The Hero's Journey
Plus life updates and theme park news
The very best parts of theme parks are related to stories we know and understand. Disney is a master at choosing an IP that tugs at the heartstrings, from renovating in-crowd favorite Maelstrom to a Frozen ride starring Anna and Elsa, to the emergence of “the grey stuff” in all kinds of snacks and treats.
Universal is catching up, with Dungeons and Dragons fan nights, and How To Train Your Dragon’s Isle of Berk.
These parks are great at what we’ll call “world building.” They take the concept of an idea and blow it out, taking the parts of the story that are fan favorites and filling in gaps where nothing has been mentioned or determined yet (example: Beauty and the Beast never actually shows you what the grey stuff is). No matter how much you know or don’t know about your favorite world, theme parks take you on a hero’s journey. The characters become more real, the challenges reflect your own and the stories are more memorable.
Widely used by professor and theologist Joseph Campbell (and since taken over by, well, everyone), a hero’s journey, or monomyth, follows an everyman’s path of resistance to become a hero, following as he makes friends, conquers challenges and learns about himself.
The steps of the journey are broken into 3 acts:
Departure
Initiation
Return
And the steps, though debated, are usually the following, broken down by act:
The call to adventure
Trepidation to the adventure
Meeting a mentor or aid
Crossing the threshold to begin the adventure
The first trial
Meeting an ally
Approach to innermost cave
Ordeal
Reward
Self-atonement
Resurrection
Return
The hero’s journey gives us the opportunity to see ourselves in a normal person who receives a calling, believes they are unfit for that calling, relents, faces challenges with the help of a mentor, and comes out the other side with not just a tactile reward but a sense of self that changes even others minds about them. Within any story we have the opportunity to create a central character that accepts a challenge, faces it, and has an ending, a narrative we are emotionally and mentally drawn to for two reasons:
Mirroring of self.
Chunked storytelling that’s an easier cognitive load to follow. This essentially means breaking a large story down into bite-sized chapters that make it easier to comprehend and remember longterm.
Even when our story doesn’t feel like a hero’s journey, there’s a chance to identify what the central character sees as their hurdle, whether that be emotional, financial or economic, or physical. Perhaps the hero is a bar owner who faces the hurdle of a rival opening up a few minutes away, the hero is a social media manager and the road to return is a community punch card. Maybe the hero is joined by a cast of characters on the hunt, and the hero joins them to solve a mystery, like finding their missing cars. We can’t ever underestimate the power of using common language to speak to people. Nothing feels more alienating than telling stories with verbiage or hierarchy that doesn’t make sense to a wider audience.
By turning what could be a tedious tale of problems into a journey, we help place readers along the tale with us, learning something by the end. This even applies to your own challenges, as I discovered in this day planner that turns to-do’s into journeys. It’s ideal for someone like me who hates the concept of being more productive and believes we should all be running through fields of flowers all the time.
What’s going on in my world?
I’ve long been advising newsrooms on community building, but I’ve wanted to approach this from the other side. What does it look like to be a journalist that finds an interesting nugget, investigates it and integrates the community impacts? With the concept of “neighbors you don’t know yet,” I’ve been attempting to write content with the central theme of, do you know this person in your own backyard?
That includes a dog trainer and the spots where you can meet other pet owners, two similar bars that joined forces to build community with their clients, and coming very soon, what we can learn from sex worker unions that create mutual aid for each other, and what the magic community thinks about the renovation of one of their hallowed places.
I’m also around the corner from completing an ENLT course with Dr. Clay Colmon in which we dissected systems inside of literature and what they reflect of society. Getting down to base human needs, I’ve used the course as a way to abandon productivity and templates, and instead deal in messy, raw emotion.
My submission box for the class has been placed at South Street Art Mart in Philadelphia and I’d love to receive your anonymous submissions on a recent moment of pure happiness; no AI, no perfection, just gut feelings.
Following that I am working with a handful of non-profits on ways media and officials can talk about people in recovery, the unhoused and people in harm reduction work with respect and dignity.
Finally, Lenu the Poodle has been invited to several patio activities this summer, and we just returned from a trip to New Hope, PA, which is absolutely perfect for dogs and she was giddy from end to end. 16 toe beans up.
What’s going on at the parks?
WHEW. SO MUCH!
The next Disney park is going where? How’s Pride Night going to look?
The new Disney dining plans will cost either $60 and $97 depending on which plan you get, and are a great value if you can score character meal reservations. WDW Prep School has a good breakdown of snacks vs. credits.
The Enchanted Tiki Room is taking a break, to come back with historic improvements.
And the Pirates of the Caribbean Tavern, Beak and Barrel, WILL have alcohol, with a two-drink max.
You bet your ass I will be going to the GEO-82 lounge at EPCOT, opening June 4.
There’s an official food guide for the Disneyland 70th celebration and among my favorites are a tropical rum cocktail (Bacardi & Myers’s rums, pineapple, orange, and lime juices, and grenadine) at Carnation Cafe, a tiramisu cold brew (chocolate cold brew with tiramisu topper and ladyfinger cookie) at the Troubador Tavern, and Honey Gintini (Hendrick’s Gin, pineapple and lemon juices, honey, and orange marmalade) at the Grand Californian.
Tell me: Where do you see the hero’s journey helping in your own life, whether that’s systems or storytelling? And what’s your hero’s journey?
Goodnight, Commenters.
Thanks for the thoughtful write—up. I’d like to believe those of us launching our blogs here — in mid 2025, with all of the context within — are crossing an important threshold for ourselves.
As others who have already done so may be in caves and/or sorting through rewards and feedback.