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.