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.)

After-Action Report: GotG—Monsters After Dark

They should not have closed the Tower of Terror. I still hold that opinion. That ride was...basically perfect for its circumstances. It fit in exactly with Hollywood Land, it did an extraordinary job of building up atmosphere, it made guests the center of the story (“...in tonight's episode you are the star...”) and the effects were pretty dang...effective.

Guardians of the Galaxy—Mission: Breakout! is a distinctly inferior replacement. I have no animus against the GotG franchise itself—on the contrary, the movies are delightful and the second-worst thing about the firing of James Gunn is the wrench it throws into the production cycle of the third one*—but it's not the sort of thing that begs to be a theme park ride, and certainly not this theme park ride. It's awkwardly crammed into infrastructure that was designed for something completely different, it jettisons the Tower's beautiful melding of physical sets with digital effects in favor of a collection of movie screens, instead of making the guests the protagonists it makes them side characters in someone else's adventure, it has an unwieldy, overly wordy name, and the building is an eyesore.

Someone signed paperwork approving this design. Wrap your mind around that.

(Some people have the audacity to claim that this is an improvement on Tower of Terror. To them I say: On what grounds? Seriously, what does it do better? Also, aren't you the same people who were telling us we shouldn't be upset that it was being changed because it was still going to be a drop ride? Do you see the contradiction there?)

All that said, there is something at least moderately interesting about the ride's Halloween overlay, Guardians of the Galaxy—Monsters After Dark, and that's that it is framed as a direct sequel to Mission: Breakout! I don't think that's ever been done with Disney theme park attractions before—Star Tours: The Adventures Continue is framed as a prequel to the original Star Tours, what with the older Starspeeder model and glitchy prototype of Rex in the queue, but there is no sense in which the events of the one lead to the events of the other.**

Mission: Breakout! literally causes Monsters After Dark. The tower's generators get shut off during the former, and in the latter, the loss of power has freed all the dangerous creatures from confinement (hence the title). If nothing else, I appreciate the experiment. A Halloween overlay that only goes into effect at night (with the default version of the attraction operating during the day) is probably the only circumstance under which this conceit could really work, and I imagine it must be pretty cool if you manage to go on both in one day.

This is not to say that similar ideas couldn't work, especially if played subtlely. It could cross the borders of attractions or even lands. Imagine, for instance, if evidence were planted suggesting that the founder of the Jungle Cruise Co. got his startup capital mining gold in Big Thunder Mountain (before the disaster, of course). Obviously this would have to be used sparingly—Imagineering is doing something like this with the Society of Explorers and Adventurers, and the overall consensus from the snooty elitist fans is that it's not nearly as clever as the creators seem to think it is, doesn't really add anything to the attractions it touches, and discourages guest imagination by imposing One True Backstory on everything.

Anyway, back to Monsters After Dark: How is it as a ride? Eh, it's okay, I guess. It has all the same weaknesses (compared to Tower of Terror) as its non-Halloween/daytime counterpart, but some of the details are different. Pro: Since it is framed as a horror story rather than action-adventure, the queue is made creepier and more atmospheric, with reddish lighting and corrupted video transmissions playing on the big screen. Con: Instead of a more traditional eerie Halloween score or even the upbeat pop songs of Mission: Breakout!, our musical accompaniment is abrasive and repetitive heavy metal.***

I'm also not entirely sure it works as a Halloween overlay. Mission: Breakout! is already a ride that drops you at unpredictable intervals while various threatening situations play out on the screens and occasionally are staged to narrowly miss you. I'm not sure there is a way to make that scarier or more thrilling and aside from the unsettling elements in the queue, I am sure Monsters After Dark isn't such. It also doesn't reference Halloween by name, or use any of the holiday's specific imagery such as ghosts or pumpkins. If they decided to make it a year-round thing, it wouldn't exactly be out of place.

And that's about all I have to say on the matter. Should you check out Monsters After Dark, if you find yourself in California Adventure this Halloween season? Sure, why not. Unless you're legitimately afraid of heights/falling, darkness, monsters, fire, or Bradley Cooper.

Have a magnificent spooky holiday, readers mine. Next week...something different!

* The first-worst thing is that it was done at the behest of neo-Nazis. In case you were wondering.

** And that's not even addressing the fact that in aggregate, the events of ST:TAC are a stinking jumbled mess of shredded continuity.

*** I don't personally mind it, and it is composed by Tyler Bates, who also did the scores for both movies, but I imagine it must have fairly niche appeal among the theme park crowd.

