60 Disneyland Diamonds: 1986-1995

The second half of my 60 Disneyland Diamonds for the Diamond Anniversary starts now! For the first half, see here, here, and here. And if you just stumbled upon this blog and are completely baffled as to what the 60 Diamonds series even is, see here!

1986: Big Thunder Ranch

If you're wondering what could possibly be so great about this dusty little back corner of quaint old Frontierland, I have two words for you: Baby goats. There. Any counter-argument you might offer has just been rendered invalid. In all seriousness, this is a great spot to take a break when all the high-speed thrills and elaborate E-tickets in the rest of the park get to be a little overstimulating, without feeling like you're wasting your day at Disneyland doing nothing. Playing with even-tempered farm animals is about as simple and low-tech as you can get while still doing something fun that you don't get to do every day. And that's without even taking into account that the Festival Arena in back, for years available only for rental by private parties, is now open to the public as a venue for Frontierland's live entertainment, performances by amateur music and dance groups visiting from around the world, and seasonal events. If you were in the mood to extend a metaphor, you might say the Ranch is a Diamond that was recently taken out and re-polished.

1987: Star Tours

I'm not at all shy about sharing what I find wrong with this ride and with the very idea of having Star Wars material so prominent in Disneyland, but I can't deny its importance to the park and the high regard in which many other guests hold it. Star Tours was a first in at least two ways: It was Disneyland's first motion-simulator attraction...and more importantly, it was the first time the Imagineers got to play with (what was at the time) someone else's IP, to create a Disney-caliber experience from non-Disney source material. And maybe the effect of that has been, in part, to keep that source material alive for younger generations of movie- and theme park-goers. Without Star Tours, the entire Star Wars franchise might have faded into semi-obscurity by now—no prequel trilogy, certainly no incentive for Disney to buy LucasFilm and start making a sequel trilogy, maybe no more LEGO sets. Without Star Tours, Disney probably wouldn't have bothered with the Indiana Jones Adventure (see below) and other Indy-related attractions in their parks, which themselves were likely instrumental in maintaining public interest in that franchise. If not for the success of Star Tours, Disney might not have bothered buying the rights to the Muppets in order to build MuppetVision 3-D and film new Muppet movies, and they might have faded away. And all these consequences would have consequences of their own...we can scarcely imagine the landscape of popular culture in a world where Star Wars was forgotten after the Eighties.

So maybe I shouldn't be quite so hard on Star Tours. And I can start by awarding it Diamond status.

1988: Peace With Frontierland's Indians

Encounters with friendly Indians have always been part of the Frontierland experience—even after the Indian Village attraction closed in order to make room for Bear Country, animatronic Indians still watched and waved at the boats on the Rivers of America. But these peaceful scenes used to be preceded by one of carnage—a log cabin lit afire by a hostile tribe, its former occupant sprawled dead out front with an arrow in his chest. After such a dramatic sight, the friendly Indians could seem almost like an afterthought. The “Cowboys vs. Indians” assumption was a long-standing feature of stories set in the Old West, of course, particularly when Disneyland opened...but by the Eighties it was considered poor taste to depict the natives, rather than the invading white settlers, as the sole aggressors. And the park was hardly going to position its own guests in the role of historical villains. So the Indian attack story was dropped. The cabin remained alight for several more years, with various explanations offered, before someone intelligent asked why the flames were necessary at all. But since 1988, relations between the Frontierland pioneers and the local tribes have been nothing but good.

1989: Splash Mountain

So the story goes, Imagineer Tony Baxter got the idea for this ride while sitting in Southern California freeway traffic. The joke there practically writes itself, but you can't argue with the end results. Splash Mountain is a success on every level. From the point of view of Disneyland management, it solved three problems at once: 1) It brought a much-needed log flume ride to the park, 2) it saved the excellent audio-animatronic characters from the obsolete America Sings from being chucked into storage, and 3) it completely revitalized what was at the time the least popular area of the park. From the point of view of the analyst fans like Yours Truly, this is a film-based attraction done right—minimal front-loading of story information (letting the events of the ride's story speak for themselves), a layout that positions riders in the midst of scenes and exposes them to the same events as the characters they are following...and as a bonus, it's based not on the latest record-busting, dollar-raking cinematic release, but a film that is little known in the mainstream and only becoming less known as time passes without an official video release.* From the point of view of everyday guests, it's just a fantastic ride, combining thrills with cute characters and charming set pieces. It does it all so right that there's only one thing to complain about—the length of the queue!

