Taking a Seat

When Roy E. Disney accused the Eisner regime of building Disney's California Adventure "on the cheap" it was very clear what he was talking about. Here was a park filled with off the shelf amusements contracted out to less than stellar vendors, no distinct themed areas and nary a penny spent on new show technology, save perhaps Soaring Over California's remarkable hovering benchseats.

But what the park's few guests may not realize is that the 'cheap' across the street from Disneyland went far deeper than Wal-Mart style thrills, mall esthetics and empty sightlines. When it came to the comfort of patrons, DCA proudly demoted the guests to third world refugees by not fully budgeting for one of the most rudimentary of theme park provisions: Outdoor seating.

We all know what happens to guests non-plussed by their stroll along Paradise Pier. They leave and never come back. But what about the few remaining souls who haven't yet given up the faith? What happens when, after searching vainly for any element of charm in the park, guests now need a quiet place to rest their weary feet?


It appears that when it comes to taking a break from your glorious California Adventure Disney would rather you please remain standing.

Positive Signs

A baby step forward is still progress, no matter how small.

Whether it was due to Exxon's sponsorship pull-out of Epcot's Universe of Energy or an astute management decision from someone at Disney with taste, the aggressively ugly marquee that sat beside the pavilion is now history. No longer will guests be barraged by over-zealous splashes of mauve, crowded visual elements, pop-icon mugging, covert explosions of pink triangles, incongruous type fonts and golden dinosaurs all randomly glued to a cheap milk crate backing. This was a visual eyesore so discomforting it didn't belong at a Six Flags park, let alone Epcot Center's classy Future World.

On the other side of the country the final retro touches have been affixed to the once equally ugly Club Buzz at Disneyland's Tomorrowland. Also back is the original name for the area, The Tomorrowland Terrace. A lone designer at Disneyland's Entertainment Division saw fit to pay homage to the timeless design sensibility of Disney's legendary Imagineer Rolly Crump and his original modernist motif for this unique rising bandstand. Though not an exact re-fit of Rolly's whimsical airy space-age planters, it's a genuine and heartfelt nod to his take on a promising optimistic future. Club Buzz, on the other hand, was a heavy, brooding, dystopian monolith that sucked all the life out of the area.


Those that value great design and a quality guest experience right down to the smallest detail have reason to rejoice at these recent, albeit minor, changes. Progress at a snail's pace is still better than decay and destruction at any pace.

The Irrelevance of Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer

Yes it's true. Jay Rasulo and the marketing minions at Disney Corporate are pushing hard for a rushed tear-down of Tom Sawyer's Island to make room for a Jack Sparrow themed Pirate Playground in May of 2007.

Those within the Orwellian confines of W.D.I. now tasked with shape-shifting this classic Walt inspired island of adventure and brave enough to talk about it generally don't agree with their new mandate. Driven hard by the movie's financial success, this is a decision that is both knee-jerk and wrong.

The argument that is being used is that the Island is no longer being attended, so W.D.I. must make it "relevant".

Just when did attendance drop? Was it when the fort shut and locked its entrance gate? When the bridges were temporarily run down and closed? When the allure of a burning cabin was shut off? When water traffic backed off with the loss of the Keel Boats and slimmed down Canoes? When the designated "smoking area" for that region was moved to the load/unload of the rafts?

So now what? Collective wisdom at Imagineering is that the disease has been mis-diagnosed. But no one in upper management seems to care about the legacy of Disneyland anymore. It's old fashioned, and long-term apparently does not appeal to Wallstreet.

Okay, so Disneyland is not a museum. Still, some things are just fun!

But only when they are working the way they had been designed to.

Walking in Walt's Footsteps

John Hench often talked about Walt's desires for his staff of Imagineers at W.E.D. to visit the Park often.

"You guys get down there at least twice a month. For God's sake, don't eat off the lot. Stay there... lunch with the guests... talk to them."

Why would Walt Disney suggest such a thing? The answer is of course very simple. Walt understood that the only way to discover what works and what does not work is to experience it for yourself. You must have a personal emotional response in order to progress with any sincerity. Think of the potential strength of your creative work force when they have been educated by their own product. Walt thought about that very thing.

How often have you experienced great joy at a Disney theme park? Was it your Jungle Cruise Skipper with his impeccable comedic timing? Was it seeing the family of ducks that crossed the parade path over to the StorybookLand canal for a swim? Was it the smell of fresh buttered popcorn? Now, do you personally feel qualified to tell your family, friends and/or peers about all of these things?

Of course you do.


How often have you experienced disappointment at a Disney theme park? Was it a crowd control Cast Member who was rude because you did not know which way to traverse Main Street in the evening? Was the restaurant you were anticipating the most closed early or not open at all? Was the restroom you went in to unclean, with a mysterious wet floor? Again, do you feel personally qualified to tell your family, friends and/or peers about those same things?

