Imagineering Theory: Animating the Parks

Or: Matching Film Settings to Area Themes

The Walt Disney Company is known for two things above all else: its high-quality animated films, and its equally high-quality theme parks. From the earliest days of Disneyland, these two product lines have been closely intertwined: rides based on the films were built in Disneyland, and Disneyland’s landmark castle (itself named after a movie but not actually based on the appearance of the castle in said movie) was used as the basis for the animation studio’s logo. In recent decades, “synergitis” has only intensified the relationship between Disney animation and Disney parks, and almost any animated film with the Disney name attached might find a presence in one of the company’s resorts.

But we can probably all agree that there’s a right way and a wrong way to do it. The purpose of this article is to get a handle on the right way, for the benefit of Armchair Imagineers who combine a love of the Disney animated canon with an eye for immersive and cohesive theming.

It used to be simple: animated characters went into Fantasyland, the domain of fairy tales, storybook adventures, and childhood dreams, and that was all there was to it. The other lands were for realism, or failing that, at least a more puckish, adult type of whimsy. But as once-classic attractions such as the Swiss Family Treehouse and CircleVision 360 wore out their welcome, the Disney Imagineers looked to the company’s popular animated properties to inspire their replacements, and animated characters began to infiltrate the other lands. The first instance was the 1989 debut of Splash Mountain in Bear Country, now rechristened Critter Country, since the flume ride’s charming protagonist was the decidedly non-ursine Brer Rabbit from Song of the South. The next few years saw the placement of Aladdin in Adventureland, Pocahontas in Frontierland, and even an entirely new land, Mickey’s Toontown (an expansion on the concept of the earlier Mickey’s Birthdayland in Florida), built just to showcase the Toons. Characters crept into the non-Magic Kingdom parks as well, into EPCOT Center and Disney-MGM Studios (both of which would ultimately be renamed). When Disney’s Animal Kingdom opened in 1998, the animated characters were included from the start.

So now, Armchair Imagineers (and real ones, for that matter) wishing to base an attraction or other feature on an animated Disney property have the task of figuring out where to put it in order to best match its setting and visual style to the existing themes present in the parks. Some matches are obvious—no one will dispute the inclusion of Pixie Hollow in Fantasyland or propose that the Festival of the Lion King should be in Epcot rather than Animal Kingdom—but some films are trickier to place. Some, such as Lilo and Stitch, might potentially fit in two or more lands or parks. And some films don’t really have a “natural home” in the theme parks…yet.

To a large extent, Fantasyland is still the best bet for most films and characters. The original practice of putting all cartoon-based attractions there has left the various incarnations of Fantasyland with a broad thematic base that can accommodate many different types of movies, not just those based on fairy tales and classic children’s stories. Don’t let the name or castle-shaped entrance (whichever Princess is credited with ownership) fool you into thinking only the magical and medieval-flavored films would be appropriate for the land that has, since the start, also included Dumbo and Mr. Toad.

Still, said fantasies are the easiest to imagine adding to the existing environs of Fantasyland, and given the huge popularity of the Princess, Pixie Hollow, and Alice in Wonderland brands, said environs will likely only shift further in a fairy tale-related direction in the near future. Plenty of animated films that have yet to receive a full-blown attraction would fit perfectly in Fantasyland—Beauty and the Beast, The Sword in the Stone, and even Hercules come to mind.

Apart from fairy tales and children’s stories, Disney is perhaps best known for its animal stories, from semi-realistic takes such as Bambi and The Lion King to fanciful tales starring anthropomorphized creatures as in Robin Hood and The Great Mouse Detective. Comparatively few of them have been turned into permanent attractions, despite the existence of the animal-centered Critter Country and Animal Kingdom. Of those that have, most take the form of shows rather than rides. There are some big gaps going unfilled here!

There is no all-purpose land or park that could host all animal stories and characters equally well. Animal Kingdom is the best choice for wild animal characters that behave much like their real-world counterparts—it is easy to imagine a Bambi attraction in Camp Minnie-Mickey, or a Jungle Book-based ride in Asia. Adventureland is also a good place for wild animal characters, provided they come from a suitably exotic habitat. Critter Country is for semi-anthropomorphic animals with a rustic lifestyle; the more human-like and more urban they get, the better they would fit somewhere else such as Fantasyland or Mickey’s Toontown. Farm animals would probably work best in Frontierland, and pets…well, it depends on the details. The period settings of Lady and the Tramp and The Aristocats map well to Main Street, USA, while Bolt is a natural for Disney-Hollywood Studios or California Adventure’s Hollywood Pictures Backlot.

