Kidnap the Magic: The Art of the Disneyland Font (Part 1)

I've been wanting to do a post about fonts for quite a while. They're such amazing bits of software—negligible in size, easy and quick to install, and then you can open any word-processing program on your computer and type fancy letters! Or even pictures! Just type them!

Why now? Firstly, why not now? Secondly, the holiday season typically involves greeting cards and party invitations, and the creative among us might like to design our own instead of buying pre-made ones. And supposing your party and/or greetings are Disneyland themed? Hopefully, you will find this brief guide enlightening.

There are thousands upon thousands of individual fonts available for completely free download online. The really high-quality ones cost money, but unless you're looking to do professional-grade work, freeware usually suffices. A simple Google search for “Disney fonts” yields good results if your primary interest is films and characters—and there's certainly enough of that to go around in the theme parks—but “Disneyland fonts” is a less fruitful endeavor.* A few specialist websites such as The Disney Experience and Mickey Avenue are invaluable, but the fact remains that you're almost more likely to stumble across an incredible gem while browsing through a massive general archive, than searching for one specifically.

The long and the short of it is that only a handful of lettering styles specific to Disneyland attractions (or best known in that context) have been created as fonts for general use by the public. But most of the park signage actually uses pre-existing typefaces, many of which have been adapted into freeware versions.** This is where the aforementioned Mickey Avenue really shines. And when it comes to bringing across the atmosphere of a given land or attraction, it’s more about the type of lettering you use.

Thousands upon thousands. This is going to be fun.

Imagineering Theory: The Third Gate Solution

As construction on Star Wars Land continues, shutting down much of Frontierland (and leaving us long-time fans with a nagging sense of dread over whether it will be satisfying when it re-opens), I've been thinking about the commonly proposed “third gate” solution to all this Star Wars and Marvel and Pixar nonsense. Most of us agree that these IPs don't sit well alongside most of the existing themes in Disneyland and California Adventure, but their profitability is too great for Management to resist. A third park, designed from the get-go to include them, seems like the perfect compromise—fans of these franchises get to play with them and the company gets the money, while the rest of us don't have to cringe at the awkward mismatches with the rest of the parks.

Here's the main problem with that idea, though:

What would be the theme of this third theme park?

Armchair Imagineering: Holiday Fantasmic!

The Disneyland Resort sure loves to celebrate Christmas. Not only do thematically specific decorations go up in most areas of both parks, but a handful of attractions get made over into holiday-specific versions of themselves.* The most notable might be the shows and live entertainment offerings, nearly all of which, from the humble and homey Dapper Dans to the extravagant fireworks display, are in holiday mode at this time of year. Disneyland has hosted any number of Christmas parades over the years. Across the Esplanade, World of Color is on its second holiday version. But there’s one live show that has so far bucked the trend: Fantasmic!

It’s not hard to see why—Fantasmic! is possibly the most complex and intricate performance in theme park history. Not only does it involve multiple types of live performers and special effects, but it was designed from start to finish to be a satisfying whole. It tells a complete story with a three-act structure (something almost never done in theme park entertainment), and the musical score is as much a symphony as a medley. It's amazing that something like this was achieved once; doing it all over again with a more specific theme would be almost unfathomably difficult.

But what is Armchair Imagineering for, if not indulging in these wild Blue-Sky ideas? Come brainstorm with me...

(Well, okay, technically for now you're going to read while I brainstorm, but I welcome any and all contributions in the comments.)

Imagineering Theory: The Frontierland Problem

BREAKING NEWS: Moana is fantastic. Go see it.

We Disneyland fans often enjoy discussing the Tomorrowland Problem—i.e., how do you go about portraying “the future” in an age when technology progresses as quickly as it does in this day and age? What you don't hear about much is the Frontierland Problem, which I will identify in a moment. To the best of my knowledge, this phrase doesn't even exist as a widely recognized term for a phenomenon that most guests may not think about, or want to.

The Frontierland Problem, in brief, is this: How do you depict a superficially exciting but very ugly phase in American history in a theme park setting, without either whitewashing the nasty parts or bumming out your guests? It's a problem that might not have arisen had Disneyland been built in any decade other than the 1950s, when white American machismo (of a clean-cut variety that seems paradoxical to modern eyes) was perhaps the dominant value in American pop culture. Nowhere was this better exemplified than in the Western genre of film and television, which had its absolute heyday in the Fifties. In any other decade, Walt Disney—or at least his advisors—might have deemed the Frontierland concept not nearly marketable enough for mainstream audiences, and chosen a different theme for this largest of the themed lands, or at least diminished the “American history” presence in favor of nature or modern-day America* or something else related.

Might have. It is by no means certain. But it is well worth looking at all the small ways in which the sights to see in Frontierland have been tweaked over the years, as the guest base has grown more diverse and less forgiving of the whitewashed, white-centric Old West narrative. The Indian attack was removed from the backstory of the Burning Cabin and the Indian War Canoes were retooled into the Davy Crockett Explorer Canoes,** leaving only allied tribes among Frontierland's Native population. The Golden Horseshoe's long-running show, featuring mild burlesque elements, came to an end. Gunplay was progressively downplayed. It's safe to say that mainstream America no longer considers Westward Expansion a period of unalloyed heroism on the part of white settlers and the U.S. Cavalry.

And that leaves both Management and Imagineering in a bit of a fix. What do you do when the entire theme of an important land has gone out of fashion? For the time being, the answer seems to be “Put it off for another day.” Tomorrowland is suffering from a lack of solid direction, but Frontierland is suffering from neglect, to the extent that large chunks of its real estate were deemed expendable in order to make way for Star Wars. The closest thing to a new permanent attraction it has received in over twenty years is the out-of-place Pirates' Lair overlay of Tom Sawyer Island. Granted, adding attractions to a land whose atmosphere relies on a sense of wide openness is automatically tricky business, but it's no wonder Frontierland's overall popularity has been declining when it never has anything new to say, when its former messages have become unpalatable but it has nothing meaningful to replace them with.