The Second Sense: A Halloween Song For Every Land

In my various ruminations about how to further dress up the Disneyland Resort for the Halloween season, I have touched on the subject of seasonal music loops. I always include a few examples in my proposals—songs with spooky subject matter in the right genre for the area—but this time I thought I'd try something a little different and come up with one signature Halloween song for each area in both parks.

And for an extra bit of challenge...none of them can be Disney tunes. No “Skeleton Dance,” no “Headless Horseman,” no “This Is Halloween.” The Disney theme parks are in danger of losing themselves completely in self-reference, so I'm pulling back from that a bit.

Be fairly warned...this is a video-heavy post.

Armchair Imagineering: Halloween Adventure

Many moons ago, I outlined a vision for a Disneyland Park going as hard (if not harder) for Halloween as it typically does for Christmas—unique decorations throughout every land, seasonal area music loops, nighttime attraction overlays, live entertainment, the works. None of it has actually come to pass, of course, but Halloween remains a highlight of the year, both at the Disneyland Resort and in the larger culture.

So now it’s the other park’s turn.

Like its older sister, California Adventure does a fair amount for Spoopy Day already, but there is tons of room for improvement, in terms of both refining what is there and adding more. One interesting aspect here is that the Halloween offerings only really kick in at nightfall, which is...certainly thematically appropriate! I might just let that stand.

Conversely, the one thing I find pretty irritating is the designation of Oogie Boogie as the park's official Halloween mascot. There's nothing wrong with a Halloween mascot per se,* but not only are there no specific links between California Adventure and The Nightmare Before Christmas or its characters, they don't actually do anything with this supposed mascot. His silhouette appears over the entrance gates and there are occasionally booming announcements in Ken Page's fabulous voice. That's it. There's no Oogie meet-and-greet tucked into an unassuming corner, no Oogie-based attraction overlay or stage skit.

So if we must have a mascot, then a) it should be a character with some legitimate connection to the park (such as perhaps?) and b) you should be able to tell that they're the mascot.

Anyway, let's get to the land-by-land breakdown. I admittedly have fewer solid ideas for this park than for the other one, mostly because...I was already an adult when California Adventure opened. I didn't grow up thinking about it; it doesn't live in my bones the way Disneyland does.

But let's see what I can do.

Armchair Imagineering: A California Adventure Worthy of the Name

Lastweek's post brought a momentary idle thought about an alternate version of California Adventure 1.0. It wasn't the sort of thing I could let slide, so this week, you get to see me develop it a bit further. I say “a bit” because, well, this is my first time designing a theme park almost completely from scratch. I'm keeping very little from the California Adventure we actually got; the area themes, attractions, and even layout are almost completely different. The upshot is that virtually none of the work has already been done for me and I've had to bash this out in time for the weekly deadline I have set myself.* So it's more of an outline than a fully detailed concept.

But enough excuses. Let's talk theme park!

Armchair Imagineering: Alternate Universe Castles

Sleeping Beauty Castle. Cinderella's Castle. Cinderella's Castle again. Sleeping Beauty's Castle en français. Generic Castle! If there's one thing that defines a Disneyland-style theme park, it's that gorgeous central castle. Fans even lump together the various Disneylands and Magic Kingdoms around the world under the umbrella name of “castle parks,” understood to mean not just that they contain a castle, but that they consist of several themed lands arranged radially around said castle. One of the first details many Armchair Imagineers hammer down when doing something like this is the identity and basic design of the castle: Which Princess has her name attached to it? How big is it? What (if anything) is inside it? Obviously, you can't envision such a park without a castle...

...or can you?

Years before the announcement of a Star Wars themed area dropped, fans would sometimes spitball ideas for an entire Star Wars theme park. I actually think such a park could work really well,* but the interesting thing is that more than one person defaulted to the “castle park” template in their design, with lands themed to various planets and other concepts in the Star Wars continuity, arranged around a central palace-like structure. Obviously this wasn't a storybook castle—it was the palace on Naboo, or the Galactic Senate meeting hall, or a grand Jedi temple.

So now I'm thinking...what else could the castle be, besides a castle? Part of the reason it's always a castle, of course, is that it doubles as the entrance to Fantasyland, where all the fairy tales get charmingly mashed together. So what if a different themed land claimed that place of honor? Let's try a few:

After-Action Report: Pixar Fest

It's very rare that I manage to see new developments at the Disneyland Resort within the first week or two of launch. The San Fernando Valley isn't quite close enough to Anaheim for a casual hop over, and I don't actually own a car. So my trips need a bit of advance planning, and the timing doesn't often seem to work out for experiencing something while it's brand-new. This was an exception—I had some time off of work, and my sister had a day off, and so we managed to hit the place up on a Wednesday.

