After-Action Report: New Christmas Decs!

Short post this time—I've been a bit sick and the holiday tasks are piling up as it is! But I did manage to fit in a visit to the main park recently, and I took a few pictures of some lovely decorations that have been added this year.

I'll begin in Frontierland, which has been putting up Christmas decorations for quite some time (as described in this post). But these ones are new, and have a lot of character. It's not just the ornaments that are unique to each—the evergreen bases to which they are attached vary from post to post, as if each was assembled from scratch by a different person who used whatever they had on hand or could easily find. The highlight has to be the single boot, which is a perfect Old West stand-in for a Christmas stocking:

From there, we move to Fantasyland, where...I don't want to alarm anyone, but they have finally started putting up decorations in the Fantasyland Courtyard. I speculated in the post linked above about what that might hypothetically look like, but the reality turned out to be far more restrained than what I was imagining. You could put these up in your house without anyone batting an eye:

Yes, those are apples on the decoration for Snow White.

It almost feels like a beta test, like maybe they plan on expanding these in years to come. They are a little sparse for the medieval castle environment, I think.

Around this time most years, I put the blog on a little year-end hiatus so I can focus on my holiday obligations and brainstorm ideas for the new year. But I'm finding myself in a bit of a quandary this time around...I think I'm running out of topics to write about! I am coming to the end of my fourth straight year of Disneyland blogging, having maintained a pretty faithful weekly schedule for most of that time. Even a lifelong just-short-of-obsessed fan like me has to run dry eventually, right?

There are a few things I don't want to do. I don't want to start spacing the posts out more, for fear my eternally busy schedule squeezes out my motivation to maintain the blog altogether. And I don't want to let it devolve into more of this—just collections of recent photos detailing minutiae like crowd levels, construction progress, and maintenance hiccups. I want to keep this a thoughtful blog.

I might not be averse to expanding my subject matter. Reviewing other theme parks is probably off the table for now for financial reasons, but I occasionally touch on the subject of Disney movies, and perhaps I could go into more detail on my thoughts in that area.

Ideally, though, I would keep my focus on the Disneyland Resort. So I put it to you...what would you like to see me write about that I haven't yet? Any attractions, past or present, you'd like to see my take on? Principles of theme park design I should address? General questions I should answer?

I'll give you the next...oh, three weeks or so, to think about it. Until then, Happy Holidays to my few but loyal readers, and keep dreaming!

The Second Sense: Top 5 Holiday Music Loops

As long as we're thinking about Christmas music...

This isn't the first time I've gone off about the area music loops in the Disneyland Resort and it probably won't be the last. But we're solidly into the Christmas season now, with all its attendant responsibilities, and I need to write and post something simple. Simple...like one of the most basic delights of the holiday season at Disneyland: the temporary replacement of many area music loops with holiday versions.

Background music is a key element in creating themed atmosphere (or atmosphere at all, really), and this is especially true when the theme involves Christmas, because the intergenerationally familiar music is such a big part of the holiday. Disneyland's holiday loops are generally excellent for their purpose, but only about half of them are much good for any other purpose—i.e. general seasonal listening. I'll pull up the New Orleans Square waterfront loop as part of my Disneyland Christmas lineup, but not when I just feel like getting my holiday spirit on. Dixieland jazz isn't a normal part of my music listening habits.

But there are a handful of these loops from both parks, past and present, that I absolutely adore on their own merits, not just because they remind me of Disneyland. Here they are, in reverse order of my preference, so that the best is saved for last!

Armchair Imagineering: Walt Disney Animation Holiday

We can definitely start thinking about Christmas music now.

Disney sure loves its holiday overlays. Between Halloween and Christmas, and counting parades and fireworks shows, there are no fewer than eleven holiday-specific attractions in the Disneyland Resort.* Likewise, quite a few music loops throughout the resort are seasonally replaced with Christmas-y versions.

However, there is one—attraction? sort of? let's call it an attraction-esque feature—wherein the music is much of the point, yet it has never been given this sort of temporary reskin. And this despite the fact that the feature in question is so modular that creating and executing a special version for the winter holiday season would be a snap. I am referring, of course, to the lobby area of Walt Disney Animation in California Adventure.

