Unauthorized Fun – Kingdom Hearts Tour

A funny thing happened about five minutes after I submitted last week's post. I suddenly remembered that when Kingdom Hearts was new—well, newer than it is today*—I actually had a silly idea for a “Kingdom Hearts tour,” where you would visit attractions in the same order as you visit the corresponding “worlds” in the game.

And...why not? I'm distracted this week, it's been a while since I offered up any Unauthorized Fun, and we're just entering the time of year where you can actually experience this ride plan to its fullest extent. So here it is: The Disneyland Resort Kingdom Hearts Tour!

Destiny Islands

The game starts you out on a tropical island which some kids have converted to an adventure hangout by building platforms and bridges and lookout towers and whatnot out of scrap lumber and native materials. Well then. Start the tour with a trip to Tom Sawyer Island! Explore as much or as little of the island as you like in order to “level up” before proceeding.

Disney Castle

In the first Kingdom Hearts game, this world appears only in cutscenes and is not playable. Head over to Sleeping Beauty Castle and take a picture, but don’t go inside!

Traverse Town

This cozy town winds up being your “home base” world, where you come to re-supply, improve your gear, and catch up with NPCs. Simulate this by ambling around Main Street for a while and visiting the shops.

Wonderland

This is the first Disney setting world you actually play through in the game, and fittingly, this is the first actual ride on the tour. (Well…you have to ride the rafts to and from Tom Sawyer Island, but I don’t think most people consider that a “ride” any more than the parking lot tram counts as a “ride.”) Hop aboard a caterpillar for the Alice in Wonderland dark ride! Or spin a teacup in the Mad Tea Party! Or both! The dark ride gets you a lot closer to the content of the game, though.

Olympus Coliseum

This one gave me a bit of pause. Disneyland doesn’t have any sort of Hercules-based attraction, nor does it generally use the characters much. But it does have an attraction featuring combat training, ultimately leading to a face-off with a black-robed villain voiced by an actor named James. To cover this world, take in a show at the Jedi Training Academy!

Deep Jungle

This is the Tarzan world, because I guess they decided not to name any of the worlds after a real location even when the movie transparently takes place there. That’s fine. Visit Tarzan's Treehouse and play with all the things in the camp area to pass this stage. If that's not enough content for you, go ahead and ride the Jungle Cruise as well.

Take a Break

At this point in the game, you have to return to Traverse Town and accomplish some tasks before you can continue to more worlds. Depending on crowd level and when you started your quest, it might be time for lunch about now. Or at least a snack.

Agrabah

After eating, troop right back to Adventureland and visit Aladdin's Oasis. If you can, go inside and get a quick picture of the Cave of Wonders set piece. Unfortunately, there's not much else to do there these days.

Monstro

Yes, the whale from Pinocchio comprises a world unto himself, and when you arrive at him, he swallows you. If that's the main element under consideration, now would be the time to ride the Storybook Land Canal Boats, and then I guess plug your ears for most of the tour. Otherwise, ride Pinocchio's Daring Journey.

Atlantica

Are you ready to do some walking? Time was, you would have stayed comfortably within the berm of Disneyland Park and visited Ariel's Grotto in order to check off the Little Mermaid portion of the game. For better or worse, that spot has been given over to the pixies and Ariel has her own dark ride, clear over in California Adventure. I suppose it's fitting that you have to undergo a radical departure from the park you're in for this stage, since in the game, navigating the underwater world involves a radical departure from the standard motion controls.

If there's anything else you want to do in California Adventure while you're there (such as any of the “Sidequests and Mini-games” below), go ahead and do it, because you won't be back otherwise.

Halloween Town

This is why it's so fortuitous that I started thinking about Kingdom Hearts in the fall—the last quarter of the year is when The Nightmare Before Christmas has itself an actual ride, not just a merch kiosk. I guess Haunted Mansion Holiday is good for something after all?

Incidentally, if you attempt the Kingdom Hearts tour outside of the Halloween-Christmas season, you can clear this stage by browsing the aforementioned kiosk and/or going ahead and riding the plain old superb Haunted Mansion anyway.

Neverland

Nip back over to Fantasyland and ride Peter Pan's Flight. Not much else to say about this one.**

100-Acre Wood

Cross back to the west end of the park and ride The Many Adventures of Winnie The Pooh. Technically, you can begin accessing this world (more like a bundle of mini-games) at any point after completing Deep Jungle, but you can't finish it until much later, and official numbered listings of the worlds in the game place it after Neverland. If the extravagant back-and-forth travel annoys you, I won't blame you for checking it off immediately before or after Halloween Town instead.

Take Another Break

It must be just about dinner time, mustn't it?

Hollow Bastion

This is that pseudo-futuristic/steampunk/magepunk palace I mentioned last week. Conceptually, it was created for the game and has no ready counterpart in Disneyland or the Disney film library. Disney characters appear there, however—Belle and the Beast, a handful of other Princesses, and Maleficent. Due to the overall castle-y nature of the place and the showdown with Maleficent, I'm going to go ahead and say this is where you return to Sleeping Beauty Castle and do the walkthrough.

End of the World

Not a world per se, but a conglomeration of the remnants of all the worlds destroyed by the game's villains, resembling a black hole in outer space. It seems like the logical choice for an attraction here is Space Mountain, wouldn't you say? The fact that at this moment in time, the ride is done up as Space Mountain Ghost Galaxy, is no problem, because “Bob” is a reasonable substitute for the enormous monstrosities you have to fight as part of Kingdom Hearts's grand finale!

Sidequests and Mini-games

Of course, there's more to any decent video game in the adventure genre than the straightforward story, and Kingdom Hearts includes many optional goodies. I won't describe them all in detail here—those of you who have played the game know what I'm talking about, and those who haven't can easily look them up if you're curious.

• Find all 99 Dalmatian puppies: This would work best as a camera quest, I think. Take 99 pictures of Dalmatian puppies—in shop windows, in plush form, on other merch...go to Toontown and ring the Firehouse doorbell 99 times if you must.
• Gummi Garage: Buy a package of gummi candies. Make sure your hands are nice and clean and play with them for a bit, assembling them into vehicle-like shapes. Then eat them. Yum!
• Magic spells: Find the best possible visual representation of each of the following “elements”: Fire, Ice, Thunder/Lightning, Healing, Wind, Gravity, and Time. Snap a picture of each.
• Practice magic with Merlin: Visit the Main Street Magic Shop and watch a demonstration of a trick. Be sure to look suitably impressed!
• Summonable characters: This can work similarly to the puppy quest. The characters you need to locate are Simba, the Genie, Dumbo, Bambi, Tinker Bell, and Mushu.
• Item synthesis: Uuuhhhhhhh...I got nothin'. Someone else will have to cover this one. Fortunately, it's only a sidequest.

That's all for this week! Hopefully I'll have something a little more substantial next time!

* That damn game turns fifteen this year. You know what turned fifteen the year it came out? The original Legend of Zelda. Do you feel old yet?

** Yes, I know it's ironic that you never set foot in Neverland proper in the original Kingdom Hearts. That's not what I'm here to talk about today.