Yes. In fact, you become the most qualified, just for having been there.


But, what if the extent of your theme park visit was a piece of paper handed to you some 40 miles away? The contents therein being such information as- 37% of the clicks through the turnstiles may not have experienced Space Mountain today due to periodic attraction closures? This same paper also tells you that churro sales are up 5% from the same peak Saturday a year ago. What is your emotional reaction to that information? How interested are you in making sincere attempts to resolve any negatives in such reports? How damaging is it for a person who is in a position of decision or influence to only see the theme park guests as numbers or percentages on a spreadsheet?

Walt knew what he was saying when he would stress the importance of going to the Park. He knew, because he was there as a guest.

Frequently.

Strike Up The Band!

Let the drums roll out! Let the trumpets call! Let the people sing! Strike up the band!

It may be appear to be an insignificant trifle in the great corporate universe of the Disney Company, but the re-installation of a classic Disneyland detail gives all those who care about good taste, timeless design and the heritage of Walt's classic theme park reason to rejoice.

Rolly Crump's fanciful space-age planters that festooned the original Tommowland Terrace bandshell appear to be making a return. For three decades this classic Disneyland icon never lost its design appeal or its ability to transport guests to a groovy sleek and optimistic world of tomorrow. When Rolly's imaginative ornamentation disappeared with the installation of Club Buzz, a heavy-handed, grim and aggressively unappealing redressing of the stage in 1998, Disneyland not only lost a peice of great design from an accomplished artist but it lost a bit of its heritage as well.


But somewhere, somehow, someone at Disneyland's Entertainment Division is fighting the good fight. To those who reinstated this glorious Disneyland gem, bravo to one and all.

May this be the beginning of a great big beautiful tomorrow.

Comforting Words

Communi-clutter

Words can’t begin to truly describe the mess that has befallen Epcot’s Communicore. Infact, weeks have passed and still this writer struggles to find the perfect analogy, the sterling turn of phrase, the precise metaphor to summarize the visual nightmare this once comforting futuristic landscape has become.

The clean spartan lines are gone now; the simple visual statement completely covered over in designer excreta. Where less was much more, now more apparently isn’t more enough. Where the original Imagineers worked overtime to create a visually pleasing forward thinking urban environment, later embellishers, well schooled in the art of ugly, spared no expense in making a mockery of Communicore’s once pure and reassuring architectural statement.



Giant metal poles, tightly affixed with metal bolts, painted in garish grunge-mall mauve now spear the landscape. Twine and sharp edged tarps splay out over the area like malevolent fish nets descending for the catch. Add to that endless metal doo dads and twirly gigs, spinning whozits and whatzits, towering kiosks and assaultive souvenir pushcarts, billowing tents and oversized umbrellas. And all of it stirred up with a healthy helping of cheap.

The gentle sensuous lines of Communicore East and West are barely discernable now; the grand vision suffocated by the very worst in bad taste.

Shame on the perpertrators.

Shame.

Elemental Losses: Water

Initially The Great Movie Ride was going to be part of a show business themed attraction at Epcot but the powers that be felt it was strong enough to anchor an entire new theme park. And so, in May of 1989, the Disney MGM Studios was born.

If The Great Movie Ride was going to be the flagship attraction at the new park it was appropriate that the first in its more than ten movie set pieces be one of the most elaborate.

And elaborate it was; a faithful recreation of the five tiered cake of bathing beauties in 1933’s Footlight Parade, specifically one of Busby Berkley’s showiest numbers, ‘By a Waterfall’.

Imagineers didn’t scrimp on the details. Just as the set appeared in the film, each of the five tiers rotated counter to one another while fountains of water sprayed from ornamental gold deco jets trimming each layer. To top it all off, designers added three shimmering caped beauties on diving boards to the right of the set and filled the room with very real bubbles. When the switch was finally flipped on this extravagant movie musical recreation it was truly a sight to behold; a magical glittering tribute to the spectacular showmanship of Busby Berkley at the height of his craft and a fitting introduction to Disney’s Great Movie Ride.

But in perhaps one of park managements most egregious exploitations of the whole ‘If It’s Broke Don’t Fix It’ dictum, this was yet another spectacle that wasn’t going to last.

As with virtually all new attractions, technical and engineering issues are bound to crop up and this one was no exception. What the actual problems were depended on who you talked to; the mechanism that turned the giant cake was problematic, the foundation was cracking, water was leaking, mold and mildew was forming and/or the set was incurring water damage.

Maintenance staff whined up a blue streak, and eventually word came down from above that the expense of upkeep just wasn’t worth the payoff.

With the bane of unavoidable mechanical problems it certainly makes some sense to sacrifice a single show element here or there to save the intergrity of others, but the changes to this one Movie Ride set were so massive and all-consuming that one had to wonder if they weren’t inspired by someone in management who personally found the whole 1930’s Busby Berkley esthete morally and ethically repugnant.

