Conflict in Theme Parks

“Over the years Disney repeated to his animators: “Make it read!” Meaning, make the action distinct and recognizable. No contradictions, no ambiguities.” - Bob Thomas, Walt Disney: An American Original

You, the audience, make your way through the Temple of the Crystal Skull. You know Dr. Jones has been here - he's set up his base camp, disarmed booby traps, and his name is on the attraction marquee. But now he's vanished inside the temple, and his faithful assistant Paco, who can't operate a tripod, decides to send you directly into certain death!

....Hold on, back up here. Let's take this from the top.

We're all taught in Western storytelling that nothing can happen without conflict. There just can't be a story of renewal or growth without somebody running into some kind of obstacle, or antagonist. Many people think the antagonists are more interesting than the heroes who fight them. Even a cursory glance at a single scene from most major Hollywood movies and you'll see it's mainly a checklist of characters developing or resolving conflicts. Sometimes, when the conflict building isn't adequately disguised inside the narrative spine - as in the recent Hobbit movies - audiences rebel.

In contrast, theme parks seem to operate in an entirely different register, despite otherwise seeming to be a direct outgrowth of traditional Western art forms like theater and filmmaking. And while we conflate the effects of multiple art forms - think of those who consider an especially visually appealing area to be "painterly" - the fact is, theme parks construct their meanings quite differently than other narrative modes like cinema.

Although they've been the dominant narrative mode for most of the last 110 years, films have limitations. Film scholar Tom Gunning notes that "Whereas literature is never directly iconic, film, as a series of photographic representational signs, is. [...] In film, the excess of [surface detail] over meaning appears automatically with the photographic image." Films can depict dreams, but they can't really convey thoughts; they are full of surface details, but audiences must know which details in-frame are relevant. We begin to realize the unique difficulties of storytelling in the themed space when we realize that  filmic limitations apply to spaces such as Disneyland, but the difficulties are multiplied!

Unlike in a film, a themed space can be experienced in any order, and at any speed desired. Unlike a film, images may be examined from multiple perspectives, and linged over or rushed past as the viewer desires. And unlike film, the gaze cannot entirely be fully directed, although a truly exceptional themed space can "drag" the eye through it in controllable ways. Themed space shares the visual limitations of films, but without the benefits of editing!

This means that if you want to tell a story in a theme park with an identifiable bad guy, there can be no cut "back at the ranch" while the villains hatch their scheme, no leisurely unfolding of information through a first act. Themed spaces tell stories that hardly ever break down in acts; it's all action, as if you had to tell an entire film's narrative in the context of one huge action scene. Given these limitations, it's amazing that any theme park stories work at all!

So what's the solution? Theme parks tell stories that boil down to morsel size "storylets" with lots, and lots, of conflict.

On one end of the spectrum, we can look at an attraction like Alien Encounter, which had so many various conflicts going on at once it was confusing. There was the conflict of the X-S Tech Corporation wanting to demonstrate its very poorly tested teleporter technology, the conflict of Chairman Clench wanting to teleport into the theater but being unable to, the conflict of an alien bug wanting to eat the audience, and an extra layer of conflict of the XS Tech technicians trying to figure out how to get the bug out of the theater. If Western narrative wisdom about conflict were applied here, this would seem like a winner, and perhaps it would have been - in a feature length film! In the practice of an 8 minute theater show, with an excess of telling instead of showing, it all came across as a lot of shouting.

Another attraction where there's simply too much going on to be digestible at the fast pace required of a park attraction is Dinosaur - in this one two characters even get into an argument in the safety film! We think we're entering an ordinary museum, but surprise! We're going to be sent into the past in a time machine they built in their weird basement secret lab. Once on the ride we're required to keep track of multiple story threads simultaneously: we're supposed to be looking for and capturing a highly specific dinosaur, while also being pursued by another highly specific dinosaur, while also somehow getting out alive before a meteor hits - three jobs nobody associates with bounding around in the dark with dinosaurs. While Dinosaur checks the boxes of being a thrill ride, most guests forget one or two of these plot points while actually going through the darn thing, and the payoffs never register as well as they should.

If we want to look at a more successful example, we could look at the Indiana Jones Adventure, where we are asked to keep track of a missing person narrative about Indiana Jones, a not very fully thought out danger situation involving an angry Indian god, and finally our own desire to survive the ride. I think where Indiana Jones Adventure succeeds whereas Dinosaur fails, is because the first two conflict threads or storylets pretty much resolve immediately; they're only really there to keep us engaged while we're waiting in line, and manage to sneak in a safety film sideways without seeming abstruse. Pretty much right away Mara decides to kill us and Indiana Jones is recovered; with those resolved, the only remaining pressing concern is to survive the temple.