So what can they do? Well, in some respects the experiments are already being performed.

After-Action Report: World of Color: Season of Light

I have never been what you’d call a huge fan of World of Color. For all the massive promotion when it first debuted, it has always struck me as distinctly inferior to Fantasmic! The reasons for this are numerous, but among them is that World of Color has always seemed so very commercial. From the very first iteration, it has come across as having the primary purpose of waving popular characters and recent or upcoming films in guests’ faces, spurring the purchase of merchandise and movie tickets. The previous holiday version, World of Color: Winter Dreams, was especially blatant about this, betraying its own theme—you know, winter—with the use of the song “In Summer” from Frozen.* They tried to pass it off as an ironic juxtaposition, but not many people were fooled. They knew a shameless advertisement when they saw one.

Thus it is with delight that I inform you that the new holiday version—World of Color: Season of Light—does not give me this impression at all. Instead of using the show to promote the characters, it uses characters to illustrate the themes of the show. There are no Disney songs in this one—just well-known Christmas tunes as performed by equally well-known singers (and one absolutely marvelous surprise, about which more later). Each song is accompanied by appropriate footage from Disney films and shorts, and the hey-look-at-our-new-movie vibe is kept to a minimum.

That said, it’s still fairly one-dimensional as a presentation. World of Color is by its very nature something of a one-trick pony, lacking the multiple facets of something like Fantasmic! or even a parade. So this is gonna be a pretty short post, focusing on some of the highlights that really stood out to me as making this one special.

• “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”: The obligatory Princess/romance sequence uses this fairly infamous song, but there’s a twist—it’s the Idina Menzel/Michael Bublé cover, which swaps out some of the dodgier lyrics for more family-friendly ones. Combined with the footage of Princesses pulling away from their love interests (when we all know these stories have fully consensual, mutually fulfilling happy endings), it does a lot to redeem the song for modern sensibilities.
• “Mele Kalikamaka”: This segment starts with clips from Lilo & Stitch. Then it continues with clips from Lilo & Stitch, before concluding with clips from Lilo & Stitch. I fully expected it to tease Moana at some point, since that film comes out in just a few days. But it didn’t. That alone speaks well for its sincerity—it would have been so easy to throw in a promotional clip or two, but they resisted the urge.
• “Wizards in Winter”: This was the big surprise I mentioned earlier. Everyone knows who Trans-Siberian Orchestra is these days, but I don’t think many people are familiar with their work beyond the rock remixes of “The Nutcracker” and “Carol of the Bells.”** However, if just one of their original Christmas compositions has achieved any sort of penetration into public recognition, it surely must be “Wizards in Winter,” thanks to a YouTube video of someone’s elaborately synchronized home exterior Christmas lights that went viral some years back. Accordingly, this segment—the most over-the-top part of the whole show, making ample use of the laser grid as well as the fire jets—purports to be someone’s elaborately synchronized home exterior Christmas lights. The someone in question is Goofy, who is probably the only character in the Disney lineup who might believably use fire jets at Christmas.

Is there anything I would do differently? Absolutely. Well, maybe.

For example, there's a segment featuring music from “The Nutcracker” as sung, a cappella, by the Pentatonix...and illustrated with the dancing hippos and ostriches from Fantasia. Except...Fantasia has a “Nutcracker” segment, and it's not the one with hippos. (It's the one with dancing mushrooms and thistles that makes you wonder what the animators were on when they created it.) I'm being charitable and assuming they went that route in order to keep the tone light and portray explicit ballet dancers, but it still creates the impression that they missed an obvious target at close range.

Another aspect that seemed kind of odd was the complete absence of any acknowledgement of Hannukah. The Disneyland Resort's holiday shows can normally be counted upon to provide at least a token round of “Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel,” making the lack of such this time around a pretty glaring omission. I would rather they leave it out than force it if they couldn't find a natural place for it in the lineup, and anyway California Adventure has no shortage of diversity celebration this season, for which I have nothing but praise.

So it's not perfect. But it still stands head and shoulders above any other iteration of World of Color, and I highly recommend it as the perfect way to cap off a day enjoying California Adventure's Festival of Holidays.

* Among other songs from said movie.

** Which are actually entitled, respectively, “A Mad Russian’s Christmas” and “Christmas Eve – Sarajevo 12/24.” People don't pay attention.

The Disneyland Dilettante 100th Post Special

I wanted to make this something spectacular. It's been nearly two years since I began this blog, and I've managed a post a week the entire time, plus one or two extras. I hoped to find some major source of inspiration and give my readers an early-early Christmas gift of something astounding.

Then...Tuesday happened.

It was the most severe gutpunch I have experienced in my life, and it killed most of my desire to write. I spent most of Wednesday in something like a sick daze. I'm getting better as I process it, but it's so rough. I thought so much better of my countryfolk than this. I honestly don't know how I'm going to get through the next four years (or however long it takes to impeach his orange ass and discredit his entire administration). But I will try to continue my posting rate. I have posts brewing from before this catastrophe, and hopefully my psyche is resilient enough to recover and keep providing content (in addition to all the real-world activism I will most assuredly be doing).

Because we still have Disneyland. We still have that. I'm going to need it dearly in the near future, to escape the horror of reality once in a while. That's what it's there for, isn't it? To be a better place than the world we live in?

So I offer you this for Disneyland Dilettante Post #100: 100 Disneyland Delights. Little bits of joy a day at the park can provide, even in these scary times.

After-Action Report: Storybook Land Canal Boats

Walt Disney loved miniatures. This interest seems to be part of a broader fascination with extremes of size that gave us Mickey Mouse’s battles against giants in “The Brave Little Tailor” and “Mickey and the Beanstalk,” the immense dinosaurs and minute pixies of Fantasia, Alice’s size-shifting escapades in Wonderland, the tiny animal sidekicks in films such as Pinocchio and Cinderella, and perhaps even Adventure Thru Inner Space. A dramatic change of scale is a dramatic change of perspective, and Walt was all about seeing the world in unconventional ways. Combine that with the delicate and nimble touch required to craft miniature models, and it's not hard to see why he loved them so much that he decided to put an entire country of them in his park.

