Breaking: Disneyland Converts Corporate Embarrassment Into Family Entertainment
This is what happens when Imagineers get stuck in HR training.
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Writing about the new live-action Lilo and Stitch a couple of weeks ago got me thinking about Disney and its interconnected properties. Since they have been having a terrible time at the box office, releasing flop after flop, I thought, “Hey, this could be an opportunity!”
To help them out I’ve come up with some exciting new rides for Disney theme parks, inspired by their ups and downs…mostly downs, and I took the initiative to write this faux release to get them off to a great start, free of charge… or they could send me a $16 churro for my hard work and great attitude!
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Disneyland Unveils 10 Groundbreaking Attractions Based on Its Worst Box Office Decisions: Now With 40% More Regret!™
ANAHEIM, CA — June 20, 2025 — In a bold move that both mental health professionals and YouTube film critics have called “deeply concerning,” Disneyworld is proud to announce a new slate of immersive attractions based on its most spectacularly disappointing live-action remakes and forgotten box office disasters. Welcome to the “Repressed Memories Land” expansion—because nothing says “family fun” like unresolved grief and a $16 churro.
"People said these films were flops," related Disney Death Spiral Integration Director Dr. Marty Plott, LMHC, and part-time improv comic. "But we know how to turn neglect, betrayal, and CGI abominations into interactive joy! Think of it as exposure therapy with merch."
NEW RIDES INCLUDE:
🎢 Lilo & the Legal System
An enclosed roller coaster through the unlit tunnel of Hawaii’s overwhelmed Child Protective Services. Plunge 12 stories in the dark as Lilo is handed over to a geriatric foster mom followed by a 180 underwater corkscrew where Stitch becomes a therapy animal for children with attachment disorders. Sponsored by Lexapro®.
🚀 Lightyear: The Existential Coaster
Strap in for a ride that goes nowhere—fast! Wizz around in circles as a Buzz automaton questions the meaning of time, identity, and merchandising. Features endless loops, and angsty babbling! Captain America stars as Buzz, and absolutely no Woody, none, not even a little bit.
🌊 Live-Action Snow White and the Seven Equity Consultants™: This Time We Lawyered Up!
Guests board an enchanted water carriage shaped like a LinkedIn profile, gliding through gorgeously lit scenes devoid of joy but rich in messaging. Float in the lazy river of Snow White not falling in love, not cleaning a house, and not engaging in any behavior that might inspire little girls to do anything other than file an HR complaint!
Then enjoy the finale thrill of a 1000-foot super flume drop into the Canyon of Consequences— charting Rachel Zegler’s public statements in reverse chronological order, including layers of deleted tweets, passive-aggressive red carpet interviews, and ill-advised video clips!!
🐘 Live-Action Mulan Nap Area!
Take a breather strapped to a chair while a Mulan-shaped standee breezes through saving China without a lick of personal growth! Comfortable recliners with restraints will give you both the comfort and security that everything will be fine without ever having to reflect on any shortcomings! BONUS! For an additional $200, take home a goodnight recording of shredding documents, and corporate cow-towing to the CCP chants to fall asleep to!
🧜♀️ Live-Action Ariel's Voice Recovery Center
An interactive therapy workshop where guests journal about Lin-Manuel Miranda’s parental boundary violations with the song “Scuttlebutt” and the residual emotional trauma from the CGI uncanny valley! All while learning vocalization tips from animatronics! Triggering for linguists.
📚 Indiana Jones and the Dial of Diminishing Returns™
Step into your dusty, CGI-smoothed loafers and join 80-year-old Indiana Jones on a high-octane mobility scooter through a confusing blur of time travel! Featuring:
Animatronic Harrison Ford grunts in pain every time he stands up.
A.I. De-Aging Tunnel™, where your face gets digitally smoothed until you look like a haunted PlayStation 3 character.
Phoebe Waller-Bridge Override, where your vehicle is hijacked every 2 minutes so she can deliver a monologue about colonialism.
Historical Inaccuracy Spinners, where the faster you turn, the less anything makes sense.
Ride Time: 2 hours and 34 minutes. Just like the movie. And it feels like all of it.
