gay4disney

[gay4disney]

This is a big deal. This is from Disney's blog, and it's talking about Gay Days and PRIDE. Disney is finally more publically supporting us. Very, very cool.

[gay4disney]

This is wonderful news to receive just before I leave for a Walt Disney World vacation.

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Amazing.

[gay4disney]

Someone just shared this with me. Nick Wilde is the best Disney princess!

[gay4disney]

I love the new Mickey Mouse cartoons.

"Wha hoppen?"

[gay4disney]

Casual Princess-Wear Can Be Yours

I mentioned a week or two ago that I wanted Disney to market the casual outfits Vanellope makes for the Disney Princesses in Ralph Breaks the Internet. Well, apparently they are! Aurora's outfit is at https://www.shopdisney.com/aurora-and-vanellope-tank-top-for-women-ralph-breaks-the-internet-1496154?splat=&captures=&redirect=true&rsize=1&rquery=nap%20queen

You'll quickly find the others from there.

[gay4disney]

This sounds so interesting and exciting. Epcot is mine and my husband's favorite park. I am pleased to see it getting so much TLC.

[gay4disney]

Elsa's Quest for a Girlfriend...

Joking. I'm joking. But hope we see more of Oaken and his family.

Frozen II - November 2019

[gay4disney]

Oh dang I hope she's there when I go in March!

[gay4disney]

Like, Disney should legit make this a thing people could buy.

Disney Princesses + Casual Clothes

[gay4disney]

Cinderella was too weak to fight for herself...AND THAT’S OKAY!

I cannot believe we’re still tearing Cinderella down! 2018 only has a few months left and we’re still doing this, we’re still painting her as the weakest Disney princess and we’re still painting her weakness as a bad thing?

Why?

Why are people so caught up on bashing this princess?

“The movie is so simplistic—”

In what way is it possibly simplistic?!

“She didn’t work hard—”

YES, SHE DID!

“Well, okay, but the fairy godmother still had to come in—”

Yep, I remember the movie too, and the countless stories on which it’s based.

“So the fairy godmother was the one who caused the happily ever after.”

She sure was, now, what’s your point?

No, really, what’s your point? Is the point that Cinderella is somehow weak because she wasn’t 100% in control of her own life? Seems like a pretty disgusting opinion to have when the whole movie is about an abuse victim finding a way out of her horrible situation. So Cinderella wasn’t the one who got herself out. So what? Instead of looking the movie at its bare surface, maybe try analyzing it with a bit more thought and tact. You might see something a little different. A magical transformation, if you will.

Because Cinderella did work hard.

And guess what we learned from that?

You can work

and work

and work

And there will still be people out there who will try to tear you apart:

Literally.

And that sucks. It’s a horrible lesson to learn but it is something we will all face in our lifetimes. There will always be people who will try to tear us down, there will always be people who will try to rip us apart, until we’re in a low place:

Until it seems like there’s no hope…

Until it seems like you’re too weak to get out on your own…

And maybe you are.

Maybe you are too weak to get out on your own. Maybe you’re not the strongest woman in the world. Maybe you’re not capable of screaming at the top of your lungs or brandishing a weapon or throwing a punch. Maybe you’re not able to get out of something on your own. Maybe you hit a low point and maybe you have no way out of it. Not alone. But that’s just it.

You’re not alone.

Even at your lowest point, someone will come help you.

You don’t have to do it all alone.

It’s okay to have a little help when you have nowhere else to turn.

Cinderella is the story about an abuse victim who is unable to get out of her toxic situation by herself and just when she begins to lose all hope, is able to get help from an unlikely source. It’s the story about a girl who needs help getting to her happily ever after and that’s okay. 

Give us advocates:

They deserve their happily ever afters!

Give us warriors:

They deserve their happily ever afters!

Give us fighters:

They deserve their happily ever afters!

Give us girls who are not advocates, girls who are not warriors, girls who are not fighters, girls who still deserves their happily ever afters:

[gay4disney]

Mmmmmm, boy!

Tokyo Disney Resort:)

[gay4disney]

Okay, won't be grabbing the ears most likely, but that hat is mine!

