Imagineering Theory: Zootopia and Theme Flexibility

I cannot say enough good things about Disney's latest animated feature, Zootopia, now showing in a theater near you! But this is not a film blog. This is a theme park blog; hence my observations will mostly be limited to discussing the potential and actual impact of this completely excellent movie on the Disneyland Resort.

So far, Zootopia has been brought to the parks in the laziest and most predictable way possible: by situating fuzzies of the two main characters in Hollywood Land for photos and autographs. The motivation? To sell park-hopper tickets. The justification? Well, it's a movie, isn't it?

Please.

Apart from a blink-and-you-miss-it* joke about the pronunciation of “Tujunga,” there is nothing whatsoever tying Zootopia to California. But neither does it fit comfortably into any of the themed lands of Disneyland Park...or does it? This post is going to be a thought experiment on the flexibility of area themes and the need for creative solutions to potential mismatches. “Theme dilution” is a common pet peeve among Disney theme park fans, but the area themes have never been 100% pure, and as Disney's cinematic palette expands, it's only going to be more challenging for the Imagineers to successfully integrate movie-based attractions** with the limited selection of themed areas available.

To be clear, this entire post is completely speculative. I do not expect a permanent attraction based on Zootopia to be built in any park. (Actually, the film's setting would make for a fantastic basis for a theme park all on its own, but that's another topic.) The point of the exercise is that we have a wonderful movie, tearing up box-office records, taking place in a fantastic world that would be a blast to visit...and there's no obvious place to put it in Disney's parks.

So what about the non-obvious places?

Let's imagine for a moment that we live in an alternate universe where Disneyland is pretty much as it is now, but with enough spare space around the edges that the Imagineers could put a new attraction in any land. Under these circumstances, which land's theming would be the most accommodating of the Zootopia premise?

For those of you who haven't seen the movie yet...go see it. Right now. Seriously. I'll wait.

…

I can't help but notice that you haven't gone anywhere. I'm flattered that you don't want to put my blog post on hold for a few hours to go see a movie, but...

Okay, enough kidding around. Zootopia, for those just getting up to speed, takes place in a world where humanity never evolved and non-human mammals collectively developed intelligence, bipedality, and civilization. The title city of Zootopia is a place where different species can mingle and work together in harmony without traditional stereotypes and inter-species rivalries getting in the way. Obviously, the reality turns out to be less rosy than the advertising copy, but I'm not going to delve into the film's plot here.

So, given our hypothetical conditions, where would be the best place to put a Zootopia attraction?

I think we can rule out Main Street, New Orleans Square, and Frontierland right off the bat. Those three lands are too tied into real-world, human history, with no comfortable way to connect to a fanciful yet wholly contemporary world of animals. But that still leaves five candidates for our consideration.

Adventureland – A Lost Civilization of Wild Beasts?

Adventureland is admittedly the least likely of our options. While Zootopia does have a “Rainforest District” and the central mystery of the plot concerns citizens randomly turning feral, that's a far cry from a genuine jungle teeming with wild animals as traditionally represented in Adventureland. Then, too, the “lost civilizations” typically found in the sorts of pulp adventures that provide inspiration for the area, generally don't have high-speed trains and smartphones. There's a grain of potential here, but no more than a grain. Let's look elsewhere.

Critter Country – Critter City?

This, on the other hand, seems like an obvious winner...at first. A world where animals walk upright, wear clothes, and have multi-species societies? That description could fit either Critter Country or Zootopia quite nicely. The one caveat—and it's a pretty big one—is that Critter Country is portrayed as entirely rustic, while Zootopia is, well, The Big City. In-universe, no less.

And that right there is a potential way for the mismatch to solve itself. The film Zootopia also has scenes taking place in an outlying rural community called Bunnyburrow which fits the Critter Country vibe like hand in glove. I can envision a Zootopia attraction which uses Bunnyburrow as the setting for the queue, so that guests experience Judy's trek from her hometown to the city before the ride even starts.

Would this work, do you think? A ride taking place someplace very different from the setting of the land where it is located, using the queue to help make the transition?