Firstly, the entire cake set was curtained over by a giant scrim so that its reveal could be shortened. Then the art deco painting details on the walls faithfully recreated from the movie were removed as were the three bathing beauties and their diving board perches. Lastly, the mechanics that made each separate tier of the cake rotate were turned off, the animated lights unplugged and the bubble making machines removed.

And despite this being a recreation of a number called “By a Waterfall” guests would no longer see a single speck of water in the whole set. Those pesky water fountains were turned off for good.

So today visitors who enter The Great Movie Ride’s Footlight Parade set now witness a less than impressive slide show of Berkley formations on that giant scrim punctuated by sporadic hazy reveals of the Footlight Parade cake behind it; no deco details, no motion, no animated lighting, no bubbles.

No water.

Guests would just have to be trusted to not know what they were missing.

Elemental Losses: Fire

If the Kodak Corporation’s 1970’s era boast that more photos were snapped per day at Disneyland than any other place in the world, then you could bet that when the Mark Twain Steamboat or Columbia Sailing Ship rounded the northern bend of Tom Sawyer Island back then one photo spot in particular would threaten to usurp the crown from Sleeping Beauty’s Castle, or, for that matter, Paris' Eiffel Tower.
 
It was Frontierland’s infamous Burning Settler’s Cabin and every time any of the guests onboard any Rivers of America water craft caught sight of that stack of logs on the edge of the bank fully engulfed in very real flames every last soul rushed to the edge of the boat, cameras clacking away like an over caffeinated secretarial pool, the deck listing precariously to starboard.
 
Though the entire vignette was certainly photo-worthy, what with an early pioneer hunched dead over a log out front, an Indian arrow stuck clean through his chest, it wasn’t really the gruesome crime scene that caught the fancy of snap happy tourists.
 
It was that burning cabin.
 
Certainly filmmakers and visual storytellers instinctively understood that human nature can’t resist gawking at train wrecks or peeping through a neighbor’s window no matter how untoward the practice. Walt and the gang, who certainly knew as much, were more than happy to set the stage, light the fire and then actively solicit Disneyland adventurers to gawk to their hearts content.
 
And for decades guests did just that, shamelessly clicking and whirring through endless rolls of Kodachrome and Super-8 film the moment they spotted the first flicker over the embankment.
 
As time went on, however, political and economic forces threw a wet blanket over Walt’s little waterside bonfire.
 
In the 1970’s the energy crisis compelled management to turn the flames off, collective wisdom being that this was an enormous waste of fuel. Truth be told, the cumulative gas used to keep the cabin ablaze was an incredibly trivial sum when compared to the rest of the park’s total usage.
 
In the politically correct decade to follow the idea that Indians were apparently being vilified as the cold blooded murderers of early Pioneers (despite the fact that greedy homesteaders probably deserved such a fate), was deemed too difficult for Disneyland guests to process and so out came the Indian arrow and in came a less risky story line, this one showcasing a sleeping moonshiner who’d inadvertently set fire to his cabin. Or, depending on how the Disney Gods felt about the fire effect from one week to the next, merely a story about a sleeping moonshiner.

But somehow even this angle didn’t sit well with Disney Management, the whole alcohol issue now being deemed too spicy for modern family audiences.
 
So now the ‘Endangered Bald Eagle Nest’ scenario was given a go, this story being that of an environmentally unsympathetic settler who had inadvertently set fire to his cabin and thus endangered a nest of eagle chicks roosting right above the roof line.

One Frontierland cast member who operated attractions there from 1969 through 1973 was, to say the least, a little befuddled when the latest dumbing down of the cabin was unveiled:
 
“First, show me a bald eagle that builds a nest ten feet off the ground. And second, show me someone who can build a log cabin with only basic hand tools and then cannot contain a fire in a stone fireplace. I do not think this is at all verifiable or historically accurate.”
 
And then, suddenly, the fire was turned off. Then on. Then finally off for good.
 
One could argue that the idea of Indians killing off settlers is a little off color. Or that viewing faux corpses at Disneyland is distasteful. Or that the expense of keeping real flames lapping at the side of an outdoor cabin set for hours on end day after day is a global warming nightmare.
 
But you can’t argue the fact that stumbling upon the sight of a log cabin fully engulfed in flames in a far off corner of Disneyland was one of the coolest experiences a kid and his parents could share together. Moonshiners, careless pioneers or ruthless Indians were beside the point. It was that audacious outdoor conflagration that wholly captivated Disney guests for years.

As with all Eisner era decisions affecting the parks, economics would always trump politics. Any off the beaten path Disney era detail without a measurable profit margin that required upkeep above and beyond a fresh coat of paint every three years was not worth tending to. All the better if the decision to forego maintenance came with a touchy-feely culturally sensitive excuse to placate disgruntled guests.

