100 Days of Wonder – #90

Now that Christmas and birthday are done, we enter that weird time between Christmas and New Year. The old not quite done, the new not quite here. You get glimpses of the possibilities and potential of what is to come but you’re also not quite ready to let go of what was. I love this liminality. I love being in liminal spaces, maybe because of the promise of endless possibilities and new adventures that they hold. There’s the possibility of new ways of thinking, new ways of doing things, of positive change and discovery but at this point there is no risk, no threat of chucking the baby out with the bathwater and abandon the good in the pursuit of the new. Liminal is uncertain, yes, but it’s exciting.

Disney World is incredibly good at creating spaces that, to me anyway, feel very liminal. There are no harsh endings and beginning just lots of transitions. You can see it everywhere. For example as you walk from the Contemporary Resort to the Magic Kingdom, you move along the path and it’s very resort like but you transition to Magic Kingdom park bit by bit as you walk along the path with commemorative bricks, through security, past themed bins, under the railways arches and into Main Street USA. As you walk under the arches there is a change and the opening up into Main Street is as close as you will come to a big reveal – but it doesn’t feel jarring or sudden. It feels like you have been building to it and when you get there you are ready. You see it in the parks with the transitions between worlds. You can linger with the magic of the castle right until you are carried away by the anticipation of Tomorrowland. Or, if you go the other way, you can feel the pixie dust right until the excitement of Adventureland hits. You never feel like you have to exit, or stop, instead you transition easily, comfortably and without ever breaking the spell from one story into the next. You also see it within rides. You transition through a liminal not quite park, not quite ride space as you make your way through the queue and somehow it keeps the magic alive. My brain really likes the lack of stopping and starting different things and the encouragement to just flow from one to the other through these spaces that are both nothing and the places you came from and the places you are going at the same time. It seems I like being in-between – where nothing has yet finished and anything is possible.