The weather was perfect, the crowds were as light as they are ever likely to be anymore, and...Pixar Fest had just started up the previous weekend.

Man, they don't make summer events like they used to, do they?

Like I've said before, I've got nothing against Pixar. They produce quality movies.* Coco was one of the best things I've seen in years. But as I've also said before, Pixar is not a theme. There is not much uniting the Pixar movies apart from them all being made by the same studio; objectively speaking, a summer celebration dedicated to Pixar is no more coherent than if they tossed all of the films in the Disney Animated Canon into a hat and drew fifteen at random.

But it is what it is. So what is it? How is it? Is it tolerable?

Eh, I guess.

Source Materials: The Shape of Land

Before we begin, I would like to note that I titled this post before The Shape of Water won Best Picture. That is all.

Let's talk for a bit about theme park layouts.

One of the often-praised aspects of Disneyland, especially in terms of its innovation when it was new, is the hub-and-spoke design plan that makes navigating from theme to theme so intuitive. (It also has potential mystical significance, but that's literally a topic for another post.) This model is so successful that it became iconic and has been re-used for every “Kingdom” park built since.

Of course, it's not the only way to organize a theme park. For example, Epcot's World Showcase and Universal Islands of Adventure both arrange their attractions around a central body of water, with the main pathway a long loop. The result is picturesque, but a bit more tiresome to traverse than a hub-and-spoke since there's (usually) no way to cut across the middle. I don't know of any examples, but a park could be built in a fan shape, with the themed areas radiating directly from the entrance. A park emphasizing exploration and discovery could use winding paths that branch and intersect.

And then there are the parks that are...how to put this nicely...not really organized at all. Universal Studios Hollywood* is a big offender here. There are all kinds of logical ways to subdivide a theme based on the glamor and excitement of the movies, and USH uses none of them, slapping down whatever, wherever. But I can't be too hard on its designers—the place is built into the side of a hill. A steep hill. With major streets and freeways wrapped around the base. They gotta work within the limitations imposed by the local topography.

You know which park's designers I might criticize for their slapdash approach? California Adventure. They had complete freedom to work within a parcel of flat land that was comparable in size to Disneyland itself and preconditioned for construction. And what did they give us with that freedom? An irregular elongated blob, grossly lopsided with the respect to the location of the entrance, with little sense of “flow” between the various themes.

Is there any sense to this layout at all? The strange thing is...there might be. 

Kidnap the Magic: Another Themed Party Masterpost

(Continued from last week.)

In all my Kidnap the Magic posts, I haven't touched California Adventure once. So this should be interesting.

Disney California Adventure

The concept of a theme party celebrating California makes about as much sense as the concept of a theme park celebrating California...which is to say, it makes as much sense as you put into it. I have Definite Opinions about how California Adventure could have been a hit from the start, if only they'd kept in mind what they were actually building.* That said, California is still kind of a weird theme for a party...and a hard one to convey unless, like, you bake cookies in the shape of the state map or something. Making the theme of the party in fact a Disney theme park based on California just complicates matters further. There's no instantly recognizable set of icons comparable to the “Mickey Mouse + castle” I identified for Disneyland last week.

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.

Beyond Blue Sky: A Princess For Every Land

Let's be perfectly clear: Most animated Disney movies are not “Princess movies.” Run the numbers, and you’ll find that a protagonist in the Disney Animated Canon is much more likely to be some kind of non-human animal than a young lady of royal disposition.

If not both...

But the Princesses are probably the most collectively visible characters under the Disney banner, and not just because they have a merchandise brand. And there are quite a few of them, especially when you expand beyond the fairly restrictive boundaries* of said brand. They are perhaps the quintessential Fantasyland characters, but are so popular for meet-and-greets that Fantasyland alone cannot contain them. Not only do Princesses pop up in other parts of Disneyland and even across the way in California Adventure, but Fantasyland itself annexed a chunk of Main Street in order to host the Princesses in Fantasy Faire.

So here's an idea that's kinda fun and silly: Can we assign each land in the Disneyland Resort its very own, focus-tested, thematically or at least situationally appropriate Princess? And by we, I of course mean I. I have too much respect for you to ever accuse you of finding enjoyment in something this self-referentially nerdy.

It should go without saying, but I am not restricting this project to the “official” Disney Princesses, or even the official Princesses plus the few characters that everyone assumes will become official sooner or later. That wouldn't be enough, in terms of raw numbers or variety of character types. Instead, I am taking into consideration official Princesses, presumed future official Princesses, and characters from theatrical releases who are referred to as princesses and/or presumed to be princesses in-universe. Basically, if fans are prone to wondering why a character isn't included in the brand, we can give her an honorarium for the purposes of this post.