1990: Parasol Cart

Technically, the Parasol Cart is just the latest in a long line of New Orleans Square vendors selling personalized art as souvenirs. But it offers one huge advantage over the portrait and caricature artists: You don't have to sit still in a chair for upwards of fifteen minutes while the artist in question does their thing. Just tell them your name and how to spell it and what all else you want painted on the panels of your parasol, leave them to it...and come back in an hour or two after the paint has had a chance to dry. And the prices are quite reasonable for a souvenir that is both custom-detailed and as substantial and functional as a parasol.

I also like that it's in New Orleans Square. You would expect to find such a thing in Fantasyland alongside all the other Princessy stuff, but the people who plan these sorts of things are clearly thinking “Southern belle” rather than just “Belle.” The color palette is equally broad-minded—white and delicate pastels, certainly, but bold red, fuchsia, and even black (for the Goths wandering over from the Haunted Mansion, apparently) are also on offer.

1991: Disney Villains

Early in the Disney Renaissance, perhaps in order to kick its overly saccharine, childish reputation and convince moviegoers that the standards for animated movies had indeed been permanently raised, Disney launched the Villains merchandise brand. Whereas most Disney sub-brands such as Princess or Winnie-the-Pooh are aimed at children, Disney Villains primarily targets adults—children don't tend to identify with the baddie who dies at the end of the movie, but many adults are more than willing to proclaim their lack of innocence. To promote this concept, the little shop just inside the Fantasyland courtyard on the east side (next to the archway that leads out to Snow White's Grotto) was designated the Disney Villains shop (later the Villains' Lair) and stocked with clothing and gifts featuring characters such as Captain Hook, Maleficent, and Ursula.

The shop itself is no longer there—that retail space went through a few different identities before settling down as the Castle Heraldry Shoppe—but the Disney Villains brand is still going strong. You just might need to hunt a little harder to find it in Disneyland. I recommend starting in New Orleans Square, where the two Jacks, Skellington and Sparrow, are often joined in their own retail spaces by similarly frightening or anti-social characters from the genuinely evil side of the moral chasm. On the other hand, the Heraldry Shoppe does retain some vestiges of its days as the one-stop shop for all things wicked. There's usually a small rack of Villain shirts available for sale, and the shop's music system still plays, albeit very faintly, the same loop of flamboyant songs and scary score pieces that help make the Villains so memorable in the movies.

1992: Fantasmic!

The thing you have to realize about Fantasmic! is that when it debuted, it blew our freaking minds. Pretty much everyone was on board as soon as they saw the promotional art of Sorcerer Mickey fighting all those Disney Villains...but I don't think we could possibly have foreseen what we were in for. Fantasmic! is the art of Disneyland entertainment at its most magnificent, combining every theatrical art imaginable, from dance and puppetry, through pyrotechnics and stunt choreography, all the way to state-of-the-art fiber-optics and the then-revolutionary water screens. And it's all set to outstanding music and used in the service of a bona-fide three-act story. It's a rare nighttime show that has a story of any kind, let alone epic Disney crossover fanfiction. It demonstrates respect for both the source material, showing that it can withstand such a high-concept treatment, and for the audience, acknowledging that they—ahem, that we—not only don't mind seeing beloved characters recontextualized in this way, but solidly appreciate it. Or to put it more simply: Disney's classic animated properties work well as part of a shared Disney continuity, and Mickey Mouse fits the role of badass action hero just as well as he does that of the comic Everyman.

Fantasmic! It deserves the exclamation point.

1993: Partners

One of Walt Disney's quirkier decisions regarding Disneyland's design was that he didn't want to feature his own image anywhere in the park. This can't have been because he wanted to disguise his personal involvement; he named the place after himself, after all. It was the Cold War; maybe he thought it a little too Stalinesque to have portraits and statues of himself in a place that he so often visited in person? A little too personality cult-ish? In any event, his successors obviously saw no reason to hold to that policy after his death. And maybe Walt was onto something, because I won't lie—there are corners of the Disney fandom that ramp up the Adoration of Saint Walt to potentially unhealthy levels.

