Quick Bites

Come now—you didn't think you were going to get rid of me that easily, did you? I have no intention of abandoning this blog quite yet! Things are happening again, and I have things to say about them...I just don't have the brainspace to develop full posts about them. So here's a sampler platter.

After-Action Report: Star Wars Land/Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge/Batuu/Black Spire Outpost

What a mouthful! As Jenny Nicholson points out, the latest addition to the Disneyland map has no less than four names in common usage, representing, in this order: 1) An informal description of the area; 2) The official name of the area; 3) The fictitious planet represented by the area; and 4) The specific location on said fictitious planet. That's a lot of lore to absorb, just in what the place is called.

It kind of lets you know what you're in for with the land itself.

50 Bad Ideas for the Haunted Mansion's 50th

Anniversaries creep up on you sometimes, don't they? At least in this case, the subject of the anniversary has the excuse of always being somewhat creepy. By most counts, the adored Haunted Mansion hits the big Five-Oh on August 9^th of this year, and...people don't seem to be talking about it much. I suppose Galaxy's Edge is overshadowing it, both in the literal sense of Disney not doing much to promote it because they have this other thing going on, and Annual Passholders like myself (who would otherwise plan to turn up in droves to have our own promotion) having perused the park's calendar and found that our APs are blocked until at least mid-August in order to leave room for those massive Star Wars crowds.*

Or maybe people are talking about it, just not where I can hear them.

In any case, the chances that I will be able to properly celebrate this momentous event are looking pretty slim, so in lieu of that, here's a snarky list of 50 things that Disney and/or Doom Bugs** should definitely not do to mark the occasion.

Off-Brand: Universal Studios Hollywood and the Wizarding World of Harry Potter

*carefully peeks inside the blog*

Wow, that dust built up faster than I thought it would. What has it been, six weeks? I'm going to need to get a crew in here. Or just rebrand it as a urban exploration/haunted house blog. But for now, this:

Geographically speaking, I should be a Universal gal. The house I grew up in is about a 25-minute drive from Universal Studios Hollywood, and nowadays I live even closer—if I could get up to the roof of my apartment building, I could probably see the park. But the pattern was established in my childhood and I am pretty ride-or-die for Disneyland.* I think I've been to You Ess Aitch about...ten times. In my life. Until very recently, all my trips preceded my theme park blogging life, which is why I have mentioned Universal only in passing.

Until now.

This past Memorial Day weekend, I finally went back in order to finally see the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. We probably could not have timed it better—we were anticipating insane crowds due to a) the holiday, and b) the fact that everyone was saving their Disneyland trips for the next weekend—but attendance was actually pretty light. Maybe the weather kept people away (it was the chilliest, dampest Memorial Sunday I can personally remember. I wore layers), or maybe the Universal fans were holding off until the Jurassic ride opens back up. We got to do everything we wanted to do, some of it more than once.

I shrieked at the top of my lungs in full view of an auditorium crowd. I had my reasons.

After-Action Report: The Fantasyland Dark Rides

Wow, how long has it been since I did an After-Action Report post? According to my records, it's been...oh. About three months. It seems longer. You know, when I first began this blog, right after the Bronze Age Collapse, I assumed the bulk of it would be me yammering on about existing attractions and other features, what I like and don't like about them and so forth. Funny, that.

This one has been a long time coming, I think. For some reason, theme park bloggers don't talk much about the Fantasyland dark rides as much as we probably should, considering they are in many ways the bread and butter of Disneyland's branding. The quintessential Disney theme park ride is one based on an animated movie, and these are the classic examples. Even I usually just bring them up in passing rather than applying any sort of analysis; on the rare occasions when I do devote an entire post to just one of them, it tends to be a shorter-than-usual example of its type. These rides just are not big enough to spark many deep and rambling thoughts.

And that's fine. They're bite-sized morsels of delight. So for this post, I'm not going to exhaustively list their individual features or even do much comparing and contrasting between them. I'm just going to highlight a few unique points of each—believe it or not, although they justifiably vary quite a bit in popularity, each of the five Fantasyland dark rides can claim to be the best at something.

Is Star Wars Even “Disney” Enough?

Sorry about the clickbait-y title up there. What with the opening of Galaxy's Edge mere weeks away and May the Fourth having just been with us recently, I've been thinking about Star Wars a little more than usual. I've never made any secret of my misgivings about the union of the Lucasfilm franchise and Disneyland, but only recently have I started to put my finger on the cause(s) of them.