Got it? Good.

Imagineering Theory: The Art of Placemaking, Part 2

So I have this theory of sorts regarding how themed areas at Disney parks come across independent of whatever attractions they might boast. I think in order to “work” (however you might interpret that word), a themed area needs to a) represent an easily recognizable concept, and b) entice on the basis of said concept, before you even consider rides and such. Last week, I did a rundown of the lands of Disneyland to see how they stack up, and this week, the quest continues with California Adventure.

Armchair Imagineering: Pixar Pier

So D23 just happened last weekend. I didn't get to go, but by all accounts, the Parks Division had a lot to say about their upcoming projects. Among them is a plan to remodel California Adventure's Paradise Pier—again—this time with a unique and cohesive theme that really brings across the romance of the boardwalk and the seaside environment.

Nah, just kidding. They're gonna slather Pixar IP all over the place.

I've explained before why I don't think a “Pixar Land” would really work as a themed area. In brief, few Pixar movies have the kind of setting that would be fascinating just to exist in; they mostly take place in the normal modern world, or a facsimile of it (even if they offer a different perspective on said world). But I must say...it's not as if the area is all that compelling to begin with. Maybe a dose of Pixar-i-fication will at least liven things up a bit.

But can we at least hope that they don't just randomly slap these valuable IPs on attractions and shops willy-nilly? Please? Can we hope for some logic to be involved?

Maybe?

The Second Sense: A Disneyland Playlist, Part 5

All good things must come to an end, and here we are. For the very last leg of this playlist, covering California Adventure, I'm going to change up my methodology—rather than meticulously covering every noteworthy attraction in every land, I'm going to pick theme songs for each land and just the standout attractions therein. California Adventure hasn't been around as long as Disneyland and has spent much of that time flailing for purpose; it hasn't had much of a chance to build up a roster of instant memory-making music. On the flipside, songs in praise of California itself aren't exactly rare. So let's see what we wind up with!

Sentimental Paleontology: Twilight Zone Tower of Terror

Well, here we are. The Great California Adventure Mistake of 2017 is live, with reports of a queue stretching all the way to the park's entrance.

Within five minutes of opening.

Every day so far.

Dammit, people. Why are you rewarding them for this? That thing should have opened to the sound of crickets, and not the kind that asks you to recycle your beverage containers.

Dude. This is actually a pin.

Nuts to y'all. I'm going to reminisce about what we lost.

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.

Kidnap the Magic: Disneyland Jack-o-Lanterns

Okay, help me out here. When did Halloween pumpkin carving become so...awesome? When I was a kid, riding my giant ground sloth to the playground, everyone I knew just drew a few triangles and circles on a pumpkin and cut them out with a kitchen knife. I felt fancy if I managed to include pupils in the eyes. I remember starting to see those specialty carving kits with the gnome-sized miter saws when I was in my teens,* and sometime between then and now, it just exploded as an artform.

Pumpkin has become a medium of sculpture in its own right—a feat all the more impressive when you remember that these globoid gourds are available only seasonally and the resulting creations are necessarily ephemeral. Despite its fragility, in the hands of an expert carver the flesh of a pumpkin can hold fine details as well as soft wood, and its translucency allows for subtle shading effects that only become apparent when the candle inside is lit. At the extreme end, we get stuff like this:

Most people probably don't have it in them to create anything that elaborate—I know I don't—but “rough image of a face” is no longer the default. Between the aforementioned carving kits and the widely available pattern templates, even the average neighborhood candy-giver is as likely to have pumpkins carved to resemble miniature scenes, or favorite media characters, as simple faces.

And occasionally, they turn to a Disney theme park for inspiration.

Disney jack-o-lanterns, per se...those are everywhere. Always quick to jump on the bandwagon of anything child-focused, Disney prints loads of pumpkin templates, in little booklets themed by character family. You've got your Mickey & Friends, your Princess, your Winnie The Pooh, your Pixar, probably your Jake and the Neverland Pirates. If you want a design specifically related to the parks, though, you're on your own. Naturally.

Nonetheless, some people pull it off, and it is my very great pleasure to show you some examples of their work. I had to work a bit harder than I anticipated (with some much appreciated help from The Sister) to collect all these...it turns out that Googling “Disneyland jack-o-lantern” doesn't bring up many examples of homemade carvings by private citizens.

So without further ado...

After-Action Report: Radiator Springs Racers

I have a love-hate relationship with Cars Land. The Cars franchise may well be Pixar's weakest concept,* and it really has nothing to offer me in particular. There are several reasons, but for our purposes here, the main one is that I'm not interested in cars. Never have been. And especially in the context of a theme park, where I prefer to be surrounded by things I don't see and hear every hour of every day. If it had been my decision to make, I never would have put Cars in a Disney theme park, especially not to the extent of building an entire huge themed land.

