September 15, 2025 • 34 mins
AJ Wolfe, author of the New York Times Best-Selling Disney Adults, joins me to discuss the Disney Adults phenomenon, including a breakdown from a psychological perspective, as well as a look at why we love Disney so much. Pull up a chair, grab your favorite mug, and have some Coffee With Kenobi!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
This is Vanessa Marshall Harrison Dula from Star Wars Rebels,
and you're listening to coffee with Kenoby.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Well friends, Hello, it is Dan's Air from Coffee with Kenoby.
I am so excited to be here with you to
talk to a New York Times best selling author. She
is one of my dear friends and one of the
few people in the world that can get me tongue
tied where I can't know what to say. See it's
(00:32):
happening now all my golden words are spent. It's aj Wolfe,
the author of Disney Adult Exploring and Falling in Love
with a magical subculture. Aja, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Hi Hian, I am so great.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
How are you.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
That's I didn't realize that I had that power. That's exciting.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
We talked about that when we were all at Ohana
and Deana, my wife, was getting a big kick out
of the fact that you're the only people that can
get me flustered.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
I was. I was a lapoo lapoo down at that point,
so I don't remember too much of it.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
There is nothing wrong with a lap poo lap poo.
Look I got to say, and I texted you and
this happened. When as soon as I saw you're a
New York Times bestselling author, I was so incredibly happy
for you. Like you, no one works as hard as you,
your passion in all things Disney and just what you
put out into the world. So again, so I can
(01:26):
say publicly congratulations on be a New York Times bestselling author.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
I can die happy now.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
I am just beside myself because I never ever thought
that that would happen. But the bottom line is this
audience and this you know, these people to follow what
we do are so incredible that they made it happen.
You know, they absolutely made it happen. So many thanks
to everyone who bought the book.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Well look, yes that is absolutely true. But you you
have established for yourself for a long time you are
you're a go to person that people trust about Disney.
You're always very honest but tactfully. So, although don't quote
me on that, and I think that I think that
you know, there's there's an ethos that comes into play
(02:12):
when it when it comes to you, where where did
you kind of start your journey? I know you've never
talked about before in a podcast, So just imagine, if
you will, this is the first time talk about your
journey into the world of Disney. And of course you
did talk about this a lot in the book, and
people are going to have to read it to find
out more. But go ahead and give us, like a
cliff notes version.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
The origin story. Well, it's it's like in Golden Girls
when she's like, what is road? Say back in Saint Olify,
So it goes back to like nineteen eighty two Ebcot,
nineteen eighty five eb caught that time frame is my
first sort of memory of the Disney parks.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
And I consider myself a Disney Parks adult.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
There are you know, Disney merchandise adults, and there are
Disney music adults, and you know, people specialized in in
this particular arena.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
You don't want to be termalized in, do you do
you specialize in anything? I don't think the expert on.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Still I'm still trying to figure that out.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
He'll figure it. Still working on it.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
Discuss So maybe toys. I sees a lot of toys
behind you, toys. So I really became an Ebcot fan
when I was like five or seven or whatever. My
parents would take us down to the Florida coast for
(03:38):
you know, we'd stay in a condo and go to
the beach and whatever for spring break every couple of years,
and we'd always do one Disney day. Back then it
was just two parks, and we would do rope drop
to fireworks and it would just you know, that would
be there the whole day. And I guess I just
I fell in love with Ebcot spec I don't even
(03:59):
remember Magic.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
I don't know nothing about. I have zero memories of it.
It's all Epcot.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
It's all like World of Motion and universe of energy
and horizons.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
And all of the great music that went along with them.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
My dad and I really bonded over the Epcot original
background music and the and the songs from the rides,
you know, all those fabulous fun to be free and
you know, the American Adventure you know songs, and so
we would, you know, we bought the the LP and
would listen to it on the on.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
The record player back home. And that's how old I am.
But that was probably my origin story there.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
And then as I got older, I sort of kind
of conned them into into taking us back to Disney
World when I was a teenager.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
And then when I got into college.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
I just started taking myself to Disney World, like solo
trips by myself in college and it was and just
absolutely became obsessed. So that's the origin story of Disney
for me. Definitely A parks girl. Don't really I don't
really know. I couldn't win trivia about the movies or
the or the music.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
Even I don't think so.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
I mean maybe I could, but not not anything real
niche you know what I mean, Like I could talk
to the characters and the storylines, but yeah, I think.
But but parks, man, I can. I can tell you
about the parks.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
I've been in the parks with you before, and it
is is quite quite entertaining. I will say, uh, look,
I I uh what I love about the concept Disney adults.
And I think you'll I think you'll appreciate this. Last summer,
I took my wife and I took our boys who
are now in their twenties, and their and their girlfriends
(05:42):
and then our youngest Mason, who of course you know,
and we were walking around Epcot, your old stomping grounds,
and my middle child's girlfriend said, Dan is the the
is the ultimate Disney adult because he's having fun with
it and he's showing us around, but he's not pushing
us to do stuff. And I took that as a
massive compliment, a massive compliment. And then so then I
(06:05):
open up Disney Adults, which I was going to read anyway,
because you wrote it and you introduced this idea which
shouldn't really be a surprise what it is. The term
Disney Adults can be a very welcoming thing that people embrace.
It also can have sort of a pejorative negative connotation
to it, and I don't think Disney owns the rights
(06:26):
to that, to criticism and people not liking when other
people have joy, unfortunately, but they alsothing very unique about
it because it's the Disney brand of Disney Corporation. And
what I love about Disney Adults, I promise there's a
question here somewhere. What I love about Disney Adults is
that you dive deeply into the psychology and sort of
the sociology of this, and there's a lot of research
(06:48):
to back it up to, which I really appreciate talking
about kind of what into that aspect of it.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
Yeah, I was quite honored when my editor first read
the first draft and said, this is edutainment at its finest,
because you know, edutainment has always been used to describe
I've got so I'm very happy that she considered an
edutainment But there is a lot I really approached this
(07:15):
as a journalist. I think that people who see this
that this book is called Disney Adults and there's a
castle in balloons on the cover and it was written by,
you know, a Disney creator, that it's just gonna.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
Be a fluff piece. You know, that's just gonna be like.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
Disney's great and people who love Disney are great.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
And that's absolutely not what it is.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
It is absolutely it is one thousand percent a deep dive,
a journalistic look at the subculture of Disney Adults, how
we became, who we are, and what we are, what
that means for Disney as a corporation, because I do
think that Disney adults are some of the most dedicated
(07:59):
and passion fans of any major corporation out there. And
also I wanted to figure something I wanted to figure
out for myself was how do they manipulate us this way?
