This week my parents are going to Disneyland. Without me, if you can imagine! It’s the first time since they had kids they’re going without kids.

I’m almost 40 years old. That, as Mike Gundy would attest, is a grown man. I could, at any time, take off work and go Disneyland. There’s literally nothing stopping me except the increasingly exorbitant cost and my workload. And yet I still find myself grumbling that I’m not going, too.

Therefore, because I’m a mature adult, I’m going to listen to the songs I’d hear at Disneyland and pretend I’m there while I do my job like a sucker.

Perrey and Kingsley — “Baroque Hoedown”

Anyone who doesn’t love the Main Street Electrical Parade is wrong and bad.

Now, since LEDs are a thing and there are lights on everything, it’s not impressive at all when something’s all lit up. But back in the ’80s? As a kid? That was so cool. There were so many lights! Everything was moving! It was awesome!

They stopped the parade in 1996 and I haven’t seen the new version from 2017, 2019 and 2022. But I probably hate it because they definitely changed it. As a grumpy, jaded adult, I don’t have the childlike wonder to make it seem awesome.

By the way, I just now found out that the song in the parade is an actual song. How did nobody tell me this?!

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George Bruns and Xavier Atencio — “Yo Ho (A Pirate’s Life for Me)”

Don’t lie and pretend you didn’t like the movies. We all did. We know the narrative flaws and the, ahem, flaws with certain cast members, but the movies were incredibly entertaining.

The big failing? They barely used the song! That’s one of the three things people remember about the ride, along with “dead men tell no tales” and the dog with the key to the jail cell.

Or is the dog thing just me? The dog thing might just be me.

Buddy Baker and Xavier Atencio — “Grim Grinning Ghosts”

This may come as a surprise from someone who once spent an entire month writing columns full of Halloween music, but I love the Haunted Mansion. Always have. It was probably formative in ways that my parents likely regret.

As a kid, I was obsessed with how they did the stuff like the hitchhiking ghosts and the floating ghosts at the banquet, so of course I read every book I could on how to do that sort of thing. It really is ingenious how they pulled some of that stuff off with 1968 technology. I know people with that much talent for engineering probably could have made world-changing discoveries or inventions instead but, you know what? Worth it.

Also, the lyrics are by the same Xavier Atencio who did the lyrics for the Pirates of the Caribbean song. Who knew that guy was one of my favorite songwriters?

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Allie Wrubel and Ray Gilbert — “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah”

The song from the end of Splash Mountain won an Oscar.

Seriously, it was Best Original Song in 1947. It was originally from a movie called “Song of the South,” which was pretty innovative, blending live action and animation 18 years before “Mary Poppins” and 42 years before “Who Framed Roger Rabbit.” The songs and characters still appear in Disney stuff.

The reason you probably haven’t seen it is because it’s shockingly racist. Not in the active racial slur way, but in the insidious stereotype way. It centers on Uncle Remus, an elderly Black man who still works on a plantation even though slavery ended, telling stories to a little white boy.

Last I heard, Disney was taking all the “Song of the South” stuff out of Splash Mountain and replacing it with “The Princess and the Frog” stuff instead. Which is good, but it means this entry is just gonna make me sound old pretty soon.

The Mellomen — “The Tiki Tiki Tiki Room”

I’ll admit this song is pretty annoying as an adult. Not “Small World” annoying, but close. I stand by it because I have fond memories of the annoying Enchanted Tiki Room.

Apparently, at Walt Disney World they changed that Tiki Room to be hosted by Iago from “Aladdin” and Zazu from “The Lion King,” and everyone hated it. Then it caught fire so they changed it back. So that’s good! I like when things stay the same as they were when I was a kid. At Tokyo Disneyland, they changed it to a Lilo and Stitch theme and got rid of the song, which, I mean, I get it.

But the thing I remember the most? That all the animatronics’ mouths clicked loudly when they closed while singing, so the song was nearly drowned out by an omnipresent chorus of incessant clacking. I still enjoyed it. Don’t care what you say.

Follow publisher Daniel J. Willis and tweet column ideas to him at Twitter.com/BayAreaData.