Disneyland. Photo / 123RF
As his daughter is left star-struck by the princesses of Disneyland, Winston Aldworth finds his Frozen heart melts.
It's when she's perched at the top of a five-storey watery descent that my daughter and I both have epiphanies. In the nanosecond before descent, she realises just how profoundly angry a little girl can possibly be with her dad and I realise that she will still get that angry despite me bringing her to Disneyland.
It seemed like a good idea at the time. Taking our seats on Disneyland's famous Splash Mountain water ride, I figured I'd make sure I got my 4-and-a-half-year-old daughter Zoe into the very front of the small log-shaped carriage that bumps its way around the nine-minute, watery journey.
That way she'd get the best view, right? There'd be no wide, soda-slurping Yank in the way. It's commonsense.
"Where you're seated will determine how wet you'll likely get," I read - many days later - on the Disneyland website. "Riders in the back may just experience a sudden splash or spray; those who opt for the front can expect to get soaked." Yes, soaked. Well played, Father of the Year.
"I'm so angry!" She declared minutes after the ride had finished, as she stood outside Splash Mountain, drenched to the bone and, yes, angry to her sodden, little, incredibly spirited core. "I want dry clothes! Right now!"
Fortunately a change of clothes was at hand. Dry ones. And very special ones. But we'll be getting to Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique in a minute.
We tell ourselves that we do these things for the kids.
We pack their lunches and snacks, dress them up and trot them off to places - playgrounds, mostly, but beaches and other kids' birthday parties feature prominently. And then we document the whole thing in photos. Photos on the fridge, photos on Facebook. Underlining the memories and, for the kids, creating memories of actual events they can soon hardly recall. (Truly self-indulgent parents even write travel stories about holidays with their kids. Imagine that!)
So I told myself that I did it for Zoe. And on the surface, I sure did. She was stoked.
Yet months later, it's me prodding Zoe's memory. Running her through the photos - including the one where she's wearing an expression of abject horror at the top of Splash Mountain - and trying to plant little memory seeds.
"Remember that time on Ariel's ride, darling? And remember that little girl you met on the monorail? And you gave her your balloon? Hey, remember how angry you were after Splash Mountain?" (And, yep, she's still definitely in touch with her rage on that one.)
For much of her time inside the walls of Disneyland, Zoe was utterly star-struck. She didn't even know who Minnie Mouse was until we got there. We chanced upon a meeting with Mickey's main squeeze as soon as we entered Disneyland on the first day. Zoe wanted to go straight from there to Minnie's house to meet her again. Both times, standing gormlessly star-struck.
The reason Minnie Mouse had never really registered on Zoe's radar is because that radar has been dominated by the big beast of the Disney princess stratosphere. Elsa from Frozen.
Disney's kiddie-culture behemoth has dissected, analysed and mastered the DNA of little girls, figuring out exactly what makes them tick. The songs are agreeable to adult ears and the characters seem likable enough -- but the icy grip that Frozen has on Little Girl World is greater than the sum of the movie's parts.
These days, when we talk about something "going viral", we generally mean it spread via social media - like those wonderful videos of skateboarders landing on their nuts right on a handrail. But when Frozen went viral it was old-school, word-of-mouth stuff. The lyrics to the songs and the little dance moves and gestures were shared by kids in playgrounds, schoolgrounds and kindergartens the world over.
Zoe saw the movie once and thought little of it; she even wanted to leave the theatre before the end. Months later, the virus took hold. And today, it's all about Elsa, the troubled ice queen with major issues; the princess of myth at the end of a prince's quest - or, in this case, her sister's quest.
"Why do you like Elsa, Zoe?"
"Because she's got ice powers."
Writing in The Independent, Jane Merrick sees a feminist hero in Elsa.
"Elsa is not like other Disney princesses ... Instead she is the female equivalent of a superhero like Batman or Spider-Man. And little girls, who haven't quite yet had society's norms thrust upon them, just want the same as little boys - they want to emulate superheroes, not the demure and subservient princesses waiting for their prince to come."