Speaker 3 (08:14):
Like, how do they do this that they can make
me want to.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Sit in a waiting online waiting room for eleven hours
on multiple devices, mind you, just to give them thousands
and thousands of my dollars. I'm a pretty smart person, like, relatively,
I think I'm above average, but here, I know, I
know questionable, But here I am just like, yes, please,
(08:41):
can I please just spend an entire day waiting to
give you money? So how do they do that to us?
How do they make us love this so much? Then?
Want we want to go back and ride the same
rides over and over and over again. Because everybody always says,
you know, why.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
Would you already rode that?
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Why do you need to ride that again? I can't
really explain it, and so I wanted to figure out why.
So that's why I started talking to psychologists and psychiatrists
and therapists, and.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
Also researched for the book.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
No that wasn't funny. I think I will insert and
post a rim shot not funny.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
But also talk to former imagineers and try to find out,
how do you guys approach creating this sort of thing
in a way that will make perfectly rational people act
somewhat irrationally about this place that they love so much?
Speaker 2 (09:39):
So why do you say irrationally? I typically have heard
in the past. Didn't you just go there last year?
Didn't you just go there like six months ago? Don't
you want to go other places? And I do and
I have and so do you, by the way, But
there's something special about it, And one of the things
(09:59):
you hear on in the book is it's tied into
sort of like your first experiences and the association with family,
combined with the fact that Disney, more than any other
company in the world, I would say, knows how to
appease the five senses to create those trigger experiences.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
Yep, absolutely everyone.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
I mean I talked to a lot of Disney adults
for this book, including people on my team at Disney
Food Blog and all ears, and folks who were who
follow us on social media YouTube followers. You know, we
have millions of people who who follow along the work
that we do, and so they were the perfect kind
of folks to ask. And everybody I talked to brought
(10:47):
it back somehow to how they had experienced Disney with
someone they loved, right And that could have been a spouse,
it could have been a parent, it could have been
a brother, a grandparent, whatever, a friend, but it always
they when I said, what makes you love Disney so much.
It was a broad question, but it all I got
(11:09):
were stories of this experience, this experience, this experience with
somebody else. When I go here, it makes me think
of my grandma who passed away, and I feel like
I'm with her again when I'm there. Those sorts of things, right,
So it's never nobody ever said, oh, I go there
because they have the best backpacks with the character I like.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
Like, nobody said that, So it does.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
It goes back to your to your nostalgic feelings of
experiencing something that Disney produced with someone that you love.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
And it goes back to what I what I kept.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Saying, I keep saying in the book, Like a main
point of the book for me is that this isn't
about your hobby. This your hobby isn't about your hobby.
It's about how your hobby makes you feel. And so
that is that is what Disney is for us. And
that's another point where I think people can start to
understand Disney adults a little better. Is that everybody's got
(12:04):
something that they love and that they will spend way
too much money on and that they will spend all
their resources to get to that they can they can
sort of see the parallel. And when I say irrational,
I mean you were questioning irrational. It's that it's that
we're spending unbelievable amounts of money on this thing. And
(12:25):
a lot of people do that for their hobbies. People
do that for season tickets for the NFL, people do
that for Taylor Swift Right, people.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
Do that for Star Wars.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
And it's this thing that we love that makes us
happy and joyful, and so sometimes we get a little
irrational about how we choose to allocate resources as a result.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
Right, And another great thing about the book is that
you break it all down, you explain the science and
the psychology behind it. You're not judgmental about it. And
because you're a Disney adult too, but you also understand.
You know, a passion or a hobby, or a love
or a fanaticism can in and of itself, be a
(13:05):
healthy escape, can be a positive thing, can bring as
we both know, can bring us into these incredible friendships
and relationships, and we have these incredible communities. But also
as as as you know, Friar Lawrence says in Romeo
and Juliet, the sweet taste of honey is loathsome in
its own deliciousness. Oh wow, talk about kind of the
(13:27):
balance there.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
I'm sorry, the balance of what I was. I was
caught up in the in the shape shape.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
Yeah, I get it. I get it now, the fact
that you can have that fanaticism and that love, but
you also very much acknowledge the fact that, look to
you can go too far. And it's not like we're
empowering obsession. It's more like, hey, this is a real thing,
this is a this can be a positive thing, and
here are the good things that come from that.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Yeah, And I do talk quite a bit in the
book about Disney potentially being a drug for people, being
something that they turned to to escape their real life,
to escape something they maybe don't want to deal with,
which is how I treated it at the beginning, you know,
at the beginning of my sort of adult Disney passion,
(14:18):
probably when I was in my twenties, Disney was very
much me sticking my head in the sand and wanting
to get away from, you know, a life that I
wasn't happy in, and so I ran up my credit
cards to keep getting back to this place that brought
me dopamine and joy and so new York.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
Right.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
I was in New York City.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
I had a great job, I was I was doing
just fine. But it's just I was at that quarter
life crisis where I wasn't sure what I was about
and things were kind of falling apart all over the place,
and and that was sort of my escape, and so
I did want to sort of I talked to some
Disney adults who who have had to step away from
(15:02):
Disney because of taking it a little bit too far,
or spending too much money or spending too much time
loving it so much that it made them, you know, sad,
mentally ill depressed.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
And so I guess what, I what? I sort of
ended up.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
And again I talked to a lot of therapists in
this for the book about this, people who specialize in therapy,
you know, or like game or addiction and addiction of
this kind of thing where you're escaping into this fantasy world.
And something that I realized through talking to them was
that there isn't an objective line of what makes it
(15:42):
too much for for everybody?
Speaker 3 (15:45):
Right, There isn't. It's different for everyone.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
You just have to sort of look for the signs
where maybe you're neglecting your family, you're neglecting your job,
You're you're you're not able to pay you know, your
rent because you're going to Disney instead. You know, those
sorts of things are the objective ways to tell if
it's getting a little bit too far. But something else
(16:09):
I wanted to make sure to say in the book
is like, you're not alone.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
We've all been.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Addicted to something in our lives. We've all gone too
far over the limit of what is healthy for us.
Whether it's just that you keep checking your text messages
every five seconds to see if that girl messaged you back,
or whatever, like, there are plenty of examples of kind
of unhealthy obsession with something. So the key is to
(16:38):
not feel shameful.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
Or bad about it.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
Just be like, okay, just recognize it and pull back
a little bit, you know. So that's that's something I
really wanted to get across in the book, is like,
you're not bad. Everybody does it. I don't care if
they tell you that they don't they do. So just
just recognize.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
It, right and then if that doesn't get to that point,
then you need to obviously do something to help yourself
when it come. When it comes to Disney, you talked
about your origin story, but what was your origin story
for how this book and how it came together.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
So yeah, basically I think that everybody thinks they know
what a Disney adult is.