I just don't think Star Wars is very “Disney.” Not that the company hasn't done right by the franchise—for the most part, the new films are quite good—but it doesn't sit well alongside what you might call Disney's more traditional fare.* The Platonic ideal of “a Disney movie” is an animated fairy tale, or maybe an adventure story with animal characters. Obviously there are plenty of exceptions, but that's the baseline most people think of.

And that is not Star Wars. It may be a fantasy, but it's no fairy tale. The main difference is one of size. Disney fairy tales (and fairy tales in general) tend to be pretty small. The stakes are low, with the protagonists trying to save themselves, or their families, or at most a small kingdom (and not necessarily from something as dire as literal destruction). Their actions have little to no effect on the larger world and the larger world does not intrude upon their stories. Moreover, for most of them, the main plot takes place within a relatively small area and/or a compressed timeframe. And finally, they are self-contained stories. You start the movie, and 90 minutes or so later, they all live happily ever after, The End. What happened next is left to the realm of justly loathed direct-to-video sequels. Or fanfiction.**

None of this describes the Star Wars saga, a claim which can be handily proved by the fact that you aren't questioning my use of the word saga. The scale of it is huge—it's a story that spans generations and star systems, that's been being told for over forty years, via ten theatrical movies (and counting!), several TV series, and an inestimable number of novels, comic books, video games, and other supplemental media.

I mean, that is nuts. Do you have any idea how nuts that is?

My point is that Star Wars is vast. They could give it its own entire Epcot-sized theme park, and still only have room to explore a fraction of what makes it so compelling to audiences of all ages. And they decided the best thing to do with it is stick it on the back end of Frontierland? I'm sure Galaxy's Edge is going to be monstrously popular and remain so for the foreseeable future. I am also sure that it represents missed opportunities. A remote corner of Disneyland Park, Anaheim, CA is not the optimal location for this sort of concept.

From the point of view of the park as a whole, Galaxy's Edge represents a major departure from the kinds of themes that have historically been assigned to lands. (Note here that I am talking about lands, not individual attractions. Nor am I talking about any other parks.) Better bloggers than I have spent hours and pages trying to pin down the overall theme of Disneyland Park, but however you choose to phrase it, there has always been a sense that no matter how wacky and wonderful the environment was, you can get there from here. This is our history, our future, our shared imagination, our world.

Star Wars is decidedly not our world. Does it take place a long time ago from where we sit, or from the perspective of someone even farther in the future? The answer is that it doesn't matter, because it takes place in a galaxy far, far away. We, ourselves, are entirely out of the picture. Earth might not even exist in the Star Wars setting, and the “human” characters might actually be aliens that look indistinguishable from humans à la Superman.

Is it just me, or is there something inherently...askew about this? Disneyland has always been about the best aspects of the world we know. The tropics are full of adventure! The Wild West was a time of heroes! Fairy tales can come true, and so can cartoons! The future is bright! Spinning Star Wars into its own land kind of feels like...giving up. Like saying “Actually, the world sucks and always has. Our history is full of irredeemable villains, our mythology is pointless, and it's only going to get worse from here no matter what we do. Our only possible comfort is in the prospect of running away to another universe entirely.”

And isn't that uncharacteristically bleak for the company that gave us “it's a small world”, the Carousel of Progress, and all those Happily Ever Afters?

Just some things to think about.

* The same is true of the MCU, for similar reasons. This is not meant as a knock against either film franchise in and of itself.

** This is why I feel that even though the trailer looks okay, Frozen 2 may be a mistake.

It Came From the Fandom: Disney Park Blueprints

As a rule, my ICFTF posts are, well, fun. “Here,” I say, tossing out my links in much the same manner that I skate a catnip mouse across the kitchen floor for the amusement of my cat, “this should entertain you for a while.” This one's a little different—still fun, immensely so, but also useful. We're talking bona-fide STEM content.

The Disney Park Blueprints website is an absolute treasure trove of dozens of images showing how individual attractions at the parks are laid out. Although aerial photos and fan-made images far outnumber actual blueprints/plans, the whole archive is still invaluable if you've ever wanted to recreate your favorite ride as part of a creative hobby, or just get a better feel for how a winding track fits into its show building. It can be difficult to perceive a track layout while you're riding and immersed in the scenery, but these images lay it all out for you.

Go, browse, enjoy!