I've gushed about this spot before. It's just such a pleasant place to pass a half-hour or so until the display loops around. Given the extent to which my personal enjoyment of the Christmas season relies on the holiday's unique atmosphere, I can't help but feel this would only be enhanced if the lobby lined up with the holidays. The only snag is...is there enough material?

It's not that Disney never makes anything specifically for Christmas. Consider Mickey's Christmas Carol, or Prep and Landing, or even Beauty and the Beast: Enchanted Christmas. The problem from our point of view is that Walt Disney Animation focuses exclusively on theatrical features, on the output of Walt Disney Animation Studios and Pixar. And given that the point is to toot Disney's horn about its best offerings, things should probably stay that way. So where are we supposed to come up with a 30-minute loop's worth of Christmas footage when not a single entry in the Disney Animated Canon or the Pixar filmography counts as a Christmas movie?

Well, there are a few things we can do. The main one is that instead of celebrating an entire movie at a time, we can zero in on particular scenes, sequences and songs that are Christmas-related. Another is that we can then broaden our standards to include general winter imagery, which in American culture is associated almost exclusively with Christmas. I'll go ahead and say we can venture a little outside the WDAS/Pixar dyad, as long as we stay within the realm of theatrical feature animation. And finally...as a holiday special, maybe this loop doesn't have to be as long as the standard one. 15-20 minutes should suffice.

So what have we got to play with?

After-Action Report: 5 Cool Custom Gifts You Can Get At Disneyland

We can start thinking about Christmas shopping now, right?

Once upon a time, strange as it may seem, Disneyland was considered a prime shopping destination. The park was chock-a-block with unique shops selling lines of merchandise that could be found literally nowhere else. There was a candle shop on Main Street, an antique shop in New Orleans Square, and the Guatemalan Weavers operated out of the Adventureland Bazaar. This all changed in the Nineties, when Archdemon Pressler decided it would be more efficient to just stuff the park with the same stuff being sold in every large mall in the country via the Disney Store. But even the machinations of a suit-wearing hellfiend couldn't completely eliminate the park's uniqueness, and to this day, there are quite a few distinctive, customizable, and surprisingly affordable items available at Disneyland's specialty shops and kiosks.

Here are just five that would make awesome holiday gifts for the special people in your life.

Kidnap the Magic: Disneyland Christmas Ornaments

We can start thinking about Christmas decorations now, right?

One year, my Christmas decorations revolved around a Disneyland theme. Before you roll your eyes and go “Well, duh,” you should be aware that I choose a different decorating scheme every year, and usually it's color-based. For instance, this year, my colors are red, green, gold, and purple.

But one year, I just couldn't settle on a palette for some reason, so I went with Disneyland. I used all the various mouse-eared ornaments I've picked up at the park itself, tied loops of string to my die-cast ride vehicles to turn them into ornaments and since that wasn't enough to really fill out my tree...I made a bunch more. I made an entire set based on the Small World Promenade Wreaths, using 6” snowflake ornaments as backdrops. I gave those away to a friend some years ago, but I still have some others that I put together:

And I do mean put together. These ornaments are assemblages of elements. Disneyland is far from my only subject matter when it comes to creating ornaments like these,* but I'm sure it's the one you're interested in. They're actually pretty easy to make, if time-consuming...but you do need special materials that are not necessarily easy to acquire. Said materials are as follows:

After-Action Report: Festival of Holidays

A short one this time—I'm still working on getting back on track, and you don't want to waste hours of your Christmas reading my barely-coherent ramblings.

Last year, our Christmastime Disneyland visit turned out to be more of Christmastime California Adventure visit, because the new Festival of Holidays event proved so engaging. We didn't even visit the food kiosks due to lack of funds, but I got a good review of World of Color: Season of Light out of it, so it wasn't a total loss.

