Williamsburg, and Walt never intended it to be that.

But a random Puerto Rican dropped in to 1905 Missouri? Why???? There's millions of other interesting stories to tell that are actually grounded in reality and reflect the culture and peoples of 1900's Midwest America. This just seems so pandering and forced that it damages the legitimate need to include more voices into the stories.

 

[UNCgolf]

I already said I would drop this, but I’ll respond this time. Pretty much nothing about Main Street USA is historically accurate. If you’re going to be concerned about a Puerto Rican fictional character on fake Main Street, be concerned about everything else as well.

Tokenism is annoying, but some of you seem upset for other reasons. I’ll leave it at that.

It smells of tokenism to me -- something they can claim is inclusive but is so far in the background that most people will never know it even exists. As I said above, though, that part is harmless. It doesn't hurt anyone for Disney to claim the shop was run by a Puerto Rican woman and if it actually makes a small handful of people feel more included then great!

It's the idea of coming up with backstories as a replacement for actually theming the stores that bothers me. It's not really an issue with this particular store (in that this one actually looks the part, at least to an extent), but it certainly is elsewhere.

 

[TP2000]

It smells of tokenism to me -- something they can claim is inclusive but is so far in the background that most people will never know it even exists. As I said above, though, that part is harmless. It doesn't hurt anyone for Disney to claim the shop was run by a Puerto Rican woman and if it actually makes a small handful of people feel more included then great!

It's the idea of coming up with backstories as a replacement for actually theming the stores that bothers me. It's not really an issue with this particular store (in that this one actually looks the part, at least to an extent), but it certainly is elsewhere.

Exactly.

DCA 1.0 in 2001 was a cheap and ugly disaster. But to try and obscure the bland stucco warehouses and carnival rides in the park, they gave all the stores and restaurants punny names. Everything had a name that was punny, if not actually funny. Maliburitos, Rushin' River Outfitters, Award Weiners, Taste Pilots Grill, Pizza Oom-Mow-Mow, Burrrrbank Ice Cream, Souvenir Itch, Fly-N-Buy, etc., etc., etc.

It was all they had. Instead of high quality attractions and epic design, they had puns.

This is almost as bad as that. It's nothing, and yet somehow it's super annoying.

 

[Californian Elitist]

It smells of tokenism to me -- something they can claim is inclusive but is so far in the background that most people will never know it even exists. As I said above, though, that part is harmless. It doesn't hurt anyone for Disney to claim the shop was run by a Puerto Rican woman and if it actually makes a small handful of people feel more included then great!

Exactly my point. I don’t like the idea of randomly creating a fictional person of color to stick somewhere to pretend like there’s actual care and concern about our communities. But as I stated, some people seem to be bothered for other reasons…intolerable ones. That’s the interesting part, at least for me.

 

[Californian Elitist]

Speaking of Latine culture, it would be amazing to get some space in DCA celebrating Latine culture. California is brimming with Latine history and culture and a fictional Puerto Rican, Mexican, El Salvadoran, etc. character would be perfect and it probably wouldn’t feel like tokenism.

Disney can and should do better.

 

[Castle Cake Apologist]

It's called the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community now. Try and keep up, it's not 1958 any more.

Aside from her ability to time-travel, and the suspicious ability to spend huge amounts of money to circle the globe on a small town shopkeeper's salary, the weird thing about this is that she has to be Puerto Rican. She can't be Black?

The Midwest and Plains States of the early 1900's did not have a sizable Hispanic population, nor did it have a sizable Asian population. But there were white and Black folks by the millions.

If they need to create fake shopkeepers that no one will ever see or hear about ever again after the press release, it seems to me that the shops of California Adventure are ripe for the picking to have Latino ownership. But Main Street USA? It just makes no sense. It makes it laughable, not notable.

It would be like not using a Creole woman to own a shop in New Orleans Square, and instead claiming that it's a Korean lady that owns the local kitchenware shop. And try her Kimchee Gumbo!

Wow, it's almost like we're in Walt Disney's Magic Kingdom. Maybe people were never racists here and Puerto Rican women can own shops and everybody can be whoever they want to be. Even in the late 1800s.

 

[Californian Elitist]

Exactly. It would be easy to incorporate this at both DCA and at DHS, considering the whole front of DHS is essentially themed to Los Angeles.

Yep. And what’s funny and ironic is that both California AND Florida continue to be influenced by Latine culture and have a sizable Latine population, so finding help for such a project wouldn’t take much effort at all. Yet here we are.

 

[EPCOTCenterLover]

I appreciate your kind response, but I think part of the issue is people having the mindset that it's a big deal, or a big conversation, that will somehow change their children so it must be approached cautiously or in the right time.

The conversation is that people love each other, and you may see them out and about holding hands, and being together. It's simple, it's easy.

And the world is changing, we will be out and proud more then ever. In real life, in media, at Disney.

Sexuality is a big deal as it is a big part of life, but it is not simple as we are not beings defined only by our body parts. At least that's my understanding of the larger picture of sexuality. Isn't that the reason for the LGBTQ etc identification?

 

[EPCOTCenterLover]

Some of my favorite people of all time were people of color, or homosexual.

There's so many great people to honor and show their history vs the cartoon main street characters Disney makes up.

Captain Lafayette, Mark Twain, Davey Crocket, and Abraham Lincoln are all historical figures associated with the park.

The late Michael Jackson is a cultural icon as well, and his presence in the parks is missed.

Instead of shoehorning characters, why not honor real history?

Martin Luther King, Harriet Tubman, John Henry, Harvey Milk, Peter Tatchell? They don't need to be store owners, but putting up a placard or relic for them in the parks would be both honorable and educational.

You could even have the pianos in Fronteirland named Liberace and Elton John.

Have a peanut butter item named after George Washington Carver.

I find history more interesting than fiction in many cases.

SO TRUE! Especially your last line- and that is what makes Disneyland so amazing.

 

[Californian Elitist]

Some of my favorite people of all time were people of color, or homosexual.

There's so many great people to honor and show their history vs the cartoon main street characters Disney makes up.

Captain Lafayette, Mark Twain, Davey Crocket, and Abraham Lincoln are all historical figures associated with the park.

The late Michael Jackson is a cultural icon as well, and his presence in the parks is missed.

Instead of shoehorning characters, why not honor real history?

Martin Luther King, Harriet Tubman, John Henry, Harvey Milk, Peter Tatchell? They don't need to be store owners, but putting up a placard or relic for them in the parks would be both honorable and educational.

You could even have the pianos in Fronteirland named Liberace and Elton John.

Have a peanutbutter item named after George Washington Carver.

I find history more interesting than fiction in many cases.

I definitely agree. I hate tokenism and Disney is for sure fake about all of this. I’d prefer for them to actually be interested in our cultures, histories, and contributions.

 

[Castle Cake Apologist]

Sexuality is a big deal as it is a big part of life, but it is not simple as we are not beings defined only by our body parts. At least that's my understanding of the larger picture of sexuality. Isn't that the reason for the LGBTQ etc identification?

I think the biggest issue here is that you seem to be equating sexual orientation and actual sex. Plenty of gay people are celibate, or asexual, and still in committed relationships. Same with straight people. Who you love has nothing to do with sex.

I guess I just don't understand what "Sophie has two mommies who love each other and her very much, just like your daddy and I love each other and you very much" has to do with sex.