Speaker 3 (17:20):
You know, Disney adults sort of came to the forefront.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
They've we've always been here, We've been around since nineteen
twenty eight, but we came to the forefront online in
during the pandemic. You know, everybody went online and the
Disney adults sort of just became the butt of everyone's jokes,
and you know, you started to see a lot of
viral tiktoks and a lot of Reddit threads about Disney adults.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
There are there are in Anaheim and Orlando.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
You can go on dating apps and see that it
says no Disney adults on several people's actual profiles. The
term was coined like on Tumblr back in like twenty ten,
but just for for everyone to kind of know that
that they they've heard the term and they have an
opinion about those people, even though they don't know any
(18:10):
of them.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
Sure, since.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
Yeah, I became okay, I became mainstream and twenty and
and so, nobody was really talking about Disney adults. They
were just making fun of them. And so this became
a great opportunity to really dive into a controversial topic
and like I said, instead of defending Disney adults, to
really look at the stereotypes and recognize why they're there
and and what is uh, what is it that makes
(18:36):
this subculture tick, Because it's a huge subculture. It's massive.
Even if you don't think you know a Disney adult,
you do you know a Disney adult. It's probably your dentist,
or it's your kids teacher in this case, or it's
you know, like it's it's your congressman. I don't know,
but like, yes, you know a Disney.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
Adult definitely, and like and it's also like this great
gay way to opening up a cool conversation about about
your love for Disney, because, as you mentioned at the
top of the shell, it's not just the theme parks,
it's movies, it's music. Although I feel like the majority
of Disney adults the book really is kind of more
(19:16):
towards the theme parks, but not necessarily just Walt Disney World.
But I think both coasts yep. And I suppose there
are Disney The Disney adult factions certainly occur overseas as well.
But I'm pretty sure that Walt Disney World has as
the most visitors.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
Right, Walt Disney World has the most people every year,
for sure, But I think Disney has eight of the
top ten visited theme parks in the world. So you know,
every it's everywhere, isn't that?
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Isn't that wild? And how much? What has the feedback
been like?
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Doing this book has been such an incredible boon, I
guess is the right word for this brand, and not
because of why you would think. What's been really fun
about this is that, you know, I am a very
private person. I stay behind the scenes. I don't show
(20:11):
my face. I don't you know, I don't know that.
I don't share a lot of personal experience in the
brand because I don't feel like that is something that
my audience has made. The the agreement I have with
my audience is not to talk about myself. It's to
(20:32):
give them good information and to share ways to kind
of save money when they're at Disney and not waste
their time on dumb stuff.
Speaker 3 (20:42):
Not to talk about me. Who cares.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
But with the book, there is so much of me
in it that and again, it's not a lot if
you haven't abought the book, don't worry. It's not all
about me. There's just like a thread, but there's enough
of me in it that I felt like it was.
The book itself sort of changes that agreement a little
bit and allows me to come forward a little bit more.
So that's been really fun because I'm doing these book
(21:06):
signings and I'm meeting people who have been following, you know,
our YouTube channel, our blog for decade, you know, decade plus,
And that's just been such a joy, such a humbling
experience and a joy, and it lets me actually see
these people that I think about every single day, you
(21:27):
know that I think about how can I make your
life better? And I get to see them and they
get to tell me how it's helped, which is awesome.
Speaker 3 (21:36):
So that's really good.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
I've really enjoyed that a lot, and I think it's
been a benefit also for how my audience and I
interact with one another.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
So that's been great definitely. And I think with a
community is large and as loyal as yours, I think
it helps. And I think it's important to have a
face there, a person there and I didn'ty there that
they know has everyone best interest in mine because it's
very selfless what you're doing with the book. I really,
I really do mean that you really are championing people
(22:08):
and empowering people and letting them know that there's somebody
that's that's driving the ship that really truly loves Disney,
loves the community, and really does want good things to
come from then. And so I think that's just a
moral thing, and I think, honestly, that's a big reason
for your success.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
The thing that I've always tried anytime someone comes up
to me and says, how do I do what you do?
How do I you know, how do I write a blog?
How do I start a YouTube channel? The number one
thing I always tell them is they is nobody cares
about you, like, nobody cares what you think until you
prove how you can help them or add value to
(22:48):
their life.
Speaker 3 (22:50):
And I feel like the people make fun of me
for saying that.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
They're like, oh, you know, typical, nobody's a special snowfl
And I'm like, but it's true. Why would anybody care
what I think until like improve to them that I
can make their life a little bit better if they do.
And so that's that's always been my job is to
lift the boats all around me, make sure that people
see what they what they need to see and experience,
and then you know, whatever benefit I get from that awesome.
(23:20):
But the goal is always to make other people's lives
better and then and then you know, the success will
come from that absolutely.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
So tell me about your writing process, Like, did you
dedicate uh, just blocks of time? Do you just hold
yourself up in a cabin in the woods?
Speaker 1 (23:35):
And who was just.
Speaker 3 (23:36):
Talking to my mom last night.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
I was talking to her about a flight I was
taking to Ireland. And I'm on this flight to Ireland
and working on the book right And it's like that
this book was just sort of with me every second
for two years. It was three years, really, I mean
it was the and you know how it is. I
(23:58):
mean it's like your your.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
Cons and companion.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
But you're like, well, I should be doing this at all.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
Times, like so you know, showering, you know, taking a nap,
anything that you're doing just for self care.
Speaker 3 (24:13):
You're like, I should be writing right now.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
So my writing, but my writing process, you know, Dan,
I've been writing the blog for sixteen years, and of
course I've written the DFB Guides to Walt Disney World
Dining and all of all of those guides that we have.
But I'd never done kind of a long form nonfiction
book in this way. I when I was in college,
I did a lot of essay. That was my master's
(24:36):
degree was essay and journalism and stuff like that. Never
something like this, And I didn't know what I was doing.