Returning to Adventureland, it’s not just the pure animal stories that work well there. A number of films in the Disney animated canon take place in the tropics and can be represented in Adventureland with little trouble. In the Anaheim park, Tarzan’s Treehouse has replaced the Swiss Family Treehouse, while Tokyo Disneyland added Lilo and Stitch-based elements to its revamp of the Enchanted Tiki Room. (The American parks instead emphasize Stitch’s science-fiction origins and put him in Tomorrowland.) Nor is the Disney definition of “exotic” limited to equatorial rain forests—Aladdin has a presence in no fewer than three Magic Kingdom parks. It might be just the place for an attraction based on The Rescuers Down Under or possibly even Mulan.

Animated films with a futuristic or science-fiction feel are rarer in the Disney lineup than those that hinge on fantasy and magic, but they do exist and are well-suited to Tomorrowland and the FutureWorld portion of Epcot. Lilo and Stitch has already been mentioned, but an even better choice for a Tomorrowland attraction is Meet the Robinsons, which is so much in harmony with the original presentation of the land that it includes a tongue-in-cheek tribute to it (making it utterly bizarre that in Anaheim, the characters were shoehorned into Hollywood Pictures Backlot.) On the other hand, the more steampunk-ish style of Atlantis: The Lost Empire and Treasure Planet fits better in Disneyland Paris’s Discoveryland.

Meet the Robinsons is, of course, not the only Disney film to be assigned willy-nilly to Hollywood Pictures Backlot or Disney-Hollywood Studios. The philosophy of the Imagineering decision-makers seems to be: they’re all movies, so why not? It’s hard to argue with “logic” like that, which is vague enough to defy refutation. Of course, part of the awkwardness stems from the fact that Disney’s theme parks have always been about total immersion and willing suspension of disbelief. (“It’s a movie—look at how it works!” is more of a Universal Studios thing.) It can create a sort of cognitive dissonance to be asked to accept Cruella DeVil as a dangerous villainess in one park and a mere film diva in another. That said, there are a few animated Disney properties that self-reference Hollywood and the film industry, and which would be perfect for inclusion in these locations. Others could work by dint of having contemporary urban settings that, if they don’t specifically address Hollywood, at least inhabit the same universe. And really, where else in the existing parks could you put, say, an Oliver & Company attraction? (If you wanted to, that is.)

This brings us to the Pixar films, most of which fall right into that contemporary urban (or not-so-urban) limbo. Their artistic merit and popularity practically demand that big-ticket attractions be made of them, but for the most part they don’t fit any of the standard Disney themes. The usual solution so far as been to jam them wherever there is room or usable infrastructure, which many hardcore fans of the parks find unsatisfactory at best. As if to add insult to injury, the Pixar films tapped for attractions tend to be those easiest to merchandise rather than those that tell the best stories or that would fit most comfortably in existing park areas.

A popular Armchair Imagineering solution to the Pixar problem is to design an entire theme park specifically to house attractions based on the Pixar films. This idea has potential, but in order to fully realize this potential it would have to be imagined as something radically different from a standard Disney park, to reflect the fundamentals of Pixar storytelling and characterization as distinct from those of pure Disney works. Walt didn’t just use Disneyland to retell the stories he had already told; he applied his filmmaking principles to the themes he chose and told entirely new stories, in an entirely new medium, but with an unmistakable Disney feel. Ideally, a Pixar-based park would do the same thing with that studio’s principles, not just rehash the movies, settings, and characters.

The same is true of any new park or land designed in order to provide a “home” for an animated film that doesn’t have one. Accommodating that one film, or even several films, can’t be its sole purpose or it will fall flat. There must be an underlying theme that can be developed independently of the movie and character tie-ins.

And so I’d like to end this article on a cautionary note. While Disney animation and Disney theme parks go together like peanut butter and jelly, the former is not the be-all and end-all of the latter. A common rut for Armchair Imagineers to fall into is to base all their ideas on the animated films and shorts, plus a handful of high-profile live-action films…apparently forgetting that the most successful rides have always been those not taken directly from any in-house source material. In this era of 72-inch plasma screens and home SurroundSound, it is more important than ever that theme park attractions, and the parks themselves, have something to offer beyond simple recreations of films. Figuring out where to place an attraction based on an animated film is a stimulating exercise…but there’s no point unless the possible locations have robust themes to begin with.