Kidnap the Magic: Disneyland Jack-o-Lanterns

Okay, help me out here. When did Halloween pumpkin carving become so...awesome? When I was a kid, riding my giant ground sloth to the playground, everyone I knew just drew a few triangles and circles on a pumpkin and cut them out with a kitchen knife. I felt fancy if I managed to include pupils in the eyes. I remember starting to see those specialty carving kits with the gnome-sized miter saws when I was in my teens,* and sometime between then and now, it just exploded as an artform.

Pumpkin has become a medium of sculpture in its own right—a feat all the more impressive when you remember that these globoid gourds are available only seasonally and the resulting creations are necessarily ephemeral. Despite its fragility, in the hands of an expert carver the flesh of a pumpkin can hold fine details as well as soft wood, and its translucency allows for subtle shading effects that only become apparent when the candle inside is lit. At the extreme end, we get stuff like this:

Most people probably don't have it in them to create anything that elaborate—I know I don't—but “rough image of a face” is no longer the default. Between the aforementioned carving kits and the widely available pattern templates, even the average neighborhood candy-giver is as likely to have pumpkins carved to resemble miniature scenes, or favorite media characters, as simple faces.

And occasionally, they turn to a Disney theme park for inspiration.

Disney jack-o-lanterns, per se...those are everywhere. Always quick to jump on the bandwagon of anything child-focused, Disney prints loads of pumpkin templates, in little booklets themed by character family. You've got your Mickey & Friends, your Princess, your Winnie The Pooh, your Pixar, probably your Jake and the Neverland Pirates. If you want a design specifically related to the parks, though, you're on your own. Naturally.

Nonetheless, some people pull it off, and it is my very great pleasure to show you some examples of their work. I had to work a bit harder than I anticipated (with some much appreciated help from The Sister) to collect all these...it turns out that Googling “Disneyland jack-o-lantern” doesn't bring up many examples of homemade carvings by private citizens.

So without further ado...

After-Action Report: Radiator Springs Racers

I have a love-hate relationship with Cars Land. The Cars franchise may well be Pixar's weakest concept,* and it really has nothing to offer me in particular. There are several reasons, but for our purposes here, the main one is that I'm not interested in cars. Never have been. And especially in the context of a theme park, where I prefer to be surrounded by things I don't see and hear every hour of every day. If it had been my decision to make, I never would have put Cars in a Disney theme park, especially not to the extent of building an entire huge themed land.

And yet...

And yet...

I cannot deny that Cars Land, apart from the dumb name, is really, really well done. I mean, look at this:

And that's not even the town part. This is the town part:

This is Imagineering at its placemaking best. The attention paid to detail here is phenomenal. You walk into Cars Land, and you're there, in a tiny town in the American Southwest, with jagged cliffs of red sandstone in the distance. I'm sure it helped that they had the setting pre-rendered in three digital dimensions for their convenience, but they still had to figure out how to create it in three actual dimensions, and it's stunning work.

A lot of cleverness went into the execution. The businesses of Radiator Springs have been translated into typical theme park fixtures. The hippie VW bus's “organic fuel” station is a beverage stand, the paint shop is a clothing store, the souvenir shop is...a souvenir shop. Businesses with no ready counterpart have either been adjusted or made the sites of rides. But the area's tentpole attraction, Radiator Springs Racers, isn't located in the town at all—it takes place on the outskirts, amid those magnificent buttes seen in the top photo.

I actually haven't been on it many times—three or four, total, since it opened. This is because a) it's in the park I don't favor, b) it's Cars, and c) the wait time frequently tops two hours. But I never regret riding it. It's too dang good...maybe the best execution of a ride concept in years.

Actually, calling Radiator Springs Racers a ride is underselling it. It's three rides in one, plus a fantastically immersive queue that expands on the source material in a charming way. I'll start with the queue since—as mentioned above—we're going to be standing in it for a while.

Notes on the Fandom: Clichés and Axioms

I adore Disneyland like little else in my life, but I have to admit that the fandom can be...difficult. For me, at least. It's a thing apart from every other fandom I have ever gotten involved with, probably because it's based on a fixed location rather than a piece of easily reproducible media, but my area of concern today is the way the discussions tend to go.

I'm only “active” on one Disneyland discussion forum, that being the one on Micechat, and the scare quotes are because I rarely find it in me to join the conversations there. They're just...so...repetitive. Trip reports (not much to add there), news items, requests for advice from people about to make their first visit (others have usually gotten there long before I see the thread), and the ever-popular debates about the sorts of attractions Disney should add to their parks vs. the sorts they do add.

That last category of conversations are the really frustrating ones, because they have possibly the highest potential for fruitful discussion, but the lowest actualization of that potential. Most of what I see is factions of people arguing past each other. As is usually the case when people are more interested in waving their opinions about like magic talismans than actually communicating with each other, there are certain stock phrases that appear over and over. Today I've chosen to highlight four that I think are especially poisonous and would be discarded by a wiser fandom. I've been guilty of using some of them myself.

Some of these clichés and axioms, I would like to banish from the overall conversation because I disagree with them, others because I feel they convey my own positions badly. But we would be better off without all of them, as a general rule, because they are less thoughts than substitutes for thought.

Source Materials: Ghoul Love

As part of last week's criticism of Haunted Mansion Holiday, I mentioned the Séance Circle's weird grab bag of themes and imagery, to wit: Madam Leota recites an occult-themed, thirteen-verse spinoff of “The Twelve Days of Christmas” wherein divinatory tools have romantic functions, while giant Tarot-esque cards featuring characters from The Nightmare Before Christmas swirl around the room. It's three or four completely disparate things just mashed together because they needed to give Leota something Christmas-y to do and include more of of the Burton characters. The scene is appropos of nothing.