And so, here we are at Ground Zero of the Frozen flu. I can picture a laboratory, deep below the surface of Disneyland, in which a massive team of scientists and psychologists - really, really smart ones - wrote the tunes and scripted the one-liners. Luckily, dads are immune.
Zoe, on the other hand, is in the grip of the Frozen flu. The longest queue we joined during our four days at Disneyland was the one for tickets to meet the princesses. That's right, it wasn't the queue to actually meet Elsa and Anna - it was the queue to get tickets to come back and join another queue later in the day. Feminist heroes or not, these girls know how to work a crowd.
We were definitely doing it for Zoe.
The post-Splash Mountain change of clothes was no normal set of dry kit. At Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique, little girls get a makeover to look like their favourite Disney princess. Zoe chose Elsa. So did the girl in the next chair and the six others seated alongside them. I saw dozens of Elsas in the boutique, but just one other princess, a cute-as-a-button Sleeping Beauty. Hundreds of Elsas roam Disneyland.
With her hair too short for the full bun, Zoe was left with a kind of a mullet at the back (we might be at Disneyland, but we'll always be West Aucklanders). The rest of her, from the dress, to the wand, to the nail polish is utterly Elsafied. She's transfixed by the process and, at the end, spellbound by her reflection. I'm speechless.
I could barely recognise my own daughter. Oh well, we're only here once.
With Zoe dressed as Elsa, we spent the afternoon meeting princesses. Sleeping Beauty, Ariel, Cinderella and others I couldn't recall.
They all called her Queen Elsa and, in royal fashion, made polite chitchat, mostly about the wand.
The highlight, inevitably, came when my little speechless Elsa, met the big grown-up Elsa. Like the Splash Mountain rage incident, I don't need to prod Zoe to remember meeting Elsa.
We're definitely doing this for Zoe.
Hey! Great news for dads! There's a cool new Star Wars ride over in Tomorrowland! It's got the Millennium Falcon in it!
"No," says Zoe. "I want to go on the Sleeping Beauty ride again."
(That'd be the fifth time we've done that ride.)
"There's a princess in Star Wars too, you know ..."
Removed from our usual settings and perhaps enlivened by having actually met Elsa, Zoe pushes some radical conversation agendas.
"Daddy, babies come from mummies' tummies," Zoe tells me point-blank over dinner. "But how do the babies get into mummies' tummies?"
"Well, mummies and daddies put them there."
"I know that." She pauses. "But how do they put them there?"
Time passes. "Hey, sweetheart, do you think we'll see Minnie Mouse again tomorrow?"
The profound observations continue at breakfast the next morning. Her hair is bedraggled; she insisted on sleeping in her tiara.
"Daddy," she looks at me earnestly as we eat bananas, yoghurt and nuts. "When you grow up, your boobies are called 'nibbles'."
She's watching me, checking my reaction to see if I concur. So, I concur.
Yes, we're doing this for Zoe.
In Disneyland, you see no litter. Not only do you see no litter, but you don't even see people who pick up the litter. Everyone is happy. It's not like the rest of the world, but parts of this place are definitely the way the world should be.
"I was in California," says Mad Men character Don Draper. "Everything's new, and it's clean. The people are filled with hope."
Just check your cynicism at the door and you'll all live happily ever after.
• Pick your time of year. We were there at the end of September and we hit a good patch between major holidays. There was still a heap of people, but whenever a ride or attraction had a large queue, we moved along to the next one. Except when it came to meeting the Frozen princesses - there was no moving from that one. We never queued for more than 10 minutes.
• Pack a lunch (we refuelled on nuts and bananas). But don't fret if the kids hit the junk food - they're at Disneyland, not boot camp.
• The FastPass system allows you to book a slot on a ride later in the day. But if you're there when it's not busy, then you probably don't need it.
CHECKLIST
Getting there: Air New Zealand flies up to three times daily to Los Angeles from Auckland. Its 777-300s carry the Economy Skycouch facility for an additional fee.
Accommodation: The Anabella is a California mission-style hotel, ideal for families. It's a 15-minute walk to the main gates of Disneyland.
The writer and his daughter travelled as guests of Air New Zealand and Anaheim Orange County Visitor & Convention Bureau.
The trendy spot is just six minutes from the Waikiki beach.