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!
45.
Home on the Range (2004)
Location:
Frontierland
This
is the only movie in the
Disney Animation Canon I have never seen, and the reviews I have read
give me no inclination to change that any time soon. However, I will
concede that it is definitely a Western, and that the mercifully
brief re-naming of Big Thunder Ranch* to Patch O' Heaven was not out
of theme.
46.
Chicken Little (2005)
Location:
Mickey's Toontown
Now, this one I have seen, but only because it was on cable once and
I had nothing better to do and decided to see if it was really as bad
as I assumed back in the glory days of the Golden Anniversary.
(Spoiler: It was.)
Fortunately, it came and went quickly enough that there were no
threats of any sort of permanent attraction stinking up the
joint...but if there had been, perhaps Mickey's Toontown would be the
least terrible place to put such an abomination? The movie takes
place in a suburb populated by very cartoony barnyard animals, and I
feel like there's room here for a riff on Disney's previous take on
the Chicken Little story, which was back in the Silly Symphony era,
which also has thematic ties to Toontown, and I am putting way
too much thought into this considering how much I don't like this
movie.
47.
Meet the Robinsons (2007)
Location:
Tomorrowland
Now we are getting to the part of the studio/theme park history that
actually makes me angry, because...because...
Meet the Robinsons obviously
belongs, if anywhere, in Tomorrowland. The movie knows
it belongs in Tomorrowland. It kicks you in the eyeballs
with an admission of the fact:
That scene was in the trailer.
Nobody missed it. It
may have been a little Disney in-joke, but it was as good as a
verbatim declaration that according to this movie, the future will be
like Tomorrowland.
But when the movie came out and the
obligatory temporary character meet-and-greet came to the Disneyland
Resort, was it located in Tomorrowland? Of course not. It was in
Hollywood Pictures Backlot (as it was then called), because the
executives in charge of these things have the artistic sense of
gravel.
Actually, I take that back. Gravel
can be very artistic:
 |
| Hey there, Buddha. Apparently I'm supposed to kill you? Nothing personal. |
Do not be fooled. It should have
been Tomorrowland.
48.
Bolt (2008)
Location:
Hollywood Land
Ready
to compound the above insult? The
release of this
movie, which is
about a dog television star traveling cross-country to Hollywood,
may or may not have been accompanied by costumed character
appearances. I don't specifically remember seeing any, but I'm going
to assume they existed and were in Hollywood Pictures Backlot. But
then they evaporated and Bolt
was quietly shelved and forgotten about. Keep in mind, this was at a
time when basically no one cared about California Adventure, and one
of the presumed reasons was that there weren't enough thematically
appropriate Disney IPs in the place. Here they had a movie that was
explicitly
keyed in to one of the themed areas in California Adventure, and they
just let it pass into obscurity.
Well,
I'm not them. And if you keep your eye on the Disneyland Dilettante,
pretty soon you'll see one of my most ambitious Armchair Imagineering
ideas yet, and it's all to do with Bolt.
49.
The Princess and the Frog (2009)
Location:
New Orleans Square
I've
got a hunch that they set this movie in New Orleans so
that
they would have a Princess for New Orleans Square. That's fine. It's
a lovely movie, featuring fun characters, and it's nice to see some
attention paid to the New
Orleans
aspect of New Orleans Square, which otherwise tends to get
overshadowed simply because the area's two big blockbuster rides are
so distinctive and well-done and neither one actually takes place
within New Orleans city limits.
Moreover,
in an era when Upper Management seems to have lost all sense of theme
integrity in the mad rush to cram the parks with their most
profitable animated franchises, it's heartwarming to see them plan a
movie with a specific area theme in mind, and in this era of generic
“Disney Parks” branding, it's doubly heartwarming that the area
in question is one unique to Disneyland.
50.
Tangled (2010)
Location:
Fantasyland
This movie is another pretty standard Princess fairy tale (New
Renaissance edition) and therefore obviously belongs in Fantasyland.
At least in this case, it has something nice (and permanent!) to show
for it. No, not the “let's just summarize the movie” stage show
at the Royal Theatre in Fantasy Faire,** but the nicely detailed
sculpture/model of Rapunzel's tower located mere yards away.
51. Winnie The Pooh (2011)
Location:
Critter Country/Fantasyland
Been
over this already, actually. If I have anything to add, it might
be a wry observation on the fact that the two Rescuers movies are
different enough that I assign them different lands, but Pooh Bear
and his friends always have the same charmingly harmless sorts of
adventures close to home.
52.