And yet...

And yet...

I cannot deny that Cars Land, apart from the dumb name, is really, really well done. I mean, look at this:

And that's not even the town part. This is the town part:

This is Imagineering at its placemaking best. The attention paid to detail here is phenomenal. You walk into Cars Land, and you're there, in a tiny town in the American Southwest, with jagged cliffs of red sandstone in the distance. I'm sure it helped that they had the setting pre-rendered in three digital dimensions for their convenience, but they still had to figure out how to create it in three actual dimensions, and it's stunning work.

A lot of cleverness went into the execution. The businesses of Radiator Springs have been translated into typical theme park fixtures. The hippie VW bus's “organic fuel” station is a beverage stand, the paint shop is a clothing store, the souvenir shop is...a souvenir shop. Businesses with no ready counterpart have either been adjusted or made the sites of rides. But the area's tentpole attraction, Radiator Springs Racers, isn't located in the town at all—it takes place on the outskirts, amid those magnificent buttes seen in the top photo.

I actually haven't been on it many times—three or four, total, since it opened. This is because a) it's in the park I don't favor, b) it's Cars, and c) the wait time frequently tops two hours. But I never regret riding it. It's too dang good...maybe the best execution of a ride concept in years.

Actually, calling Radiator Springs Racers a ride is underselling it. It's three rides in one, plus a fantastically immersive queue that expands on the source material in a charming way. I'll start with the queue since—as mentioned above—we're going to be standing in it for a while.

Beyond Blue Sky: Wicked Kingdoms

One oft-repeated wish in the Disney theme park fandom is for some permanent attraction based on the Disney Villains brand. A Villains ride, or a Villains land (often envisioned as an offshoot of Fantasyland)...sometimes even an entire Villains park, with themed areas based around individual members of the brand.

On the whole, the conceit seems to be the result of Disney's own relentless trend toward character branding running smack into the young adult taste for the dark and edgy. Most Disney animation showcases pretty black-and-white morality, and if the good guys come across as unappealingly twee (as they often do, thanks to child-oriented marketing efforts), there's only one place left to go.

To be honest, I don't think a Villains-themed area, ride, or park would really work. Disney Villains is very much like Disney Princess—a marketing brand that involves characters from several different movies but keeps them rigorously separated instead of allowing true crossover interaction. With Disney's theme parks in thrall to its branded IPs, I can't see the Imagineers being allowed to do anything really satisfying with the concept. Something like Princess Fantasy Faire squeaks by because its target audience is fairly undiscriminating about these things. I doubt the fans wishing for a Villains attraction would be content with a collection of meet-and-greet spots.

On the other hand, there's all kinds of fun to be had with layering the Villains on top of what's already there. “The Villains take over” is the plot bunny for a hundred and two Disney fanfics (including part of my own Crowns of the Kingdom as well as my flight of fancy about the ultimate Disneyland-based video game), but few people (myself included) really explore the potential. Disney itself rarely goes farther than the odd Halloween event, wherein the takeover seems limited to a particular live entertainment location and is quickly defeated. I'm thinking it could be fun to examine the possibilities if the Villains really did take over Disneyland and parcel it out amongst themselves.

Actually, let's make that both parks, maybe even the entire Disneyland Resort. There are a lot of Villains, after all—even considering only those from the Disney Animated Canon—and one of their qualifying traits is that they don't play well with others. They need a lot of territory to avoid getting up in each other's business and fracturing the whole coalition.

For this bit of spitballing, I'll be deviating from my usual practice of examining the themed lands in map order: Main Street, Adventureland, etc. An awful lot here hinges on what goes on at the epicenter of Villain activity: Fantasyland.

As a final note before we dive in, Disney's last few movies have surprised audiences (or not, depending upon how shrewd they are as viewers...no comment on my end) with the identity of the real Villain. So SPOILER WARNINGS apply to the rest of this post!

Armchair Imagineering: Canine Stunt Spectacular Starring Bolt!

Somewhere along the line, Disney made the mistake of thinking it and Universal were in the same business.

Now you might be thinking: but of course they are, they both produce films and then turn those films into rides in their respective theme parks. That's like saying Coca-Cola and Budweiser are in the same business because they both manufacture carbonated beverages flavored with hops and packaged in aluminum cans. If you paid attention to that previous sentence, at this point you're scratching your head and going “But Coke isn't flavored with hops,” to which my reply is: Exactly.