From a Child's View
One of the really great things that Disney does is that they often walk in the shoes of children. My visit to Disney’s new Aulani Resort in Hawaii reinforced that notion. I was in the front of the hotel admiring the artwork when I saw a small child leaning down and looking through the keyhole of an end table. He seemed intent on what he was looking at.
After he left I thought little of it until the next morning I passed by the same table. I stopped to take a look and found that the keyhole was a portal to a miniature world all of its own.
My mind started looking for other such locations around the hotel. In the area dedicated to small children watching TV while their parents are handling front desk matters, I found a number of images such as the following:
I quickly recalled some of the other wonderful Disney resorts that provide the same opportunity. At Disney’s Wilderness Lodge, small animals grace the front desk of that resort. While a parent is busy checking in, their knee highs are down below checking out animals such as the following:
The same experience awaits young visitors to Disney’s Grand Californian Resort. There not only small bronze sculptures of small animals native to California await along the front desk, but so do a number of animals represented in bas-relief
Disney’s been seeing things from the eyes of a child for years. One of my favorites has been the sculpture of Cinderella in the courtyard just outside of Cinderella Castle. Any adult can see the image of her is in her working, peasant clothes. But get down to the eyes of a child, and you see a crown above her head.
We could all benefit from seeing things from a child’s view. That’s not just getting down on their level physically. It’s about getting down on their level innocently. While I would never espouse being childish, I think it wouldn’t hurt if we were perhaps more child-like. I think that is the power of Disney. It brings us back to a time and place we long forgot. As Mr. Darling put it at the end of Peter Pan: “You know, I have the strangest feeling that I’ve seen that ship before. A long time ago, when I was very young.”
How do you see things from a child’s view. How does that view inform you of the world around you?