But it’s just these surprising little show elements, these ‘hidden gems’, scattered throughout the Disney Parks that make the guest experience such a magical and transporting experience. There’s no real reason why the Settler’s Cabin can’t once again burst into flames to delight new generations of pyromaniacal children. If Imagineers can’t find a new high-tech energy efficient way to bring back that fire of old then they shouldn’t be called Imagineers.

A convincing dimensional outdoor fire illusion? I dare you.

Elemental Losses: Earth

When Imagineering legend John Hench, after a pre-opening VIP tour of Disney’s California Adventure in 2001, famously quipped, “I liked it better when it was a parking lot” it would have been easy to dismiss the statement as merely a wry and devilishly wicked smack-down of a theme park that deserved much of the criticism thrown its way.

But look beyond the surface giggles and you’ll find a level of of wisdom that is both disarming and a little profound.

For when the 15,167 space 100 acre parking lot was torn up and replaced with flashy shops, restaurants, movie theaters, hotels and theme park attractions something very special about the Disneyland experience was lost forever.

For early Disney Imagineers it was the ubiquitous parking lot that visually symbolized everything ‘today’ and as such gave guests a little heads up on a sign over the two entrance portals to Disney’s Magical Kingdom:

"Here you leave today and enter the world of yesterday, tomorrow and fantasy."

Walt and his designers knew that by carefully contrasting the parking lot’s wide grey expanse of cement and steel with the color and intimate pageantry of Main Street U.S.A. they’d be giving guests a carefully calculated jolt of sensory uplift the moment they left the entrance tunnel, much like the experience Dorothy had leaving the drab sepia world of Kansas and opening the door to a Technicolor Oz.

Today that classic bronze plaque above the entrance portal has lost much of its prophetic power. Well before arriving at Disneyland guests have already been assaulted and overloaded with so many over-scaled and conflicting thematic show elements that entering Main Street can easily feel like an anti-climax; victim to the visual cacophony right outside the berm.

And so that whoosh of excitement guests once felt as they left the entrance tunnels and entered into the worlds of yesterday, tomorrow and fantasy has been severely degraded by the loss of the original Disneyland parking lot. In his day Walt saw the parking lot as part of the over-all show. In our day Disney management saw the parking lot as a tremendous cash cow.

The Disney Guest, they figured, would never know what they were missing.

John Hench, however, knew too well.

Elemental Losses: Air

The sudden closure of Disneyland’s famous Skyway became the stuff of urban legend almost immediately after it closed in 1994. For 38 years it had carried guests between Fantasyland and Tomorrowland high above the air in gleaming colorful buckets. And then, suddenly and without so much as a press release, it was gone.

For the Disney faithful it just didn’t make sense. How could an attraction that had become such a staple of the Disneyland experience be shut down so unceremoniously; every last pylon uprooted and carried away in the dark of a single night.

It must have been because the attraction had become too litiginous they figured. Only a few months earlier a 30 year old man had fallen from one of the cabins and suffered severe neck and back injuries. Certainly Disney was right to assume that any additional accidents might tarnish the company name and ultimately the guest experience.

But for those more willing to face the darker side of Disney the truth could be found in the spreadsheets and pie charts floating around the executive offices of Disney Enterprises well before the accident. Cost cutters had dismissed the attraction as too little bang for the buck, with staffing expenses, maintenance costs and necessary safety upgrades demanding more capital than they felt appropriate. Randle Charles’ fortuitous fall from the Skyway became the perfect smokescreen for the purely economic decision that quickly followed.

Eventually Randle’s lawsuit was dismissed. Seems the 30 year old nutball had jumped, not fallen, and had he stayed inside his cabin the Skyway would have enjoyed a perfect safety record.

If Disney executives were waiting for another bogus excuse to shutter Walt Disney World’s Skyway they only had to wait five more years. In February of 1999 65 year old custodial host Raymond Barlow was accidentally scooped up and dropped 40 feet from a moving gondola when cast members started up the ride in the morning without checking the exit platform. Nine months later and The Magic Kingdom saw the last of its own Skyway; Disney executives smiling all the way to the bank.

And so the magical flights through mountains, past rocket ships and over lands of fantasy came to an end and all because the top Disney brass merely wanted to save some money.

The Disney Guest, they figured, just wasn’t worth it.

Feel All The Wonderful Motion

One afternoon in the summer of 1984 news spread like wildfire among Epcot Center cast members that the ‘Radok Blocks’ were finally fully operational. From one end of the park to the other operations hosts and hostesses quickly changed out of their costumes and rushed towards Universe of Energy in Future World East, converging on the pre-show theater directly inside the building.