👸 Wish - The Ride to Nowhere™
Climb aboard Disney’s most daring ride yet: a visually stunning, narratively empty journey through a musical that reminds you of all the better Disney movies! Enjoy the Star Drop Section, where you plummet 300 feet as Star™ bobs near your face, communicating deep emotional wisdom through blank stares and sparkles!
Warning! - May cause confusion, mild existential crisis, and unshakable déjà vu.
💚 She-Hulk: Motion to Dismiss™ – The Ride
Welcome to the first-ever courtroom-themed rollercoaster where your emotional stability is tested harder than Marvel's CGI budget.
Guests are seated two-by-two in giant, neon-green Legal Brief Mobiles™ and hurled through the multiverse of mixed tones, dating app disasters, and fourth-wall breaks that never got a callback.
💥 Special Effects:
Hulk-smash track segments that go nowhere.
Objection Overruled: a random trapdoor under half the audience.
Twerking animatronics that cause all carts to stop and experience “secondhand cringe.”
Disclaimer:
This ride is considered canon until it isn't. Any enjoyment felt during the experience is subject to reinterpretation in future phases. Consult your lawyer before emotional investment.
🎢 "The Marvels: Multiverse of Mid – Where Plot is Optional, but Empowerment is Mandatory!"
Step into your Plothole Pod™ and prepare to be catapulted through the chaotic, CGI-smeared vacuum of Disney’s The Marvels — where the budget is massive, but the stakes are nonexistent!
Begin with a gravity-defying spiral through Captain Marvel’s Personality-Free Zone, where guests confront the bold message: “Strength means never showing emotion, unless it’s disdain.”
Next, plunge into Ms. Marvel’s TikTok Tunnel, complete with dancing holograms shouting “Slay Queen!” while her family lectures you on cultural representation — in case you forgot diversity was the actual plot.
Bounce off the Monica Rambeau Identity Crisis Wall, where you’re asked to feel inspired by a character the writers forgot to write — but don’t worry, you’re still problematic for not applauding her anyway.
⚔️Disney+ Star Wars Disappointment Pavilion™ Including:
🌌 The Acolyte: Path of Most Resistance™
Tagline: “Feel the Force. Eventually.”
Ride Description: Climb aboard this slow-moving, hyperspace-hovercraft dark ride through the High Republic... or whatever’s left of it after the writers got tenure in the Writer’s Room of Diversity.
As you glide past vast, dimly-lit halls of vague lore and whispered tension, a disembodied narrator whispers, “What if the Sith… had a point?” before veering off into a lecture on intergalactic patriarchy. Thrill in your seat as Jedi Masters are bested by morally complex baristas with better feelings.
Interactive feature: Guests vote at the end if the plot ever started. It’s always 73% “No.”
⚙️ Andor: Bureaucracy Run™
Tagline: “Rebel paperwork has never been this thrilling.”
Ride Description: It’s the galaxy’s first queue-themed ride — and the queue is the ride. Spend 45 minutes navigating forms, standing in line, and arguing with animatronic Imperial middle managers about docking permits.
Midway through, a thrilling twist: you attend a planning meeting about a prison break you won’t participate in for another six episodes!
Ride climax: You're interrogated by a droid with monotone inflection while a resistance fighter reads Marxist poetry on loop.
Guest reviews: “It’s like It’s a Small World, but everyone's exhausted and British.”
🌀 Ahsoka: The Black Box Experience™
Tagline: “No one watched it. Now you can not watch it... in person.”
Ride Description: Step into total darkness — literally. This cutting-edge sensory deprivation experience recreates the cultural impact of Ahsoka by immersing you in a pitch-black box theater where plot threads drift like forgotten Jedi apprentices.
Guests sit in silence for 34 minutes while an off-screen voice mutters, “Ezra?” and a faint space whale moan echoes from the left speaker.
Occasionally, a spotlight turns on and Rosario Dawson appears just long enough to frown meaningfully... before disappearing again.
Midway through, the floor rotates 180 degrees, symbolizing the show's abrupt tonal shifts and narrative inertia.
And that’s not all! Announcing this Exclusive Bonus Attraction!
🎢 Disney’s Culture War Carousel™: “Now Spinning in All Directions — Inclusively!”
Tagline: Where dreams come true… but never for long.