Bragging Rights

I have literally been a regular Disneyland visitor as long as I can remember. In fact, one of my very earliest memories is of visiting Disneyland! With as many visits as I've racked up over the years—it must be in the hundreds by now—I've also picked up, well, some stories. Anyone with the money can walk in the front gate, ride some rides, and leave. That's a typical Disneyland experience. I've managed to have some fairly atypical experiences there—incidents that were enviable, or especially memorable, or just plain silly.

Here, in no particular order, are some of the Unusual Things I've Done At Disneyland:

The Second Sense: The Music of Tomorrowland

Quick! What's the first thing you think of in association with the phrase “Disneyland music”?

If you're like most people...uh...probably nothing, actually. Most people are not familiar enough with Disneyland to have an automatic response to that phrase. But if you're in the minority that are, then you probably instantly thought of “Yo Ho” or “It's a Small World (After All)” or “Grim Grinning Ghosts.” Or “In the Tiki Tiki Tiki Room.” Maybe “Baroque Hoedown,” which wasn't composed for Disneyland but is almost exclusively known as the Main Street Electrical Parade theme.

In any case, it probably won't be something from Tomorrowland that pops into your head. It's not that the area has no music to call its own—on the contrary, it has lots, both now and in the past. It's more that Tomorrowland's unique melodies have been progressively downplayed over the years as more IP has moved in, bringing its own accompanying soundtracks. It's been nearly fifteen years since any new compositions were created for Tomorrowland, but fortunately, there's a lot of good stuff to hear if you know where to listen!

(And a lot more to be found on Disneyland retrospective albums and in niche collections!)

Disneyland By Decades

Well, folks, we are looking straight up the barrel of the biggest event to hit the Disneyland Resort in over fifteen years by my estimation—the opening of a whole new themed land! The last thing to happen on this scale was the debut of Cars Land, and, well...the Cars franchise is a profitmaker, but that's about all it is. It doesn't have much in the way of cross-demographic appeal. It hasn't spawned a giant mythos requiring five coffee table books and a community-edited website to keep track of. It's not even within a direct flight of being a cultural phenomenon.

It's no Star Wars, in other words.

But then, very little is.

If anyone expects the premiere of Galaxy's Edge to go smoothly, I have two questions for them: 1) What are you huffing? and 2) Did you bring enough for everyone? There's no way this is not going to be a crowd control nightmare, at least intermittently and in the vicinity of the new land's entrance. Disney is expecting a horde—for at least a month after opening, merely setting foot inside will require a reservation. You can bet your sweet bippy* that this particular fact will escape the notice of some percentage of hardcore Star Wars fans, and I fully expect the disappointment to engender fistfights. I hope the park nurses are trained to recognize and treat lightsaber-inflicted concussions.

It's enough to make a dedicated Disneylander ask yet another question: How did we get here? What sequence of events brought us to the point where the world's first, most famous, and (dare I say it) best theme park a) can and b) has decided to, intimately tie its legacy to that of an outside franchise?

To figure that out, it might be helpful to look at the whole history and evolution of Disneyland through the decades, to see which trends have defined its development from those misty days of 1955 to the present. Or it might not. But either way, it'll be fun, in a geeky sort of way. This is a fun blog.

So let's do this!

Movie Screens

Pretty short one this time. I've had this idea knocking around for a while and I want to try putting it into words to see if it holds up when stated plainly.

There are two Imagineering trends that we hardcore Disney theme park fans tend to criticize: 1) the abandonment of original ideas in favor of attractions that lean on film IP for their ideas, and 2) the over-reliance on screens and projections at the expense of three-dimensional sets and complex animatronic figures. The object of both is, naturally, maximizing revenue (luring in guests with already-popular films and characters) while cutting costs (screens take up less space and are easier to construct, maintain, and adjust than three-dimensional infrastructure).

But I'm starting to think the two trends are connected in another way. A way that speaks volumes about the company's artistic philosophy in this day and age.

First, let's backtrack a few decades. I think I'm just old enough to remember when Disney theme parks openly lauded their technology as technology...not just to the theme park buffs but to mainstream audiences. “Come see this cool thing we built,” advertisements would say.* They freely admitted that they were creating sophisticated illusions and invited people to be impressed by the ingenuity on display. Disneyland took on the role of a stage magician, wearing top hat and tails and wowing audiences with sleight-of-hand tricks that had us all wondering “How did they do that?” but never for a moment doubting that it was a trick.

