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

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

34. The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996)

Location: Fantasyland

This is not a fantasy movie per se (especially if you interpret the gargoyles as figments of Quasimodo's imagination), but the medieval setting matches best with Fantasyland. The hand-cranked “music box” in Fantasy Faire is pretty on-point. Back when the movie was new, the shop on the east side of the Castle courtyard (currently the Heraldry Shoppe) was called “Quasimodo's Attic,” and they actually left the gargoyles in the window display for a while. Strangely enough, the more significant Hunchback addition, a theatre-in-the-round show, was held in the Festival Arena in Frontierland. Obviously this was because they had the space for such a thing there—we're entering the period where stuff just gets shoved into odd corners of the park any old how, because sensible area theming is less important than getting that marketable property into Disneyland NOW!

35. Hercules (1997)

Location: Fantasyland/Hollywood Land

Ancient mythology is not as natural a fit for Fantasyland as fairy tales, but where else could you possibly put a Hercules attraction?

Well...what about Hollywood Land? Hear me out here. The movie treats Hercules as a celebrity—a sports star rather than a film or TV star, but it works out much the same with the branding and the fangirls—and portrays Hades like a slimy agent always tricking naive young talents into nearly one-sided contracts. I think if they played up that aspect of the characters, Hollywood Land could be a good place for them. I'm not quite sure what they'd do there, exactly, but points for creativity?

36. Mulan (1998)

Location: ???

This film, I am less sure about. The title character shows up the most often in Fantasyland, having been assimilated into the Disney Princess Collective*, but I really don't feel the whole movie is a good fit—fantastic elements aside, it reads more like historical drama than a fairy tale, and of course it isn't remotely European. The next most common place to encounter Mulan is in California Adventure, supposedly because San Francisco has a pretty famous Chinatown district, but that is a weak connection. The only Chinatown-ish thing actually present in California Adventure is this pin cart:

And if you're going to use that as your excuse, you might as well stick Mulan in Frontierland:

It's times like this when I wish they had gone ahead with the Chinatown area they were thinking of putting in Main Street, USA a while back.

37. Tarzan (1999)

Location: Adventureland

This might actually be the Adventureland-iest movie Disney has ever animated, featuring as it does the meeting (and clash) between highly developed Western civilization and the jungle primeval. That was the original concept behind the area back in the Fifties. It's a lot more “pulpy” now with the addition of Indiana Jones and the retrofitting of the Jungle Cruise boathouse to match, but then Tarzan is a pulp character to begin with.

You might not love Tarzan's Treehouse overall, but at least we can all agree it works better in Adventureland than it would anywhere else.**

38. Fantasia 2000 (1999)

Location: Probably multiple

Unless you count the numerous Sorcerer's Apprentice references, nothing from this movie, to my knowledge, has made it as a permanent feature of the Disneyland Resort. Some of the imagery has been used in various parades and shows, none of them current. But if they were to give it a bigger presence, I think they would have to go the same route as the original Fantasia and put small references in multiple locations around the resort.

39. Dinosaur (2000)

Location: Adventureland

This film isn't...bad, per se. It's mostly just really, really forgettable. And the CGI doesn't hold up as well as it needs to. (Come on, Disney—Universal was able to render photorealistic dinosaurs seven years before this, and they still look fantastic!) Nonetheless, it has found a permanent home over in the Dinoland USA portion of Disney's Animal Kingdom. But where might it work in Disneyland?

I have to go with Adventureland. It's a common enough pulp scenario: Our intrepid explorers are machete-ing their way through some godforsaken jungle when they suddenly find themselves on the rim of The Valley That Time Forgot, where The Dinosaurs Still Roam. (And the cavemen and sabertoothed tigers too, since those pulp writers were all about style over substance.)

40. The Emperor's New Groove

Location: Adventureland

This one gets Adventureland on the basis of setting alone. You can't start a movie with “Long ago, somewhere deep in the jungle...” and expect my brain not to jump directly to Adventureland.

Well...technically you can, but you'll be disappointed.

41. Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001)

Location: Tomorrowland/Adventureland?

Back in the late 90s while this movie was still in production, there were plans to retool the Submarine Voyage as a trip to the Atlantis of the film. I don't know how exactly that would have worked since the plans were shelved as soon as it became evident the movie was not a success. But for a brief time, they had a character meet-and-greet by the Submarine Lagoon anyway.

So that's the Tomorrowland connection...but it's not a very good fit, is it? For Discoveryland, the Tomorrowland equivalent in Disneyland Paris, it would be spot-on. But we don't have a natural home for steampunkish, “future of the past” stuff. On the other hand, the movie is about a bunch of Westerners traveling to a remote corner of the world and making contact with/trying to exploit the people they find already living there, and that's pretty Adventureland.

42. Lilo and Stitch (2002)

Location: Adventureland/Tomorrowland

The Stateside parks like to put this movie in Tomorrowland, because Stitch is an alien from outer space and the decision-makers have apparently never actually watched it. Shame on them. The rest of us know that the movie ends with Stitch and some other aliens settling down in the tropical paradise*** of Hawaii. If it ended instead with Lilo and Nani jetting off into the star-spangled yonder with the aliens, I might consider it more of a Tomorrowland-style piece. But as it is, I think Adventureland is better.

43. Treasure Planet (2002)

Location: Tomorrowland

Here we sort of have the Atlantis problem again—while this movie features no end of space travel and aliens and robots and holographic technology, it's all cosmetic. This isn't even Treasure Island In Space...it's Treasure Island With A Sort Of Clock-Punk Aesthetic And The Use Of Sci-Fi Words Like “Cyborg.” This is not a criticism of the film's art design, which is extremely imaginative and gorgeously animated. But it does mean that when I say the best place for an attraction based on it would have been Tomorrowland, I am simultaneously side-eyeing it and wondering whether it might actually be happier in New Orleans Square with the other pirates.

44. Brother Bear (2003)

Location: Grizzly Peak

Bear. Grizzly. Voilà. Plus they actually did give the Redwood Creek Challenge Trail a Brother Bear overlay, which lasted until they had something to replace it with (specifically an Up overlay). And that's all I'm going to say, because this movie honestly disappointed me so much that I didn't even bother to see the next two Disney releases.

More on them next week!

* The Ballgown Borg, if you will.

** If you can't agree with that, then I really don't know what to tell you.

*** Phrase used by convention—actually, paradise to me would be someplace where it snows in the winter. I've already got warm weather and sandy beaches, here in L.A., and they don't do much for me.