Indiana Jones Adventure and especially Dinosaur spend an inordinate amount of time checking the boxes of classical story structure, to really no discernible good end - ask anybody coming off either ride to identify what the main conflict in the ride is, and they won't. Or, more accurately, they'll fall back on descriptions of things that happened to them - we dodged the Carnotaurus, we avoided the rolling boulder, with no consideration whatever for the elaborate conflicts and storylets laid out inside the narrative for them. With such complicated considerations, the harried theme park designer starts to long for the simple life.

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I consider these three attractions to be just about the most convoluted experiential narratives ever devised in the industry, and really only one of them works to any degree it was intended to, so let's back away from the double (or triple, or quadruple) conflict narratives and look at some middle-ground examples.

Let's consider Big Thunder Mountain Railroad as an example. Yes, there have been various layers of narrative complication added to the attraction over the years, mostly in the form of queue area entertainments, but when you get right down to it, the basic conflict of Big Thunder Mountain - the one you actually experience between getting on and off the ride - is that you decided to ride a runaway mine train, and now you are on a runaway mine train. Various things, little "storylets", happen to you while you're on the train, and each is more exciting than the last, until you arrive safely back at the station.

Or, to take another famous example, there are many opinions and rumors as to what the "story" of the Haunted Mansion is, but in reality the story is simplicity in and of itself - you, played by you, decide to enter a haunted house and you live to tell the tale. That's it. The ride implies universes of characters, connections, and backstories, but in the end it's really just the story of you spending a night in a haunted house. Does it really need to be anything more?

Perhaps the pioneering narrative conflict told in themed spaces is what we may call "Dodge The Witch", in which you avoid various dangers and make it out okay. Under the guise of "man vs. nature", The Jungle Cruise is basically a Dodge the Witch ride. Grizzly River Rapids is an very good Dodge the Witch - it may not have a grizzly bear, but it does have plenty of dangers and surprises. Even Disneyland's Matterhorn is an exceptionally carefully modulated Dodge the Witch, in which there's nearly nothing doing the storytelling except some steel track and an abominable snowman.

Yet aren't Indiana Jones Adventure and Dinosaur also Dodge the Witch rides, to some degree? Is there perhaps something to the fact that most riders blithely ignore all of the carefully modulated narrative information and conflict setup in these attractions and gleefully report that they did indeed Dodge the Witch?

Laff in the Dark, Early 1930s

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Here, then, is one crucial distinction in the way theme parks tell stories and the way everyone else tells stories. A novel, or a film, or a play, must engage in a lengthy setup in which character are introduced, a situation is outlined, a conflict identified, and then pass through an inciting incident which sets the rest of the narrative in motion. Theme parks don't need to do this.

Why? The reason is because the only characters that really matter in theme parks are the spectators. That's the reason people visit, after all - we sail over London, we encounter some dinosaurs along the Disneyland Railroad, we ride the Hogwarts Express. This is what themed spaces can do that nobody else can, and it's the blend of passive and active participation that makes the places resonant. There doesn't need to be an inciting incident because it already happened when we entered the park.

There is conflict (or at least drama) baked into everything that we do at a theme park, because by their very nature theme parks are places of the exotic and strange. The unspoken contract that exists between the themed space and the public is that we will agree to be mildly inconvenienced while entering an attraction in exchange for being excited inside it - this is why it's disappointing, sometimes enough to make news headlines, when the ride breaks down and the excitement is ended prematurely. Themed spaces are orderly areas of pictorial effects which break down in irrational and chaotic images, briefly glimpsed, once we hop into that Mr. Toad car.

This is why the attractions that really matter, that really last, tie up the conflict with the theme of the attraction in a way that's seamless: we decide to enter the jungle, board our jungle steamship, and are guided through the various dangers. That situation doesn't need anything more than to be present to be understandable, it uses very clear, very understandable visual cues to work. Everybody knows that giant snakes and cannibals are bad news, and - uh oh - now it's happening to us!

This is also why a ride like Space Mountain can work across time and cultures in a way that the Delta Dreamflights of the world could not. Just as with Big Thunder Mountain, Space Mountain really offers amazingly little information about what we are doing or why - we're going into space, and space is weird. The drama is right there in the attraction name, and as far as theming goes, all that's really required is that the vehicles look like rockets and we're off. Again, riders bring more drama to the experience than the designers need to supply, because themed spaces work differently.

This also points towards one feature of themed spaces which the rules say would seem impossible in other media: the low, or no, conflict experience. There's the Enchanted Tiki Room, which 50 years on still enraptures audiences by doing nothing more than slowly coming to life. Consider also the Skyway, which requires severe interpretive methods to find any conflict in it. Or It's A Small World, where the entire darn point of it is that it's conflict free. Through the 70s, Disney repeatedly attempted to make a Small World movie, and repeatedly failed because to introduce conflict into that experience defeats the whole reason it exists in the first place.

