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 first Disneyland music heard by the vast majority of guests upon arriving is the area loop for the Esplanade. This loop has been in place (barring Christmas seasons) since 2001, when California Adventure opened, and back then it was a reasonably accurate summary of the kinds of things that could be found in both parks. Here's the complete track list:

1. When You Wish Upon a Star
2. You’ve Got a Friend In Me
3. Hi-Diddle-Dee-Dee
4. Under the Sea
5. Indiana Jones Theme (Raiders March)
6. California Girls (boardwalk version)
7. In the Tiki, Tiki, Tiki Room
8. Hooray For Hollywood
9. Yo Ho (A Pirate’s Life For Me)
10. I Left My Heart in San Francisco (boardwalk version)
11. Heigh-Ho
12. Smile, Darn Ya, Smile
13. It’s a Small World (After All)
14. March of the Cards
15. Mickey Mouse Club March
16. Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah
17. Fantasmic! Exit Music
18. Soarin’ Over California Load Music
19. Be Our Guest (carousel version)
20. The Ballad of Davy Crockett
21. You Can Fly! You Can Fly! You Can Fly!
22. Star Wars Medley
23. Muppets Theme
24. Minnie’s Yoo-Hoo
25. Imagination Institute Theme
26. How Do You Do?
27. Golden Dreams Exit Music
28. Golden Afternoon
29. Time of Your Life
30. Heffalumps and Woozles

I like this lineup. You can take just about every track and map it directly to an attraction or thematic motif in one park or the other—quite often, of course, because the tune in question was composed specifically for an attraction. That's exactly what I look for in a good theme park entrance music loop. But you know what? It's been playing for fifteen years. A lot can change in a decade and a half—some of the attractions referred to in this loop have closed in the meantime, and plenty of new ones have been added. An overly critical person might be inclined to point out that the music loop is no longer entirely honest, and should be updated to reflect current reality.

So, first the tracks to drop. “California Girls,” “Hooray for Hollywood,” and “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” are from area loops in California Adventure which have since been replaced (that is, they no longer represent the atmosphere the designers wish to project). Honey I Shrunk the Audience (the source of the “Imagination Institute Theme”) and Golden Dreams have both closed. Muppet*Vision 3-D may not be coming back (though I hope it does), and Soarin' Over California will soon become Soarin' Over the Horizon, possibly with new music. That's seven tracks in the loop that are either obsolete, or may become so very soon. But have there been enough new additions to supply replacement tunes for all of them? What all has opened at the Disneyland Resort in the last fifteen years?

A whole heckuva lot, that's what. I'll focus on the highlights.

“a bug's land”

After complaints that there wasn't enough in California Adventure for young children to do, Flik's Fun Fair was appended to the back of Bountiful Valley Farm, which was renamed “a bug's land”...to no great fanfare, since it was basically already themed to a bug's life.

In fact...the one song from that fairly forgettable Pixar film is already in the loop. If you're scratching your head—and who can blame you?—it's the one entitled “Time of Your Life.” I actually wouldn't mind dropping it. Flik's Fun Fair is nothing to get excited about if you're older than about six, and the one attraction in “a bug's land” that is kind of cool—“It's Tough to Be a Bug”—is frequently pre-empted by movie previews. Disney doesn't care, so why should we?

Incidentally, this now leaves us with eight slots to fill in the Esplanade loop.

The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh

This ride, which debuted a year after “a bug's land,” is similarly toddler-focused and, similarly, is already represented in the Esplanade loop via “Heffalumps and Woozles.” Move along, folks, there's nothing to see here.

Twilight Zone Tower of Terror

This, on the other hand, would seem to be the ideal attraction to honor in the new version of the loop—it's a major addition to the resort, quite successful, and has associated music built right in.

Unfortunately—and it's a doozy of a thing—it seems we won't have this ride around much longer. We're short only one 100% official press release confirming that the building will be made over as a Guardians of the Galaxy ride. GotG is great and all, but in what universe does it make sense to take away a ride based on an intergenerationally famous TV franchise in order to prop up what isn't even the real moneymaker of the Marvel acquisition?