Cast members familiar with the eight minute film that had shown there since Epcot’s opening in 1982 were immediately aware that something was off the moment they entered. The entire ninety foot wide screen used for the presentation appeared to be missing, now completely covered over in black. They wouldn’t have long to wonder as once the lights dimmed the mystery quickly dissipated. Like pristine white dominoes falling magically into place, the screen exploded out from the center in perfect synchronization with the film. From one end of the auditorium to the other you could hear audible gasps, all eyes now locked on this wonderous undulating surface.

Months later operators at Universe of Energy would joke about how quickly the room of 580 boisterous guests would brake to dead silence the moment the screen started throbbing to life.

An online fansite dedicated to preserving the Universe of Energy’s history summed it up:

“Saddling it with the term ‘pre-show’ is an injustice, given the connotations that the term carries. The original pre-show for Universe of Energy, the absolutely dazzling "Kinetic Mosaic" …was regarded by many as better than some main shows."

The movie, consisting of five 35 mm films running in unison, hadn’t changed when cast members poured into the building that Summer afternoon in 1984 but the screen very much had. Made up of 100 3½ foot square prism-shaped tiles, these ‘mini-screens’ consisted of two sides of a projection surface and one side non-reflective black. Each segment could show either a black or white surface, or allow one of several combinations with its point facing forward; the full screen capable of more than a billion separate configurations. Synchronized with the film, these tiles rotated independently or in concert with each other by way of individual servo-motors and all were controlled by microprocessors, making this the first time in film history where a computer was used to move elements within a film presentation.

And the effect was breathtaking.

The mastermind behind this remarkable presentation was the Czech film director Emil Radok who, with his brother, presented his landmark film ‘The Magic Lantern’ at the Brussels Expo in 1958, part of an experimental system of combining film projection with live performance. But it was his pre-show presentation at Epcot’s Energy Pavilion that was, ten years before he passed away, his most monumental and astonishing masterwork.

So complex and demanding was the technology behind Radok’s Kinetic Mosaic that each screen element was set to their default white position when Epcot opened and remained that way for two years while Imagineers continued to work the bugs out, not least of which was the unreliability of the 100 separate motors, each with its own precise braking system, required to operate the individual screen elements. So long had this screen lay dormant that when in-the-know guests asked Universe of Energy operators about why it wasn’t working they were met with, “What? The screen moves?”

Radok’s audacious show continued to wow audiences in the coming decade but challenged engineers on an almost daily basis. It was rare to see every block operational with guests often witnessing a row of at least four blocks locked to white when they entered the pavilion.

Two years after Emil passed away in Canada (where he’d been exiled from then socialist Czechoslovakia), Disney accountaneers decided they’d had enough of those un-reliable and costly Radok blocks and plastered them over with stationary screens, figuring a newer hipper generation of Disney guests would respond more favorably to the pop culture antics of Ellen Degeneres in a pure film format.

Disney management was probably correct in assuming that guests who didn't know what they’re missing wouldn't miss it; that ignorance is indeed bliss.

But some of us know better. Some of us enter that pre-show theater at Epcot’s Universe of Energy today and recall how our jaws dropped to the floor every time we saw that giant wall ripple to life. How we stared in wonder as wild fully dimensional images formed out of thin air. How we delighted in the whimsical play of shadow and light over constantly shifting shape and form. How even today this presentation was way ahead of its time.

And so we mourn what future generations will miss by not viewing Emil Radok’s masterpiece, an artist and filmmaker who truly made us, “Feel all the wonderful motion flowing through things far and near.”

Disneyland Civic Projects

In the plaza between Disneyland and California Adventure, thousands of guests have paid in the neighborhood of $150. to commemorate the family name on a brick paver tile, a nostalgic memento to revisit in future years.

One could say they “own a piece of Disneyland.”

But what did they pay for, really, but a homely little tile? Unlike plaques at civil projects or hospital wards, the “donation” didn’t really contribute toward the creation of anything but the brick itself and some additional profit margin for Disneyland merchandisers.

Where is the lasting monument this kind of money could build?

With all the needed talk of Disneyland restoration and revival, the problem of finding budgets for atmospheric items like scenic locales, fountains and forts often comes up short.

Since it is assumed such details will not draw additional paying customers through the gate, but merely enhance the day for those already there, accountaneers don’t tend to see the necessity of aesthetic charm. While the purse strings appear to be loosening a bit these days, can we really expect this to change?

Does it fall on the shoulders of those with a passion for Walt and his artists to turn this bull by the horns? - - Not by begging, complaining or demanding the Company do something on their own dime (though that can produce some slow results as we have seen), but putting our monies where our mouths may be.

What if Disneyland were to draw up plans for the return of specific, historic park scenic elements, restorations or improvements in the manner of civic projects, soliciting funds for their execution?

If people will pay for a mere brick, wouldn’t they pay even more to own a piece of a mural, a tree house or a pirate ship? Especially a beloved icon they were reviving from their own childhood so it might last for generations to come?

