Today's main character has, well, seen a lot of main characters in the past decade.
A California man recently set a Guinness World Record for most consecutive visits to the Disneyland theme park — with 2,995 straight days of visits. That breaks down to eight years, three months, and 13 days. And yes, it took some dedication. He coordinated the visits around dinner plans, work duties and travel.
Who is he? Jeff Reitz lives about 30 minutes from Disneyland, in Huntington Beach, Calif. He was at the theme park on New Year's Day 2012 when he and his friends noticed an advertisement for an "extra Disney Day." It was an event celebrating Feb. 29, the additional day coming up that leap year.
"We were joking around, 'How could it be an extra day if you didn't use the others?'" Reitz told NPR. So they set out to use all the other days too. They were unemployed at the time, so this was an opportunity to do something positive with their time instead of dwelling on their situation, he said.
"We could still do job hunting in the morning or night, and [we] got exercise," he said. "And you were always networking because you never knew who you were talking to."
Once they reached their goal of visiting the park all 366 days, he just kept going.
That's one cool character.
Jeff Reitz
How did he keep it up? That first year, Reitz was able to go to the park daily with an annual pass that his family gifted him in December 2011. He later got a job at a medical center and began purchasing his own passes.
To him, the daily visits were a constant source of joy.
"It was my gym. It was my happy hour. It was entertainment all in one package," he said. "You know, instead of paying for a separate membership for doing lots of different things, it was all in one package with my annual pass."
Reitz said that, at the beginning, the annual pass would cost around $500. In the later years, it was $1,400. "So for me, going every day, even at the end, was only about $3.50 a day," Reitz said. "So about the same as someone going to buy a cup of coffee."
He also started using the hashtag #Disney366 on social media to document his journey. He said it was a casual thing at first, but it then developed into his "persona."
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