Wow! This is infuriating. “Once-in-a-lifetime” trip or not, I would be so pissed to be in that restaurant with grown adults being that disruptive and annoying. I’m both shocked at the blatant disrespect and not surprised at all. It reminded me that I never shared my story of BLOB ruining my re-entry experience when Disneyland reopened. I was never a follower or a fan. I became aware of them through other family members who watched most of the Disney vloggers, and since I follow other Disney related accounts on Instagram, she always seemed to pop up on my explore page. I was immediately turned off by her screeching and attention-whore behaviors. I didn’t have much of an opinion on him, just because he was so low-key compared to her (of course, that was before I found out about their affair). We saw them in the parks quite a bit before shutdown, I specifically remember a few incidences around the time Rise of the Resistance opened. I would see their stuff on Instagram and laugh about it with my family, so I never blocked their pages because it was fun to snark on them.
As reopening neared, I knew they had gotten into cast-member previews through Instagram. My family and I showed up on the official re-opening day and wouldn’t you know it, we were a few rows over from BLOB, Fresh Baked, and Charlie at the entrance gates (maybe a few others, I didn’t know them all at the time). Other guests were happy and excited as they start letting the lines enter the park, but people were calm. It seemed like a reverent moment for a lot of us who had missed being at the parks, and none of the rest of the crowd was being loud. We passed through the main gate right as their group entered a few lines over, and Katie immediately starts screeching and dancing like a coked-up monkey who found a barrel of bananas. The fake and obnoxious scene she caused totally overwhelmed what I expected to be an emotional moment for me and my family. She was screaming and cackling super loud, trying to get everyone to look at her and join in her fake excitement. She was jumping and dancing, wanting others to do the same. She started yelling “I’ve missed you Disneyland” when even I knew this bitch had just been there the day before at a cast preview. The rest of the group was annoying too, but she made sure she was the loudest, by far, by far. They kept moving about the area filming, taking pictures, talking to stans, and just taking up way more space than necessary. While I was super annoyed by them, we didn’t leave the area right away because we wanted to get our own photos and moments in the entry plaza (not infringing on others, of course). Naturally, they ended up a little behind us as we started to walk down Main Street, so we could still hear them yell about “being home”, “it’s really happening”, and being “excited to finally be back” (all while “YOU WERE JUST HERE YESTERDAY!" looped in my head). I had to remind myself not to let them impose on our experience and ruin my mood. Eventually, we lost them as they lingered, sucking the attention and joy from others along Main Street. We ran into them a few more times during the day and all the fake smiles and happiness were gone, unless they were filming. We saw them sitting at a table not talking and just staring at their phones while looking annoyed.
Did she really “ruin” my reentry experience? No, I refuse to give her that power because ultimately, I was able to be back with my family and we had a great day. But now I will always have that memory of her being so incredibly obnoxious and intrusive, invading everyone else’s moment with her horrible, screeching voice and cackle. She forces herself on everyone else as she tries to be the center of attention and truly sucks the joy out of things. I have no doubt in my mind that many other park guests have had similar experiences.