How Gay Days Made a Home at Disney World

Like pretty much every child who walks up Main Street U.S.A. at Disney World for the first time, Alix, 10, and her brother Evan, 11, can barely contain their anticipation. Evan wants to ride Space Mountain. Alix is so excited, she can’t even say what she wants to do. She is jumping up and down. It’s a typical Disney scene, except that Evan, Alix and their sister Jamie, a desultory 4-year-old shielded from the sun in a stroller, have come to the Magic Kingdom with their two moms. It is the 20th anniversary of Gay Days at Disney, and the whole family has traveled from Hickory Corners, Mich., to celebrate.

Gay Days is now one of the largest gay-pride events in the world. According to Watermark, a Florida-based gay newspaper that has been covering Gay Days since it started, about 150,000 people attended this June’s six-day gathering, which included 17 pool parties, a business expo, a comic-book convention, a film festival, an after-hours trip to a Disney water park (think dance music and guys in very small swimsuits), bobble-head painting and tie-dyeing for the kids, rivers of alcohol (and some other substances) for the adults and, on June 5, the great culmination: 20,000 to 30,000 lesbians, gays and their families and friends descending on Disney World, everyone clad in red shirts to signify their presence.

(Watch TIME’s video about Gay Days in the Magic Kingdom.)

Gay Days started modestly in 1991 as a way for some 3,000 lesbians and gays from central Florida to become more visible — on one day, the first Saturday in June — in the theme parks that dominate the region’s economy. Few nongays noticed. But the event sparked something in the gay imagination. For many gays and lesbians who grew up in the latter half of the 20th century, childhood was a time of anxiety and secrets, faggot jokes and spitballs. There was, literally and figuratively, no Glee. Going on the teacup ride or getting wet on Splash Mountain was a way to reclaim an unfinished adolescence. By 1995, at least 10,000 gays and lesbians were traveling to Orlando for the gay day at Disney.

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There was also an element of political theater in a mass Disney visit — a flash mob before the term existed. “Twenty years ago, there were hardly any visible portrayals of our community other than the pride parades,” says Chris Alexander-Manley, 52, president of Gay Days Inc. and one of the volunteers who helped organize the first event in 1991. The media tended to show “the drag queens and the extremes, the leather people,” he says. “But that’s only a small part of the overall community.” A gay day at the Magic Kingdom was a way to emphasize that many gays just want to ride a roller coaster with their partner like any other couple.

How did the event come to rival the pride parades in New York City and San Francisco in terms of attendance? One answer, the answer you would hear from any gay political organization, is that many gay couples now have children. The kids I met on Main Street U.S.A. — Evan, Alix and Jamie — were with their moms Richelle Spencer, 30, and Janice Couchman, 46. Spencer is a deputy sheriff who runs the K-9 unit in Michigan’s Barry County; Couchman, who is originally from the U.K., works in retail. The Couchman-Spencer family avoided the expo and the other adult activities.

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They also did not stay at the official host hotel, a sprawling Doubletree resort whose lobby had been transformed into a frolicking gay idyll. Thousands of people roamed the lobby and convention spaces, which were filled with booths aimed at the gay consumer. There were real estate agents from Key West; representatives from Re-Bath, which claims to be the world’s largest bathroom remodeler; a team of nurses under a sign offering free hepatitis A and B vaccinations and another team that would give you HIV-test results in 20 minutes; purveyors of teeth whitener and fancy vinegars.

In another part of the expo, closed to those under 18, there were huge displays for companies that sell pornography, sex toys and lubricants. A Doubletree desk clerk doing his best to be professional was given a handwritten note: “Call me, sex muffin.” A phone number followed.

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Even though Disney has never officially sanctioned Gay Days and has asked employees to treat the first Saturday in June just like any other day, Christian-right groups have scolded the company for doing nothing to stop the event. For eight years after Gay Days began, the Southern Baptist Convention boycotted Disney. But it’s unclear what, specifically, conservatives wanted park officials to do — ban anyone in a red shirt on the first Saturday in June?

Evan, Alix and Jamie had a great time with their moms at Disney World on June 5. They loved Disney’s afternoon Celebrate a Dream Come True parade, which they watched right up front, by the castle. Thousands of gays and lesbians and their families surrounded them. “That was really awesome and empowering,” Couchman told me later. “The kids really felt part of the bigger picture.” For the Couchman-Spencer family, the only controversy about Gay Days was how long to stay. The kids got tired. By the time Disney’s big nighttime electrical parade was over, the family had been at the park for 12 hours.

Other gays pushed the boundaries of what the park might consider family friendly. One man wore a red T-shirt with three enormous letters on the front: “F-A-G.” Others carried water bottles that had been filled in advance with cocktails, since the Magic Kingdom does not serve alcohol. The night before, at the Gay Days event at Disney’s Typhoon Lagoon water park, a man had to be taken away by security because he was high on something and incoherent.

The drugs and overt sexuality at Gay Days are one reason some lesbians and gays are opposed to the event. “It hurts the cause to gain equal rights,” says Alex Wall, 24, a test-prep teacher and lesbian activist who has been called an Uncle Tom because of anti–Gay Days comments she posted on Facebook. “I’m all for having a good time,” she wrote, “but not at the expense of people’s family vacation.”

A former Disney employee who was at the park on June 5 told me that every year, Disney issues refunds or free next-day tickets to angry moms and dads who don’t want their kids exposed to gay couples or gay-themed shirts. Some families don’t get past Main Street U.S.A. before turning around and taking the monorail back to the parking lots.

But they are a vanishing minority. Gay Days may be an occasion for gays to overindulge and conservatives to squirm, but Evan, Alix and Jamie are the future: kids with their parents who want the great American vacation, no politics required.

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