And so to do this book, it was a lot
of trial and error. It was a lot of me
trying to scribble out some sort of schedule and then
crossing it all out and starting over. And when it
comes right down to it, I think that right, you know,
(24:57):
writing a book is a lot like doing it anything
else it's worth doing, which is you just have to
force yourself to sit down and do it. I always
love hearing the anecdotes from writers who are like, yep,
I just get up and I write ten pages of
something in the morning, because if I don't do that,
then I won't do it, you know, And that's sort
of how it feels. So for me, the writing process
(25:19):
was work my day job, which is Disney food log
all day until you know, five, six, seven pm, and
then get something done on the book and crash at
like midnight. That was sort of how it went for
two and a half years.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
I'm that guide too. I have like a word count
for a project, and I literally do the math this
is how many words.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
I think, how many words I have to get done today.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
And I do it. When I wake up, I work out,
make some coffee, eat some breakfast, and I write. Yeah,
and after doing it for over one thousand hours. Absolutely,
you have two all kinds of writing, scholarly writing, you know,
stuff for online stuff, stuff for published whatever. You just
get to a place where you can suffer it and
(26:05):
you can agonize over every single word, or you can
just make it happen. Yeah, you just have to do
it because you can't edit a blank page.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
Just all of the research that went into this book too, write,
like so many interviews just it felt like hundreds and
it wasn't. It was dozens, but so many interviews, and
so all of those had to be I had to
reach out to all those people and schedule all those
It's not like I had like someone doing that. You know.
Speaker 3 (26:33):
I had to schedule all of those and then that
person got sick or we had read it to change
it around, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
So it's like all of all of that work, that
admin work that goes along with it was just a
huge chunk that you don't you don't game plan.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
Into that spreadsheet, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
And then all of the all of the other research
that that had to go into it, just reading so many,
so many articles, so many you know, help like abstracts,
and you know, I was.
Speaker 4 (27:11):
A psychology major, so I like I understand all of
that stuff, but it's just like just just combing through
and getting the right quotes and the things that are
actually going to make sense in the argument. You know,
just so so much of that and and so the
writing piece was even secondary to making sure that you
(27:33):
had all the backup information that you needed for for this,
for a book like this, So.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
That was you know, that was a that was huge.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
And all of that extra we call it biscuit time,
like all that extra like plan planning and scheduling and
all of that stuff was a lot. And then transcribing
all those interviews, you know, getting all those transcribed during all.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
Of that out.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
And then having to go through those interviews and pull
out out because you know, of course I'd talk a lot,
as you can tell, and some of those were, you know,
dozens of pages long, and you had to pull out
the great stuff, and then it's just so heartbreaking the
stuff that doesn't go in the book that you loved,
the people that I talked to, that I loved talking to,
and that I would have I would have loved to
(28:19):
put everybody in, and I can't. I couldn't put everybody in.
So there was that too, of like all of these
relationships that I formed now that I that I couldn't
kind of tell people about them the way that I
would have wanted to. So maybe I'll have to do
like a an.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
Extra from the vault. Yeah, a's version, because my.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
Editor, when I sent her the final version, she's like,
you need to cut about thirty thousand words from this.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
Oh that's a lot.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
It was so painful.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
That's a lot. So yeah, and it's hard. I tell
my students it's harder to subtract words than it is
to add them.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
Yeah, so much harder, because you've structured a whole book around,
you know, and figuring out what needs to you know.
So you and I ended up having to take out
entire chunks of chapters and it just less. That stinks.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
Well, I'm very fortunate and very blessed that you you
kept the parts with me in it.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
Yeah, of course, of course, my all of my Kenobi
Dan content is in there.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
So let's talk about the Star Wars side things. Disney
Star Wars is a more of a recent thing to
the Disney universe, but of course to me, it's really important,
and I was very happy that these two iconic companies
merged together. And I think, uh, lucasfilm is is just
in a great place because of the Disney umbrella. But
(29:48):
what was the Star Wars section? Like one of the
things you had to consider when looking into the stars?
Think because you're a Star Wars fan but not necessarily
ready to start your own coffee with Knoby show, that's.
Speaker 3 (29:58):
Kind of you. That's true.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
That is true. So what was interesting about this book
and Star Wars is that my editor is a massive,
massive Star Wars fan. She is a Disney adult through
and through, and she it was, is part of the
(30:21):
Galactic star Cruiser community and a huge Star Wars fan.
Speaker 3 (30:25):
And so.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
While I have a pretty significant section on the Galactic
star Cruiser in here in a chapter that sort of
talks about how the Disney adult community has affected the
choices that Disney has made. There's also you know, looking
at Star Wars and in how it is a part
(30:48):
of such a huge, huge company and how basically Disney
owns so much that it's kind of impossible to realize
actually how much Disney you're consuming every single day. But
there is a very significant example of the Star Cruiser
in this book, because I think it is extremely compelling
(31:09):
and extremely important, and I probably could write a whole
book about I say, that whole situation and what happened
there and how I think Star Wars fans affected what
happened with the Star Cruiser. Listening to coffee with Knobe,
you are with Dean Zi the podcast you're looking for
(31:31):
this is.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
Because it really did it. It kind of once they
said we're closing it, suddenly it sold out. They all
sold out.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
Yeah, yeah, it's it. I honestly, I I hope somebody
does a pH d thesis on on what happened with
the Star Cruiser in terms of how social media did
the outcome, and.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
Of course that's a massive part of this whole machine. Anyway, good,
bad and indifferent. Well, ajay, this has been a great,
great fun Thanks for giving me so much to have
to edit. Please let people know where they can buy
Disney Adults and tell us about where they can find
Disney Food Blog. Of course they already know, but it's
(32:24):
always good to throw it out.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
Yeah, Disney Adult is even buy it anywhere that you
buy a book, so Barnes and Noble, Amazon Target Books,
a million Barnes and Noble, I said that already lots
of places. If you want to signed copy, we can
do it signed copy for you. Go to dfbstore dot com.
You pay the same amount that you pay anywhere else,
and I pull one of the books off the top
(32:47):
of the pile on my dining room table and I
sign it and I send it on to you. So
that is how you can get a sign copy for
yourself or your Disney Adult friend that you would like
to buy this for a Christmas and not have to
worry about what to get them.
Speaker 5 (33:00):
Share.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
You can also find me a Disney Food blog, Disney
Food Blog on Instagram, TikTok, all of those, and of
course DFB Guide on YouTube.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
And it always makes me happy whenever someone tells me
that they're going to Disney World. One of the first
things that always comes up is Yeah, while I was
watching this video on YouTube Disney Food Blog, and this
is what they told me. And I'd always get a
big smile like, oh was it AJ, And then I
get to say that I knew you and you know, yeah,
what cloud instant cloud for Dan.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
That's right, just right on the code Tales Dan.
Speaker 5 (33:36):
This podcast is not endorsed by the Walt Disney Company
or Lucasfilm Limited. It is intended for entertainment and informational
purposes only. The official Star Wars website can be found
at www dot star Wars dot com. Star Wars, All names, sounds,
and any other Star Wars related items are registered trademarks
and or copyrights of Disney and their respective trademark and
copyright holders. All original content of this podcast is the
(33:57):
intellectual property of Coffee with Knobe. Unless otherwise indicated.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
This is the podcast you're looking for. There's no one here,
Hold on, Hold on,
This is Vanessa Marshall Harrison Dula from Star Wars Rebels,
and you're listening to coffee with Kenoby.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Well friends, Hello, it is Dan's Air from Coffee with Kenoby.