#gay disney

[gay4disney]

the disney gay dads triumvirate

Opposites attract dads, bond over show-tunes, their son, and avoiding near death situations

flaming (lol) bisexual Frenchman and uptight British guy who raise their bratty man-child ward and get so annoyed at each other they get married

college roommates that lived together so long it just sort of happened 

raise street urchins for no reason other than seeing them and being like ‘??? you don’t have a place to stay?? that’s fucked up, come home with us’

[gay4disney]

To Stay or Not to Stay – Should you plan to stay at a Disney Resort while visiting the parks?

Hello, Gentle Readers. Well, I was doing a bunch of prep for my upcoming stay at Walt Disney World in February 2018, and I thought I should get cracking on some articles! Since I have a lot of experience in planning and making Disney trips, I thought I’d offer you my thoughts.

First, in the spirit of full transparency, I will tell you that, when I visit Walt Disney World, I always stay at a Walt Disney World Resort hotel. When I visit Disneyland, however, I usually don’t. So I can say that there are definitely pros and cons. Part of the reason for this is actually that, when I visit WDW, I’m usually staying for an extended time, but my DL visits tend to be part of some larger overall trip to California. More on that later.

So why should you consider staying at a Disney Resort while visiting the parks? In my opinion, there are three main reasons: Location, Perks, and Magic.

When you stay at a WDW Resort, you’re just minutes from the parks. In the case of some, such as the Contemporary, you’re within walking distance. If you stay off-site, you have to arrange to arrive inside the complex, take the long transportation time into account, deal with shuttle schedules & parking, etc. Staying on site leads to a more leisurely pace of arrival, since you’re pretty much already there.

There are tons of perks in staying at the Resorts, starting off with the Disney Transportation System. Resorts are serviced by a variety of transportation options, including buses, boats, monorails, the new “Minnie Van” services, and the forthcoming “Skyliner” gondolas. These help you get from your Resorts to the parks, and they’re completely free to use. There’s also the Disney’s Magical Express, which gets you from the airport to your resort at the beginning of the trip and then back at the end. If you’re on specific partnered airlines, it even lets you check your luggage right at the hotel.

Another great perk of staying on site is the ability to reserve key elements, like dining plans and fastpasses, in advance of when everyone else can. This alone might be the best reason to stay onsite, as those staying offsite have to take what they can get after resort guests have already pretty much wiped out the most popular options. If you want to get on the new hotnesses, such as Frozen Ever After or Flight of Passage, be prepared to take fastpasses at odd, awkward times or else to stand in line.

One more awesome perk is Extra Magic Hours. Every day, one park either opens an hour early or stays open up to three hours later. This can be a great way to get into the parks with limited folks there. Really works well for purposes of sneaking in a bunch of rides before things crowd up.

Past these perks, there’s also the perk of Disney Magic. From room theming to beautiful landscaping to incredibly pools, every resort has its own character and charm. It really does feel like being part of the magic of the experience from the moment you arrive. Little touches often find their way into your stay. Whether it’s wake-up calls from Mickey or Stitch, towels arranged in the shapes of animals, or finding your kids’ stuffed toys arranged in a tea party, there are just great little things that happen that there’s no way to predict.

Now, with these in mind, what reasons could you possibly have for not staying on site? In my opinion, it mostly boils down to Cost. There’s no way around it – Disney Resorts are pretty expensive. I’ve been lucky, in that my brother is a Disney Vacation Club member who hasn’t been able to take full advantage of his points. Many years, we pay for his dues and use his points with his blessing. This has allowed me to stay at the Treehouse Villas, the Animal Kingdom Lodge, the Grand Californian, and, on an upcoming trip, Bay Lake Tower and the Polynesian Resort. Prior to that, my trips were generally spent at the All-Star Resorts and Pop Century. They’re still Disney Resorts and still nice, but they’re not as nice as others I’ve stayed at since.

One of the reasons I generally don’t get a Disney hotel when I visit Disneyland is cost. There are many great, inexpensive partner hotels with shuttles to Disneyland around the area. Given how many Vacation Club points the Disneyland hotels cost, I’d rather save those points for big WDW visits.

That being said, there’s nothing wrong with the All-Star Resorts, Pop Century, and Art of Animation. They have all the perks of the other resorts, and I’ve noticed the staff there go out of the way to be nice and accommodating. The only negatives might be that they are more motel-like than a lot of the other resorts, and they’re often used by large families with kids. For me, that’s no big deal; I pretty much use a room to sleep, shower, and leave my stuff. I won’t lie – having a three-bedroom suite with views over the savannah was amazing. But for a basic trip if I couldn’t use the Vacation Club points? I’d be perfectly happy at the less expensive value resorts.