Or is it?

Readers, I have a confession to make. I may have—may have—misrepresented that scene. It may actually make more sense than I originally gave it credit for. See, I was thinking of it as a Christmas-related scene, but if we consider that the invading characters see everything through the lens of Halloween, it's possible that the Imagineers who designed it were alluding to some genuine, if nearly forgotten, old traditions.

Possible, not definite. It could be a coincidence. Then again, even Disneyland's coincidental design choices sometimes end up being profound.

After-Action Report: Haunted Mansion Holiday

We must face it: Haunted Mansion Holiday is something we, as Disneyland fans, need to reckon with.* Yet in the 21 months this blog has been active, the only thoughts I have shared on the matter are that a) I wish it didn't go up so early in the year, and b) I adore the thing it temporarily replaces. I haven't ever given my actual opinion on the thing itself, as a holiday overlay. So here it is:

Eh, it's okay.

As a rule, I am far more forgiving of temporary ride alterations than permanent ones. The latter have to constitute a definite improvement on the original for me to approve of them, while the former just have to be moderately entertaining since, after all, I'll have the original back soon enough. Even if I can't stand a temporary change, all I have to do is wait it out.

I'm happy enough to put Haunted Mansion Holiday in the “moderately entertaining” pile. I like some of the music, the visuals in the stretching room are pretty sweet, and I like seeing the new gingerbread house each year. (Though this year's is a little...uh...) I even think the often criticized mismatch between the existing Haunted Mansion imagery and the Tim Burton additions kind of works with the concept—the Halloweentown characters are imposing their style on the Mansion, are they not?

Of course, I am well aware that this is the kind of cheap post-hoc rationalization for lazy attraction design that Disney's own Marketing Department apologists like to use: “Of course it sucks. We were going for suck.” So I don't give it too much weight. And there's plenty else to criticize about the endeavor.

I just don't find myself criticizing it on the level of “This is a travesty against everything Disneyland outght to stand for” like many commenters do. It's more along the lines of “This could have and should have been done better.” So what I'll do here is, I'll go over various aspects of the ride, explain what I do and don't like about them, and then—as a bonus bit of Armchair Imagineering—sketch out an alternate way of adding The Nightmare Before Christmas to the Haunted Mansion for the holiday season that hopefully makes more sense and is more engaging.

Unauthorized Fun: Hidden Mickeys

You don't hear as much about Hidden Mickeys as you used to. Hunting down these subtle images of or references to Mickey Mouse placed around Disney theme parks used to be a major pastime of Annual Passholders and other major fans, but the furor seems to have died down. In all probability, the phenomenon was a victim of its own success—it caught on to the extent that several guidebooks were published, taking away much of the joy of discovery. It's hard to get excited about a “secret” that a million people are privy to by virtue of having spent twelve dollars on a book. Not to mention, having access to such resources sped up the process immensely. Many people probably feel there's no point in continuing to look once you've gone through the entire list.

I still find some entertainment value in seeking them out, possibly because I eschew those same guidebooks. For one thing, it's impossible for them to stay up-to-date—a waggish Cast Member can create a new, semi-permanent Hidden Mickey in a matter of minutes, while a minor renovation can obliterate a long-standing one in a day. No book can come out with new editions that fast. For another thing...even to the extent that they are current, I find such books a little untrustworthy—there is too much of a tendency to take fan consensus for granted instead of “vetting” individual Hidden Mickeys for plausibility.

Armchair Imagineering: Hooray For Halloween Parade

The first Mickey's Halloween Party of the year is this Friday. I got to go to that thing in 2013. It wasn't as mind-blowing as the advertising (and price tag) would have you believe, but it was fun enough. There honestly wasn't that much going on that there wouldn't be on any normal Disneyland evening, it's just that on this occasion, it was Halloween-themed. Speaking as a grown-up, the best part was getting to wander around Disneyland in a costume. (I was the “it's a small world” Clock Tower.) The “candy stations” were nothing to write home about and I don't usually go in for rave dancing.

And then there was the unique live entertainment, which I would describe as a mixed bag. The “Cadaver Dans”—i.e. The Dapper Dans with ghoulish makeup and a spooky song repertoire—were a lot of fun. The “Halloween Screams” fireworks show is fantastic, and I think it's practically criminal that they only show it at the party. The parade, though—”Mickey's Costume Party Cavalcade”—was rather disappointing. It just felt very thrown-together, with cheap floats, uninspired music and dancing, and an overall lack of imagination and effort.

Orlando's Magic Kingdom, by contrast, has a Halloween parade—Mickey's Boo-To-You Halloween Parade—that's pretty dang slick..but rather than simply wish to have theirs imported over here,* I thought I'd Armchair Imagineer a better one from scratch! Inspired by the wonderful A Christmas Fantasy Parade, I would make this parade an elaborate, tightly themed spectacle that really brings across the spirit of the holiday in all its facets (or at least all the facets that are family-friendly enough for Disneyland). Accordingly, rather than spamming the most marketable characters, I would choose characters and IPs that actually reflect aspects of Halloween...while still including plenty of crowd-pleasers so the average guest can still find a favorite!

Disneyland Dilettante readers, I give you...the Hooray For Halloween Parade!

See Ya Real Soon: The Haunted Mansion

The holidays come earlier every year, don't they? By the time this posts, Disneyland's Halloween Time will have begun, meaning the Haunted Mansion will be occupied by Burtonian forces. We won't be able to enjoy its normal mode until sometime after the New Year.

Even apart from the seasonal wonkiness, it's a real shame that the Haunted Mansion is functionally unavailable for such a large slice of the year, because it's...how to put this?

Really effin' awesome.

 So. Effin'. Awesome.