I am so excited to be here with you to
talk to a New York Times best selling author. She
is one of my dear friends and one of the
few people in the world that can get me tongue
tied where I can't know what to say. See it's
(00:32):
happening now all my golden words are spent. It's aj Wolfe,
the author of Disney Adult Exploring and Falling in Love
with a magical subculture. Aja, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Hi Hian, I am so great.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
How are you.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
That's I didn't realize that I had that power. That's exciting.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
We talked about that when we were all at Ohana
and Deana, my wife, was getting a big kick out
of the fact that you're the only people that can
get me flustered.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
I was. I was a lapoo lapoo down at that point,
so I don't remember too much of it.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
There is nothing wrong with a lap poo lap poo.
Look I got to say, and I texted you and
this happened. When as soon as I saw you're a
New York Times bestselling author, I was so incredibly happy
for you. Like you, no one works as hard as you,
your passion in all things Disney and just what you
put out into the world. So again, so I can
(01:26):
say publicly congratulations on be a New York Times bestselling author.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
I can die happy now.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
I am just beside myself because I never ever thought
that that would happen. But the bottom line is this
audience and this you know, these people to follow what
we do are so incredible that they made it happen.
You know, they absolutely made it happen. So many thanks
to everyone who bought the book.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Well look, yes that is absolutely true. But you you
have established for yourself for a long time you are
you're a go to person that people trust about Disney.
You're always very honest but tactfully. So, although don't quote
me on that, and I think that I think that
you know, there's there's an ethos that comes into play
(02:12):
when it when it comes to you, where where did
you kind of start your journey? I know you've never
talked about before in a podcast, So just imagine, if
you will, this is the first time talk about your
journey into the world of Disney. And of course you
did talk about this a lot in the book, and
people are going to have to read it to find
out more. But go ahead and give us, like a
cliff notes version.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
The origin story. Well, it's it's like in Golden Girls
when she's like, what is road? Say back in Saint Olify,
So it goes back to like nineteen eighty two Ebcot,
nineteen eighty five eb caught that time frame is my
first sort of memory of the Disney parks.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
And I consider myself a Disney Parks adult.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
There are you know, Disney merchandise adults, and there are
Disney music adults, and you know, people specialized in in
this particular arena.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
You don't want to be termalized in, do you do
you specialize in anything? I don't think the expert on.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Still I'm still trying to figure that out.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
He'll figure it. Still working on it.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
Discuss So maybe toys. I sees a lot of toys
behind you, toys. So I really became an Ebcot fan
when I was like five or seven or whatever. My
parents would take us down to the Florida coast for
(03:38):
you know, we'd stay in a condo and go to
the beach and whatever for spring break every couple of years,
and we'd always do one Disney day. Back then it
was just two parks, and we would do rope drop
to fireworks and it would just you know, that would
be there the whole day. And I guess I just
I fell in love with Ebcot spec I don't even
(03:59):
remember Magic.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
I don't know nothing about. I have zero memories of it.
It's all Epcot.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
It's all like World of Motion and universe of energy
and horizons.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
And all of the great music that went along with them.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
My dad and I really bonded over the Epcot original
background music and the and the songs from the rides,
you know, all those fabulous fun to be free and
you know, the American Adventure you know songs, and so
we would, you know, we bought the the LP and
would listen to it on the on.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
The record player back home. And that's how old I am.
But that was probably my origin story there.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
And then as I got older, I sort of kind
of conned them into into taking us back to Disney
World when I was a teenager.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
And then when I got into college.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
I just started taking myself to Disney World, like solo
trips by myself in college and it was and just
absolutely became obsessed. So that's the origin story of Disney
for me. Definitely A parks girl. Don't really I don't
really know. I couldn't win trivia about the movies or
the or the music.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
Even I don't think so.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
I mean maybe I could, but not not anything real
niche you know what I mean, Like I could talk
to the characters and the storylines, but yeah, I think.
But but parks, man, I can. I can tell you
about the parks.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
I've been in the parks with you before, and it
is is quite quite entertaining. I will say, uh, look,
I I uh what I love about the concept Disney adults.
And I think you'll I think you'll appreciate this. Last summer,
I took my wife and I took our boys who
are now in their twenties, and their and their girlfriends
(05:42):
and then our youngest Mason, who of course you know,
and we were walking around Epcot, your old stomping grounds,
and my middle child's girlfriend said, Dan is the the
is the ultimate Disney adult because he's having fun with
it and he's showing us around, but he's not pushing
us to do stuff. And I took that as a
massive compliment, a massive compliment. And then so then I
(06:05):
open up Disney Adults, which I was going to read anyway,
because you wrote it and you introduced this idea which
shouldn't really be a surprise what it is. The term
Disney Adults can be a very welcoming thing that people embrace.
It also can have sort of a pejorative negative connotation
to it, and I don't think Disney owns the rights
(06:26):
to that, to criticism and people not liking when other
people have joy, unfortunately, but they alsothing very unique about
it because it's the Disney brand of Disney Corporation. And
what I love about Disney Adults, I promise there's a
question here somewhere. What I love about Disney Adults is
that you dive deeply into the psychology and sort of
the sociology of this, and there's a lot of research
(06:48):
to back it up to, which I really appreciate talking
about kind of what into that aspect of it.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
Yeah, I was quite honored when my editor first read
the first draft and said, this is edutainment at its finest,
because you know, edutainment has always been used to describe
I've got so I'm very happy that she considered an
edutainment But there is a lot I really approached this
(07:15):
as a journalist. I think that people who see this
that this book is called Disney Adults and there's a
castle in balloons on the cover and it was written by,
you know, a Disney creator, that it's just gonna.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
Be a fluff piece. You know, that's just gonna be like.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
Disney's great and people who love Disney are great.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
And that's absolutely not what it is.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
It is absolutely it is one thousand percent a deep dive,
a journalistic look at the subculture of Disney Adults, how
we became, who we are, and what we are, what
that means for Disney as a corporation, because I do
think that Disney adults are some of the most dedicated
(07:59):
and passion fans of any major corporation out there. And
also I wanted to figure something I wanted to figure
out for myself was how do they manipulate us this way?