I'm not sure when that started changing, but the transition is certainly complete by now. The goal these days appears to be total suspension of disbelief. Disney doesn't want guests to be awed by how lifelike the animatronics are...because they don't want people thinking about them being animatronics. They want them to be bowled over by the prospect of being in the presence of the characters, in a kind of imposed celebrity worship. I don't know why they went in this direction—surely they don't expect anyone over the age of about six to actually be fooled, and surely popular characters have the same draw whether we're mutually pretending they're real or not, but it is what it is. The magician has traded their tuxedo for a purple robe sprinkled with stars and a pointy hat, and insists we play along with the notion that the otherworldly spirit in the summoning circle is real, and evince awe that the wizard can call up that spirit, as opposed to the less fashionable spirits at the command of other wizards.

The upshot is that the more Disney de-emphasizes the craft on display in their parks, the less reason there is to put a lot of effort into that craft. Imagineers used to advance their tech for its own sake as well as for the entertainment value, but now, with the sole benchmark being “How well does this convince the kiddies that they are meeting their heroes?”, all that matters is that it looks right. Building an animatronic that really looks and moves like a beloved character is hard. Creating a movie that really looks and moves like the character is...well, it's automatic, since these characters came from movies to begin with.

TL;DR: The increased use of screens on rides isn't just for economic reasons; it's also because Disney has become so fixated on getting people to play along with the delusion that the characters are real that the company has forgotten how to be proud of invention for its own sake.

I dunno. Just a thought I had.

* Not in those exact words.

Imagineering Theory: Three Transcendent Rides

I keep saying that having a popular IP tie-in isn’t enough. Even the most expensive, state-of-the-art ride needs to have something to say beyond “Look! It’s that movie/those characters you like! (Now go buy the merch!)” Otherwise, the movie can do a fine job all by itself and there’s no need for anyone, on either end of the transaction, to spend the kind of money that theme parks cost these days.

It’s easy and fun and even satisfying, in a snobbish sort of way, to expound at length about the failures: those attractions whose slavish adherence to recreating some aspect of their source material results in lackluster experiences. I’ve done that enough on this blog. This post, at least, is about…not the successes, but a handful of rides that go above and beyond mere success. These few rides have built on their source material so well that they have transcended said material. You don’t need to know the first thing about the movies that inspired these rides—and indeed, many people don’t—to appreciate them for what they are.

Armchair Imagineering: A Proper “Studios” Park

There seems to be a broad consensus among theme park fans that Disney's worst results come about when it tries to poach Universal's fanbase by creating parks (and sometimes sections of parks) where the “theme” is: movies. The main reason for this consistent failure is, I think, that Disney is too wedded to the concept of “magic.” The thing that makes Universal Studios Hollywood unique is not which IPs it can lay claim to, but that it is entwined with a working film studio, and its centerpiece attraction (as well as various others over the years) is all about showing its guests, in some detail, how filmmaking works, how the illusions are created. Other Universal parks don't have this going for them, but some of the mojo rubs off on the brand.

But Disney won't do that, because for some reason the company hates admitting that what it does is artifice. Maybe the decision-makers actually don't think much of guests' imaginations,* so they assume they have to trick us into believing it's all really truly reeeeaaaaaaaaal or we can't be counted on to purchase Princess costumes and toy lightsabers. Whatever the reason, the “Studios” parks end up being dumping grounds for rides based on movies that don't fit the themes of a Kingdom-style park or Epcot or DisneySea, but they're still movies, so they totally work in a park where the theme is movies, right?

Right?

Does it even need to be said at this point that I disagree?

If Disney really wants to duke it out with Universal, it has to be willing to go all-in—to say not only “Aren't our movies awesome?” but also “And here's how we make them so.”

And then it has to do its rival one better by focusing on not just the most popular movies under its already vast and still-expanding umbrella, but those movies that best demonstrate “movie magic”—the ones that advance the artform in some significant way, the ones that enjoy not just box-office success but critical acclaim. By the same token, the company needs to be willing to highlight the differences in how the various studios it has absorbed tell their stories, instead of just blithely subsuming them under the homogenized banner of Disney-ness and pretending that Elsa, Spider-Man, Chewbacca, and Dory are all natural companions to each other.

This Armchair Imagineering post offers a rough idea of how they might do that in a hypothetical “studios” park.

In addition to this bold premise, I continue to champion the idea that there is a broad middle ground between the biggest bestest most elaborate thrill rides on one hand, and the humble character meet-and-greets on the other, and Disney needs to get back to offering more of that middle ground.

Intrigued yet?

