After Action Report: Window Shopping

It’s certainly possible to experience Disneyland without walking down Main Street, USA, but a) it’s non-intuitive, b) it’s not recommended, and c) I hope you like trains. I doubt if one guest in a million even thinks to try it. I think we can safely say that within an acceptable margin of error, everyone who visits the Happiest Place on Earth gets to take a gander at one of its most unique features: the Main Street Emporium window displays.

In principle, the Emporium windows are as straightforward a case of synergy as you can get—scenes from Disney films converted into animated dioramas for cross-promotional purposes. In practice, it’s a rather odd choice—that’s a lot of effort to go to for what amounts to a film trailer. And why the Emporium rather than, I don’t know, a dedicated exhibit space? And why did they keep on doing it? And why do we, the guests, find these miniaturized movie moments so goshdarn compelling?

Having asked the questions, I am forced to admit that I do not have the answers. I’m not even sure at what point I became properly aware that the Emporium windows were regularly updated to reflect current animated releases and re-releases. It seems to me that at one point in the Eighties, the big corner window was stuck on a scene from 101 Dalmatians for the longest time…but it might just be that I spent an abnormally high amount of time in the vicinity of that particular window on the one or two annual trips. Either way, I certainly have rock-solid memories of the Baduns’ flashlight beams sweeping back and forth in search of the puppies hiding under the bridge.

And I remember that the windows were changed like clockwork all throughout the Disney Renaissance and even, to an extent, beyond, and that this seemed like a new phenomenon to me. So maybe they were allowed to stagnate at some point. The Fox and the Hound was honored with its own window displays—I know this because one of them was re-used for the 50th Anniversary retrospective (about which more in a bit)—but I don’t ever recall seeing anything for The Black Cauldron, The Great Mouse Detective, or Oliver & Company.*

As far as I am aware, the last animated film to get its own series of window displays was Treasure Planet, released late in 2002.** The movie itself flopped, and by this point the 50th Anniversary was coming up and it must have seemed more important to plan the composite displays for the retrospective, than to design and manufacture entirely new figures and sets for the increasingly unlikely-to-succeed films in the animation pipeline at the time. The very last film to get a promotional window concurrent with its release—just the one window, not a whole series—was Ratatouille, which isn’t even Disney but Pixar.

Not that I’m complaining about the retrospective! In keeping with the overall theme of the 50th Anniversary celebration—namely, “this park is AWESOME, huh?”—the windows were kitted out to celebrate, basically, themselves. The composite displays, made from carefully chosen fragments of decades’ worth of dioramas, were arranged to reflect not so much the eras of Disney animation up to that point, but different phases in the evolution of their own mechanized three-dimensional art. Not only was this the perfect way to highlight a Disneyland tradition for Disneyland's grandest celebration yet, but re-using the actual vignettes from years prior in this new context made the Emporium windows into a fountain of nostalgia, at least while this particular display lasted.

That is to say...for ten years.

If the lone Ratatouille window had us all hoping that the windows would go back to regular updates once the 50th Anniversary was over, those hopes were quickly dashed. Nor did the original tradition resume once Disney Animation found its new equilibirum in the 2010s. I assumed—a bit cynically, but not entirely unreasonably—that this was it, that the suits now had an excuse to let the windows stagnate forever, since they were now dedicated to telling their own history, which ended once they began telling it.

Fortunately, this turned out not to be the case—an entirely new series of six displays was created for the Diamond Anniversary. Now referred to as the Main Street Enchanted Windows, each one represents a single movie (or in one case a franchise), encapsulating what we love about said movie by transforming between two or more states. Unlike the 50th displays which went up all together, these were unveiled one at a time, with twee little verses hinting at the ones yet to have their curtains pulled back.