Monuments for Walt Disney’s Disneyland by and for the people.

Donations could be solicited at varied levels, with a clear dollar goal set for work to progress. Donors would be noted on a bronze plaque at the location of the “monument”, just as it is in the real world outside the berm.

In this way, permanent artistic improvements could be made to the park's atmosphere, expenditures that don't always measure up to the Company reinvestment goals. And new WDC funds can then be dedicated to creating a roster of exciting new attractions, as they should be.

While this sort of plan would be impractical for the building of major attractions that require bigger budgets, constant maintenance and staffing, it could be just the thing for the little extra details that make Disneyland so special:

Mary Blair’s Tomorrowland Murals
Captain Hook's Pirate Ship and Skull Rock
The Swiss Family Treehouse
Cascade Falls on the Rivers of America
Sleeping Beauty Castle Diorama
The House of the Future
Fort Wilderness
Tomorrowland Terrace Stage Design
Clock of the World

…would seem perfect for such a scheme, helping to bring back a bit more of Walt Disney’s wonderful world of color and design to the historic Magic Kingdom.

By online and in-park voting, the most popular icons could be selected. To avoid competitive, promotional or vanity projects, the focus would stay on historic Walt-era restoration projects – on which most can find common ground.

Are there a significant number of potential patrons… fans, animators, cast-members and common folk who would spend a little of their own cash to sponsor a Disneyland renewal project? To help bring back a bit of Walt and Mary and Marc and the rest?

To pay back to Disneyland a bit of the joy they have received from it over the years? I’d bet on it.

Who wouldn’t want to point out Captain Hook's Ship and proudly tell their kids that it partly belongs to them? And behind the ship, their named plaque awaits to prove it.

If Walt said, “Disneyland is your land,” why not let us all help to contribute to its future? After 50 years, Disneyland really belongs to us all.

Make that tile mean something.

That's an Exit, Not an Entrance

Walt Disney’s disdain for the hard sell was a cornerstone philosophy in his creation of Disneyland. Guests of the Magic Kingdom wouldn’t have to deal with the sideshow barkers and pushy salesmen so common in carnivals and state fairs anymore. Their ability to move about the park unencumbered and make spending choices purely of their own volition was important to Disney when he debuted his new form of family entertainment. History has shown this respect for the paying customer pays off handsomely.

Examples of Walt’s kinder gentler retail ideology start on Main Street and continue throughout the park. Sounds, smells and sights gently lure guests into spaces that make the shopping experience an organic extension of their own unique adventure rather than one of high pressure. The intoxicating smell of fresh fudge wafting from the candy shop, the hiss and flare of the glass blower in New Orleans Square, the whimsical art of the window display begging for closer inspection; all of it cleverly designed to nudge guests into a spending comfort zone without degrading their sense of personal choice and freedom.

But in the last couple decades Disney Management has completely turned the tables on Walt’s soft sell / escapist sell paradigm. Nowhere is this more prevalent than in the company’s current trend to assure that no new attraction debut unless guests are forcibly corralled through one or more shopping venues before they exit while other attractions are shape-shifted to conform to this new profit driven model.
 
In Florida alone the list of attractions cum tchotchke traps seems endless. Tower of Terror, Star Tours, Test Track, Stitch’s Great Escape, Winnie the Pooh, Maelstrom, Rock ‘n Roller Coaster and many more all demand guests exit through assaultive merchandising gauntlets before they’re allowed back on neutral ground. In California, where once you could hear the gentle tick-tock of Small World’s animated clock as you wandered from the exit, now the clatter of registers quickly overwhelms it as you’re briskly shepherded into a merchandising kiosk to the left of the attraction.


Often these pocketbook shakedowns are complimented by the ubiquitous flood of post-ride video screens begging you to take home yet another high-priced snapshot of your latest thrill ride climax. And even where the climax is questionable at best, as with DINOSAUR at Disney’s Animal Kingdom or Space Ranger Spin at the Magic Kingdom, you can bet Disney execs have found somewhere along the ride path to pop off yet another flash-bulb.

Selling souvenirs based on a theme park attraction is certainly an admirable service, especially when the attraction is as transporting and magical as, say, Pirates of the Caribbean. But back in 1967 Disney designers weren’t under the jurisdiction of profit addicted M.B.A.’s and still retained a deep respect for a guests free-will. 'Pirates Arcade Museum', the Pirates themed shop and arcade that opened concurrently with the attraction, was not only placed outside and to the right of the show’s exit, but was an organic addition to the New Orleans Square street scape. Guests could enter or exit at their free will, confident that if they made a purchase it was based on their own personal inspiration, not on a company’s shrill insistence.
 