It Came From the Fandom: Yesterworld Entertainment

(My excuse this time around is that I'm on vacation and taking it easy. I'll have something more interesting next week.)

Our subject this week is Yesterworld Entertainment, a YouTube channel focusing on theme park attractions that are either extinct, or have been heavily altered over the years. The curator addresses not just Disney parks, but Universal Studios and even films and video games, and occasionally does long-form podcasts with other theme park vloggers. The presentation is straightforward, with an abundance of photos and video clips showing what once was. Most YouTube channels can't tell me anything about Disneyland that I don't already know, but I've learned a lot from Yesterworld. There's no attraction too big or too small for this channel, as long as it has a detailed history. As of this writing, the most recent video is this one about Peter Pan's Flight:

Give it a watch! There's enough here to keep any theme park fan busy for hours or days!

Imagineering Theory: But I WANT To Design a Tie-In Ride!

You may have noticed that I tend to come down pretty hard on IP-based attractions around here, especially the newer ones. And maybe you've found that a little...distressing. The great majority of Armchair Imagineering efforts probably take inspiration from Disney films and TV series. It's hard not to go that way when there's so much material to draw on and we have so many examples already in the parks. I know I can come across pretty strong in my opinions, and maybe I've given you cause to wonder if I might be preemptively dismissing your own ideas as unworthy.

Sorry if I did give that impression. I didn't mean to. It would be pretty hypocritical of me, given that most of the items under my own Armchair Imagineering tag use Disney properties as inspiration. Moreover, it would be pointless to discourage the Armchair Imagineers of the world from sowing their seeds of creativity in such fertile soil.* Everyone expects Disney IPs to be adapted as rides in Disney theme parks. It's a legit tradition. It's not gonna stop.

The point of this post is not to tell you not to design tie-in rides. It's to tell you how you can design tie-in rides that are interesting, unique, and even artistic on their own merits. To that end, I've got some Do's and Don't's to offer you. Actually, make that Don't's and Do's—each Don't followed by one or more Do's as alternatives.

Now, if only I could get WDI to take my advice...

My Top 5 Attractions I've Never Been To (Yet)

As I mentioned at the start of the year, I am running low on detailed things to say about Disneyland. But there is a growing roster of Disney theme park resorts around the world, only one other I have had any experience of, and that was...nearly 30 years ago, if you can believe it. So there's a whole lot I haven't seen in person, but in this day of YouTube and GoPros, I can get a pretty good impression of them regardless—easily enough for me to develop Opinions about which ones intrigue me the most.

Some of you have more money and vacation time than I do, so maybe you can tell me whether my Opinions are backed up by Facts?

Anyway, here my five favorite Disney attractions that I've never (yet) been to in person!

Armchair Imagineering: Moana's Grand Voyage Parade

Remember when Disneyland used to run parades based on a single movie? It was a Nineties phenomenon—the Disney Renaissance was redefining theatrical animation, but the suits weren't quite ready to devote permanent theme park real estate to new films yet, so they went all-in on live entertainment. Some of the Renaissance movies were honored with summary stage adaptations (leaning heavily on the musical numbers, natch), others with parades, but one way or another, nearly every one of them got some sort of show all to itself.

I kinda miss that. Not just the creativity that went into spinning an entire full-length parade concept out of the imagery of just one film, but the frequency with which the parades were rotated as new movies were released. We had an average of about one new daytime parade every two years throughout the Nineties, whereas now? The last new daytime parade was rolled out in 2011—and granted, said parade is Mickey's Soundsational and I don't exactly have anything to complain about, and we've also gotten Paint the Night in the meantime, but that's still eight years without anything fresh for the daylight hours.

I sometimes think about what it would have been like if the single-film parade tradition had been maintained, or at least revived once Disney regained confidence in its animated features. It almost was—a parade was planned for The Princess and the Frog before being scaled back to just one unit* of Soundsational—and I can drive myself to distraction wondering what a Tangled parade would look like. Or a Wreck-it Ralph parade.

But by far the best 2010s candidate for adaptation into a parade is Moana. Disney Renaissance parades grew out of movies where it made some amount of sense in-universe to hold a parade or similar event. Aladdin's Royal Caravan was basically a fifteen-minute expansion of the Prince Ali sequence, the Mulan Parade was very much like a Chinese New Year parade with lion dancers, acrobats, and jugglers. Moana is a film about a personal journey wrapped up in a physical journey—how better to represent that than with an attraction that literally moves from one end of Disneyland to the other?

Board my boat and strap in while I take you through the Moana's Grand Voyage Parade!

