Hello and welcome to very amusing your one-stop shop for the stories, secrets, and

shenanigans of a popcorn-fueled theme park journalist. I'm Carly Wiesel and I'm

feeling quarantine y'all. It ebbs and it flows but Labor Day weekend a few days ago really got me down.

This is supposed to be our bummer of a turning point that ugh all the nice beach weather is gone and summer is over

or if you're in California

that you will now burn alive if you go outside. But it was just another step

forward on the emptiness treadmill that is 2020. I mean I'm in Colorado and it is literally a blizzard outside.

Early September and it's a blizzard. I cannot deal.

Now I promise this won't be one woman's slam poetry hour about the annoyance that is this year,

but given that looking forward keeps getting bleaker, I've been spending all my free time lately looking backwards,

and I really think it's helping. I watched

defunct lands video on Tomorrowland at the time of Disneyland's opening, listened to

background music loops at Epcot from the early days and saw a bunch of

clips of Rocketrods at Disneyland which, as you'll remember from last

week's episode, I had never been on. And it's

really been so nice. I find that channeling a park I still can't go to for a much more airtight reason, you know, the time travel doesn't exist yet.

Is an easier pill to swallow than not knowing when many people's jobs, livelihoods, and day-to-day may return.

Also, does anyone else find themselves missing the tiniest, strangest parts of California

theme parks? I found myself daydreaming more than once

about the drive I'd take through the hills to reach Universal Studios Hollywood or

strangely the Disneyland lockers.

Last year I started getting a locker on every single Disneyland trip

...