I’m going to say something that I know might sound unhinged: theme parks are an expression of the modern world’s longing for God and some of the people most attuned to that longing – though often ridiculed by society – are Disney Adults.
Yes, I know how that sounds. But stay with me.
A new theme park just opened - Universal’s Epic Universe – and I’ve been watching YouTube walk-through and review videos. What strikes me again and again is the language people use when talking about these parks. It’s not just about the rides or the food or the characters; it’s the cohesion that gets them. The unified vision. The fact that every lamppost, cobblestone, soundtrack, and snack is speaking the same aesthetic language.
This is the ethos undergirding theme park design in places like Disney and Universal, which are built around the principle that every detail matters. The total immersion of visitors requires consistency down to the color of the pavement and the engravings on the doorknobs in order to successfully conjure the intended fantasy world. Even the trashcans are designed to match the language of their surroundings. These parks are not intended to merely entertain but to transport.
Take the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Orlando. Visitors pass through a magical brick wall in a London street and emerge into Diagon Alley. To their right is Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes bursting with chaos and color, while down the way the crooked pillars of Gringotts bank loom, a dragon perched on the roof that roars and breathes real fire. Visitors can browse and buy in the shops they have spent years reading about in the books, their windows alive with spellbooks that flutter, quills that twitch, and helpful witches and wizards who embody the world in which they live.
In these parks every detail matters and nothing breaks the illusion. In the YouTube videos I watch, self-proclaimed Disney Adults point out this attention to detail constantly, marveling at the utterly enthralling sense of consensus reality it creates.
The wonder Disney Adults feel at the meticulous world-building found in their beloved theme parks isn’t just about spectacle; it’s about the soul’s recognition of – and hunger for - an enchanted order.
Breaking the Spell
Our modern world tells us that what you see is all there is: consciousness is a just fluke of evolution, beauty is subjective, and meaning is only a human construct. There is nothing transcendent about a sunrise, it is just photons scattered by atmospheric particles; there is nothing special about mankind, we are just angst-ridden upright apes with no inherent significance. This disenchantment didn’t just happen, though, it was the result of a long historical unraveling that tore spirit from matter and flattened the world into a lifeless machine.
Before this long process of disenchantment, premodern people believed the world around them was radiant with supernatural presence. This wasn’t a niche theological take, it was the assumed grammar of the premodern mind. In this sacramental worldview, the material world was never just material; it was a theater of divine signs. This understanding is woven throughout Scripture – a burning bush that is not consumed, water that parts and then saves, bread the falls from heaven, oil that anoints, and ultimately through flesh that is the Word. In this vision everything can be understood within a single, coherent rubric of meaning; nothing is isolated or random. To live in such a world was to walk through a creation saturated with meaning, existing within a great unfolding cosmic story.
Over the centuries across the West, the rise of mechanistic science, Enlightenment rationalism, and the slow erosion of religious belief dismantled that cosmic story. Sacrament became symbol and then symbol became superstition. In this way the world was drained of its divine significance, rendered down to meaningless atoms and random happenstance. From a world where everything meant something we found ourselves transported to a world where nothing meant anything.
Yet our longing did not go away. We humans are made for meaning and built for transcendence. In a society that denies us most outlets for that longing, people take what they can get – even if that is the ersatz magic of a theme park. For some of their most ardent fans, even if the fans themselves do not realize it, theme parks provide a secular echo of the sacramental worldview which stirs our buried longing for Eden itself. Here, everything is connected to everything else in an ecosystem of meaning that says: this world holds together for a reason. This is what makes Disney Adults feel a heady sense of wonder and giddy delight. It’s kitsch theology, sure, but it points, however faintly, however artificially, toward the deeper coherence we were made for.
And these theme parks aren’t just magical – they are morally legible. The fairy tales that animate them show us worlds of ontological fullness where things mean what they are supposed to mean. Whether you’re walking through Hogwarts, Cinderella’s Castle, or Snow White’s Enchanted Wish, what defines these spaces isn’t just enchantment, but deep purpose. In these stories magic is never random; it exists within a structure that is in service of a clear moral vision: goodness is good, evil is evil, and we are expected to imaginatively align ourselves with the good to fight against the darkness.
In this way, these fantasy theme park worlds reveal a truth about our real world we often forget: there are true stakes and the choices we make matter. This is part of the Disney Adult longing, too, not just to be enchanted, but to be pulled into a greater purpose because we matter and we are meant to take part in something meaningful.
Where the Veil is Thin Again
CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien, two of the greatest fantasy writers of the twentieth century, pushed back firmly against the modern notion that the magic found in fairy tales was a nefarious or dangerous influence, arguing instead that these magical worlds could reveal deep truths. They understood that fantasy literature - when done well and in the service of good – had the power to awaken the soul’s longing for transcendence. In a secular world that tells us not to long at all, fantasy literature can stir desire, not as a distraction, but to lead us toward wonder’s true source. We keenly feel the loss of our once-enchanted world so we invent stories (and build the theme parks they inspire) where the veil is thin again.
In Miracles, CS Lewis muses that our fondness for fairy tales might stem from a deeper intuition that in the world to come spirit and matter will be so perfectly united that what we now call “magic” in stories may in fact reflect the kind of harmony we will one day experience. A world where nature responds to our will, not through domination, but through perfect communion. Lewis describes not a rejection of matter, but the reunion of heaven and earth, “the fact and the myth remarried… the literal and the metaphorical rushing together.” That’s what we glimpse, however faintly, in these theme parks, a stylized, plastic echo of what a fully redeemed world might feel like. Not escapism, then, but rehearsal.
To be clear: I am not saying that Disney or Universal is consciously trying to offer us a glimpse of Eden for our own good, they are simply in the business of making money. But sometimes the fantastical stories these corporations are working with contain elements that are so potent, so archetypal, that they slip the leash. These fairy tales carry a charge that corporations can’t contain and when the world-building around them is executed with care – even if intended to maximize profit – that mythic charge spills into the resulting environment and tinges everything with a hint of the transcendent.
Today, Disney is seen as something for children. It’s supposed to be outgrown at a certain point and after that indulged only through the proxy of parenting. But that was never Walt Disney’s vision; from the beginning the parks were explicitly conceived of as something for people of all ages. Yet, in our secular modern world we only allow children to retain the wonder we are all meant to experience. After childhood, loving the magic of Disney is something we collectively sneer at, and Disney Adults are seen as cringey and pathetic.
But not all Disney adults are just mindlessly prolonging adolescence or chasing collectible merchandise. Some of them are responding, however unconsciously, to a deeper hunger: the desire to step into a world where everything means something, where wonder is allowed, and where joy is the rightful conclusion to every story. Theme parks may be artificial, but the ache they try to answer is real. And sometimes, even a manufactured fantasy can point us – however dimly – toward the world we are made for.