After Action Report: Tropical Hideaway

Subtitle: In Which I Review A Restaurant For A Bit And Then Go Off About The SEA

I know you’ve been on tenterhooks waiting for this one: my in-depth review of the latest iteration of the big Adventureland eatery, the Tropical Hideaway! I’d previously meandered around the seating area and looked at stuff, but only on my most recent trip to the park did I finally take some time to enjoy the Hideaway in full.

I’ll start by saying…it’s not very well named. The phrase “tropical hideaway” is of course drawn from the lyrics of “(In the) Tiki Tiki Tiki Room,” but there’s nothing hidden about this place—it’s open to view from the main walkway in a way that its immediate predecessor, Aladdin’s Oasis, was not. This isn’t really a complaint, just an ironic observation.

Despite being so very public, it's a nice little place to hang out for a while. It has a unique music loop, featuring mid-century exotica by the likes of Les Baxter and Augie Colon, and the food is garnering high praise from just about everyone who tries it. There are two snack counters in the Tropical Hideaway. The more obvious one, with a big ostentatious sign, is Dole Whip, I Presume. The name alone is a stroke of genius—it references the original Adventureland snack stand, Sunkist, I Presume (which became the Bengal Barbecue in the late Eighties), right down to the curly cursive font in which “I Presume” is written:

But the thing is, you don't have to be aware of that reference to get the name, because it's all a riff on the famous “Dr. Livingstone, I presume” incident. This is a theme park reference done right. (We'll see about some done wrong in a little while.)

Unauthorized Fun: The Stormy Weather Tour

So it's been raining, here in sunny Southern California, and we're all a little confused. It kinda makes me envy those Annual Passholders who are in college or whatever and can just jet down to the park whenevs, because Disneyland is lovely in the rain. It's cool, much of the crowd dissipates, and it's especially nice after dark, with all the lights reflecting in the wet pavement.

But if you think about it...every day at Disneyland is a stormy one, at least if you use your imagination. A surprisingly high number of attractions use storm imagery to set the mood, drive the plot, and/or shake things up. Howling winds, torrential rains, thunderbolts—all these can be found in abundance throughout the park, in the form of special and practical effects. With a little creative planning, you could spin a little “meta-story” out of some of them.

And creativity is, after all, what my Unauthorized Fun category is all about!

It does not need to be literally raining for you to take advantage of this unofficial tour; in fact, you'll have more control over the beats of the “story” if there's no real weather to contend with. On the other hand, a little real rain wont hurt you either. It's just for fun, after all.

Let's start the tour!

It Came From the Fandom: Magical Soundtracks

Here we go again. I seem to be relying on these types of posts more frequently lately. I gotta get my groove back somehow.

The fan content I choose to highlight this time around is Magical Soundtracks, a YouTube channel that posts, almost exclusively, music from the Disney theme parks. Their particular area of specialization is music loops, be they from themed areas, shops, restaurants...even hotel lobbies and special seasonal events. Here's a timely one, considering the Year of the Pig starts tomorrow:

I'm always excited to see that they've updated, especially since the quality is so high—many theme park music archivists rely on induction recordings and shotgun microphones, which tend to produce listenable but not stellar audio. Magical Soundtracks, I believe, obtains reference recordings of loops and then reconstructs them using source tracks. So there's a lot of hands-on editing work that goes into this channel as well. The results literally speak for themselves.

Here's a few more of my favorites from this channel:

Have a listen!

Armchair Imagineering: Make Mine Marvel

The construction walls have been up at California Adventure for several months at this point, as “a bug's land” is torn out and replaced with...I hesitate to say a Marvel land, since I don't know yet what all will be there. Let's go with Marvel stuff. “a bug's land” is being torn out and replaced with Marvel stuff. WDI is being pretty tight-lipped about the details, but apparently we have an Avengers attraction and a Spider-Man attraction on the way, which in combination with the Guardians Tower of Galactic Terror—Mission: Breaktime! Breakneck! Breakout! amounts to...one heck of a missed opportunity.

There are two problems with IP-mania, as I see it. There's the simple fact of it, the trend of attractions and entire lands based on popular film properties completely overtaking original concepts. I've been over the reasons this is a problem on multiple occasions, so I won't go into it now. The second problem is that IP-based attractions are rarely executed in a way that does justice to either the source material or the larger themes of the park/land where they are placed. We see a lot of “book report” rides, as well as attractions that literally just put character images on otherwise unexceptional rides.* There tends to be too much emphasis on popular characters, rather than on making guests feel like part of an exciting world.

