Theme parks and vacation spots hold special places in our hearts. We visit, and we have experiences that stay with us all our lives. With fondness, we remember the rides, the shows, the historical significance, the beauty, and we pass the experiences generationally.
Because of this, we often take ownership of a place or a thing that does not belong to us. We come to think we can insult the true managers of a place or thing because it is ours. After all, it was our experiences that brought us to a place - and back to the same place. We see changes, and we think, I would have done it differently, or if only they had asked me for my ideas... Call it "armchair vacation design" if you will.
Sitting back, however, we must realize that the property, the investment in capital and the employment of personnel is not really ours. Thus, the decisions made are not ours. We were not privy to the process of deciding to change this or add that. We were not in the conversation of deciding to solve a problem or issue in a particular manner. We might want to be, but most of us would not have the skills or the know-how to make such choices, weighing the opportunity cost, designing the marketing, meeting the needs and demands of management, increasing public attraction, all while balancing the checkbook.
We own it solely in our imaginations, and in our imaginations there is no criticism - just our own vision, just our own desires, just our own experiences...and an unlimited budget without risk of failure. In our imaginations, we see only happy faces; we fail so see the physics, the economics, and the rule of law. But that's OK because we do own our imaginations.
We make the same harsh criticism on highway design, restaurants, and television programs. We question the store that puts display in the aisle. We wonder why a car does not have certain amenities. But that's different. Those things are not like our childhood memories of a vacation getaway. Those things do not hold the same level of nostalgia for us. We don't "own" those things like we do our experiences.
So the next time we visit a national park, state-of-the-art museum, or theme park, we must remind ourselves that we have purchased a ticket to someone else's imagination. We have crossed the turnstile to someone else's pocketbook. We have visited someone else's property. But that does not remove our ability to experience it and pass it to the next generation. If we still enjoy the rides, the shows, the historical significance, and the beauty that is there - and not worry about what it looks like in our imaginary worlds - then we will have something worth keeping and a memory worth repeating.
