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.

Disneyland Was Walt's Park

Look.

I am not an adherent of the Cult of Saint Walt. For one thing, he weren't no saint, not by a long shot. There's plenty to criticize him about, starting with his antipathy toward unions, taking a grand circle tour through various mainstream mid-century American bigotries and pulling back into the station at his antipathy toward unions, because dang was the man anti-union. Like, it's amazing Newsies got made without his ghost rising from the grave and cursing the shoot.

But he was, unquestionably, a creative visionary, and his creative vision is why Disneyland works so well. It's why the place feels like a cohesive whole even as it's placing a Mississippi River steamboat across from a rocket to the stars and setting a fairytale castle between them. The thing all the area themes have in common isn't “popular literary/film genres” but “stuff Walt Disney thought was cool,” and he was intensely involved with the park's development right up until he died. The overarching effect is that Disneyland is a coherent work of art.

Fun fact: the medium of film was not, at first, universally accepted as an artistic one, because it was unclear who should be considered the artist. A painting is the work of a painter, a sculpture that of a sculptor, a novel that of an author, a beautiful building that of an architect. But a movie has many creators—screenwriter, director, actors, camera operators, set designers, etc.--who might be pulling in different directions, fragmenting the “voice” of the film. In the late 1940s, auteur theory emerged, assigning the authorial role to the director, and the rest is art history.

The construction and continuing development of a theme park is many more times as complex, as an endeavor, than the making of a film. This means that a strong authorial voice is even more necessary to achieving artistic greatness. Disneyland had that authorial voice in Walt, but he died before construction could even begin on its Florida counterpart, and no one left at the company could quite fill his shoes. The plan they were left with was to simply copy Disneyland, plus or minus a few details. It wasn't, and still isn't, quite the same. Something is missing.

There is an idea in certain strains of speculative fiction, that no matter how exact they appear to be, clones are always incomplete in some way. Often it is implied, if not stated outright, that the missing element is a soul. Make of that what you will.

Disneyland Was the Grand Experiment

Maybe Team Orlando is right, maybe Walt Disney World is more polished. By the time it opened, Disneyland had been operating for over fifteen years and Imagineering had a pretty good idea of what worked and what didn't.

That's part of the problem.

Disneyland's experimental status is a thing of wonder all on its own. Because they didn't know what would work and what wouldn't, its designers spent an awful lot of time, in the early years, throwing things at the wall to see what would stick. If it stuck, great, if not, they tried something else...but oftentimes what didn't stick still left remnants in the infant park, and those remnants contribute a lot to the park's messy charm. As much as we wave banners extolling the virtues of area theming and carefully planned sightlines, there are pockets of hodgepodgery throughout the place. We tend to let most of them slide, simply because they've been that way forever and we're used to it.

Disneyland is just plain weird in some ways, and the weirdness is what makes it special, what makes it unique. There is so much that we wouldn't have if the Imagineers had known more about what they were doing. Because they were making it up as they went along, they were forced to take creative chances, and the failures are almost as valuable as the successes. The developmental history of Disneyland is a story of exploration and discovery, the invention of a new storytelling medium. The developmental history of Walt Disney World is just that much plainer. They already knew what worked, so why try other things?

Disneyland is a messy, quirky prototype: the inventor's labor of love. Walt Disney World is what emerges after the prototype has been refined and focus-tested in preparation for mass marketing.

Disneyland Was Built on a Shoestring Budget

“Shoestring” may be an exaggeration, but it is certain that the park was nowhere near as well-funded, during construction or for a good while thereafter, than anyone would have liked it to be. This is related to the above point, because just as lack of experience forced the creators to innovate, so lack of money forced them to problem-solve, to do more with less, and sometimes to accept flaws because perfection just wasn't in the budget.

Of course, “flaws” are relative. Just because a given element or feature isn't quite what its designers were going for, or isn't exactly on-model with regard to its source material, doesn't mean it's not perfect in other ways. Such as being perfectly Disneyland.

The limited construction budget also kept Disneyland small—by the time it was successful enough to warrant expansion, that same success had made expansion impossible by attracting hoteliers and restaurateurs to fill in the surrounding land. The smallness makes it cozy, and also forces more of the abrupt border phenomena described by FoxxFur in the link above.

None of this applied to the construction of Walt Disney World, which had all the space and money anyone could want.

Creative freedom is amazing, but creative constraints can be a blessing in disguise.

So yeah. You can argue that being first does not inherently make Disneyland better. You can argue that Magic Kingdom is the superior park. Ultimately I think it comes down to personal preference and also personal familiarity—whichever park you came to know first set the standard to which you hold all others. And that's all right.

But you can't tell me that Disneyland's firstness doesn't matter.

Happy New Year to my terrific readers (all, what, four of you?) and please do let me know what sorts of topics you would like to see me write about, if you haven't already!