The obsessions

Whenever Della and I travel to a Disney park, Della always tends to return with some obsession.

In May 2005, after returning from the 50th Anniversary kick off in Anaheim, it was pins.  She picked up the pin obsession while over there and after our return, she discovered the wonder of buying pins from Ebay.  She would scour the Internet, determine the auction cut off times, log on at the last minute and continue bouts of bidding, followed by frantic presses of the refresh icon on her web browser, waiting to win, or God-forbid, waiting to be out-bid.

In March 2006 after we returned from Hong Kong, she was still interested in pins, but we were instantly distracted by news of the Down Under Disneyana Club’s world Disney tour in September, so no general obsession set in – other than counting down six months to the holiday.

But our return from the Disney round the world tour bought an odd obsession – Pal Mickey.  We enjoyed PM while we were in Walt Disney World Florida, but I didn’t expect to be badgered on a daily basis about him when we returned…”can’t you get him to talk” , “I want to hear his trivia again” , “You’re good with computers, can’t you do something?” – No Della, sorry – that was one obsession I couldn’t help!  Mind you, when his batteries went flat and Mickey began shuddering and talking gibberish in front of Della causing her a minor panic attack – I did have to laugh!

So what about the return from Tokyo this year?  Well, the current obsession is all about Duffy.  “Who is Duffy?” you ask?  Duffy is a teddy bear character from Tokyo Disneysea.  He was originally sold in WDW as “The Disney Bear” and came in different colours.  He wasn’t that successful there, so he was handed over to Japan where he is available in a traditional teddy bear brown colour.  I have to admit, Duffy is a really nice bear and was supposedly a gift from Minnie to Mickey to accompany him on his journeys around the world.  In Japan, he has become a cultural phenomena. They release new clothes for him at Disneysea each month, and Duffy owners take him to the park on every visit.  When two Duffys meet in the park, the owners make sure they greet each other!  Now that we are back in Australia – Duffy is Della’s latest obsession.  I’m being dragged around Build-a-Bear Shops in search of new clothes, and sent on missions to obscure Japanese websites – using Google language tools to determine whether they ship items such as bear shoes to Australia.

As for me, I don’t get post-holiday Disney obsessions.  Sure, I spend hundreds of hours on the internet viewing You Tube videos and reading website forums about the parks I just returned from.  I painstakingly plot the route of my holiday on Google Earth.  I bought around 15 Disney books on Amazon when I returned from Anaheim.  And next week, I’m planning on purchasing eight Tokyo Disney Resort CDs from HMV Japan (which will go nicely with the 15 I purchased over there, plus a few more I borrowed since I returned) .

You see, I’m quite normal – I don’t have any post-holiday obsessions…do I?