And that's what I'm worried about with the new Marvel stuff. Mission: Brakepads! is already a subpar execution, because they forced it to occupy infrastructure designed for another ride entirely. There's almost certainly a good Guardians of the Galaxy ride out there in the realm of possibility, but deciding to make one where the premise is that the Collector literally took a traveling exhibit of his stuff to the literal California Adventure, simply because there was a convenient tower there to squeeze it into...well, it's not what I would have done. (For the record, this is what I would have done.) A GotG attraction should take advantage of the exotic interplanetary setting and make us feel as if we, like young Peter Quill, have been abducted by aliens and introduced into this hyper-advanced, multi-species society. To the extent that a Guardians of the Galaxy ride needs to focus on its wacky stars, we should at least get to see them guarding the freaking Galaxy, yeah?

Getting back to the upcoming additions...I don't have high hopes. The Avengers and Spider-Man are certainly fun characters, but their “standard” adventures take place in...ordinary cities in the real, modern world. You don't watch an Avengers movie to see what fantastic realm they're going to visit, because they (generally) won't. You do it to see what sort of over-the-top baddie they have to face this time, and how they'll use their over-the-top powers to win the day.

I don't know about you, but I live in an ordinary city in the real, modern world, and it's boring as hell. Which is why I go to theme parks.

The sad irony is that there are several MCU properties that could provide that sense of wonder and participatory adventure that the Avengers and Spider-Man are (probably) not quite up to. Let me throw out some ideas.

(Just as a note before we begin, I haven't actually seen all of the Marvel movies. I should probably get around to it one of these days, but it would be something like 40+ hours of cinema to sit through. So I'm going off what I have seen.)

Characters Count

As my readers may already be aware, there was a kerfuffle in the Disney theme park fandom recently, concerning comments made by Grand Poobah Bob Iger to the effect that IP-based attractions are inherently superior to original ones. Big Bad Bob's description of Expedition Everest as “nondescript” and “themed like India or whatever” evoked such a backlash that it was later edited out of the transcript of the interview where he said it, in addition to which he assured us all over Twitter that he loves Expedition Everest. But I don't think anyone takes him at his word, because the insensitive wording was part of a larger assertion that what guests really want out of their Disney theme park visit is to encounter Disney characters (and that's why IP rides are so, so great).

Except...Bob? Disney characters are all over the original attraction concepts. Expedition Everest itself has a particular infamous one: the giant Yeti. He (?) may not be a particularly detailed character, but he's still a character, a recognizable one, and he was created for a Disney production, ergo he is a Disney character.

And if anything, Everest's Yeti is one of the least interesting of the park-original characters, insofar as it's just a huge ferocious animal. (Even that other famous Disney theme park Yeti, Harold of the Matterhorn Bobsleds, has a little more going on—he's a collector!*) There are quite a few attraction personalities with a lot more...well, personality. Turns out, the Imagineers are kind of awesome at drawing characters in broad strokes so that you can get what they're about even in the compressed timeframe of a typical theme park attraction.

Here are just a few examples, past and present.

It Came From the Fandom: MyVMK's Second Gate

I've mentioned MyVMK on this blog before, but it has been quite some time, so I'll sum it up here.

MyVMK is an MMORPG. Specifically, it is a fan-made revival of Virtual Magic Kingdom, an MMORPG that Disney ran for a few years starting in 2005, to promote Disneyland's 50^th Anniversary. True to its name, the world map is of a Magic Kingdom-style park, mixing and matching details from the various real-world ones. There are a lot of spaces to explore with your childlike sprite, and mini-games to play either alone or against other players...but the real point of the game is to create your own spaces and mini-games using the mind-boggling variety of “rooms” and “furniture” you can buy with the in-game currency. In the several years that MyVMK has been up and running, its programmers and moderators have vastly expanded upon the items available in the original VMK, as well as introducing new options for customizing the placement of furniture within a room. But one thing they never did, despite the urging of the players, was create new explorable spaces.

All that is about to change. This is the current overworld view of MyVMK:

See Spaceship Earth in the lower right corner there, with the Epcot label? That was never part of Virtual Magic Kingdom. There was always an “Esplanade” area, with famous landmarks from non-Kingdom parks visible in the background, teasing us, but to the best of my knowledge there was never any plan to expand VMK beyond a single virtual park.

