Armchair Imagineering: The Ideal Kingdom

It's inevitable. Dabble in Armchair Imagineering long enough, and sooner or later you'll get the urge to try your hand at designing an entire park. There are two main ways people go with such a project—either they attempt to put together their personal Platonic ideal of a Disneyland-style “Kingdom” park,* or they craft their own answer to Universal Islands of Adventure with a bunch of Disney's purchased IPs.

This is an example of the former.

It's times like this when I really wish I could draw well. I would love to be able to create a tentative map of my vision here, or some concept art for the original attraction ideas. But alas, that gift is not mine, so you and I are stuck with text.**

My goals here are severalfold. I wish to distill my 40 years of Disneyland memories into something that hits all the sweet spots of both my nostalgia and my current tastes, while also having things to offer the younger generation of fans. I want to iron out some of the wrinkles that have resulted from decades of making-it-up-as-they-go-along, while still preserving the charm that this methodology has produced. I want a park that's chock-a-block with things to do, at all levels of intensity, while still having room to grow. I want immersive worlds that are just complete enough to prompt guests to fill in the blanks themselves. I want to get back to the principle that the guest experience is primary.

A great deal of what follows will be intimately familiar. Hopefully, enough of it won't be to constitute a transformative improvement. Or at least to be intriguing.

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?