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Finding Disney in a Vacation Hashtag

Extraordinary Magic in Everyday Life

Social media changes the way we preserve vacation memories. Gone (for most of us) are the days of purchasing those disposable cameras on the way inside the park, and subsequently making sure we develop all our favorite moments from the day at our local Rite-Aid. Now, we don’t even have to wait until we get home to share with friends and family the fun we’re having and the memories we’re making. With social media, that picture with Mickey is seconds away from being shared with the world.

Temporarily, at least. It’s shared, it’s liked, it’s commented on, it’s oohd and aahd over, but as soon as another post in the news feed comes along, it’s bye-bye to Mickey, and hello to whatever’s next. Information is shared so frequently and so instantaneously that what each of us has to say gets a limited window of reaching its audience.

But vacation memories are something we like to revisit. We look forward to going back and re-living our trips. This used to be easy: Retrieve the photo album from the shelf. But now, while social media makes it enormously easy to share memories in the moment, it makes things a bit difficult to preserve over time. Facebook is excluded from this mantra. FB albums keep everything nice and organized. Twitter and Instagram, though, are a bit different. Without any breakdown of time passage, if you want to re-read the happy tweets you sent during vacation, you’ll have to scroll through your entire timeline until you find them.

BUT, alas, there is a solution! It’s a fun one, too.

Hashtag it.

Disney Side 24 Hour PartyCreate a unique hashtag for your vacation, and use it on every post you put up during your trip. That way, months later when you’re itching to vicariously re-live your adventure, instead of scrolling endlessly, all you have to do is type in the hashtag, and BAM! There are all the posts you or anyone in your travel party wrote while on the trip. You’ll be able to find that slice of Disney quickly without any hassle.

Try to make the hashtag specific, something really tied to the nature of your vacation or the personalities of the people you’re traveling with. During a recent trip, I visited with a friend, Brody, who had never been to Disney before, so our hashtag for the vacation was #DisneyBoundBrody. This summer, I’m headed to Florida with friends who I participate in an event event at school with called #TakeTheMountain, so our trip hashtag is #TakeTheMagic. It just makes things personal and fun, something  a bit more exciting than, say, #TaylorFamilyDisney2014. You also might want to search Twitter and Instagram for your hashtag before you select it to make sure it doesn’t conflict with an existing trend, and you’re not sorting through your own posts juxtaposed with something else completely different.

I got this idea from #Disney24. I attended 2013’s 24-hour day in the Magic Kingdom® Park, and over the summer I would periodically search the hashtag. It was so fun seeing what myself and everyone else in the park had been up to throughout the whole day (and how we were holding up!). I thought the concept of re-experiencing specific event was so neat a that I decided to do the same thing.

(Image copyright Disney.)

Try it out! What will your next trip’s hashtag be?

Blake is a college student focusing on Film and Media Studies. He enjoys making his family of six watch the parade on Main Street and then sprint to Frontierland in time to see it again. You can follow Blake’s random Disney ramblings on Twitter at @olddirtyblake, or at BlakeOnline.com.

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About Lou Mongello

Lou Mongello is a former attorney who left the practice to pursue his passion, and is now a recognized Disney expert, author, speaker, and host of WDW Radio. Learn more…

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