So far, there is no proper second gate in MyVMK either. If you click on Epcot, it will take you here:

There's nothing to do in this room, and nowhere to go from it. Yet. But it's coming. And I am weirdly excited about it. I haven't been very active in MyVMK for quite a while, but this could very well renew my interest. On the whole, of all the Disney parks I can't casually visit, Epcot probably intrigues me the most.* I've been there a grand total of once, nigh-30 years ago at this point, and I would love to see it again...even knowing that it's a mere shadow of its Eighties self by now. The high concept is that good.

A trip to the real Epcot is not in the foreseeable future for me. I'll be more than happy to pop in on the virtual one, when it opens.

* Tokyo DisneySea is a close second.

Imagineering Theory: Blending Themes

Last week's post included a link to FoxxFur's amazing article about border areas at Disneyland and how gracefully or ungracefully (usually the latter, though not necessarily to the park's detriment) the Imagineers manage the transitions. If you didn't read it then, I urge you to do so now, as it is a scrupulously well-documented analysis of design details you probably never noticed before, even though the whole point is how much they stick out compared to their equivalents in Magic Kingdom.

But it got me thinking: Could the transitions be made less awkward?* Perhaps the main reason Disneyland has so many abrupt boundaries between themed lands is the lack of space for subtle “fade” effects, but here's the thing: themes are not particulate. They can be tweaked and blended. I doubt if there are any two themes or genres in all imagination that are so dissimilar that they have no points in common and no potential to be hybridized.

So this post is my attempt to do that with all the border areas at Disneyland—all the places where two or more themes collide. It probably wouldn't be possible to retrofit the actual Disneyland with these ideas, so this is more of a what-if exercise.

Before I really get into it, I want to review my base material: what are the themes that need to be blended? This is not an exhaustive analysis of all the themes and sub-themes in Disneyland, just a quick summary. The nuances will be addressed when I start looking for ways to remix them.

Main Street, USA: A small American town around the turn of the 20^th Century. Except for the period setting, about as “generic” as can be.

Adventureland: Tropical wilderness, barely explored by Westerners.

New Orleans Square: New Orleans ca. 1925 or so, plus supernatural elements. Say, is “historical urban fantasy” a thing? I feel like it should be.

Critter Country: Rural/wilderness area inhabited by anthropomorphic animals.

Frontierland: The Old West—settlers, “cowboys and Indians,” all-American wilderness, fairly realistic.

Fantasyland: Fairy tales and magical children's stories, especially if they've been made into animated Disney movies.

Mickey's Toontown: The Golden Age of cartoons.

Tomorrowland: Futurism and science-fiction.

Now, let's see what kinds of stews we can make from these ingredients!

Imagineering Theory: Why It Matters That Disneyland Came First

Here's an experiment to try sometime: Locate a cross-section of Disney theme park fans from various parts of the United States and put them together in a room. Make sure you have at least a couple Southern California and Central Florida locals in the group. Let them talk about whatever. If no one has brought up the parks in the first five minutes, introduce the topic yourself.

Measure the resulting heat and consider whether it might be enough to drive a turbine and constitute a source of clean energy.

There's a weird sort of tribalism that afflicts Disney theme park fans. Hardly anyone is an unbiased aficionado of the entire phenomenon; you're either on Team Anaheim or Team Orlando, insisting that your “home” resort (i.e. the one you're most familiar with—hardly anyone can afford to become familiar with both) is the better of the two. They have more parks, but ours are less of a hassle to get to. Our Castle is cuter and friendlier, while theirs is grander. Our food is better, but their hotels are better. We have the Matterhorn, they have the Hall of Presidents. Our version of “it's a small world” kicks theirs to the curb, but they got a better Fantasyland expansion. We lost the Country Bears, they lost Mr. Toad. And so it goes, ad infinitum.

But sooner or later, a West Coaster will pull out the ultimate trump card: Disneyland came first. Not that the Floridians will concede the argument, but it is at least an irrefutable point with no ready counterpart. Disneyland did come first. So instead the Floridians will claim that it doesn't matter. Big whoop, they'll say, not necessarily in those exact words. There's nothing inherently special about firstness; if anything, that just makes Disneyland the rough draft and Walt Disney World the polished product.

But I think it does matter. For one thing, there is something inherently special about firstness, which is why firsts are commemorated—why the Magna Carta is such a big deal and why Neil Armstrong is just a bit more celebrated than Buzz Aldrin. Beyond that, there are aspects to Disneyland's firstness that I think impact its quality, and our perception of its quality, for the better.