But I probably don't need to tell you that, if you're the kind of person who reads Disney theme park blogs to begin with. The Haunted Mansion is quite simply the most beloved attraction in the history of Disney parks. Other rides may garner longer queues, claim grander reputations, or boast more fashionable characters, but the Haunted Mansion has the most devoted fans. A subset of Disney park aficionados are interested first and foremost in the Mansion, giving it a status entirely apart from the institution that spawned it. No other feature of the parks has such an extensive line of dedicated merchandise. No other inspires as many blogs. No other has fanfiction written about its mythos.

In a park full of rides, shows, and themed environments that work amazingly well together, the Haunted Mansion is one—maybe the only one—that can stand on its own.*

Imagineering Theory: The Pixar Problem, Part 2

Last week, I identified the problem: Audiences love Pixar movies and therefore so does Disney's upper management, but the most easily marketable ones don't have a natural place to belong in the Disneyland Resort. There is serious tension between the profit motive and artistic integrity, and in the current business climate of the parks, artistic integrity gets kicked to the curb. Pixar IPs are slung into the Resort willy-nilly, and we're lucky if a flimsy justification is included.

Unfortunately, it can be hard to get the average guest to realize this is a problem. “So what?” they might say. “The kids like it.” An entire generation has come of age in the post-Pressler era, with no memory of what Disneyland was like before the synergitis metastasized. Those who are aware of the mismatch—fans of the art of theme park design—tend to have trouble coming up with a tidy solution.

You see, it's not just that individual Pixar movies don't gel with Disney's traditional theme park areas...the entire studio's storytelling style is a bit askew from its parent company's. This is in no way an indictment of Pixar, whose commitment to quality is so great that we even get excited about their sequels. However, people who think that because their movies are animated and have a castle logo at the beginning, Pixar = Disney...well, let's just say they're obviously not film students.

I am not a film student either, but if today I awoke from a ten-year coma and all I had to watch during my tedious physical therapy was Disney and Pixar's respect animated outputs from that past decade, with the studio bumpers removed, I'm pretty sure I could sort them correctly...not even counting the blatantly obvious ones like Winnie The Pooh and Toy Story 3.* Perhaps because I am not a film student, I have a hard time pinning down the essential Disney-ness and Pixar-ness that make it so easy to tell the two apart, but I know it when I see it, and it might be the key thing keeping Pixar IPs from meshing well with Disney theme parks. Said parks are designed from the ground up to capitalize on and explore Disney-ness, even in the case of non-branded attractions.

Some of the aforementioned theme park fans recognize this—or are at least aware that merely having a Disney label doesn't make something “True Disney”—and try to come up with a solution to the Pixar Problem that involves sequestering the Pixar stuff off in its own little area away from everything else. “What we really need,” they'll say, “is a dedicated land/park for the Pixar stuff,” perhaps followed by some elaboration of the concept.

It's an idea with its heart in the right place, but I'm going to be the jerk here and say that a themed land or a full park just for rides based on Pixar movies—a Pixarland, if you will—would not be...very...good.

Imagineering Theory: The Pixar Problem, Part 1

Remember a while back when I griped about how much Pixar stuff gets crammed into the Disneyland Resort at the expense of Disney's own animated features? I'd like to think I'm more than a complainer. So I decided to take a closer look at the issue, and hopefully devise some hypothetical solutions to what I can only refer to as the Pixar Problem.

I'll start by doing a rundown similar to the recent one examining the Disney Animated Canon, wherein I look at Pixar's cinematic output to date and try to find the “right” place for each franchise within the parks...and then look at how each one has actually been used.

Beyond Blue Sky: Disneyland Alignment Chart

Please bear with me; I've gotten into a weird mood and I'm short on ideas again.

In your online travels, dear reader, you may occasionally come across a peculiar graphic: a three-by-three grid, each square containing a picture of a person or character or something, and each labeled with a two-adjective phrase, the phrases arranged such that each square in a given row or column has one word in common. At least nine times out of ten, the words so mixed and matched will be: Lawful, Chaotic, Good, Evil, and Neutral. The other ten percent of the time, a different pattern will be followed…but Neutral will always be included. Run into enough of these, even if you never see one using characters you recognize and have no idea what is up with this funky Punnett square, and you will likely come to the conclusion that, okay, this is a thing. A meme of some kind. Okay, whatever, the internet is weird.

At the risk of outing myself as an even bigger nerd than you probably already thought I was, I would like to inform you that this is what’s known as an alignment chart, and has its origins in…get ready…

Beyond Blue Sky: Wicked Kingdoms

One oft-repeated wish in the Disney theme park fandom is for some permanent attraction based on the Disney Villains brand. A Villains ride, or a Villains land (often envisioned as an offshoot of Fantasyland)...sometimes even an entire Villains park, with themed areas based around individual members of the brand.

On the whole, the conceit seems to be the result of Disney's own relentless trend toward character branding running smack into the young adult taste for the dark and edgy. Most Disney animation showcases pretty black-and-white morality, and if the good guys come across as unappealingly twee (as they often do, thanks to child-oriented marketing efforts), there's only one place left to go.

To be honest, I don't think a Villains-themed area, ride, or park would really work. Disney Villains is very much like Disney Princess—a marketing brand that involves characters from several different movies but keeps them rigorously separated instead of allowing true crossover interaction. With Disney's theme parks in thrall to its branded IPs, I can't see the Imagineers being allowed to do anything really satisfying with the concept. Something like Princess Fantasy Faire squeaks by because its target audience is fairly undiscriminating about these things. I doubt the fans wishing for a Villains attraction would be content with a collection of meet-and-greet spots.

On the other hand, there's all kinds of fun to be had with layering the Villains on top of what's already there. “The Villains take over” is the plot bunny for a hundred and two Disney fanfics (including part of my own Crowns of the Kingdom as well as my flight of fancy about the ultimate Disneyland-based video game), but few people (myself included) really explore the potential. Disney itself rarely goes farther than the odd Halloween event, wherein the takeover seems limited to a particular live entertainment location and is quickly defeated. I'm thinking it could be fun to examine the possibilities if the Villains really did take over Disneyland and parcel it out amongst themselves.

