‘Disney adult’ is not a pejorative at House of Mouse Expo

Credit: courtesy Scott Atwood

Last weekend, all eyes in sci-fi and fantasy fandom were firmly focused on San Diego Comic Con, and next month they’ll turn toward Anaheim’s D23 Ultimate Disney Fan event, in order to learn late-breaking updates about upcoming comic book films and theme park attractions. But anyone who has been to these massive conventions in recent years — or attended Orlando’s own MegaCon — knows they’ve evolved into expensive tools of corporate communication where fans wait hours in line and pay hundreds of dollars in admission fees, only to spend more time and money on assembly-line autograph sessions offering a split-second of face time with an exhausted A-lister. If you’re longing instead for an intimate, community-driven fan convention, look no further than the House of Mouse Expo, which is coming to Disney Springs’ Wyndham Lake Buena Vista Friday and Saturday, July 31-Aug. 1.

Founded in 2021 by Scott and Michele Atwood, the House of Mouse Expo emerged from their website The Main Street Mouse, which has been covering theme park news since 2009. But when their journey to become professional parkgoers began, not only were they not living in Florida, but Scott admits he wasn’t even a Disney super-fan growing up, until he met Michele, now his wife.

He recalls, “She kind of held my hand and pulled me into the whole atmosphere of Disney, and then when Star Wars and Marvel came on, it was very easy for me to follow suit because those were my fandoms of choice.” The couple were living in Michigan at the time, with day jobs in finance and IT; but after being downsized they had severance pay. “We decided in 2014 we were going to make the leap of faith, and we moved to Central Florida,” he says.

Since 2017, the Atwoods have been invited guests at Disney’s media events, and although they’ve observed the explosion of “content creators” and influencers in the theme park space, they continue to consider themselves journalists, focusing on their self-built website to share their original reporting and opinions, rather than social media.

“I’ve always been one who doesn’t want to depend on somebody else’s platform to share our messages,” says Scott. “Once we got that invite, we just went in there [and] we stayed ourselves … and Disney, from the get-go, said, ‘We like how you do it, we like that you’re honest.’ … They always have encouraged us to be very open about how we feel about everything, and we’ve always wanted to be true to our listeners.”

Although they are professionally immersed in Disney’s films and parks, the pair have a diverse array of talents and interests — they design their own label of Lularoe-like leggings, and Michele has authored four books — so (like me) Scott bristles a bit when the mainstream media uses “Disney Adults” as a pejorative.

“It’s almost like they’re saying you can’t be a fan if you’re over this certain age,” he says. “The world is so bad and so chaotic, and there’s so much bad going on around us, that if you take joy in going into that park where there’s that castle and you can forget about the outside world for a couple hours, I don’t see the harm in it.”

Before the first House of Mouse Expo, Scott had attended larger fan conventions and was inspired to create something smaller centered around the Disney fans, and “bring the actors [and] Imagineers or the animators they’ve grown up watching [to] meet them and actually talk to them.” It wasn’t until after COVID that he decided: “Life’s too short, and I need to at least try it one time. I need to take the chance. I need to see if it can work.”

They held their first event over Thanksgiving weekend 2021, attracting over 500 fans. “Everybody had a great time, they loved it. I think we only had like 40 vendors, but it was fun.” Thanks to contacts Michele had made doing interviews, notable guests at that first expo included Larry Bagby, Tobias Jelinek and Doug Jones from Hocus Pocus, along with Margaret Kerry, the recently deceased live model for Tinker Bell. “When I got there and I saw these people there, I’m like, ‘How did I pull this off?” recalls Scott. “It just blew me away, and we’ve just gotten bigger and bigger since then. Now the agents reach out to me.”

Fast-forward to five years later, and House of Mouse is expecting up to 1,800 attendees for its fourth edition, its first on Disney property. “I think that puts us a little more credibility behind what we’re doing here. Disney knows all about it; we’ve had talks with our PR representatives and legal [and] they’ve given us their blessing.” This year’s guest lineup is headlined by brothers Joey, Matthew and Andrew Lawrence, along with local celebrities like DJ Elliot Hansen and Ron “Dreamfinder” Schneider. Other highlights include former Muppeteer Steve Whitmire; Star Wars actors Emily Swallow, Chris Bartlett and Daniel Logan; a 1990s Mickey Mouse Club reunion; and Noel McNeil from millennial childhood favorite Bear in the Big Blue House, who Scott says “keeps a box of Kleenex on the table, because he said too many people tear up when they’re with him.”

Meeting these famous folks will be far more accessible and affordable at House of Mouse than at a major con, with daily admission as low as $10 for theme park employees and all signings well under $100.

“I would rather [attendees] have a little bit of money to be able to go either meet that celebrity or shop the vendor floor, so we’re trying to keep it affordable as much as we can for everybody who comes out,” says Scott, sharing that even the guest stars appreciate that his expo ensures enough time for a few minutes of interaction of with each autograph seeker instead of rushing them along. “We’ve always said that if we get larger, we don’t ever want to lose that feel [and start] disconnecting from the fans.”