I don't love them all, but it's nice to see the tradition continue in such a creative way! Here, I'll rank them, best to worst (in my scarcely humble opinion, of course):

1. Aladdin

They actually saved the best for last; this was the final window to be revealed at the time of the Diamond Anniversary. Whereas the other five windows have alternating “A” and “B” states representing different phases or scenes of the movie, this one goes through an entire sequence of shifting scenery and figures, playing out a single scene/sequence that nonetheless cuts to the heart of Aladdin's magic. It's especially outstanding just how many layers of three-dimensional scenery the Imagineers managed to include in perhaps two feet of physical depth. Watch the whole thing; it's delightful.

2. The Princess and the Frog

I have several reasons for rating this window so highly. First of all...it's refreshing that they chose to highlight this movie when most of the other Princess fairy tales have higher profiles (though as you'll see, two others did get their own, nowhere near as good, displays). It's probably the most dramatic of the two-stage transformations, with the entire bayou literally lifting out of the way to make room for the riverboat. And I appreciate the extent to which it abstracts the events of the film, in much the same way as a classic dark ride. There is no point in the movie during which frog!Tiana and frog!Naveen are spinning on a lily pad being personally menaced by Dr. Facilier, but presenting the scene in that way sums up the middle acts of the story in an admirable way.

If I have one criticism, it's that the Facilier figure is too fragile—I've seen his hand broken clean off more than once.

3. Peter Pan

This is another very dramatic transformation, with the entire house folding up and sinking down in order to move the action to its own rooftop level. Peter Pan is one of those evergreen Disney movies with extremely broad appeal, and it all revolves around that central fantasy of being granted the gift of flight.

4. Toy Story

It loses points for being Pixar rather than Disney, but I ironically like this one for its minimalism—for getting across the dual nature of its franchise's protagonists and the intriguing concept it poses as its premise, without changing the scene very much.

5. Cinderella

I am almost entirely lukewarm toward Cinderella as a movie, for reasons which are probably outside the scope of this blog and certainly outside the scope of this post. So right off the bat, this window doesn't have much to offer me. The transformation effect on the dress is pretty nice, but apart from that, it's not very innovative as a transforming display either.

Also, why does the Fairy Godmother have her hood back? That's just weird.

6. Frozen

Now, Frozen I do like reasonably well...at least while I'm actively in the process of watching it. But its window display is a huge disappointment. The character figures are modeled directly on common merchandising images, as if they just 3D-printed the art from a little girl's lunchbox, and there's no sense of the substance of the movie. It's just “Here's Anna, Sven, and Kristoff, and now...wait for it...here's Elsa and Olaf. Ta-da!” With the other five windows, a person who had never seen the movies in question could probably suss out the core of their appeal from watching the full transformation sequence. Here...you'd never guess that Frozen was about sisterhood, and you'd certainly never pick up on the grandiose scope of Elsa's ice magic.

So where does that leave us? For the time being, the Enchanted Window displays are still installed and running. But I think the time is ripe for a return to regular window updates reflecting recent (and perhaps upcoming) releases. Disney is more prolific than ever before, not just in animation but in live-action film releases, and there's no real reason the Emporium windows couldn't be used in service of the latter as well as the former. Perhaps there's no need to devote a full six dioramas to every major feature that comes out...in fact, that would require a completely impractical degree of turnover in the displays. But with six spaces available, giving each promotable movie one scene, transforming or not, would enable the company to simultaneously highlight:

• A Disney Animation feature
• A Pixar feature
• A Star Wars installment
• An MCU release

And then perhaps the remaining two could be “floaters” in case a given division had more than one feature out in one year, or to showoff the live-action remake of an animated classic,*** or to tease pipeline projects with distinctive silhouette figures, or for seasonal displays. There's a lot of untapped potential here.

Would it be advertising? Of course. But the resort advertises current and upcoming movies pretty much constantly anyway, via posters and 3-D previews. At least the window displays are unique works of art in their own right. And you don't even have to wait in line.

* If any of my readers can confirm or refute this point, I would be grateful.

** This point too.

*** I have always been cool toward this trend and I'm getting colder, but it is what it is.