This year...it happened again. And this time we did try some of the food offerings. More on that in a bit, but for now, I want to focus on what a good idea the Festival of Holidays is in general. Guys? Management guys? This is how you leverage your California theme to provide quality entertainment while still pulling in the money you love so much. If there's one thing we Californians pride ourselves on, it's our multicultural savvy.* This state boasts an extremely high level of ethnic and cultural diversity, and by and large we embrace it.

Armchair Imagineering: Holiday Fantasmic!

The Disneyland Resort sure loves to celebrate Christmas. Not only do thematically specific decorations go up in most areas of both parks, but a handful of attractions get made over into holiday-specific versions of themselves.* The most notable might be the shows and live entertainment offerings, nearly all of which, from the humble and homey Dapper Dans to the extravagant fireworks display, are in holiday mode at this time of year. Disneyland has hosted any number of Christmas parades over the years. Across the Esplanade, World of Color is on its second holiday version. But there’s one live show that has so far bucked the trend: Fantasmic!

It’s not hard to see why—Fantasmic! is possibly the most complex and intricate performance in theme park history. Not only does it involve multiple types of live performers and special effects, but it was designed from start to finish to be a satisfying whole. It tells a complete story with a three-act structure (something almost never done in theme park entertainment), and the musical score is as much a symphony as a medley. It's amazing that something like this was achieved once; doing it all over again with a more specific theme would be almost unfathomably difficult.

But what is Armchair Imagineering for, if not indulging in these wild Blue-Sky ideas? Come brainstorm with me...

(Well, okay, technically for now you're going to read while I brainstorm, but I welcome any and all contributions in the comments.)

After-Action Report: World of Color: Season of Light

I have never been what you’d call a huge fan of World of Color. For all the massive promotion when it first debuted, it has always struck me as distinctly inferior to Fantasmic! The reasons for this are numerous, but among them is that World of Color has always seemed so very commercial. From the very first iteration, it has come across as having the primary purpose of waving popular characters and recent or upcoming films in guests’ faces, spurring the purchase of merchandise and movie tickets. The previous holiday version, World of Color: Winter Dreams, was especially blatant about this, betraying its own theme—you know, winter—with the use of the song “In Summer” from Frozen.* They tried to pass it off as an ironic juxtaposition, but not many people were fooled. They knew a shameless advertisement when they saw one.

Thus it is with delight that I inform you that the new holiday version—World of Color: Season of Light—does not give me this impression at all. Instead of using the show to promote the characters, it uses characters to illustrate the themes of the show. There are no Disney songs in this one—just well-known Christmas tunes as performed by equally well-known singers (and one absolutely marvelous surprise, about which more later). Each song is accompanied by appropriate footage from Disney films and shorts, and the hey-look-at-our-new-movie vibe is kept to a minimum.

That said, it’s still fairly one-dimensional as a presentation. World of Color is by its very nature something of a one-trick pony, lacking the multiple facets of something like Fantasmic! or even a parade. So this is gonna be a pretty short post, focusing on some of the highlights that really stood out to me as making this one special.

• “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”: The obligatory Princess/romance sequence uses this fairly infamous song, but there’s a twist—it’s the Idina Menzel/Michael Bublé cover, which swaps out some of the dodgier lyrics for more family-friendly ones. Combined with the footage of Princesses pulling away from their love interests (when we all know these stories have fully consensual, mutually fulfilling happy endings), it does a lot to redeem the song for modern sensibilities.
• “Mele Kalikamaka”: This segment starts with clips from Lilo & Stitch. Then it continues with clips from Lilo & Stitch, before concluding with clips from Lilo & Stitch. I fully expected it to tease Moana at some point, since that film comes out in just a few days. But it didn’t. That alone speaks well for its sincerity—it would have been so easy to throw in a promotional clip or two, but they resisted the urge.
• “Wizards in Winter”: This was the big surprise I mentioned earlier. Everyone knows who Trans-Siberian Orchestra is these days, but I don’t think many people are familiar with their work beyond the rock remixes of “The Nutcracker” and “Carol of the Bells.”** However, if just one of their original Christmas compositions has achieved any sort of penetration into public recognition, it surely must be “Wizards in Winter,” thanks to a YouTube video of someone’s elaborately synchronized home exterior Christmas lights that went viral some years back. Accordingly, this segment—the most over-the-top part of the whole show, making ample use of the laser grid as well as the fire jets—purports to be someone’s elaborately synchronized home exterior Christmas lights. The someone in question is Goofy, who is probably the only character in the Disney lineup who might believably use fire jets at Christmas.

