DISNEYWASTELAND

In the past few years Disneyland has added hotels and a Toontown, turned its parking lots into a Downtown Disney shopping district, created an entire neighboring park called Disney’s California Adventure and shut down its hoary Pirates of the Caribbean ride for a movie-inspired revamp.

The park is still the — self-proclaimed — happiest place on Earth, though, and its trash cans still impart the oddest of messages to visitors. Dispersed at roughly one-meter intervals throughout the park, they all ask that visitors “Waste Please.”

The park’s recycling bins merely reinforce the grammatically and environmentally suspect nature of the trash cans. The recycling bins, of which there are about two to every 12 trash cans, urge visitors to “Recycle Please.” There’s no misreading “Waste Please,” then: Waste, please! Mickey says “Waste!”

Hard to believe this peculiarity hasn’t been noticed over the past decade or so. The only other thing that hasn’t changed in the park, apparently, is the “It’s a Small World” ride, which is just as clunky, earnest and maddening as it has been for 42 years. It may inspire people to take high-powered rifles into towers, but at least it doesn’t ask them to be profligate and thoughtless.