Speaker 3 (08:14):
Like, how do they do this that they can make
me want to.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Sit in a waiting online waiting room for eleven hours
on multiple devices, mind you, just to give them thousands
and thousands of my dollars. I'm a pretty smart person, like, relatively,
I think I'm above average, but here, I know, I
know questionable, But here I am just like, yes, please,
(08:41):
can I please just spend an entire day waiting to
give you money? So how do they do that to us?
How do they make us love this so much? Then?
Want we want to go back and ride the same
rides over and over and over again. Because everybody always says,
you know, why.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
Would you already rode that?
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Why do you need to ride that again? I can't
really explain it, and so I wanted to figure out why.
So that's why I started talking to psychologists and psychiatrists
and therapists, and.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
Also researched for the book.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
No that wasn't funny. I think I will insert and
post a rim shot not funny.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
But also talk to former imagineers and try to find out,
how do you guys approach creating this sort of thing
in a way that will make perfectly rational people act
somewhat irrationally about this place that they love so much?
Speaker 2 (09:39):
So why do you say irrationally? I typically have heard
in the past. Didn't you just go there last year?
Didn't you just go there like six months ago? Don't
you want to go other places? And I do and
I have and so do you, by the way, But
there's something special about it, And one of the things
(09:59):
you hear on in the book is it's tied into
sort of like your first experiences and the association with family,
combined with the fact that Disney, more than any other
company in the world, I would say, knows how to
appease the five senses to create those trigger experiences.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
Yep, absolutely everyone.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
I mean I talked to a lot of Disney adults
for this book, including people on my team at Disney
Food Blog and all ears, and folks who were who
follow us on social media YouTube followers. You know, we
have millions of people who who follow along the work
that we do, and so they were the perfect kind
of folks to ask. And everybody I talked to brought
(10:47):
it back somehow to how they had experienced Disney with
someone they loved, right And that could have been a spouse,
it could have been a parent, it could have been
a brother, a grandparent, whatever, a friend, but it always
they when I said, what makes you love Disney so much.
It was a broad question, but it all I got
(11:09):
were stories of this experience, this experience, this experience with
somebody else. When I go here, it makes me think
of my grandma who passed away, and I feel like
I'm with her again when I'm there. Those sorts of things, right,
So it's never nobody ever said, oh, I go there
because they have the best backpacks with the character I like.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
Like, nobody said that, So it does.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
It goes back to your to your nostalgic feelings of
experiencing something that Disney produced with someone that you love.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
And it goes back to what I what I kept.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Saying, I keep saying in the book, Like a main
point of the book for me is that this isn't
about your hobby. This your hobby isn't about your hobby.
It's about how your hobby makes you feel. And so
that is that is what Disney is for us. And
that's another point where I think people can start to
understand Disney adults a little better. Is that everybody's got
(12:04):
something that they love and that they will spend way
too much money on and that they will spend all
their resources to get to that they can they can
sort of see the parallel. And when I say irrational,
I mean you were questioning irrational. It's that it's that
we're spending unbelievable amounts of money on this thing. And
(12:25):
a lot of people do that for their hobbies. People
do that for season tickets for the NFL, people do
that for Taylor Swift Right, people.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
Do that for Star Wars.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
And it's this thing that we love that makes us
happy and joyful, and so sometimes we get a little
irrational about how we choose to allocate resources as a result.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
Right, And another great thing about the book is that
you break it all down, you explain the science and
the psychology behind it. You're not judgmental about it. And
because you're a Disney adult too, but you also understand.
You know, a passion or a hobby, or a love
or a fanaticism can in and of itself, be a
(13:05):
healthy escape, can be a positive thing, can bring as
we both know, can bring us into these incredible friendships
and relationships, and we have these incredible communities. But also
as as as you know, Friar Lawrence says in Romeo
and Juliet, the sweet taste of honey is loathsome in
its own deliciousness. Oh wow, talk about kind of the
(13:27):
balance there.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
I'm sorry, the balance of what I was. I was
caught up in the in the shape shape.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
Yeah, I get it. I get it now, the fact
that you can have that fanaticism and that love, but
you also very much acknowledge the fact that, look to
you can go too far. And it's not like we're
empowering obsession. It's more like, hey, this is a real thing,
this is a this can be a positive thing, and
here are the good things that come from that.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Yeah, And I do talk quite a bit in the
book about Disney potentially being a drug for people, being
something that they turned to to escape their real life,
to escape something they maybe don't want to deal with,
which is how I treated it at the beginning, you know,
at the beginning of my sort of adult Disney passion,
(14:18):
probably when I was in my twenties, Disney was very
much me sticking my head in the sand and wanting
to get away from, you know, a life that I
wasn't happy in, and so I ran up my credit
cards to keep getting back to this place that brought
me dopamine and joy and so new York.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
Right.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
I was in New York City.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
I had a great job, I was I was doing
just fine. But it's just I was at that quarter
life crisis where I wasn't sure what I was about
and things were kind of falling apart all over the place,
and and that was sort of my escape, and so
I did want to sort of I talked to some
Disney adults who who have had to step away from
(15:02):
Disney because of taking it a little bit too far,
or spending too much money or spending too much time
loving it so much that it made them, you know, sad,
mentally ill depressed.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
And so I guess what, I what? I sort of
ended up.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
And again I talked to a lot of therapists in
this for the book about this, people who specialize in therapy,
you know, or like game or addiction and addiction of
this kind of thing where you're escaping into this fantasy world.
And something that I realized through talking to them was
that there isn't an objective line of what makes it
(15:42):
too much for for everybody?
Speaker 3 (15:45):
Right, There isn't. It's different for everyone.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
You just have to sort of look for the signs
where maybe you're neglecting your family, you're neglecting your job,
You're you're you're not able to pay you know, your
rent because you're going to Disney instead. You know, those
sorts of things are the objective ways to tell if
it's getting a little bit too far. But something else
(16:09):
I wanted to make sure to say in the book
is like, you're not alone.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
We've all been.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Addicted to something in our lives. We've all gone too
far over the limit of what is healthy for us.
Whether it's just that you keep checking your text messages
every five seconds to see if that girl messaged you back,
or whatever, like, there are plenty of examples of kind
of unhealthy obsession with something. So the key is to
(16:38):
not feel shameful.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
Or bad about it.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
Just be like, okay, just recognize it and pull back
a little bit, you know. So that's that's something I
really wanted to get across in the book, is like,
you're not bad. Everybody does it. I don't care if
they tell you that they don't they do. So just
just recognize.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
It, right and then if that doesn't get to that point,
then you need to obviously do something to help yourself
when it come. When it comes to Disney, you talked
about your origin story, but what was your origin story
for how this book and how it came together.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
So yeah, basically I think that everybody thinks they know
what a Disney adult is.