Is there anything I would do differently? Absolutely. Well, maybe.

For example, there's a segment featuring music from “The Nutcracker” as sung, a cappella, by the Pentatonix...and illustrated with the dancing hippos and ostriches from Fantasia. Except...Fantasia has a “Nutcracker” segment, and it's not the one with hippos. (It's the one with dancing mushrooms and thistles that makes you wonder what the animators were on when they created it.) I'm being charitable and assuming they went that route in order to keep the tone light and portray explicit ballet dancers, but it still creates the impression that they missed an obvious target at close range.

Another aspect that seemed kind of odd was the complete absence of any acknowledgement of Hannukah. The Disneyland Resort's holiday shows can normally be counted upon to provide at least a token round of “Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel,” making the lack of such this time around a pretty glaring omission. I would rather they leave it out than force it if they couldn't find a natural place for it in the lineup, and anyway California Adventure has no shortage of diversity celebration this season, for which I have nothing but praise.

So it's not perfect. But it still stands head and shoulders above any other iteration of World of Color, and I highly recommend it as the perfect way to cap off a day enjoying California Adventure's Festival of Holidays.

* Among other songs from said movie.

** Which are actually entitled, respectively, “A Mad Russian’s Christmas” and “Christmas Eve – Sarajevo 12/24.” People don't pay attention.

After-Action Report: Haunted Mansion Holiday

We must face it: Haunted Mansion Holiday is something we, as Disneyland fans, need to reckon with.* Yet in the 21 months this blog has been active, the only thoughts I have shared on the matter are that a) I wish it didn't go up so early in the year, and b) I adore the thing it temporarily replaces. I haven't ever given my actual opinion on the thing itself, as a holiday overlay. So here it is:

Eh, it's okay.

As a rule, I am far more forgiving of temporary ride alterations than permanent ones. The latter have to constitute a definite improvement on the original for me to approve of them, while the former just have to be moderately entertaining since, after all, I'll have the original back soon enough. Even if I can't stand a temporary change, all I have to do is wait it out.

I'm happy enough to put Haunted Mansion Holiday in the “moderately entertaining” pile. I like some of the music, the visuals in the stretching room are pretty sweet, and I like seeing the new gingerbread house each year. (Though this year's is a little...uh...) I even think the often criticized mismatch between the existing Haunted Mansion imagery and the Tim Burton additions kind of works with the concept—the Halloweentown characters are imposing their style on the Mansion, are they not?

Of course, I am well aware that this is the kind of cheap post-hoc rationalization for lazy attraction design that Disney's own Marketing Department apologists like to use: “Of course it sucks. We were going for suck.” So I don't give it too much weight. And there's plenty else to criticize about the endeavor.

I just don't find myself criticizing it on the level of “This is a travesty against everything Disneyland outght to stand for” like many commenters do. It's more along the lines of “This could have and should have been done better.” So what I'll do here is, I'll go over various aspects of the ride, explain what I do and don't like about them, and then—as a bonus bit of Armchair Imagineering—sketch out an alternate way of adding The Nightmare Before Christmas to the Haunted Mansion for the holiday season that hopefully makes more sense and is more engaging.

Kidnap the Magic: NOS Holiday Wall Decoration

Don't you love New Orleans Square during the holidays? I do. It's totally gorgeous.

Oooooh!

Aaaaaaaahhhh!

Damn, I miss the Court of Angels.

These days, the lampposts receive arrays of décor like this:

Originally, though, they were decorated in a slightly more restrained fashion with the ornaments on and in a base of evergreen. That's how it was some years ago when I decided to try my own version of a New Orleans Square-style Christmas decoration, and that's what I'm going to instruct you in here. Since very few of us have 19th-Century vintage wrought-iron lampposts handy to hang things on, this can go on your wall or door, like a wreath. It's a very modular project, and no glue is involved so you can disassemble it after the holidays are over and perhaps try varying it up in years to come! You can find most of what you need at any big craft store such as Michael's or Jo-Ann's.