I hope this article has given you some food for thought. Feel free to hit me with any questions about the resorts that you might have. Until next time…see you real soon. Why? Because we like you.

#Disney #disneyland #waltdisneyworld #walt disney world #gay disney #disneyLOVE #disneylife #disney hotels #disney resort #disney research

[gay4disney]

Disney’s First Gay Character?

I remember visiting Disney with my 14-year old nephew. At one point, while lounging in the pool with him, my housemate Jay, and my husband Steve, we realized that the following day was National Coming Out Day. I lamented the chance to have made a shirt, and we discussed possible options:

Simba hugging Timon & Pumbaa and wishing “Happy Coming Out Day to My Two Dads”…

Happy offering flowers to Bashful.

Thumper saying “No duh!” sarcastically to Flower.

This evolved into a further discussion on which Disney characters might actually be gay. My favorite quote was when my nephew said, “Well, statistically, wouldn’t some of the 101 Dalmatians have to be?”

Now, some years later, Disney actually has a gay character…two of them in fact. And I thought I’d hip you to it, in case you didn’t notice.

Now when I say a gay character, I’m not talking about speculation and subtext. Like, Flower is pretty much flirting with Bambi in the first scene when we meet him, and the way Owl says that being twitterpated could even happen to him suggests that Owl knows something’s up with our skunk friend with the long eyelashes.

There’s a pretty strong movement to give Queen Elsa of Arendelle a girlfriend if they ever move in a romantic direction with her.  And the directors of Moana have said that they could easily see her as being gay. Timon & Pumbaa…that long, loving look into each others’ eyes in Lion King 1 ½, followed by a dissolve…yeah…

But no. Not even talking about that. Nor am I talking about Oaken and his family in the sauna…though I love the idea of Oaken as this big, sweet bear.

I’m not even talking about LeFou. First off, this is a complete retconning of the character. There was nothing in the original Beauty & the Beast to suggest LeFou was anything but a toady to Gaston, and the first gay character in a Disney movie came before the remake came out anyway.

Heh. Came out.

No, the first sincerely, officially gay character in a Disney film…or rather the first two…are a pair of ungulates in Zootopia.

Yup. Judy’s neighbors.

And no, this is not a theory.

The characters are listed in the voice cast as Bucky and Pronk Oryx-Antlerson. They are clearly two different varieties of antelopes, so they’re not brothers, as some have opined. But yes, some have suggested that, despite the fact that hyphenated last names are usually the sign of a marriage, that the two could be part of a family…adopted brothers, perhaps?

So let’s turn to the real expert…the writer and co-director, Jared Bush, who also voiced Pronk. When asked on Twitter if he’d ever commented on the nature of their relationship, he replied, “They are a gay married couple. But they don't yell at each other because they're gay, they yell because they're real. ;)”

I’m pretty sure the writer and co-director is as close to an expert as we’re going to get, so there you go. But what I like best about this is that these characters being gay isn’t a plot point, or anything important to the story. It’s just something that happens to be. Do I want an openly gay main character from Disney? Sure I do. But I can wait. I waited this long to get Bucky & Pronk. I can wait until we get more.

Small steps.

#Disney #disnerd #disneyLOVE #disneylife #gay #gay disney #zootopia #jared bush #bucky and pronk

[gay4disney]

My Disney Experience

Hey there, hi there, ho there, everyone. No, I’m not talking about the app today, though I can certainly cover that in a future article. Instead, I thought I’d give you an insight to the trips I’ve taken to Disney properties. My Disney resumé, if you will.

To begin with, I was a massive Disney animation fan when I was a kid. To this day, my stepfather calls me “Gus”, because, after seeing Cinderella when I was very young, I insisted I was Gusgus the mouse. I remember seeing Song of the South in the theater with my grandmother, and watching every Disney TV special that came along.

I took my first trip to Walt Disney World with my Dad when I was 13. I’d wanted to go for years, and, after my parents separated, my Dad promised he’d take me someday.” Someday” was many years in coming, but eventually my Dad told me he’d gotten a great deal, and we were going to Florida for over a week, including 5-day tickets to Walt Disney World and a 4-night stay at the Polynesian Village.