Speaker 3 (17:20):
You know, Disney adults sort of came to the forefront.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
They've we've always been here, We've been around since nineteen
twenty eight, but we came to the forefront online in
during the pandemic. You know, everybody went online and the
Disney adults sort of just became the butt of everyone's jokes,
and you know, you started to see a lot of
viral tiktoks and a lot of Reddit threads about Disney adults.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
There are there are in Anaheim and Orlando.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
You can go on dating apps and see that it
says no Disney adults on several people's actual profiles. The
term was coined like on Tumblr back in like twenty ten,
but just for for everyone to kind of know that
that they they've heard the term and they have an
opinion about those people, even though they don't know any
(18:10):
of them.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
Sure, since.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
Yeah, I became okay, I became mainstream and twenty and
and so, nobody was really talking about Disney adults. They
were just making fun of them. And so this became
a great opportunity to really dive into a controversial topic
and like I said, instead of defending Disney adults, to
really look at the stereotypes and recognize why they're there
and and what is uh, what is it that makes
(18:36):
this subculture tick, Because it's a huge subculture. It's massive.
Even if you don't think you know a Disney adult,
you do you know a Disney adult. It's probably your dentist,
or it's your kids teacher in this case, or it's
you know, like it's it's your congressman. I don't know,
but like, yes, you know a Disney.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
Adult definitely, and like and it's also like this great
gay way to opening up a cool conversation about about
your love for Disney, because, as you mentioned at the
top of the shell, it's not just the theme parks,
it's movies, it's music. Although I feel like the majority
of Disney adults the book really is kind of more
(19:16):
towards the theme parks, but not necessarily just Walt Disney World.
But I think both coasts yep. And I suppose there
are Disney The Disney adult factions certainly occur overseas as well.
But I'm pretty sure that Walt Disney World has as
the most visitors.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
Right, Walt Disney World has the most people every year,
for sure, But I think Disney has eight of the
top ten visited theme parks in the world. So you know,
every it's everywhere, isn't that?
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Isn't that wild? And how much? What has the feedback
been like?
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Doing this book has been such an incredible boon, I
guess is the right word for this brand, and not
because of why you would think. What's been really fun
about this is that, you know, I am a very
private person. I stay behind the scenes. I don't show
(20:11):
my face. I don't you know, I don't know that.
I don't share a lot of personal experience in the
brand because I don't feel like that is something that
my audience has made. The the agreement I have with
my audience is not to talk about myself. It's to
(20:32):
give them good information and to share ways to kind
of save money when they're at Disney and not waste
their time on dumb stuff.
Speaker 3 (20:42):
Not to talk about me. Who cares.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
But with the book, there is so much of me
in it that and again, it's not a lot if
you haven't abought the book, don't worry. It's not all
about me. There's just like a thread, but there's enough
of me in it that I felt like it was.
The book itself sort of changes that agreement a little
bit and allows me to come forward a little bit more.
So that's been really fun because I'm doing these book
(21:06):
signings and I'm meeting people who have been following, you know,
our YouTube channel, our blog for decade, you know, decade plus,
And that's just been such a joy, such a humbling
experience and a joy, and it lets me actually see
these people that I think about every single day, you
(21:27):
know that I think about how can I make your
life better? And I get to see them and they
get to tell me how it's helped, which is awesome.
Speaker 3 (21:36):
So that's really good.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
I've really enjoyed that a lot, and I think it's
been a benefit also for how my audience and I
interact with one another.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
So that's been great definitely. And I think with a
community is large and as loyal as yours, I think
it helps. And I think it's important to have a
face there, a person there and I didn'ty there that
they know has everyone best interest in mine because it's
very selfless what you're doing with the book. I really,
I really do mean that you really are championing people
(22:08):
and empowering people and letting them know that there's somebody
that's that's driving the ship that really truly loves Disney,
loves the community, and really does want good things to
come from then. And so I think that's just a
moral thing, and I think, honestly, that's a big reason
for your success.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
The thing that I've always tried anytime someone comes up
to me and says, how do I do what you do?
How do I you know, how do I write a blog?
How do I start a YouTube channel? The number one
thing I always tell them is they is nobody cares
about you, like, nobody cares what you think until you
prove how you can help them or add value to
(22:48):
their life.
Speaker 3 (22:50):
And I feel like the people make fun of me
for saying that.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
They're like, oh, you know, typical, nobody's a special snowfl
And I'm like, but it's true. Why would anybody care
what I think until like improve to them that I
can make their life a little bit better if they do.
And so that's that's always been my job is to
lift the boats all around me, make sure that people
see what they what they need to see and experience,
and then you know, whatever benefit I get from that awesome.
(23:20):
But the goal is always to make other people's lives
better and then and then you know, the success will
come from that absolutely.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
So tell me about your writing process, Like, did you
dedicate uh, just blocks of time? Do you just hold
yourself up in a cabin in the woods?
Speaker 1 (23:35):
And who was just.
Speaker 3 (23:36):
Talking to my mom last night.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
I was talking to her about a flight I was
taking to Ireland. And I'm on this flight to Ireland
and working on the book right And it's like that
this book was just sort of with me every second
for two years. It was three years, really, I mean
it was the and you know how it is. I
(23:58):
mean it's like your your.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
Cons and companion.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
But you're like, well, I should be doing this at all.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
Times, like so you know, showering, you know, taking a nap,
anything that you're doing just for self care.
Speaker 3 (24:13):
You're like, I should be writing right now.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
So my writing, but my writing process, you know, Dan,
I've been writing the blog for sixteen years, and of
course I've written the DFB Guides to Walt Disney World
Dining and all of all of those guides that we have.
But I'd never done kind of a long form nonfiction
book in this way. I when I was in college,
I did a lot of essay. That was my master's
(24:36):
degree was essay and journalism and stuff like that. Never
something like this, And I didn't know what I was doing.
And so to do this book, it was a lot
of trial and error. It was a lot of me
trying to scribble out some sort of schedule and then
crossing it all out and starting over. And when it
comes right down to it, I think that right, you know,
(24:57):
writing a book is a lot like doing it anything
else it's worth doing, which is you just have to
force yourself to sit down and do it. I always
love hearing the anecdotes from writers who are like, yep,
I just get up and I write ten pages of
something in the morning, because if I don't do that,
then I won't do it, you know, And that's sort
of how it feels. So for me, the writing process
(25:19):
was work my day job, which is Disney food log
all day until you know, five, six, seven pm, and
then get something done on the book and crash at
like midnight. That was sort of how it went for
two and a half years.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
I'm that guide too. I have like a word count
for a project, and I literally do the math this
is how many words.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
I think, how many words I have to get done today.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
And I do it. When I wake up, I work out,
make some coffee, eat some breakfast, and I write. Yeah,
and after doing it for over one thousand hours. Absolutely,
you have two all kinds of writing, scholarly writing, you know,
stuff for online stuff, stuff for published whatever. You just
get to a place where you can suffer it and
(26:05):
you can agonize over every single word, or you can
just make it happen. Yeah, you just have to do
it because you can't edit a blank page.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
Just all of the research that went into this book too, write,
like so many interviews just it felt like hundreds and
it wasn't. It was dozens, but so many interviews, and
so all of those had to be I had to
reach out to all those people and schedule all those
It's not like I had like someone doing that. You know.