Armchair Imagineering: Krampus Bobsleds

Before we begin, I just want to note that I’m basically kidding with this one.

Basically.

Mostly.

Sort of.

But it would still be pretty awesome, in an offbeat sort of way, if they did something like this.

After Action Report: A Christmas Fantasy Parade

Do you remember what Christmas was like when you were little? About seven or so? When snow was only for playing in (and not shoveling), when you could not imagine ever getting tired of eating cookies, when new toys were intoxicating? Do you remember when you wrote actual letters to Santa Claus and then lay awake at night on Christmas Eve to see if you could catch him in the act?

Do you remember?

Someone obviously does...because someone distilled those memories, that feeling, and used the concentrate as the basis for “A Christmas Fantasy,” Disneyland's seasonal parade since 1994.

Kidnap the Magic: Small World Promenade Holiday Wreath

One of the most distinctive holiday decorating schemes at Disneyland can be found on the Small World Promenade. While Chester* rocks his Santa hat and colored lights, fourteen white wreaths themed to different countries and regions as depicted on the ride line the walkway, building anticipation via their familiar central insignia and “supporting casts” of witty ornaments.

I don't know who in Imagineering is responsible for this...but I like it! So much so that several years ago, I made a set of tree ornaments based on the wreaths, using snowflakes as the base (since I couldn't find white mini-wreaths at an economical price) and variously shaped sequins for the ornaments. But this is Kidnap the Magic, and I'm going to offer you a more ambitious project: An actual wreath decorated the same way as the ones in the park, scaled down just enough to fit comfortably in the average home.

Kidnap the Magic: Decorating for Christmas...Disneyland Style!

Thanksgiving* is only a few days away, if you can believe that. Once the dishes are cleared away, the Christmas season Officially Begins on a nationwide scale. Due to the increased prominence of online shopping (and a few high-profile tragedies engendered by the pressure-cooker atmosphere of certain “mega-sales”), Black Friday is starting to slide off its throne as the shopping day of the season...but a lot of people still like to take advantage of the day off to do their decorating.

And perhaps some of those people would like to decorate in the style of the Happiest Merriest Place on Earth. They could just drop a wad of dough on ornaments sold at the parks, but that wouldn't actually do the trick. Odd as it may seem, the fictional denizens of Disneyland do not decorate using real Disneyland merchandise. Our hypothetical people will need some pointers. Fortunately for those people, they live in a world that includes this blog.

This post is going to include general guidelines rather than step-by-step instructions. Disneyland's Christmas decorations are, as a rule, magnificent, and it's really inspiring to us crafty types to see how the various area themes intersect with holiday imagery and traditions. It would almost be missing the point to try recreating most of these uniquely designed items exactly, especially since they evolve over the years. So peruse, enjoy the photos, and get some awesome ideas for a Disneyland-flavored Christmas of your own!

The Second Sense: Area Music at Christmastime

I've snarked about Christmas Creep a couple of times on this blog, but I'll be honest: I enjoy the Christmas season. And the thing I like most about it is not getting presents or watching corny Christmas specials, but the atmosphere. The weather becomes delightfully chilly (not exactly cold, here in Southern California), sparkling decorations go up everywhere, and it seems like the only time of year when mainstream society accepts the idea of benevolent magic—philosophically, if not in fact.

And the music! I know I'm not alone in having familiar Christmas music wired directly to the nostalgia centers of my brain. Religious or secular, it doesn't matter (and this is coming from someone who hasn't identified as Christian for at least twenty years). The highly specific context in which this music is usually heard is what gives it its power to enthrall: Because it is Christmas music, when we hear it we are psychologically transported to that intersection of time (winter), space (shopping malls, Grandma's house, a gingerbread village) and attitude (peace on earth and goodwill toward all) that the holiday represents. They say smell is the most emotionally charged sense, but in my experience, hearing can do just fine under the right circumstances.

Disneyland is awesome with Christmas music.