I was incredibly excited. My Dad bought the first edition of the Birnbaum Guide, and I read it every night when I stayed with him, pouring over it until I felt I could walk the place blindfolded. I still have a copy of that same edition on my bookshelf; it’s a treasure from my past. When my Dad announced that we would not be driving but flying on Delta (Disney’s partner at the time), I was over the moon. My first airplane ride!

The trip was amazing of course. I didn’t know what this “EPCOT Center” thing was I saw signs for, but in September of 1982, I was quite satisfied. We rode everything multiple times. We went to Discovery Island and River Country. We did the Hoop-De-Doo Review and the Polynesian Luau. I got to pilot my own mini-speedboat around the Seven Seas Lagoon. It was, in a word, magical. We went to Sea World & Busch Gardens on that trip, too, but they hardly blipped my radar. Walt Disney World was where it was at.

(It wasn’t until only a few years ago that I suddenly realized that the reason my Dad was likely able to afford it was because of the impending opening of EPCOT Center. I’m sure projected attendance for the weeks leading up to EPCOT’s opening were low, and deals to travel must have been excellent. After that, I didn’t get to go again until I was 16. This time, my High School chorus was going down to sing at EPCOT Center. We rehearsed “Golden Dream”, the theme song of the American Adventure, and we were so excited. Something fell through with the plans, though, and we never sang at EPCOT. We did sing at Sea World, so that was cool, and we did have two day passes to Walt Disney World. We used one pass at the Magic Kingdom and one at EPCOT.

EPCOT fascinated me, and it’s still my favorite park to this day. I got to ride on Spaceship Earth, World of Motion, the original World of Energy, and the original Journey Into Imagination (although Horizons must’ve been closed the day I went). I shopped around World Showcase for souvenirs. The time I had wasn’t enough; I left feeling like I’d barely scratched the surface.

In my late teens, however, I fell out of love with Disney. I felt absolutely betrayed by Disney’s version of The Black Cauldron, and I stopped going to Disney animated movies. I never went to see the Great Mouse Detective, Oliver & Company, The Little Mermaid, or The Rescuers Down Under in the theater. I finally saw The Little Mermaid on VHS and thought, “Huh…that was actually a pretty good film.” When Beauty & the Beast came out in theaters, I went with my Dad and said, “That was great!” Thereafter, I went to see all of the animated features in the theater again, many of them multiple times. Disney had hooked me again.

Despite this, my next trip to the parks wasn’t until 1998. By this time, I was getting romantically involved with a fella in California named Steve, which was rough, since I’m a Boston guy. We met physically at a furry convention in Buena Vista, CA. Yes, I’m a furry; get over it. Disneyland was essentially our first date, and it blew my mind. Rides like Star Tours, Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Forbidden Eye, and Splash Mountain showed me that the parks were continuing to grow and improve, and it was great to see old friends like Pirates of the Caribbean, The Haunted Mansion, The Enchanted Tiki Room, and Space Mountain again.

The following year, at the same convention, Steve and I had become closer and closer, visiting each other a couple of times and constantly on the phone with each other. We went to Disneyland again and loved it all over again. It was no shock to anyone when he moved to Boston to live with me a couple of months later.

We took our first trip together to Walt Disney World in 2002. On February 2, 2002, we had dinner at Akershus, exchanged rings carved with our names (that we’d bought at Epcot’s Mexico) inside the Stave Church (at Epcot’s Norway), and then watched the Tapestry of Dreams Parade, followed by Illuminations. It was a perfect day. Getting actually married two years later was great, but that Disney ceremony still feels even more real to me.

Since then, we’ve gone to either Walt Disney World, Disneyland, or both at least once a year, with one exception. The year of the exception we went to the Caribbean…on a Disney cruise. We’re often accompanied by our good friend Jay, who is our housemate, and we love bringing friends who’ve never been before. We’ve stayed at All Star Movies, All Star Music, Pop Century, the Yacht & Beach Club (Yacht side), Saratoga Springs, Animal Kingdom Lodge, and the Disney Treehouse Villas…oh, and also the Grand Californian at Disneyland. Next February, we’re doing a trip with just a three of us where we split the time between the Bay Lake Towers at the Contemporary and the Polynesian Village.

So there you have it – my qualifications to talk about Disney. Hope you got a smile. If you have any Disney related questions – characters, movies, parks, or what have you – please feel free to ask. It might be the basis for a future article.

See you real soon!

- Andy

#disney #disnerd #waltdisneyworld #disneyland #disneylove #disneylife