I dunno...you tell me.

Fantasyland – Back to Basics?

Fantasyland may skew heavily toward Princesses and fairies nowadays, but it used to be the default land for all rides based on animated movies. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Dumbo have little in common, but both have been included in Fantasyland right from Opening Day. Zootopia would arguably fit just as well—while it is is no sense a fairy tale, it is definitely a fable, its portrayal of civilized animals not too far off from The Wind in the Willows.

Nonetheless, it's hard to imagine a Zootopia attraction being added to Fantasyland in this day and age. As the other lands have expanded their themes to embrace animated fantasies, so Fantasyland has become progressively finickier about the sorts of animated fantasies it focuses on. People expect Fantasyland stories to be, well, fantasies—tales of magic and olden times and good vs. evil. We can expect more Princesses and fairies going forward, probably not much in the way of bunny cops.

Mickey's Toontown – Funny Animals at Home?

Mickey's Toontown has largely inherited the “contemporary animal characters going about their everyday lives” schtick now that Fantasyland doesn't want it anymore. As such, a Zootopia attraction might work here...but it seems like a long shot. It is after all Mickey's Toontown, specifically based on the characters and aesthetics of the classic Disney shorts, which don't gel with the presentation in Zootopia at all. Mickey and his pals are far more stylized and anthropomorphized than the citizens of Zootopia, who retain naturalistic proportions and features. In fact, the movie devotes part of its screen time to showing how the city's infrastructure accommodates so many different sizes of animals. Which makes for a nice segue into the fifth and final land under examination...

Tomorrowland – A City of Solutions?

In its current state—a hodgepodge of science-fiction and Pixar concepts (right now with an extra Star Wars-y veneer)—it's easy to forget that one of the main themes of Tomorrowland used to be humanity's capacity to solve its problems via technology and innovation. Zootopia's citizens aren't human, but they also have problems, many of which we would find familiar and at least some of which are shown, in the movie, to have innovative technological solutions. The intensive local climate control that creates the city's diverse biomes is certainly relevant to our interests. The aforementioned accommodation of different sizes could serve as a metaphor for accessibility for the disabled—the public services and many of the businesses of Zootopia simply take for granted that they serve an extremely diverse population in terms of size and shape and take steps to ensure equal access for all.

There is a potential science-fiction angle here as well. Remember how Zootopia takes place in an alternate universe? What if such an attraction used the framing device of portals leading from our universe to theirs? That's what they use for the Monsters Inc. Laugh Floor in Orlando, and with far less justification for putting it in Tomorrowland in the first place.

So, strange as it may seem, I think Tomorrowland is about tied with Critter Country when it comes to suitability for an attraction based on Zootopia.

In Conclusion

Disneyland's area themes have never been rigid, nor should they be. Even if Imagineering did have the resources to create an entire new land or sub-land for each movie...I think that would be less satisfying than what we have currently, where film-based attractions share lands based on their source material's genres, settings, and tones. It's more fun to imagine the movies as parts of a shared universe than to think of them as being completely separate, united only by the fact that the brands are all owned by the same corporation. We'd all like for the Princesses to take their afternoon tea together, or for Tarzan to make friends with Simba, or for Hiro Hamada to discover an Atlantean crystal.*** And even if Disney doesn't explicitly create these stories, the proximity allowed by flexible area theming suggests them to our imaginations.

So while it can be tempting, as Disney experiments with new, genre-busting sorts of stories in both animation and live-action, to throw up our hands and start dreaming about entirely new lands and parks to house the attractions we would wish to have based on them...let's give a little more credit to what's already there. If Disneyland can take us from a 15th-century German kingdom to a 1940s circus without crossing land barriers, if the Caribbean can fit into New Orleans, if the Mississippi River can pass through the orange buttes of the Southwest...then surely there's a place, somewhere, for a bunny cop.

* Or, to be perfectly honest, don't-live-in-the-L.A.-area-and-you-miss-it.

** i.e. the only kind being built anymore.

*** I can't be the only one who wants this, can I?