After Lindsey Graham was photographed at Disney World a few weeks ago, eyebrows lifted across social media, not just because the trip was during the government shutdown, but because the South Carolina senator is 70 and doesn’t have children or grandchildren.
When later asked why he was there, Graham’s response was simple: “Because I like Disney. It’s a great place to go.”
With that, the senator went on the record as being a “Disney adult,” the oft-derided fan whose interest in Disney is deemed inappropriate because of their age or the intensity of their passion for the brand.
That’s arguably unfair. Whole books have been written about Disney adults, and what goes into the making of them; much of the trend is driven by simple nostalgia and the desire for wholesome entertainment.
But lately there’s also been an undercurrent of worry about how the company’s increasing focus on adults may be affecting the beloved brand.
Are Disney weddings and vow renewals and adults-only spaces on Disney cruises, for example, taking the company too far from the children’s entertainment space it was built on? Has the company’s expansion into other ventures, such as streaming mature content, betrayed its base? The company still describes itself as a “family entertainment and media enterprise,” but many people are expressing doubts.
The nonprofit advocacy group Concerned Women for America has been critical of Disney for adding R-rated movies to its Disney+ platform after its planned integration with Hulu. Single-day admission prices to theme parks have been described as a “luxury item,” out of reach for many middle-class families. The New Yorker recently reported on people going into debt for Disney vacations, and adult visitors to theme parks now outnumber families with children, according to AJ Wolfe, the author of the 2025 book “Disney Adults.”
The bigger question, perhaps, is what’s the future of Disney if its focus is the Disney adult?
Who is a ‘Disney adult’?
According to Wolfe, who also runs the Disney Food Blog and a Disney-related website called allears.net, a Disney adult is someone who engages with Disney products and experiences intentionally: “For Disney adults, Disney isn’t a passing thing; it’s a cornerstone of their lives.”
That interest can mean spending thousands of dollars annually on Disney theme parks or cruises, or putting a mouse-ear lamp post outside of your house, which is fragrant with eau de Disney.
While the stereotypical “Disney adult” that is denigrated online is typically childless, there are proud Disney adults with children, such as Charles Maranan, a married father who lives in Blackwood, New Jersey, and who parlayed into lifelong love of Disney World into a career as a travel agent who specializes in Disney vacations.
Maranan recently went to Disney World to celebrate his 40th birthday. It was the third year in a row that he’d gone to the park for his birthday.
Maranan, who grew up watching Disney movies and took his first trip to Disney World at age 6, told me that “although when you’re 6 you don’t remember much, I had this feeling of being somewhere outside of my reality, being somewhere I was happy all the time.”
Each subsequent trip has been much the same. “It’s always been my favorite place to go because of that lasting memory of always being happiest when I’m there,” he said.
Disney has been intentional about creating an experience that would bring people back to its theme parks time and again (the return rate is 70%), even creating scents sprayed throughout its properties that are designed to evoke positive emotions.
That sense of nostalgia is one reason Disney children turn into Disney adults. But there are fewer Disney children these days.
How a falling birth rate will affect Disney
Wolfe, who, like Maranan, morphed from a Disney child to a Disney adult, said that by courting adults, the Walt Disney Co. is being realistic about a future in which there will be fewer children overall.
“Statistically, the truth is that there are more adults without children in Disney parks than there are adults with children. That is a fact,” she said. “(Young Americans) are simply not having as many children. There just aren’t as many kids being born; there are a lot of families with one child or no children.”
And young adults without children may have more expendable income and be able to indulge on things they wouldn’t if they had large families, she said, making them valuable customers.
For families, the price for a trip to Disneyland or Disney World can be prohibitive. The (UK) Times last year reported on the rising cost of admission, saying “middle class families may have to wish upon a star if they want to visit the famous theme park chain.”
California’s Disneyland, which charged $1 for an adult admission when it opened in 1955, now charges from $104 to $224 for a single day, although there are summer prices that go as low as $50 for a child.
The standard price for a one-day Disney World ticket in Florida, for ages 10 and older, is $119. And that, of course, doesn’t cover things like parking, shuttles and meals, amenities like skip-the-line passes, and of course, getting there. And few people who travel long distances stay for only one day.
Per The Times, in January of this year, “two adults with two children aged between three and nine would have to pay a total admission price of $2,161.18 for a three-day pass to the resort’s four parks.”