Wreck-It Ralph (2012)
Location:
Tomorrowland
Video
games = technology = Tomorrowland is a pretty thin justification for
a movie that was set in its own release year, but let's look closer.
In
a fairly brilliant move, Disney took the fictional classic arcade
game they invented for this film, Fix-It
Felix Jr.,
and made it real, shipping the cabinets to strategic locations as
part of pre-release promotions. About half a dozen of them wound up
in Tomorrowland's Starcade, along with a truly inspiring collection
of genuine vintage arcade cabinets. For a sadly brief period of time,
walking through that space was like being eight years old again. This
was also, appropriately, the location of the character
meet-and-greet.
A
few years later, all that was ripped away from us—ripped, I say—and
we lost the Starcade altogether. But I still peg Tomorrowland as the
best land for Wreck-It
Ralph,
because think about it: The characters are video game sprites with
their own agendas, independent of their programming. This makes them
AIs that have spontaneously achieved sapience. That's not just a
comfortably broken-in science-fiction trope, but a serious concern of
some computer scientists as programming gets more and more
complex—what if our nuclear launch software wakes up one day and
decides to go Turbo?
While
a permanent Ralph
attraction would probably eschew the hardcore machine ethics
philosophy in favor of recreating exciting scenes from the movie, the
most natural framing device would be some sort of highly advanced
virtual reality. Still Tomorrowland.
Now
if only they would go ahead and build
one...
53.
Frozen (2013)
Location:
Fantasyland
Given
how the park has handled this movie, you could be forgiven for
thinking the best place for attractions based on it is ZOMG WHEREVER
WE CAN CRAM THEM IN HOLY CRAP!!! To be fair, even that would be an
exaggeration, as the Frozen
stuff really only showed up in Fantasyland (where it fits
thematically), and Hollywood Land (where it doesn't.
Just being a movie
doesn't count, people.) But boy howdy,
did it show up in both places. Fantasyland started with a
meet-and-greet (replacing the one for Tangled), picked up a new
Storybook Land model, and wound up with a total takeover of the Royal
Theatre. But the real Frozen
oversaturation was over in California Adventure, where the movie at
one point occupied way
too much real estate in Hollywood Land. I think by now they've dialed
it back to the stage show in the Hyperion Theatre. Which is fine, I
guess—the real Hollywood has the Pantages, which is where I saw The
Lion King on stage.
 |
| Worth. EVERY. Penny. |
But
that's more of a statement about the appropriateness of elaborate
stage shows in Hollywood Land, not the appropriateness of Frozen.
Which
goes—if it must go anywhere—in Fantasyland. Fortunately, the only
permanent addition over there is the Storybook Land model, which fits
right in with the other castles and villages.
54.
Big Hero 6 (2014)
Location:
Tomorrowland/The
Golden State
I
am torn here. On the one hand, if Disney insists upon stuffing
California Adventure with IPs, the least they could do is choose the
tiny number of them that actually take place in California. But on
the other hand, I cannot think of another animated movie that comes
closer to the original
Tomorrowland vibe: real, genuine, in-development technological
wonders, soon to make the world a better place! I kid you not—most
of the superpower gear wielded by the characters is based on
inventions that already exist, just not to quite the same extent.
I
would love to have
something along the lines of a San Fransokyo Institute of Technology
in Tomorrowland. But I would also love to see it in The Golden State.
They've done a great job perking up California Adventure, but they
haven't really expanded the California
themes beyond what was already there. A Silicon Valley/tech industry
attraction could add some breadth of scope to a park that is maybe a
little too worried
about impressing the kiddies, and such an attraction could also be an
opportunity to bring in Big Hero 6.
I
mean...they're always saying
they want to do more with Marvel in the parks...
55.
Zootopia (2016)
Location:
Critter Country/Tomorrowland
I actually did an entire post
about where a Zootopia attraction might theoretically belong,
and landed on either Critter Country or Tomorrowland as the most
appropriate possibilities. For my reasoning on the matter, go read
that post if you haven't already—I'm pretty proud of it!
Aaaaand...that brings us current. I might revisit this topic with the
Pixar movies, or maybe Disney's live-action/animation hybrids,
whenever the next time is that I run out of ideas.
Ahem. Time to bring this thing full circle...
Moana hits theaters this
November. It promises to be delightful. I really
hope the inevitable character meet-and-greet lands near the Tiki
Room. It's about time those yahoos in Corporate re-learned what
theming is.
*
RIP (sniff)
** I
actually have not sat down and watched this. My reasons are my own.
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