Why Disney Adults Are So Divisive: The PR Power of Fandoms

I personally have little opinion on Disney Adults… Each to their own, and they’re certainly not causing anyone any harm. If something makes people happy, then who cares? But I couldn’t ignore how angry people seem to get about them online. The sheer level of frustration toward grown adults enjoying Disney parks piqued my interest, so out of curiosity, I watched some Disney vlogs to try and understand why they get such a strong reaction.

Here I am at Universal in Orlando, Florida.

To be honest, I expected to find them boring, just the same repetitive park visits, showing the same rides, and a lot of over-excited reactions to things designed for children. But instead, I found it kind of cute how excited these people are. There’s something nice about seeing people find something they love so much. It reminded me of a time when I was visiting Sarasota, Florida at one of my favourite restaurants called Yoders (it’s Amish and DELICIOUS), there was an adorable Amish elderly lady who noticed my accent and asked about England. I asked where she travelled from and she in her very soft accent explained she travelled down from Pennsylvania because it’s nice to see the beach and have a different place to eat her oatmeal. She shared that it’s her simple daily pleasure. It warmed my heart no end that she travelled down the East Coast to continue eating plain oatmeal with sugar sprinkled on it, with a beach. I see the same simple joy with the Disney Adult vloggers screaming at the sight of Tower of Terror.

But that said, the vlogs, psychologically, are fascinating. The way these trips are structured, the intense nostalgia, and the ritualistic nature of every visit were so consistent across different vloggers. They are all obsessed with Starbucks and convinced American Starbucks is 10 times better than the UK. I genuinely just think everything tastes better when you’re excited to be somewhere.

And beyond that, I couldn’t help but be impressed by how brilliantly Disney and Universal create these artificial worlds of constant happiness. Everything is designed to make people feel good, down to the smallest details, from the music playing as you enter the parks to the carefully curated scents and colour schemes that trigger childhood memories and create new ones to keep the conveyor belt of custom coming and returning.

Oddly enough, despite not loving my time in Orlando, watching these vlogs actually made me want to go back. When I visited, it felt like a never-ending maze of busy roads, tolls, traffic, overpriced everything, and tourists packed into every corner. Orlando felt like a busy day in England with the sun out at times, I described it at the time as an airport. Everyone is rushing, no one seems to be a local, everything feels fake/built for purpose… It’s a really unique place. There’s no cosiness to it, you’re just surrounded by busy roads. And then there was Celebration, Florida, a town originally developed by Disney that felt so eerily perfect it was like stepping into The Truman Show meets Black Mirror. More like Hallucination, Florida, because nothing felt real.

They See Magic, I Saw a Money-Making Machine

But what really struck me was how Disney Adults see the parks compared to how I did.

They seem to have the ability to completely ignore the god-awful crowds, the fact they paid $170 to stand in lines for hours, and the privilege of spending $12 on a terrible slice of pizza or $11 on a dry Homer Simpson doughnut and pretending it’s brilliant. The casualness of paying another $150 each just to skip the line to a shorter line because so many people are squeezed in. Paying $30 a day to park, on top of the already expensive tickets. The app-based ride reservation system that makes it unlikely they’ll even get on the ride they want. The fact that a bottle of “Harry Potter water” is literally just a basic plastic bottle with a Harry Potter sticker on it but costs $5.

The infamous Homer Donut

They don’t just tolerate the shops filled with Disney junk and plastic backpacks with fun but undeniably tacky designs, they actively seek them out, excited to add yet another overpriced trinket to their collection.

Meanwhile, as I walked around, I wasn’t caught up in the magic, I was blown away by how much money these corporations are making per person. The backpacks? $80. The Mickey ears everyone wears? $45, give or take. A ticket? $160. Parking? Another $30. Food for the day? Easily $50+ per person. Long-sleeve spirit jerseys that everyone seems to collect? $80. A Harry Potter cloak? $120. A wand? $50.

Disney World in Orlando, Florida.

I was genuinely so impressed at how effortlessly Disney and Universal get people to spend this kind of money. It’s brilliant business, they’ve managed to turn a day out into a financial commitment equivalent to a luxury holiday, and people happily pay it.

Men Leading the Disney Vlogs: A Nostalgia-Driven Power Trip?

What surprised me even more was who was leading these trips. The stereotype of Disney Adults online is usually women in Minnie ears dragging their reluctant boyfriends along—but in the vlogs? It was the men who were obsessed.

It was the men who filmed, planned, narrated, and structured the trips around their childhood memories. The women were along for the ride, reliving their boyfriend or husband’s childhood with them rather than their own.

And it wasn’t just nostalgia—it was almost a role-play dynamic, with the men treating their partners like children in a weirdly paternal way. They’d say things like, “You can have a treat”, and the woman would baby-talk back. There was so much outdated 80s/90s-style humour about women spending all their partner’s money, with the men sighing, “There goes my wallet” while their girlfriends picked out Mickey ears. And these women had jobs—they could afford their own stuff—but they still played along.

Beyond that, the men seemed to cling onto every detail of their childhood trips—hating any change to the parks, staying in the exact same villa, hotel, or area they stayed in as kids, needing to feel like an expert, and following the same routines they did back then. It was less about experiencing Disney and more about recreating their childhoods down to the smallest details.

And what really baffled me? They were so excited to get photos with the characters. Full-grown men enthusiastically lining up to pose with Mickey and Goofy, grinning ear to ear—while I was actively avoiding them at all costs. I did the theme park equivalent of crossing the road to avoid someone I know, steering clear before a giant costumed figure could wave at me. Meanwhile, these guys were practically running toward them.

Why This Fascinates Me From a PR Perspective

So what does this have to do with PR? A lot, actually.

Celebration, the fake but real town in Orlando.

The way people react to Disney Adults is a branding issue. Whether fair or not, the image of Disney fandom has been shaped by a mix of gender bias, infantilisation, and nostalgia-driven consumer culture. The Disney vlogging scene, in particular, is an interesting case of how social narratives around nostalgia, gender roles, and consumerism get reinforced through content creation.

Disney has mastered the art of emotional branding, selling an experience that isn’t just a holiday but a piece of personal history. They’ve made it so deeply sentimental that some fans will defend the parks as if their childhood is under attack. That’s branding on another level.

From a crisis PR perspective, it’s a reminder that public perception is never about reality, it’s about the stories people choose to tell. Disney Adults aren’t any different from die-hard sports fans or film buffs, but because of how the narrative has been shaped, they’ve become a cultural punchline.

Just because Disney and Universal didn’t sweep me in like it did Disney Adults doesn’t mean I don’t understand the pull. I’d go back, the rollercoasters are brilliant, but the noise around it just didn’t work for me. I appreciated how clever and immersive everything was, but there was no deep inner excitement beyond “That’s clever how they did that.”

I didn’t go as a kid, except for one rainy visit to Disneyland Paris, so they never trapped me with nostalgia. But nostalgia itself is powerful.

Men traditionally follow their dad’s football team, and that holds the same emotional weight. My family are huge Arsenal fans, and even though Highbury is no more, when I do go and see them play, there’s a nostalgic element for sure. I remember watching them as a kid, the old stadium atmosphere, the chants, it all brings back a time that doesn’t exist anymore. That’s what Disney is doing, but on a massive corporate scale.

Perception is everything, and once a label sticks, it’s hard to shake. If Disney Adults were rebranded as “theme park enthusiasts” or “immersive experience fans,” would the backlash even exist? Probably not.

But in the end, Disney isn’t trying to change the perception, because love them or hate them, people are still paying. And from a PR standpoint? That’s a win.