Speaker 3 (26:33):
I had to schedule all of those and then that
person got sick or we had read it to change
it around, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
So it's like all of all of that work, that
admin work that goes along with it was just a
huge chunk that you don't you don't game plan.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
Into that spreadsheet, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
And then all of the all of the other research
that that had to go into it, just reading so many,
so many articles, so many you know, help like abstracts,
and you know, I was.
Speaker 4 (27:11):
A psychology major, so I like I understand all of
that stuff, but it's just like just just combing through
and getting the right quotes and the things that are
actually going to make sense in the argument. You know,
just so so much of that and and so the
writing piece was even secondary to making sure that you
(27:33):
had all the backup information that you needed for for this,
for a book like this, So.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
That was you know, that was a that was huge.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
And all of that extra we call it biscuit time,
like all that extra like plan planning and scheduling and
all of that stuff was a lot. And then transcribing
all those interviews, you know, getting all those transcribed during all.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
Of that out.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
And then having to go through those interviews and pull
out out because you know, of course I'd talk a lot,
as you can tell, and some of those were, you know,
dozens of pages long, and you had to pull out
the great stuff, and then it's just so heartbreaking the
stuff that doesn't go in the book that you loved,
the people that I talked to, that I loved talking to,
and that I would have I would have loved to
(28:19):
put everybody in, and I can't. I couldn't put everybody in.
So there was that too, of like all of these
relationships that I formed now that I that I couldn't
kind of tell people about them the way that I
would have wanted to. So maybe I'll have to do
like a an.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
Extra from the vault. Yeah, a's version, because my.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
Editor, when I sent her the final version, she's like,
you need to cut about thirty thousand words from this.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
Oh that's a lot.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
It was so painful.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
That's a lot. So yeah, and it's hard. I tell
my students it's harder to subtract words than it is
to add them.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
Yeah, so much harder, because you've structured a whole book around,
you know, and figuring out what needs to you know.
So you and I ended up having to take out
entire chunks of chapters and it just less. That stinks.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
Well, I'm very fortunate and very blessed that you you
kept the parts with me in it.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
Yeah, of course, of course, my all of my Kenobi
Dan content is in there.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
So let's talk about the Star Wars side things. Disney
Star Wars is a more of a recent thing to
the Disney universe, but of course to me, it's really important,
and I was very happy that these two iconic companies
merged together. And I think, uh, lucasfilm is is just
in a great place because of the Disney umbrella. But
(29:48):
what was the Star Wars section? Like one of the
things you had to consider when looking into the stars?
Think because you're a Star Wars fan but not necessarily
ready to start your own coffee with Knoby show, that's.
Speaker 3 (29:58):
Kind of you. That's true.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
That is true. So what was interesting about this book
and Star Wars is that my editor is a massive,
massive Star Wars fan. She is a Disney adult through
and through, and she it was, is part of the
(30:21):
Galactic star Cruiser community and a huge Star Wars fan.
Speaker 3 (30:25):
And so.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
While I have a pretty significant section on the Galactic
star Cruiser in here in a chapter that sort of
talks about how the Disney adult community has affected the
choices that Disney has made. There's also you know, looking
at Star Wars and in how it is a part
(30:48):
of such a huge, huge company and how basically Disney
owns so much that it's kind of impossible to realize
actually how much Disney you're consuming every single day. But
there is a very significant example of the Star Cruiser
in this book, because I think it is extremely compelling
(31:09):
and extremely important, and I probably could write a whole
book about I say, that whole situation and what happened
there and how I think Star Wars fans affected what
happened with the Star Cruiser. Listening to coffee with Knobe,
you are with Dean Zi the podcast you're looking for
(31:31):
this is.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
Because it really did it. It kind of once they
said we're closing it, suddenly it sold out. They all
sold out.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
Yeah, yeah, it's it. I honestly, I I hope somebody
does a pH d thesis on on what happened with
the Star Cruiser in terms of how social media did
the outcome, and.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
Of course that's a massive part of this whole machine. Anyway, good,
bad and indifferent. Well, ajay, this has been a great,
great fun Thanks for giving me so much to have
to edit. Please let people know where they can buy
Disney Adults and tell us about where they can find
Disney Food Blog. Of course they already know, but it's
(32:24):
always good to throw it out.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
Yeah, Disney Adult is even buy it anywhere that you
buy a book, so Barnes and Noble, Amazon Target Books,
a million Barnes and Noble, I said that already lots
of places. If you want to signed copy, we can
do it signed copy for you. Go to dfbstore dot com.
You pay the same amount that you pay anywhere else,
and I pull one of the books off the top
(32:47):
of the pile on my dining room table and I
sign it and I send it on to you. So
that is how you can get a sign copy for
yourself or your Disney Adult friend that you would like
to buy this for a Christmas and not have to
worry about what to get them.
Speaker 5 (33:00):
Share.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
You can also find me a Disney Food blog, Disney
Food Blog on Instagram, TikTok, all of those, and of
course DFB Guide on YouTube.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
And it always makes me happy whenever someone tells me
that they're going to Disney World. One of the first
things that always comes up is Yeah, while I was
watching this video on YouTube Disney Food Blog, and this
is what they told me. And I'd always get a
big smile like, oh was it AJ, And then I
get to say that I knew you and you know, yeah,
what cloud instant cloud for Dan.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
That's right, just right on the code Tales Dan.
Speaker 5 (33:36):
This podcast is not endorsed by the Walt Disney Company
or Lucasfilm Limited. It is intended for entertainment and informational
purposes only. The official Star Wars website can be found
at www dot star Wars dot com. Star Wars, All names, sounds,
and any other Star Wars related items are registered trademarks
and or copyrights of Disney and their respective trademark and
copyright holders. All original content of this podcast is the
(33:57):
intellectual property of Coffee with Knobe. Unless otherwise indicated.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
This is the podcast you're looking for. There's no one here,
Hold on, Hold on,
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