Mickey's Toontown vs. “Star Wars Land”

Here we go. This one's not gonna be much fun, but it needs to be said.

So it's official: The Mickey's Toontown area at Disneyland will be demolished to make room for a “Star Wars Land,” in order to capitalize on the upcoming new trilogy of Star Wars films.

To say this decision disappoints me falls far short of reality. To say it enrages me might be overstating the case, but only a little. I think it's a wretched idea, for several reasons which I shall now enumerate, running roughly in order of most personal to least personal.

I don't give a flying gleep about Star Wars.

I've seen the movies that exist so far, though I think Episode IV is the only one I've actually sat down and watched start-to-finish. I was born the year that film came out and spent my early years getting hammered by the popcultural presence of the original trilogy without really being old enough to enjoy it for myself. I suffered from Star Wars overexposure before I even got a chance to like it, and that feeling has stayed with me my whole life.

I don't like this new trend of building entire lands themed to a single IP.

We've already got “a bug's land” and Cars Land over in California Adventure, and now this. I think it's a mistake. It narrows the horizons of what can be done with the area and risks shutting down all public interest should the IP itself not be a hit. “a bug's land” is already falling flat. Cars Land is doing better, in large part because of its fantastic design (and better attractions), but it hasn't been open very long. What happens in a few years when the novelty wears off, if people are sick of McQueen and Mater by then? (I'm already sick of them.) Acres of valuable real estate and expensive ride development will be wasted.

Also—bit of a digression here—what's with these hideous names for single-IP lands? The point of the classic naming pattern is that the themes were nonspecific—you're not going to a particular fairy tale kingdom, but to “Fantasyland.” This jungle isn't the Congo or the Amazon; it's “Adventureland.” Notice also that the classic names are single words—Adventureland is the area's name, not an informal description. But the movie Cars doesn't take place in Cars Land. It takes place in the town of Radiator Springs in Carburetor County. The Imagineers have done an amazing job of recreating this setting exactly as it appears in the movie, only to abandon diegesis in the very name of the area. I'm pretty sure it's not their fault, though—this has all the hallmarks of a management directive. It's a revoltingly transparent move to reinforce and exploit brand recognition. “Cars” is the name of the franchise, hence “Cars Land.” You can be certain they'll do the same with the Star Wars addition, destroying the illusion before guests have even had a chance to absorb it.

Disneyland does not need more saturation of outside IPs.

Yes, I know Disney owns Star Wars now. But they didn't always. They didn't own it when Star Tours was added to Tomorrowland, and the concept remains something that originated outside Disney and was adopted by them rather than being an in-house creation. Disneyland is filling up with Pixar and Marvel and now Lucasfilm material, and I feel like it's pushing the natives out, so to speak. It throws a wrench into the artistic cohesion of the park. And speaking of Star Tours...

What are they planning to do with Star Tours, anyway?

There are two Star Wars attractions in Disneyland already: The Jedi Training Academy and Star Tours. The former, being a live show, will be easy to transfer to whatever performance venue gets built in Star Wars Land...but how do you pick up a big, complex, fixed attraction and move it a half-mile away? Obviously it can be done, but I'm not at all confident that it will be done. Star Tours is working just fine and is plenty popular where it is. It, and its attached gift shop, are probably going to be left squatting in Tomorrowland, disconnected from the rest of the Star Wars theme and increasing its artistically bankrupt presence in the park. Oh yeah, I went there.

Mickey's Toontown, unlike Star Wars, serves an important function in the Disneyland mythos.

It makes so much sense to have something like Toontown in Disneyland that I'm surprised it took them until the Nineties to install one. Disneyland has always been known as a place where you could meet Mickey Mouse; it takes no great leap of logic to imagine his actual house there, as part of a suitably Toony environment. Actually, before Toontown debuted, the stars of the classic shorts didn't really have a “natural place” in Disneyland. Fantasyland was the closest, but especially since the 1983 overhaul, it emphasized old world fairy tales and timeless storybook settings. Mickey and the gang are disconnected from this theme by virtue of being contemporary (even if most of their material is decades old), slapsticky, and all-American. Toontown gives them a place to believably exist.

Now, I realize that Mickey's Toontown does not see a lot of foot traffic. I think this has more to do with its location and attractions than any general apathy to the concept. It's in a far corner of the park and has only one entrance/exit, limiting guests' exposure to the space. It was designed, with good enough intentions, as a romp area for preschoolers, leaving not much for other age groups to enjoy (although I, cornball that I am, still get a kick out of lifting the lid on the crate labeled “Train Parts” and hearing the approaching locomotive). So I understand that Toontown is kind of on the skids, popularity-wise. But is that a reason to rip it out and replace it with something completely different? Back in the 1980s, the same problem plagued Bear Country, for much the same reasons. Instead of demolishing the area, Disney buffed it. They built an elaborate new thrill ride—Splash Mountain—and changed the area's name to Critter Country, but left most of its existing features the same. And the place perked up. Surely Toontown can be refreshed rather than scrapped. In the future I will post one of my ideas for doing just that, although it is now rather bittersweet.

Putting Star Wars Land in that spot throws off the logical “flow” of Disneyland's themed areas.

Barring a few awkward transitions, the arrangement of the different lands relative to each other makes a lot of sense. New Orleans Square sits at the junction of Adventureland and Frontierland, communicating a happy medium between tropical exoticism and Westward expansion. Critter Country's rustic environment feels like a natural extension of Frontierland. Putting Mickey's Toontown beyond Fantasyland makes for an interesting south-to-north journey from the everyday (Main Street) through the whimsical and magical (Fantasyland) to the zany and absurd (Toontown). Now picture Star Wars in the same place. It doesn't really work, does it? If synergy demands a Star Wars Land, surely a better place for it would be between Fantasyland and Tomorrowland, where its blend of mythic elements (Knights, princesses, and lightsabers) and futuristic ones (spaceships, blasters, and lightsabers) would comfortably bridge the gap between the two areas. There's a fair amount of underutilized real estate there that could be pressed into service, and perhaps the Autopia and Submarine Voyage (both of them shamefully inappropriate for Tomorrowland in their current states) could be re-themed as sightseeing trips/adventures on some of the planets featured in the franchise. Of course, that in itself still leaves the elephant in the room about the whole concept...

Star Wars is not suitable source material for a theme park area.

Whatever your opinion of Star Tours and its suitability for Tomorrowland, there's no denying that it does a very good job making you feel like part of the Star Wars setting. Both incarnations of Star Tours feature “light speed” trips from planet to planet, bringing across the idea of a vast but integrated Galaxy containing dozens of populated planets, each with its own unique climate and terrain. The narrative of the ride allows for that. But there's no way to build a section of a theme park, which people explore on foot, and have it feel the same. They could construct an immersive representation of a single planetary environment, such as Tatooine or Naboo, but only at the expense of portraying a Republic comprising numerous different planets. Dividing the area into multiple slices representing the various planetary environments would just make it weird, because then people could walk from Coruscant to Endor, or wherever. One or two Star Wars-based attractions as part of a larger theme can be justified. An entire land can't help but fly in the face of what Star Wars is.

Sadly, it seems there is no way to convince Disney management to reverse this decision. We are due to lose the wonderful Mickey's Toontown and have it replaced with an intensely problematic Star Wars area. The Imagineers do wonderful work, but they're really going to have to wow me in order to overcome my distaste.