Actually, let's make that both parks, maybe even the entire Disneyland Resort. There are a lot of Villains, after all—even considering only those from the Disney Animated Canon—and one of their qualifying traits is that they don't play well with others. They need a lot of territory to avoid getting up in each other's business and fracturing the whole coalition.

For this bit of spitballing, I'll be deviating from my usual practice of examining the themed lands in map order: Main Street, Adventureland, etc. An awful lot here hinges on what goes on at the epicenter of Villain activity: Fantasyland.

As a final note before we dive in, Disney's last few movies have surprised audiences (or not, depending upon how shrewd they are as viewers...no comment on my end) with the identity of the real Villain. So SPOILER WARNINGS apply to the rest of this post!

Armchair Imagineering: Canine Stunt Spectacular Starring Bolt!

Somewhere along the line, Disney made the mistake of thinking it and Universal were in the same business.

Now you might be thinking: but of course they are, they both produce films and then turn those films into rides in their respective theme parks. That's like saying Coca-Cola and Budweiser are in the same business because they both manufacture carbonated beverages flavored with hops and packaged in aluminum cans. If you paid attention to that previous sentence, at this point you're scratching your head and going “But Coke isn't flavored with hops,” to which my reply is: Exactly.

Imagineering Theory: Marvel-ous Developments

So…some pretty infuriating news regarding the Tower of Terror broke at San Diego Comic-Con. So let’s talk about that. We can be rational adults about this, can’t we?

Yeah, I’m pretty pissed about this “Guardians of the Galaxy: Mission SPACE Breakout!” thing. And not just because it represents yet another middle finger to the very concept of area theming in the name of spamming profitable film IP. I’m actually very fond of Guardians of the Galaxy; in fact, it’s the only entry in the MCU that I own on video. But this is…just a really bad idea on multiple levels.

Armchair Imagineering: Three Prompts

Ian Kay over at Pure Imagineering has started presenting his followers with Imagineering Prompts—just quickie creative exercises for the Disney theme park fan community. I don’t have a Tumblr so I haven’t responded directly, but in the interest of maintaining momentum over here while I develop my Next Big Post, here are my responses to the three he has offered so far.

Imagineering Theory: The Disney Animated Canon And Area Themes, Part 5

Wow, would you look at the date today? Happy birthday, Disneyland! 61 already, and you don't look a day...over...

Anyway.

Here we go! The final eleven movies in the Disney Animated Canon released to date, and the themed areas in the Disneyland Resort I think would suit them best!

Imagineering Theory: The Disney Animated Canon And Area Themes, Part 4

Is everyone ready to just dive right in? Let's do this.

Imagineering Theory: The Disney Animated Canon And Area Themes, Part 3

I'm recovering nicely, thanks for asking.

But I'm still doing the rest of these movies.

Before I forget, Happy (Slightly Belated) Canada Day to my Canadian readers and Happy Independence Day to the Americans!

Imagineering Theory: The Disney Animated Canon And Area Themes, Part 2

Hi there. In case you weren't here last week, I'm taking a look at all 55 (soon to be 56) films in the Disney Animated Canon and assigning each one a themed area in the Disneyland Resort.

That's enough preamble.

Imagineering Theory: The Disney Animated Canon And Area Themes, Part 1

It's a major challenge keeping up a weekly posting schedule (nearly 18 months now, go me!) and from time to time I run low on inspiration. This is one of those times.* So for the next few weeks, I'll be doing something...straightforward. Please don't be disappointed if there are no astonishing insights or beautifully written passages for a while; I need to go on some sort of auto-pilot. Consider it a necessary compromise between my usual practices and putting the blog on hiatus.

Beyond Blue Sky: The Time Machine

Because you are a good person at heart, the Blue Fairy has teamed up with Cornelius Robinson to give you a gift: a real working time machine, good for one trip into the past, and the return trip, and no more. To minimize the risk of changing history and damaging the timestream, you may only stay in the past for one day, and it is highly advised that you spend that day in a place where your actions have few or no repercussions for the outside world.

Might as well go to Disneyland, huh?

So...how far back do you go?

Do you drop in on Opening Day and shake Walt Disney's hand? Maybe pop back and see one of the New Tomorrowlands—'59, '67, or '98—when it was genuinely new? Are you more tempted by the prospect of revisiting your own nostalgic memories or seeing things that were gone before you had the chance to know them?

Not gonna lie—I'm going with Option A. I'd rather go back and see things I miss than things I missed, if you follow. Nonetheless, I'm actually gonna set my time machine to a point slightly before my earliest solid memories of the park. Target Year: 1980.

Source Materials: A Few Excellent Moves by the Horticulture Department

Source Materials is my new label for posts about things from outside Disney theme parks that influence decisions about what to include inside the parks. For instance, I have retroactively re-classified my two-part post about heraldry in Fantasyland as a Source Materials post. There probably won't be too many of these; most of the stuff that would qualify has been gone over, extensively and in more depth than I think I would muster, by other bloggers. (Check out the sidebar for some of them!)

It's June now. What can I write about that goes well with June?

Gardening? Did I hear gardening? Gardening it is. It turns out to be a fertile* subject where Disneyland is concerned. The park's Horticulture Department is quite the unsung hero, producing magnificent work pretty much across the board, from the obvious:

to the subtle:

People certainly notice the lovely trees and garden beds throughout Disneyland, but only rarely is attention deliberately drawn toward them. It's even rarer that the specific choices made by the Horticulture Department get any focus, even though they're often brilliantly on-the-nose. Magnolia trees in New Orleans Square and edelweiss around the base of the Matterhorn are just the tip of the iceberg (lettuce).** In many cases, the appropriateness is more than just geographic.

