Imagineering Theory: Niche Vs. Pastiche

In my ongoing quest to figure out just what makes the themes of theme parks tick, I've started to think that maybe the specificity of a given theme plays a big role in how well it's received. Is it better for a themed area to mimic a defined time and place, with accurate details, or does it work better when it plays things loosey-goosey?

Ultimately the answer is probably highly subjective. Some people need a high degree of verisimilitude to feel immersed in the fictional world of a theme park, while others are fine with a rough interpretation that engages their imagination to fill the gaps. Heck with it...some settings work better with a high degree of verisimilitude, while others work better rough. Let's call the two approaches niche and pastiche—the perfect specific fit vs. the patchwork. Plus they rhyme with each other!

Both approaches are very much in evidence in the Disneyland Resort. The ultimate niche area is surely Cars Land, which mimics its source material basically to perfection. Shall I post the two images again? I'm gonna post the two images again.

Meanwhile, the best example of pastiche is probably Frontierland,* which combines elements as disparate as a Mississippi River paddleboat, a saloon decorated with Texas longhorn racks, a Mexican town square, and a Gold Rush mining operation, yet makes it work because it all fits within the continuum of the “Old West” as understood by guests. Historical accuracy is not the point; Disneyland is not Colonial Williamsburg. The object is to get across a general idea, and Frontierland succeeds very well—none of its attractions feel like they don't belong to the overall area theme, which is more than you can say for some themed lands.

On the whole, I think I generally prefer pastiche. My main objection to single-IP lands is that they aren't flexible enough to support further development, especially if the IP itself declines in popularity. But that isn't to say that niche can't do the job. New Orleans Square is pretty close to the niche end of the spectrum—oh yeah, it's a spectrum, not a binary (like most things in life**)—with architecture that evokes the French Quarter of the actual New Orleans to a tee, and it still manages to fire up our imaginations. It probably helps that New Orleans itself is rather a pastiche of influences, due to its frequent changing of hands during its colonial history. It also probably helps that New Orleans Square is not, after all, a carbon copy of the Crescent City. Its two signature attractions fit comfortably within the New Orleans motif without being totally shackled to it—other Disney parks don't even have a New Orleans Square, but they still have Pirates of the Caribbean and the Haunted Mansion (or its equivalent). If not for that built-in flexibility, New Orleans Square probably would have succumbed long ago to the same problem that plagued California Adventure 2.0—direct competition with its (inherently superior) source material.

And sometimes pastiche goes too far. Tomorrowland is the perfect case in point—in its heyday, it was if anything a little more toward the niche end of things, envisioned as a futuristic community with a pretty solid emphasis on transportation (i.e. the “World on the Move” concept), but over time more and more extraneous stuff has gotten glued on, until now it's more like “Profitable IP That Fits Logistically Into This Infrastructure Land.” Maybe we need a designation beyond pastiche for these hopelessly scrambled cases. I propose sheesh, to maintain the rhyme scheme.

So there are pros and cons of both approaches. I'll try to break down my take on when to use each:

Good Opportunities For Niche

• The area theme is an original setting. If you're making up a concept from scratch, you can define it however you wish, and anything you choose can be accurate to its specifics. Naturally there are limits—worldbuilding is itself an art which can be done well or badly—but you have an immense amount of latitude, especially in the theme park medium where things tend to be painted in broad strokes anyway.
• The area theme is an established setting, but is incompletely developed. This is the direction they went with Cars Land, reproducing what we saw in the film pretty much exactly, but then also adding a few features outside the town like Stanley's Oasis and Tail Light Caverns. If the source material gives you a map, guests will expect you to honor it...but if the map includes blank areas, you have some freedom to expand.
• The area theme is a real-world/historical setting which itself has/had numerous cultural influences. I already mentioned New Orleans Square, but the same potentially applies to settings like ancient Rome or Rio de Janeiro. Historical trading centers, places with a long history of colonialization and migration, that sort of thing. In cases like these, the niche is arguably filled with pastiche and the two approaches are one and the same.

Good Opportunities For Pastiche

• The area theme is not well-known to contemporary audiences. If we were all historians specializing in the Western Expansion period, Frontierland would drive us all nuts. Since for most of us, our knowledge of this period has more to do with Western films and vague memories of history lessons in school, we're fine with the mash-up of different regions and decades.
• The area theme draws on a variety of loosely related but distinct source materials. Fantasyland is a good example of this. The Fantasyland courtyard alone is a good example, with rides and other features inspired by a good six or eight movies, which can be loosely grouped under the fairytale/storybook heading but have little else in common. The Fantasyland courtyard looks about as generic as possible while still being identifiable as a European village-type setting.
• The area theme is more esoteric or conceptual than literal. The best example of this is probably Adventureland, whose theme can be summed up as “exotic tropical wilderness.” Now, unlike with Frontierland, I think most guests have a pretty good grasp of the differences between Africa, India, and Polynesia, so Adventureland doesn't rely on unfamiliarity with the details of its material to make sense. It's more the case that average middle-class Westerners don't differentiate these places from each other in an emotional sense. Adventureland is more about an impression of the tropics than the literal tropics themselves.

So yeah...neither niche nor pastiche is inherently superior; they both have their place. That said, there are two big pitfalls Disney seems to be running headlong into lately:

• Converting from niche to pastiche. Tomorrowland and Critter Country are both examples of areas that started out as niche, needed to expand their themes as they developed, and wound up losing all coherency. I can't think of any actual examples, but I suspect the reverse could be risky too, as for example if the new, more restricted theme seems appealing in general but doesn't generate enough attraction concepts to fill the space.
• “Themes” that are neither niche nor pastiche, because they are not themes at all. This comes up every time Pixar Pier gets mentioned. I won't go into it again now.

That about sums it up. Something else to keep in mind for your own Armchair Imagineering ventures!

* How cool is it that both my examples reflect Western rural settings? I think that's pretty cool.

** There are so many more than two genders, you guys—PRIDE MONTH!