A park spokesman responded to that report, saying, “Our pricing approach is rooted in flexibility and choice, allowing guests to design the vacation that meets their needs — starting with a $50 children’s ticket at Disneyland. Admission gives every guest who walks through our gates up to 15 hours of incredible experiences in a single day, from Broadway-style shows, parades, fireworks, and immersive attractions — all included in the ticket price.”
‘Adults are the ones with money’
The Walt Disney Co., which just reported $25 billion in revenue for the second quarter, has always been cognizant of the need to appeal to adults, Wolfe noted.
“Walt Disney himself said, if you aim just for kids, you’re dead,” she said, adding that the idea for Disney theme parks came to Disney as he sat on a bench watching his daughter ride a carousel. “He wanted to create a place where adults and kids could play together.”
“But Disney has also known from the beginning that the adults are the ones with the money so you have to entice the adults. And there’s only so far you can go by attracting them with their children’s enjoyment. There has to be something for them, too.”
Disney World, in particular, has always had attractions for adults, she said; for example, what is now called Disney Springs was once an adult attraction called Pleasure Island — the changes made it more family friendly. Disney has long been ranked by wedding websites as among the top honeymoon and wedding destinations in the U.S.
But Disney is also benefiting from the rise of a population known as the “kidult" — adults who spend money and engaging in habits that you might associate more with children, Wolfe said.
While like Disney adults, the “kidult” is easily mocked, even though they may be perfectly responsible adults, they just happen to enjoy Legos, or cosplay, or Disney. In some cases, they say they didn’t get to enjoy Disney as a child, so they’re going to do it as an adult. In others, they just just see the wonderful world of Disney as a safe space.
“The quote I’ve been using a lot lately is from an Imagineer named Herb Ryman,” Wolfe said. “He said, ‘There’s no surprises but good surprises.’ There’s still fun stuff that you weren’t expecting, but none of it is bad. You can go (to a Disney theme park) and be safe; nothing’s going to happen that you don’t like. And people are looking for a space like that right now especially with the world as it is.”
Disney’s Hulu problem
The sense that Disney, as a place and as a brand, is a safe place, a perpetual spring of childhood innocence, is what gives the company trouble when it branches into anything that runs counter to that image.
After Disney’s acquisition of 21st Century Fox and Hulu, parents began complaining about content being made available through the company’s streaming service, Disney+.
It was a change that was intentional, however. “We’re not really developing shows for kids and family — that’s really done by global brands and IP. So we’re really looking to do Hulu Originals across the world and showing people that there’s content for adults on Disney+," Eric Schrier, president of Disney Television Studios and Global Original Television Strategy, said last year.
Although the streaming service added parental controls, parents have reported that advertisements for mature content have turned up, and the nonprofit Concerned Women for America issued a statement in January saying that Disney had betrayed families.
“All of this represents a startling direction for a brand that was once synonymous with wholesome family entertainment. Disney assured parents in 2019 that they wouldn’t allow content higher than a PG-13 on its streaming platform. So this is a betrayal of trust for the parents who built their household media habits around Disney’s ‘family friendly only’ promise,” Penny Nance, the group’s CEO and president, said in the statement.
Melissa Henson, senior policy advisor for media and culture for Concerned Women for America, said in an interview that the company seems to be losing sight of its core audience. “In trying to appeal more to adults, they are losing families,” she said, adding that parents with young children have more options for entertainment than they previously did, with the growth of Angel Studios and the Daily Wire’s children programming (Bentkey).
Some subscribers have dropped Disney+ in protest, although others have dropped the service over Disney-owned ABC’s suspension of Jimmy Kimmel after his remarks about Charlie Kirk’s death. When you are an international behemoth like Disney, there’s always someone upset.
Wolfe said that with political problems, like controversy over its DEI policies and Disney World’s fight with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, the company is always trying to straddle a line of making diverse constituencies happy while being true to its brand. “There’s no pleasing everybody,” she said. “I’ve gotten lots of emails from people who say I’m never going back to Disney again because of X, Y or Z decision that they made politically, and they’re from people on both sides, conservative and liberal.”
None of that matters to Maranan, first a Disney child, then a Disney adult and now a Disney parent, who points out that Walt Disney often spoke of the importance of change.
Walt Disney said, “Times and conditions change so rapidly that we must keep our aim constantly focused on the future.”
That future, it appears, will have more adults, which is why Epcot Center now has an adults-only bar called GEO-82 and Disney is spending money specifically to bring in adults, such as investing in lounges rather than restaurants. It’s a sound business decision, she said.
“The community of Disney adults is a lot bigger than you think. ... There is a massive group of people who, because of the amount of money they’re spending, are de facto affecting the choices that Disney makes.”