At Disneyland, smoking is out and drinking is in

Disneyland dropped a ton of new “Project Stardust” news last week, but I think we can distill it a lot of that to this:

Disneyland is getting rid of its last smoking section to help make room for its first bar.

So it’s “Booze 1, Smoking 0” on the scoreboard as Disneyland moves toward the long-anticipated opening of its new Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge land on May 31. The Disneyland Resort will go smoke free on May 1 as the park eliminates its designated smoking areas inside Disneyland and Disney California Adventure and bans smoking in Downtown Disney, forcing visitors who want to smoke or vape to go outside its security perimeter.

Then on May 31, when Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge opens it will include Oga’s Cantina, the first bar to sell alcohol to the public inside the original Disneyland park. Disneyland long has served inside its private Club 33, but people who aren’t hooked up with a member can’t get in there.

I suppose that if you have a talent for social climbing, it might still be quicker to find a Club 33 member, make friends with him or her and then sweet-talk your way into that club for a drink than it would be to wait for one in the line at the Star Wars cantina.

Looking back, it seems wrong that Disneyland for years banned alcohol in the name of family friendliness while also allowing smoking throughout the park. According to fact sheets from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, smoking is responsible for more than 480,000 deaths annually in the United States, while excessive alcohol use leads to approximately 88,000 deaths a year. Second-hand smoke exposure alone causes more than 41,000 deaths a year, according to the CDC. I suppose the comparable number for drinking might be drunken driving deaths, for which the CDC says there are more than 10,000 a year.

Yeah, neither are good for you, but if I had to choose one thing to ban in my theme park, it would be smoking over alcohol, without hesitation. Let’s not forget that it was smoking that killed Walt Disney, either.

But Disneyland is not banning smoking to make a health statement. In talking with Disneyland managers, it seems clear to me that the resort simply ran out of space to provide an area to accommodate its visitors who smoke. Disneyland’s last smoking area just happened to be right at the entrance to Galaxy’s Edge. There is no way that smoking area could stay there with the new land opening, and there was no place else in the park to relocate it.

So the challenge for Disneyland now becomes to enforce its smoking ban. Every smoker I know has been fine with respecting Disney’s designated smoking areas. But that was when they had somewhere in the parks to smoke. When they have to go outside security after May 1, will Disney fans who smoke continue to be as respectful or will more of them try sneaking a cigarette or a vape inside the park instead?