This new trend to force guests into retail spaces whether they want to be there or not is damaging on several levels, not least of which is the degradation of the ‘theme’ in the very theme park Walt Disney pioneered. With the immediate onslaught of registers, photo video screens and endless racks of cotton tees immediately appearing after a trip to a 1930’s Hollywood Hotel or an enchanting Himalayan village guests are quickly ripped from the surrounding ambiance and thrown into the cynical here and now of profits and price-margins, any lasting glow from their magical adventure snuffed out, their buzz killed, with careless abandon.
 
Secondly, savvy guests can’t help but feel they’re being manipulated and pan-handled the moment they leave their ride vehicles, now caught in a retail web not of their own choosing. Where once they had free choice in whatever shopping venue they preferred, now it’s Disney Marketing that chooses for them whether they like it or not. The difference is far from subtle and deeply discouraging.


Lastly this whole retail trend at the parks is just transparently condescending. Rock n' Roller Coaster, it appears, is only an elaborate advertisement for the Aerosmith Mugs you’re pressured to purchase as you exit. Whether or not you’ve even enjoyed the last attraction you visited (Stitch’s Great Escape anyone?), the Disney Company is now shamelessly proclaiming that they don’t care. They just want your money.

And now.  

Disneyland is NOT a Museum!

How many times have you heard it?

Walt Disney’s famous quote: "Disneyland will never be completed. It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world."

…Or the oft-repeated WDI slogan: “Disneyland is not a museum.”

In any serious discussion of Disneyland’s preservation or restoration, it’s likely that one or both of these statements will crop-up as a conversation-stopper. These not-so-magic words are invoked to shutdown debate, often by those with a personal stake in the outcome.

Spouted as Gospel, such polarizing rhetoric implies that only the most stubbornly nostalgic, progress-resistant purist would dare to disagree.

Yet Walt invited each of us to feel an ownership of the park: “Disneyland is your land. Here, age relives fond memories of the past... and here youth may savor the challenge and promise of the future.” So when those fond memories are tampered with, we take it personally.

From artists to everyday guests; the dreams and wishes of untold Disneylanders are all-too-easily dismissed by the ever-ready excuses.

These tired old warhorses are trotted out regularly for the press whenever there are controversial additions or subtractions in Anaheim, such as the political correction of Pirates of the Caribbean, the eviction of the Swiss Family Robinson, or the twilight of Tomorrowland.

"I'm as pure as Disneyland fanatics can get, “ Tony Baxter told The Los Angeles Times in 1995 as the park embarked on a fateful program of change, “When a new ride comes and an old one drops out, there are bound to be twinges. But it has to happen, or (Disneyland) becomes a museum and an arthritic collection of things people were attached to in the '60s."

"It's always been this way at Disneyland," added Marty Sklar, who began working for the company as park publicist before it opened in 1955, "It was like on opening day, the one real dynamic was change… Walt's famous quote was 'Disneyland will never be completed as long as there's imagination left in the world.' "

"Pirates of the Caribbean has become the standard by which our guests measure every other attraction,” Sklar offered in 1997, “But it's not a museum piece either. We want to keep adding to it and improving it like everything else."





As Tarzan’s Treehouse came online in 1999, so did a chat with Imagineers:

“Master_Gracey: Bruce: Pleeeeaaaase don't make any radical changes to Haunted Mansion or Pirates! I'm beggin' ya!

Bruce_Gordon: I was just using those as an example...

Bruce_Gordon: But you've prompted me to type out my "Disneyland is not a museum" speech.

Bruce_Gordon: The park needs to constantly change....

Bruce_Gordon: When Walt was around, attractions came and went like you wouldn't believe.

Bruce_Gordon: He put in the Viewliner train of the future in 1957 -- then tore it down in 1958 to make way for the monorail.

Bruce_Gordon: He's the one that said it would never be finished....”

But in the post-Walt era, is every change equal?

Are we to blindly accept all revisions to Disneyland, good or bad - - from the nifty New Fantasyland to the aesthetic assault of Winnie-the-Pooh and Tomorrowland ’98 - - as if each new scheme were preordained by Walt?

Surely sacrificing Mary Blair’s handcrafted tile murals for printed billboard wraps was not Walt’s treasured dream for the future. Nor do long-abandoned attractions in full-view of the paying public seem much like Progressland.

So who decides for all of us? Can anyone with a wrecking ball and a dream become the next Walt Disney?





What did the maestro really want? In various interviews, Walt expanded on his expansion theory:

“Disneyland is like a piece of clay, if there’s something I don’t like, I’m not stuck with it. I can reshape and revamp.”

“There are many ways that you can use those certain basic things and give them a new décor, a new treatment. I’ve been doing that with Disneyland. Some of my things I’ve redone as I’ve gone along. Reshaped them.”

“The way I see it, Disneyland will never be finished. It’s something we can keep developing and adding to. A motion picture is different. Once it’s wrapped up and sent out for processing, we’re through with it. If there are things that could be improved, we can’t do anything about them anymore. I’ve always wanted to work on something alive, something that keeps growing. We’ve got that in Disneyland.”

