It Can Happen to You!

Young-at-heart gays flock to the Magic Kingdom for a wild weekend adventure at Gay Days Disneyland taking place Oct. 6-8.

By John hobbs

Long before your world became a strictly-regimented 9-to-5 day of nightmarish commutes, dull business meetings and looming deadlines, you were most likely ruled by childlike flights of fancy. You didn’t consult your Blackberry to see if you had time to capture fireflies on a warm summer evening. You never worried about health insurance coverage before climbing that massive oak tree in your backyard. And you didn’t need a special occasion to venture off to Disneyland for a day of riding the Matterhorn over and over again and cavorting around the park with your favorite Disney characters. Where did that spirited little scamp go? This Friday, break free from the level-headed adult world for 48 hours by throwing on a red shirt and dashing off to Anaheim for a wild weekend adventure in the Magic Kingdom as the ninth unofficial Gay Days comes to Southern California.

“Disney is a place, particularly for me, where, as a young gay kid being ostracized by my peers, I would go and feel like I fit in. It’s a very welcoming place and so [Gay Days] is a chance for gays to reclaim the youth that they may not have enjoyed so much,” explains Jeffrey Epstein, whose lifelong love of Disney led him to resuscitate an ailing annual gay buy-out event at Disneyland in 1998.

“When they used to do the [buy-out] at Disneyland, they operated on a limited capacity, meaning they didn’t have as many ride vehicles on the track so the lines were really long, there were no shows, no restaurants, no fireworks and no Disney characters. A lot of the things that make a Disneyland experience a Disneyland experience were not happening,” he says. After going to Gay Days in Orlando, Epstein decided to bring their successful mix-in concept, in which the park is open to the general public with gay and lesbian adventurers wearing red shirts to identify themselves, to Southern California.

With large portions of the park no longer swathed in darkness, the 30,000 red-shirted gays expected to pour in through the gates on Oct. 7 will be free to enjoy the park completely unfettered. The weekend-long event features a myriad of activities designed to appeal to all shades of gay, ranging from a family lunch for gays with children to a queer youth dinner and movie for gays under 21 to star-studded screenings of here! TV’s Shock to the System and Dante’s Cove. There’s even a meeting point for single riders to gather and pair up so that they won’t have to face Space Mountain alone. “I think Gay Days at Disneyland is all about our community and the truest sense of what gay pride is all about. It’s about people coming together and celebrating our diversity,” says drag diva Momma, who is scheduled to make appearances at several parties throughout the weekend.

At no other time is the diversity of the event more obvious than at the annual group photo. “It’s such a great moment every year to get all these people, from all walks of life—youth, older people, lesbians, gay men, leather daddies and circuit boys—together for this mass photo. That’s what I love about Gay Days. It’s not an event that appeals to just one sort of gay person. It appeals to all kinds because there are all kinds of gay people,” quips Epstein.

Of all the scheduled events at Disneyland, the most popular are those that occur after the sun has gone down. “I always look forward to Kingdom the most,” says Epstein about the Saturday night party taking place at the House of Blues in Downtown Disney. “I am really excited to see Jennifer Hudson perform this year. I got a chance to see her sing a couple of songs at a special preview for [Dreamgirls] and she just floored me so I can’t wait to see what she does.” In addition to Hudson, who, Epstein confides, used to work aboard a Disney cruiseliner before she was shot into stardom with her appearance on American Idol, the party will also feature hosts Wilson Cruz and Alec Mapa, singers Jason and deMarco, DJ Kimberly spinning and Momma leading a procession of Disney villains in “Divas of the Kingdom.”

Other afterhour events keeping party people busy all weekend long include Friday night’s Wonderland, a Trevor Project fundraiser taking place at Ralph Brennan’s Jazz Kitchen in Downtown Disney and Gay at the Grand, the final party taking place at the Hearthstone Lounge in Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel.

After sleeping off your party buzz, gay mouseketeers can either scamper off to tackle Disney’s assortment of thrilling rides or Disney fanatics who make several pilgrimmages a year to the Magic Kingdom a year can test their knowledge of all things Disney with a challenging scavenger hunt put on by Momma. “The scavenger hunts are for those of us who have annual passes and are regulars. I try to create an activity where we don’t have to go on all the rides, but can still do something with groups of people. So I created scavenger hunts, which last about two hours and help you find fun facts and ideas that are in Disneyland that you might have never recognized,” explains Momma, who admits to not only having been an annual passholder at Disneyland since 1983 when she became the 87th person to get the year-round pass, but also to frequenting the park nearly every week.

“It’s all about creating community this weekend,” she explains. “A few years ago, I ran into some very dykey lesbians from central California, who were fearful of the reaction they were going to get from all the other gay boys. But, by the end of the weekend, they were really just as gay as the gay boys. They were having so much fun. I [got to] see some women, who have to keep up walls because they live in central California, find a place of freedom and have a great time.”

Gay Days takes place Oct. 6-8 at Disneyland, 1313 Harbour Blvd., Anaheim. For more information and a complete schedule of events, go to www.gaydaysanaheim.com.