What happens when Peter Pan’s shadow has a shadow?
Over the past two weeks, TikToker Toni Kulusich, better known as @babytoni99, has gone viral for videos of herself with Peter Pan at Disneyland. What might otherwise look like a routine character meet-and-greet
has sparked a very different reaction online, with social media users questioning whether her decade-long fandom of a fictional character crosses a boundary.
According to an interview withWired, Kulusich, 27, didn’t see her content really take off until a clip of her gifting Peter Pan a tiny crocheted duck started trending.
Suddenly, she’d gone from 10,000 views to a million, and the angry comments were flooding in. Critics took issue with some of the recordings, particularly those in which Kulusich appears to kiss Peter Pan on the cheek or get down on one knee to propose to him. Other videos, however, show Kulusich and Pan skipping arm in arm through Fantasyland, with the actor seemingly leaning into the friendly exchange.
But Kulusich insists there’s a distinction between her Disney obsession and her life outside the park. “It’s not like I’m going to the store or to my job and thinking about Peter Pan,” she said, referring to her job as a manager at a big-box retailer. “It’s just that when I’m inside Disney, I’m able to release my inner child and the kid who doesn’t want to grow up.”
Kulusich defended herself to Wired, saying that even her husband of four years, a Marine, is “really supportive” of her hobby. But her account has sparked a conversation about Disney adults, what’s appropriate when visiting a park, and what’s pushing things too far. Though Kulusich says that criticism of her is unfair, there are plenty of other instances of fans crossing the line. (Kulusich, who is using her middle name to protect her privacy, declined to be interviewed by Rolling Stone. Disney did not respond to a request for comment.)
Today, there are 12 Disney parks across the globe. Guests come for the attractions, shows, and, of course, the characters. Those range from princesses, known within the company as “face characters,” whose performers wear costumes and company-approved makeup while showing their own exterior, to Mickey Mouse and other “fur characters,” the Disney term for performers who portray animated stars in full-body suits.
It’s not an easy job. I worked at Disney World in 2016 as a character attendant, assisting princesses in their duties. I remember one shift when I interacted with guests alongside Rapunzel and Cinderella. There was a frequent visitor, a man in his 30s, who repeatedly came to the park and would go from princess to princess, presenting them with drawings, making requests for videos, and going in for long hugs. We put his photo backstage to warn other women.
According to former Disney cast members, the divide between fantasy and reality can get surprisingly blurry for some adults who do become deeply attached to park performers. “Adult stalkers are much more common than you would think,” Justin Sanger, a 34-year-old former cast member who portrayed everyone from Hercules’ Hades to Toy Story’s Woody for more than nine years at Disney World in Orlando, Florida, tells Rolling Stone. “Honestly, the female characters are on the receiving end of this far more frequently than I ever was, but there was always someone who took their love for a character very personally.”
He says the role has changed significantly in the past decade, thanks to the internet. “Our job was to bring these characters to life for the guests, and for the most part, people understood that and took it at face value,” he says. “But the addition of social media created a whole new level of access and made people feel more ‘connected’ to a character — or to the person portraying them.”
He recalls seeing situations in which solo guests at the park would spend a significant amount of their free time interacting with the same character, sometimes even seeking out the actor playing them. He said that while most interactions are harmless, some fans go overboard with their devotion.
“There was also something about The Incredibles that seemed to attract a particularly extreme level of attention, including a lot of sexualization. We wore spandex and had fake muscles, but that was the role where I personally experienced some of the most extreme behavior from guests,” Sanger says. “This included people finding us on social media and asking for special meet-and-greets for family and friends. But it also included very bold, face-to-face comments about how our bodies looked in the spandex and even comments about how ‘stretchy’ Mrs. Incredible really was.”
Sanger says the behavior became so frequent that the performers had to take action. “We actually had to ban certain guests — and even fellow cast members who were harassing us — from coming to interact with us at the themed dance party because it became an every-day, all-day type of occurrence.”
However, Sanger notes that he has a soft spot for people who see Disney as an escape from the real world. “I genuinely don’t think there is anything wrong with being a Disney adult,” he said. “But being a Disney adult is not an issue. Stalking and possessiveness are.”
Rob Millerick worked as a character performer at Walt Disney World in Orlando from 2014 to 2018. During his time playing Nick Wilde from Zootopia, he encountered obsessive young parkgoers, who would ultimately play a role in his decision to leave the park.
At the beginning, Millerick says, there was nothing particularly unusual about the attention. “It was very light-hearted. They were just excited to see us,” he tells Rolling Stone. The group, made up of older teenagers and people in their early 20s, began showing up regularly for the parade’s three daily performances, led by one attendee in particular.
But the appearances became increasingly common. “As time went on, it got more and more aggressive and more and more frequent until [he] was showing up every day I was there,” Millerick says, adding that his fellow performers would warn him when they saw the attendee around. “The dancers that were with me started telling each other, ‘Hey, if you see this person, Nick Wilde has to be up on the float because he’s going to try and attack him.’”
The situation continued for months, and Disney eventually became involved. But Millerick says there was a frustrating pattern: “Every single time a manager was there to observe, he did not come,” Millerick says. “And any time the manager wasn’t there, he was there.” A few months later, Millerick quit.
Disney didn’t respond to Rolling Stone’s request for comment on how it trains employees to navigate difficult guest interactions, but from my own experience in the Disney College Program, I know that Disney’s foundational training course, “Traditions,” teaches employees to prioritize four key principles: safety, courtesy, show, and efficiency.
Every role comes with its own additional instructions; what a princess learns is different from what someone working an attraction learns, but the overarching goal is the same: Keep people safe while keeping the magic alive as long as you can do it with a smile.
As for Kulusich, she told Wired that after taking a break, she decided to come back to the park. She wasn’t going to go looking for Peter, but when she saw him, she said he waved. So while there may be problematic Disney adults who let their obsessions spiral, Kulusich insists that what she’s doing is simply an innocent hobby that “makes her happy.”
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