The park is awesome with Christmas in general. As I've mentioned before, it's still a newbie at Halloween, but it's had a lock on Christmas since...well, since December of 1955. Christmas parades, Christmas carolers, Christmas character costumes, Christmas versions of standard attractions. And of course, Christmas music. Practically every part of the park has at least one music loop swapped out for a Christmas-themed one at the tail end of the year. This being a post in the category of The Second Sense, it will be my very great pleasure to take you on a tour of all of them, starting outside the gates of Disneyland proper.

Sentimental Paleontology: Our Musical Heritage of the Past

So Halloween is over now. You know what that means. Cue the army of mall Santas.

I'm not quite ready to go full eggnog myself. I want to try to ease into the Christmas-themed posts here, so I'll start tangential: What was the first attraction at Disneyland to be made over into an alternate version for the Christmas season? I guess in part it depends on what you mean by “alternate version of the attraction.” Specially designed Christmas parades at Disneyland go all the way back to 1957...but I wouldn't consider “the parade” to be an attraction per se. There have been many different parades in Disneyland's history, of which the Christmas ones are just a few. Our current iteration, A Christmas Fantasy, is not Soundsational! or any other “regular” parade with tinsel added to the floats; it has its own completely separate floats. So it's not an alternate version of the attraction so much as an alternate attraction.

But neither did seasonal attraction overlays begin during the much-maligned Pressler era. “it's a small world” was actually the second participant in a Disneyland tradition that goes back over thirty years—more than half the park's existence. So what was the first?

Just a little show in the back corner of the park called...the Country Bear Jamboree.

This is Halloween – The Case Against Haunted Mansion Holiday

Let's digress from Disneyland for a bit to talk about Christmas Creep. Even if you haven't encountered the term before, you're bound to be familiar with the phenomenon: the tendency for retailers to start stocking and advertising their Christmas items earlier and earlier in the year. Is it a new phenomenon, per se? Hard to say. The Peanuts had a gag about a Christmas sale in April as far back as 1974, but when I was a kid in the Eighties, people still rolled their eyes over the fact that tree displays went up the instant Thanksgiving was over.* Now, of course, we're shocked if any store waits that long. The standard is to flip straight from Halloween to Christmas, with poor Thanksgiving relegated to an end cap display.

This is understandable, of course. Both Halloween and Christmas are much bigger moneymaking opportunities than Thanksgiving. For Halloween, people like to buy costumes, elaborate decorations, and loads of candy. For Christmas, they buy elaborate decorations,** candy, occasional costumes, and gifts gifts gifts. Unless you're a supermarket or an airline, Thanksgiving just isn't that much of a boost for you...and if you are a supermarket or an airline, Christmas might still be bigger. On the consumer side of things, Thanksgiving isn't capital-F Fun the way Halloween and Christmas are, so most people are content to let it be eclipsed by its feuding calendrical neighbors.

Halloween itself wasn't always so prominent, of course. I think my generation was the one to decisively say “Screw you, adulthood, we'll keep dressing up if we want,” turning what had previously been thought of mainly as a children's romp day into an all-ages cultural phenomenon...and honestly? In light of Christmas Creep, it's a good thing we did. The prominence of Halloween gives us a stick with which to draw our line in the sand: “No, Wal-Mart, we are not shopping for Christmas yet; we are still celebrating Halloween.” And since it's become so easy to capitalize on Halloween itself, the retailers of America aren't too inclined to fight us on the matter. Don't be fooled by the appearance of fake pine garlands on the shelves in mid-October—those are just there so the transition can be made as quickly as possible once November 1 hits.

Now we can get back to Disneyland, which turns the whole thing upside-down by installing the Haunted Mansion Holiday overlay in September.

After-Action Report: “it's a small world” (Part 2)

“it's a small world” debuted to the world it celebrated at the New York World's Fair in 1964 and moved to Disneyland two years later. For most of its history, changes were minimal—a new color scheme here, a remastered soundtrack there, a different sponsor*—but starting in the Paul Pressler era, management decided it was okay to mess with it to a more significant extent. So how'd all that work out? Well...