Welcome to the Culture War Carousel™, where Disney’s decades-long quest to please everyone turns into a whiplash-inducing ride through the Woke Industrial Complex™!
Board your Identity-Themed Ride Vehicles™ — choose from options like:
the Rainbow Falcon (now with 17 flags),
the Land Acknowledgement Express (brief delay for ceremonial guilt),
or the Straight White Male cart (which self-destructs at the halfway point in the name of equity).
Your journey begins with a sanitized land acknowledgment and an AI-generated DEI statement in 47 languages (except Mandarin — too risky.)
Then up you go as your cart is lifted on a 70-foot counterbalanced trebuchet arm to take off, where you:
🚀 Launch into Woke Wonderland: DEI speeches, diverse heroes, stock drop.
🎢 Flip into the Corporate Chaos Loop: Apologies fly, Bob Iger sweats, Cancel Cannon™ fires.
🎭 Freefall Through the Exit Test: Denounce a classic while AI interns sing, “Capitalism is violence.”
🌀 Finale: The Purity Spiral™Just when you think it’s over, the ride accelerates into the Virtue Cyclone™, where you’re personally accused of insufficient allyship by a talking animatronic Tumblr post. The only escape? Pledging monthly donations to a gender-expansive storytelling fund and deleting all Marvel Phase 1 DVDs.
🎁 Gift Shop Includes:
"I Survived the Discourse" T-shirts (cancelled in 6 colors)
Reusable straw sets shaped like problematic side characters
Emotional Support Mouse plushies that whisper microaggression callouts while you sleep
Disclaimer: Ride is subject to change based on the latest controversy. Please check your privileges before boarding.
“At Disney, we’re not afraid to confront our mistakes,” said CEO Bob Iger’s AI-generated stand-in. “In fact, we monetize them!”
Repressed Memories Land opens Fall 2025. Bring tissues, a support animal, and your therapist’s emergency number.
Housekeeping
So far 2025 has been a summer of thunderstorms. And Eastern Tennessee has been living up to its reputation almost being a rainforest. (I think it’s a rainforest. I don’t care about the technicalities!)
In any case, that has meant a bumper crop of mosquitos. Now this is not quite so bad as say Alaska level blood loss, but I find myself more allergic to the TN area insect advances.
I have come to think of the summer here as the itchy season.
On a related note, Poppet and I have come across quite a few asters…probably fleabane but I find it hard to tell that apart from wolfsbane or dogbane or any of the other banes, except the Batman one. He’s recognizable.
Not this Bane ❌❌❌
We also saw some wild bee balm doing its job of supplying nectar.
On the Bookshelf
I have been listening to the Licensing Racket. Arguably I’ve finished it, but I keep going back because I keep finding more information.
Accreditation on the Edge: Challenging Quality Assurance in Higher Education by Susan D. Phillips
The Case Against Education by Bryan Caplan
The Licensing Racket: How We Decide Who Is Allowed to Work, and Why It Goes Wrong by Rebecca Haw Allensworth
Moral Calculations: Game Theory, Logic and Human Frailty by Laszlo Mero
The New Know-nothings: The Political Foes of the Scientific Study of Human Nature by Morton Hunt
The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha: New Revised Standard by Marc Brettler, Carol Newsom, Pheme Perkins
Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! Adventures of a Curious Character by Richard Feynman
We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of the New Elite by Musa al-Gharbi
“Whatever It Is, I’m Against It”: Resistance to Change in Higher Education by Brian Rosenberg
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About
Diogenes in Exile began after I returned to grad school to pursue a Clinical Mental Health Counseling master’s degree at the University of Tennessee. What I encountered, however, was a program deeply entrenched in Critical Theories ideology. During my time there, I experienced significant resistance, particularly for my Buddhist practice, which was labeled as invalidating to other identities. After careful reflection, I chose to leave the program, believing the curriculum being taught would ultimately harm clients and lead to unethical practices in the field.
Since then, I’ve dedicated myself to investigating, writing, and speaking out about the troubling direction of psychology, higher education, and other institutions that seem to have lost their way. When I’m not working on these issues, you’ll find me in the garden, creating art, walking my dog, or guiding my kids toward adulthood.
You can also find my work at Minding the Campus
great chatgpt article and cover image