…So, Walt clearly expected his heirs to create thrilling new additions for Disneyland’s future and fix the problem areas.

But did he also intend that we turn our back on the past? Quite to the contrary, nostalgia was part of Disneyland’s very concept. After all, the great castles, parks, monuments and museums of European antiquity had inspired its design.

Walt elaborates:

“I love the nostalgic myself. I hope we never lose some of the things of the past.”

“Disneyland will be the essence of America as we know it, the nostalgia of the past, with exciting glimpses into the future. It will give meaning to the pleasure of children – and pleasure to the experience of adults.”

“The idea of Disneyland is a simple one. It will be a place for people to find happiness and knowledge. It will be a place for parents and children to share pleasant times in one another’s company; a place for teachers and pupils to discover greater ways of understanding and education. Here the older generation can recapture the nostalgia of days gone by, and the younger generation can savor the challenge of the future. Here will be the wonders of Nature and Man for all to see and understand. Disneyland will be based upon and dedicated to the ideals, the dreams and hard facts that have created America. And it will be uniquely equipped to dramatize these dreams and facts and send them forth as a source of courage and inspiration to all the world. Disneyland will be sometimes a fair, an exhibition, a playground, a community center, a museum of living facts, and a showplace of beauty and magic. It will be filled with accomplishments, the joys and hopes of the world we live in. And it will remind us and show us how to make these wonders part of our own lives.”

Hey - - Did Walt just say Disneyland was sometimes a museum?





“To co-ordinate the ‘Progressland’ project, General Electric assigned a vice-president whose previous expertise had been in heavy machinery,” Bob Thomas relates in Walt Disney: An American Original, “He listened impatiently as Walt outlined how the show would trace the American household from 1890 to the future. When Walt finished, the vice-president remarked, “Well, that’s not exactly what we had in mind. We’re in the business of selling progress. What do we want with all that nostalgia?”

“To the WED staff, the room temperature seemed to drop perceptibly. Walt replied with an edge to his voice, “Look, I built this studio on the basis of nostalgia, and we’ve been doing a pretty good job of selling it to the public all these years.” Afterward he was so incensed that he ordered the legal department to determine if the General Electric contract could be broken. When the G.E. president, Gerald Phillippi, visited the studio on a vacation two weeks later, Walt told him, “I’m having trouble with one of your vice presidents.” The man was instructed to stay out of Walt’s way.”

We all know the Old Man never intended the phrase "Disneyland will never be completed…" to mean "Disneyland must always change in the name of progress.”

Surely, Walt wanted the best of both worlds: to perpetuate the classic, ageless art of Disneyland to our kids and grandkids - - just as he had reintroduced his film library to sparkling new eyes every seven years - - while still adding startling new breakthroughs in technology and entertainment to keep the mix ever fresh.

It probably never occurred to him that executives would one day choose to downgrade extant facilities in the name of progress, and sometimes without a replacement on the horizon. After all, he was about building, adding, “plussing.”

"The fun is in always building something. After it's built, you play with it awhile and then you're through. You see, we never do the same thing twice around here. We're always opening up new doors."





There is no doubt Walt built things to last. Of the attractions designed for the New York World’s Fair, he said, "After the fair these attractions will all move to Disneyland, where they will find a permanent home."

“Disneyland is not just another amusement park. It’s unique and I want it kept that way. Besides, you don’t work for a dollar – you work to create and have fun.”

As Roy O. Disney confirmed in a tribute to his late brother, “Walt used to say that Disneyland would never be finished; that through his creations, future generations will continue to celebrate what he once described as "that precious, ageless something in every human being which makes us play with children's toys and laugh at silly things and sing in the bathtub and dream."

On this we all agree. While the new Walt Disney Museum prepares to open in San Francisco's Presidio under the watch of Diane Disney Miller, it's not enough. It will be a more typical museum, a collection of really cool things to observe under glass.

But Disneyland is the real deal. A physical, environmental creation of Walt's own making, a living museum of wonder. There, we can leave the real world behind and enter Walt's personal vision. It's a landmark shaped by the very hands of this remarkable artist and entrepreneur, a man who gathered some of the foremost talents and tastes of the 20th Century to create an amazing treasure park of art, color and beauty. What a shame it would be not to preserve and restore those precious ideas, artifacts, shapes and colors for our progeny. No matter what you want to call it.

“To Baxter,” The Los Angeles Times reported in 1995, “…it's the Tiki Room that is untouchable -- in contrast to his anti-museum stance.”

"It revolutionized the industry," he says. "It's the first time sound and movement have been sequenced to a three-dimensional performance. To me it's important. It should belong if only as an institution."

I guess sometimes Disneyland is a museum after all…