Abstract
In response to the closing of the Walt Disney theme parks at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, fans of Disneyland and Walt Disney World produced videos re-creating their favorite rides and attractions for a viral social media trend dubbed #homemadeDisney. The typically short (usually 30–90 seconds) videos from #homemadeDisney turned ‘guests’ into ‘cast members’ (staff) and smartphone owners into living room ‘imagineering’ ride designers. Participants engaged in a form of shared make-believe (Walton 1990) by assembling household objects as props, improvising ride elements, and performing as theme parkgoers for one another. The extensive collection of social media videos analyzed for this article reveals how fans interpreted attractions through a shared mimetic grammar (Milner 2016), the ride aesthetic (Telotte 2008), and the playful nature of the theme park experience.
Highlights
The social media phenomenon began inauspiciously when Disney fan Jess Siswick’s trip to Walt Disney World for a social media marketing and branding conference was abruptly cancelled
The event continued with virtual participation and Siswick used those days to creatively combine her career in content and video production with her Disney Fandom
The many #homemadeDisney contributions in the months after this post followed the “multimodal grammar” (Milner 2018, p. 49) that Siswick had unintentionally established. Her video, which is worth describing for posterity, used quick cuts to create a montage of Magic Kingdom events
Summary
On 13 March 2020, in light of the rapidly spreading COVID-19 pandemic, the Walt Disney Company announced that it would temporarily suspend operations in its United States theme parks. The most visible of these efforts was the #homemadeDisney (or, #homemadeUniversal or #homemadeThemePark) trend in which fans made videos that used everyday objects to re-create rides in their houses and backyards. These mimetic videos were prime examples of “multimodal texts that facilitate participation by reappropriation, by balancing a fixed premise with novel expression” In the early months of the COVID19 pandemic, #homemadeDisney videos revealed how fans interpreted their own personal relationship to the parks through playful performance and make-believe
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