Here are a few of my favorites.

Kidnap the Magic: A Main Street, USA Memorial Day

I felt conflicted about this one at first. I am well aware that a significant portion of my regular readership is Canadian (Hi, Cory!), and there's not really anything here for people outside the United States. But then I thought, what the heck, it's not like anyone comments on the themed party ideas anyway. If I'm honest, I have to admit that posting them at all is pure self-indulgent self-congratulation on my part, the equivalent of standing on a table and waving my arms and shouting “I found a thing that's like another thing!” but with more and fancier words.

Anyway, it's been a while.

So tomorrow is Memorial Day in the U.S. It kind of snuck up on us, didn't it? Or maybe it's just me. If you have some kind of shindig arranged for your day off, now might be a little late to change those plans. But if you're reading this in the morning, you do technically have the entire rest of the day to tweak your decisions! Furthermore, Memorial Day marks the start of the American cultural summer season, which features patriotic holidays at regular intervals. One “U-S-A!” day is pretty much like another when it comes to party decorations and whatnot—you could apply these ideas to the Fourth of July or Labor Day or even Flag Day.*

So say you're a Disneyland fan who wants to host a Memorial Day or other patriotic holiday get-together, and as is your wont, you wish to mix a little theme park in there. Obviously you're going to go with some Main Street, USA flavor. Within the berm, Main Street and American patriotism are practically synonymous. (Although the thesaurus does list “Frontierland” under Related Words.)

This is no coincidence—unironic patriotism pretty much took its current form during the time period represented by Main Street—the last period, maybe, when Americans were still isolated and innocent enough that they could be loudly patriotic without implied belligerence or smugness toward any other countries? I don't want this to get heavy, though, so let's just say that Main Street's brand of wholesome, matter-of-fact national pride is what most people are usually going for with these holidays. In short, this sort of theming for this sort of party is perfectly natural, and if your guests don't already know you're gaga for Disneyland, this won't necessarily be what tips them off. (This may or may not be what you're hoping for.)

Sentimental Paleontology: Buckets Aloft

For over twenty years, this chalet structure has loomed, off-limits to guests and virtually unused, over the western end of Fantasyland:

However, it seems it won't for much longer. The news recently broke that the park had obtained a permit to demolish it. (Confusingly, the outer wall has been repainted even more recently...but there are several possible reasons for that.) Its removal will finally close the curtain on the long career of the Skyway.

It's a good time to reminisce.

But here we hit a snag. The Skyway was an odd sort of attraction by Disneyland standards—no characters or story, only incidental theming. There wasn't even any recorded narration the way there usually was and is with sightseeing/transportation rides such as the Disneyland Railroad, Viewliner, or Monorail. The whole concept of the Skyway was so straightforward—take a one-way trip from Fantasyland to Tomorrowland or vice-versa, and get a bird's-eye view of both in the process—that there may not be much anyone can add.

I'll do my best anyway.

The Second Sense: Updating the Esplanade Area Music Loop

First impressions are important, and the first taste of Disneyland we get upon arriving is—

Okay, good point. The music for the Mickey and Friends parking structure—or Toy Story parking lot, or whichever alternate lot you choose—is whatever you, personally, decide to play in your car for the drive. That doesn't really count for our purposes. But the second impression we get is—

Fair enough. Now knock it off. Once we are past all that, we arrive at the Disneyland Resort Esplanade, whose music loop has—

OH COME ON! Are you gonna nitpick this thing to death or are you gonna let me get on with the post?

Okay. That's better.

Ahem.

The Disney Renaissance vs. the Pixar Revolution

WARNING: Grumpiness, Next 1,000+ Words.

Yeah...I'm one of those people. The ones who think Pixar movies are great and all, but they really don't belong in our Disney parks...at least not to the extent they have come to dominate the landscape. I could give you all the usual reasons—the movies are Disney-adjacent rather than “true” Disney, the attractions don't really fit the area themes, we often lose better (or at least more original) stuff to make room—but I recently put my finger on another reason the Pixar proliferation bugs me:

This didn't happen with the Disney Renaissance.

Beyond Blue Sky: The Disneylands Within Disneyland

Some Disney attractions could be considered “theme parks within theme parks,” and usually the fans don't think much of them. The stand-out examples here are Chester & Hester's Din-o-Rama (Animal Kingdom) and Paradise Pier (California Adventure). The first has often been called inappropriately cheesy and cheap-looking.* The second elicits the burning question: “What is the point of an amusement park-themed amusement park?” Whatever your personal opinion of these areas, you can see the complainers' point. We prefer Disney attractions because they aren't just the same old off-the-shelf carnival rides in the same old dingy, unadorned carnival setting. It feels like a betrayal when they backslide to the minimal theming effort typified by California Screamin' and Triceratops Spin.

But sometimes recursion can work. There are at least two miniature Disneylands within Disneyland. They have been operating for decades—one of them goes right back to July 17, 1955—entertaining thousands of guests every day, and to the best of my knowledge even the most persnickety park aficionado has not called them out for being redundant or inadequately themed.

In fact, most people don't even seem to notice that they are, effectively, miniature Disneylands.

Beyond Blue Sky: The Building Blocks Of Magic, Part 2

(Don't worry, I promise this will not turn into a LEGO blog.)

So the Genie or the Blue Fairy or somebody must have bugged my apartment back in March, because the news has broken that the LEGO Company will release a Disney castle later this year! It's going to be Cinderella's Castle from Orlando, not Sleeping Beauty Castle, but a) I predicted this in the earlier post, and b) I'll buy it anyway if I can remotely justify the expense. I want to send a clear message to the decision-makers in charge of this stuff that Disney theme park LEGO sets are a VERY GOOD idea.

And because my imagination is a naive optimist, it's taking this news and running wild with more ideas for other Disneyland-based sets. Bear with me while I geek out some more?