But if this is a real problem, the blame surely doesn't lie with Partners, which is anything but pompous. In fact it's charmingly restrained—just a life-sized bronze of Walt holding hands with Mickey Mouse, placed on a low pedestal for visibility but hardly looming over the Plaza Hub the way you would expect if it were intended as a monument. The sculptor—Imagineering Legend Blaine Gibson—has depicted Walt as pleased with his success but still humble enough to be relaxed and personable, waving his free hand up Main Street as if saying to Mickey “Look what we built together!” (Actually, if you extend the line of his arm, it looks like he might be pointing toward the apartment over the Fire House—fodder for wild theories!) It's a touching tribute to Disneyland's founder, and a fine enhancement to the small-town theming of Main Street.

1994: Roger Rabbit's Car Toon Spin

One of Upper Management's less savvy moves of the 1990s was to open Mickey's Toontown without its signature E-ticket, hoping to get one park attendance boost from the debut of the land and then another a year later when they announced the opening of the ride. It didn't really work for its intended purpose, but at least said ride was, of itself, worth the wait. Arguably, Roger Rabbit's Car Toon Spin is actually two rides in one—a dark ride like Pinocchio's Daring Journey, and a carnival spinner like the Mad Tea Party. Moreover, it perfectly illustrates something that I think ride designers could stand to re-learn, which is that you can build a ride with a definite plot concerning animated characters without sacrificing the riders' sense of participation and involvement. You don't have to just summarize the movie, either. Strange but true!

Car Toon Spin's popularity has waned alongside that of its title character, but this shouldn't be taken as an indication that attractions need to be based on currently hot properties in order to succeed. The ride also has its location working against it; the name alone isn't enough to entice people who aren't already familiar with it into a remote corner of the park that has little else to do. But even by current standards, more than 20 years after the fact, it's an immensely inventive ride, so chock-full of clever details that you could ride it a dozen times and not spot them all. Mickey's Toontown may not be long for this world—if you've never given this attraction a look, make sure you do!

1995: Indiana Jones Adventure

Here's where I out myself as a massive hypocrite, or at least reveal my personal biases: I am a big fan of the Indiana Jones Adventure. I give it all the love I withhold from the other thrill ride based on a LucasFilm IP with Harrison Ford in it. I could do a compare-and-contrast as to why this is so, but I don't think a 60 Diamonds post is really the place for it. So I'll just gush about Indy as it is.

The Indiana Jones Adventure is Imagineering at its absolute best. The whole package is top-notch—excellently placed, exquisitely themed, well in tune with its source material without copying it wholesale,** technologically brilliant, seamlessly presented, and just plain fun. The queue would make a worthy attraction all by itself: a good half-mile of switchbacks and corridors both outside and inside the eponymous Temple of the Forbidden Eye, with scenery every bit as detailed and immersive as that on the ride itself (if not more so, since you pass it more slowly and in better lighting), intriguing runic messages carved into the walls, a few interactive elements, and even peril in the form of a spiked ceiling that threatens to collapse. And that's just the queue. Imagine how kickass the ride is after a build-up like that.

Actually, I'm sure you don't have to imagine. I'm all but dead certain you've seen it for yourself. The number of people who are enough into Disneyland to read blogs about it but have never bothered to go on Adventureland's only thrill ride—or failing that, to watch hi-def videos on YouTube—has to be around, oh, zero. And the number of people who have experienced it, but don't like it, isn't much greater. The Indiana Jones Adventure hits all the right notes. It's an astounding, groundbreaking work of art, quite conceivably the sparkliest Diamond I've covered to date.

What a great place to end this week's post! See you next week!

* The controversy surrounding Disney's ongoing refusal to make Song of the South available to American audiences is a subject for a blog post all on its own. But not on my blog. Talk to FoxxFur.

** It hits a lot of the same beats from the various tomb-exploration sequences in the Indiana Jones movies, but the context and the details are quite different.