Anyhoo, on the off chance that the rumor has been overblown, or the reskin will only be temporary (they are all about the temporary reskins these days, after all), I propose that an instrumental version of the Twilight Zone theme be added to the Esplanade loop!

As long as we're on this subject...

Marvel

It's hard to say where all the Marvel stuff in Disneyland and California Adventure will ultimately end up, or how much of it there will be. But it's right behind Star Wars in terms of things Disney is eager to justify investing in, so we may be certain it will be promoted in the parks for the foreseeable future.

As for music, there's always this:

I'd rather have that playing in the Esplanade than “Hooked on a Feeling,” at least.

And speaking of Star Wars...

All Kinds of Star Wars Stuff

Star Tours: The Adventures Continue. The Jedi Training Academy. Star Wars Launch Bay. Star Wars: Path of the Something-Or-Other. Hyperspace Mountain. The entire Season of the Farce Forced Force deal. An entire Star Wars land in a couple of years.

Surely, with this much new content, it wouldn't be out of line to put some Star Wars music in the loop? Well, there already is some. Nyah nyah.

But if it needs another one, I vote for “Han Solo and the Princess”:

Okay, back to rough chronological order.

Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters

Toy Story is another of those franchises that Disney apparently cannot get over the fact that it owns. (Wait...is that sentence grammatically correct? Am I missing a preposition somewhere?) So once again, the area loop beat the ride to the punch. I think it's officially the case that every Disney song collection must include “You've Got a Friend In Me.” However, the version currently in the loop doesn't sound much like this ride at all. Maybe swap it out for the version actually used in the ride? It starts at about 4:13:

(Just the music. All those fireworks and other gribbly noises are not necessary.)

Monsters, Inc. - Mike and Sulley to the Rescue!

I debated whether or not to even include this cumbersome-monikered ride, which can hardly be deemed a success. If it's still around when the Powers That Be finally get around to updating the Esplanade loop, it may or may not get a nod in the new version.

Said nod would probably take one of these two forms:

Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage

Sheesh. More Pixar. But it is an “E-ticket,” as they used to be called before I scientifically proved that they shouldn't be, and the ride does conclude with a snazzy instrumental version of “Beyond the Sea” that might sound nice in the loop. It kicks in at about 11:36:

Toy Story Midway Mania

You can maybe see why some of us Disney fans have issues with the current era of Imagineering...

Ordinarily, I would say we don't need two Toy Story tracks in the Esplanade, but having chosen such a specific one for Astro Blasters, I'm going to take a page from whoever was in charge of the most recent Official Disneyland Resort soundtrack and suppose that this tune from the score of Toy Story 2—used in Midway Mania's queue loop—could be included:

Cars Land

Now this almost certainly will be represented whenever the loop gets updated, and it will probably be an instrumental version of “Route 66.” I think it would be classy of them to make it Natalie Cole's version, which was part of the area loop for Sunshine Plaza before it became Buena Vista Street. A nice little nod to California Adventure's history.*

The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Undersea Adventure

This would probably also be a shoe-in, except that, as with some of the items near the top of the list, there's already a track for it in the current loop.

World of Color

If Fantasmic! can be in the Esplanade loop, I guess this can too. The most obvious way to represent it is with an instrumental version of the main theme—you know, that “carousel of color” song. I can't seem to actually find an instrumental of it on YouTube, but I hope they would use a version that sounds like the old TV theme.

So that just leaves our original question: Do we, in fact, have enough to fill in the gaps left by what we would remove? If you go back and count the embedded videos, plus one for World of Color...we have more than enough. Even allowing for the additional removals we decided on as we** went.

Not that I expect the loop to be updated any time soon. Actually, my (fairly bleak) prediction is that we're stuck with the current one until the Star Wars area opens, at which point they'll take the all-Star Wars loop now playing in Tomorrowland and move it out to the Esplanade for who-knows-how-long.

I should sign off before I get grumpy again.

* Jeez Louise, that park is old enough to have history now.

** Okay, I. I decided on them as I went.