Armchair Imagineering: Autopian Visions of the Future

The Autopia is currently undergoing an extensive refurbishment, prompted by the end of Chevron's sponsorship and the beginning of Honda's. The known changes are primarily superficial—fresh coats of paint to bring the cars and queue structures away from the ridiculous color schemes engendered by the 1998 remodel of Tomorrowland and get them more in line with Honda's own contemporary aesthetic. We're seeing a lot of blue and white:

Nice, isn't it? More than nice, it's classic Tomorrowland coloring: a return to form in at least that superficial sense. And naturally, with a change in sponsors and paint jobs comes the inevitable question: Is anything else about this Opening Day ride changing?

Armchair Imagineering: Color Theory

If you've scrutinized a Disneyland map lately (and if you haven't, why not?), you've probably noticed that the themed lands are color-coded. Each land is assigned a different hue that is applied not only to the numbered circles that mark attraction locations, but the ground in the map image. Color-coding is one of those things that make me unreasonably happy, especially when it works out as neatly as this. I could not improve upon the Disneyland color map if I tried. Each assignment is eminently logical given the themes and motifs of the different areas, and none is repeated.

Here, this map is pretty current:

Main Street, USA is red, a color that brings to mind not only the American flag, but humble bricks, shiny fire engines, and the “red carpet treatment” that Disneyland promises to arriving guests.

Adventureland is green, for the lush jungle foliage.

New Orleans Square is purple, with all its complex associations. Purple is the color of luxury, of exoticism, of supernatural spookiness. It's also one of the principal colors of Mardi Gras.

Critter Country, an earthy sort of land, is an earthy brown—the color of tree bark and forest soil in addition to the fur of most critters.

Frontierland is the orange of raw copper, Southwestern sandstone, and those sunsets cowboys were always riding off into.

Fantasyland is pink, not just because it is arguably the girliest land (with all those Princesses and fairies), but because pink is a gentle, whimsical color. Sleeping Beauty Castle has been painted pink since well before the current onslaught of franchise branding.

Mickey's Tootown, on the other hand, is raucous, blaring yellow—the color of Mickey Mouse's shoes and taxicabs alike.

And finally, Tomorrowland is blue, a crisp, airy color that ranges from the pale tint of the sky through oceanic medium tones to the deepest navy of the outer atmosphere. It pairs well with utopian white and technological chrome.

It's all so spot on and tidy. I am giddy with delight. And it wouldn't work nearly as well without this exact roster of lands. Which leads me to the actual Armchair Imagineering portion of this post: So what about the ninth land? The one currently under construction and expected to open a couple years down the line?

That's right, readers...hold onto your jaws...I am about to speculate as to how to properly integrate the upcoming Star Wars area with the rest of the park...at least as far as the map design is concerned. Everyone loves to Armchair-Imagineer big-budget rides and elaborate shows, but somebody has to stand back here and look after the less glamorous aspects of updates to the park. You're welcome.

Beyond Blue Sky – Four Disneyland Headcanons

Disneyland tells a lot of stories...a lot of extremely incomplete stories. Even the longest, most intricately designed ride hasn't enough time and space to give us all the details. We're left with a sharply abridged narrative, or perhaps even just a series of vignettes with no explicit “plot” to connect them.

It's like I keep saying: this park is awesome.

A story told piecemeal is practically an engraved invitation to fill in the gaps with your own interpretations, speculations, and headcanons.* These bits of fanfiction might be as simple as names assigned to animatronic characters who don't have official ones, or as elaborate as a “how they met” story for all 17 Country Bears. The vast majority will probably fall somewhere in the middle.

Here are four of mine.

After-Action Report: Roger Rabbit's Car Toon Spin

Since bringing it up in the bunny-themed post of a couple weeks ago, I've been thinking I should devote a post to Roger Rabbit's Car Toon Spin. This is one of the most overlooked rides in Disneyland—not just by the general public, who tend to miss it due to its back corner location and lack of timelessly beloved central characters,* but by Disney theme park bloggers, who ought to know better. This is surprising, because it's one of the best dark rides in the park, weaving together flexible source material, an innovative ride concept, nifty effects, and an absolute commitment on the part of Imagineering to make the experience as seamless as possible within the limitations of the format and the mid-Nineties technology they had to work with.

But wait! There's more! And this is something that only occurred to me fairly recently—Roger Rabbit's Car Toon Spin is the first narrative Disney attraction I can think of that deliberately takes place in the themed land where it is physically located. I'll come back to this later.

Imagineering Theory: Zootopia and Theme Flexibility

I cannot say enough good things about Disney's latest animated feature, Zootopia, now showing in a theater near you! But this is not a film blog. This is a theme park blog; hence my observations will mostly be limited to discussing the potential and actual impact of this completely excellent movie on the Disneyland Resort.

So far, Zootopia has been brought to the parks in the laziest and most predictable way possible: by situating fuzzies of the two main characters in Hollywood Land for photos and autographs. The motivation? To sell park-hopper tickets. The justification? Well, it's a movie, isn't it?

Please.

Apart from a blink-and-you-miss-it* joke about the pronunciation of “Tujunga,” there is nothing whatsoever tying Zootopia to California. But neither does it fit comfortably into any of the themed lands of Disneyland Park...or does it? This post is going to be a thought experiment on the flexibility of area themes and the need for creative solutions to potential mismatches. “Theme dilution” is a common pet peeve among Disney theme park fans, but the area themes have never been 100% pure, and as Disney's cinematic palette expands, it's only going to be more challenging for the Imagineers to successfully integrate movie-based attractions** with the limited selection of themed areas available.

To be clear, this entire post is completely speculative. I do not expect a permanent attraction based on Zootopia to be built in any park. (Actually, the film's setting would make for a fantastic basis for a theme park all on its own, but that's another topic.) The point of the exercise is that we have a wonderful movie, tearing up box-office records, taking place in a fantastic world that would be a blast to visit...and there's no obvious place to put it in Disney's parks.

So what about the non-obvious places?