So This is Love: What Disney History Teaches Us About Love - Paperback

This thoughtfully curated collection of meditations explores love through the stories, spaces, and history of Disney culture. Written by historian, author, and digital creator Disney Cicerone, So This Is Love weaves together obscure park history, intimate Imagineer anecdotes, and real Disney love stories to show the many ways love shapes our lives. Nostalgic and deeply human, this book invites readers to see the Disney parks not just as places of magic, but as mirrors of connection, devotion, and hope.

Disneyland was a gift of love from Walt Disney.

Parts of it were for his children, his wife, and perhaps even to make his dad proud posthumously, as many men hope to do, despite Walt’s complicated relationship with his father. But more than anything, Disneyland was a gift to us. 

Walt remembered the hardships of his generation. What the world was like before and after two World Wars. The penny-pinching of the Great Depression era. The reality of Christmas gifts being practical things like socks and shoes, and not imaginative toys (except the odd one from his brother Roy). He knew how heartbreaking the world could be, so he created a place that was free of heartbreak for us to get lost in, if only for a little while. 

He loved us. 

He loved us in insisting on details that were simply “beauty for beauty’s sake,” as Ray Bradbury would attest, referring to the golden spire atop the castle that makes no sense with the Bavarian architecture. In fact, some of the amusement park creators that Walt consulted for advice while developing Disneyland told him to get rid of the castle because it was a waste of space that wouldn’t make him any money. 

The castle. 

The most iconic symbol of the whole park. 

But Walt knew it mattered. 

Walt knew we mattered. That we were worth spending the money on, to make the park a place we’d want to return to, again and again. To catch details we’d missed. To bring our kids and point out the beautiful icons that were the foundations of our childhood. The origin of our dreams. The starting place of our hope. 

Somehow, he knew. 

And so that’s where we begin this journey of finding out what love is: by Walt’s example.