During the construction of Disneyland, Walt Disney repeatedly instructed his designers just to "build something people will like". In theme park analysis circles we like to say that areas need a mix of A, C, and E tickets to be successful - a shorthand to refer to the "levels" of the attractions that are needed to flesh out any themed space. But it may be just as well to refer to these ticketing levels in terms of levels on conflict - this is why Tomorrowland doesn't feel complete without a Peoplemover, because the Peoplemover fulfills the role of the Mark Twain steamboat in Frontierland - a relaxed scenic experience with no plot or conflict to speak of.  The low conflict attractions round out the day with a variety of low-stakes experiences that are "safer spaces" than the Jungle Cruises or Space Mountains. Every child implicitly understands this unspoken dynamic.

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This mass of data seems to suggest, more than anything, that there is in fact a diversity of ways to build a successful theme park attraction's story - there may be plenty of bad examples that hog the spotlight, but for every three unsuccessful, obvious examples, there's at least one where the thing works just fine.

What can be said is that conflict in theme parks can be implied in such a way to require almost no special treatment, or indeed even be a component of creating a compelling experience. The aesthetics of theme parks, and the unspoken contract between themed spaces and spectators, is such that there can be narrative inherent in simple visual designs and enveloping environments that can supplant the need for a formalized conflict. In this sense, themed spaces have a power to suggest narratives in a way nearer to the way that fine art like painting or sculpture can: through the deployment of such features as colors or shapes.

Although themed spaces are absolutely the nearest to cinema in terms of logic and effect, the theme park has a secret power that cinema does not: it can be iconic without needing to be abstract. Every so often, somebody comes along and tries to make a film that is played out entirely from one character's point of view, replacing the "I" tense in traditional novelistic storytelling with the filmed camera. This never ever works; it's easier for audiences to invest in screen characters depicted on the screen rather than as the screen.

Theme parks are films that happen to you, and they happen with no signposting or role playing. Think of the Disneyland Railroad: imagine if you made a film out of those events. You'd have an avant-garde film; mass audiences would say that it makes no sense, that it's outside their comfort zone. But millions ride the Disneyland Railroad every year and take its bizarre mix of nostalgia, sightseeing, and time travel totally at face value. That's the secret power of themed spaces, the power to compel without the need for a formalized narrative or even narrative logic.

Ready for more deep dives into the hows and whys of theme parks? Check out our Park Theory Hub Page, host to dozens of long essays just like this one!

Fun House: A Dark Ride Documentary

There aren't really too many really terrific theme park documentaries out there - at least ones written and produced with an eye towards objectivity and education. There's always been making-of television specials and the kind of "documentaries" Disney regularly commissions from the History and Travel Channels, but these are as much promotional tools as anything else. But a well-researched theme park documentary that has a point of view and a variety of subjects across a broad spectrum of the industry?

Well, I know of one. It was a large influence on my way of thinking about theme parks, and we're going to take a look at it today.

In the 1990s growing up out in the country, I did not have access to a lot of information about theme parks. I had grown up with our regional amusement center, Riverside Park - now known as Six Flags New England - every few years may be able to make a trip down to Disney. There was no such thing as streaming video, and a dial-up connection to a 56k modem was still years away for me. Amazon did not yet exist, never mind of the sort of information resource I've worked to make this site into. I wanted to learn more about theme parks, but my options were very limited.

Thankfully I was at the time a VHS hoarder and was able to capture this Discovery Channel documentary in 1997. When I watched it some time later, it really took my head off and changed the way I thought about my occasional trips to the orlando mega parks. Suddenly, the two worlds of amusement parks I had known - the regional parks like Lake Compounce and the Orlando extravaganzas - were contextualized as being two different expressions of a shared heritage. It was a revelation. The show was called "Fun House", and there seemingly is very little information available about it.

One could argue with certain points that the documentary makes. Its' two examples of cutting edge attractions are Indiana Jones Adventure and Terminator 2: 3D, and most theme park fans would not lump T2 in with all of the dark rides. At the end, it takes a dive into the world of IMAX films. Yet it's very easy to imagine an updated version of this documentary then moving on to discuss Universal's Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man or Disney's Soarin' as examples of rides which build on the boom in themed projection technology from the 90s. The current champion for most cutting edge attraction operating is Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey, which frankly isn't all that different than Spider-Man.

And on the other hand, this hour long show preserves a number of things which are now lost. The Old Mill and Le Cachot at Kenywood are gone, and Bushkill Park's historic Haunted Pretzel was destroyed in the Pennsylvania flooding in 2005. The lights-on tour of the Haunted Pretzel is a high point of this documentary, and worth watching to see exactly what the Pretzel Amusement Company was building in the late 1920s.

Oh, and thankfully the me of 1997 had enough foresight to include all of the commercials. Hop on board the Fun House and let's learn something!

Universal's Magnum Opus: Spider-Man

Several weeks ago I spent the better part of a day re-riding what I consider to be the second-best ride in Orlando, right behind the Haunted Mansion: The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man at Islands of Adventure. This may come as a surprise to some of you and indeed had the 1990s not brought the end of Horizons, Journey into Imagination and World of Motion, it would probably be much lower on the list. In fact, Universal's brilliant Kongfrontation! would probably have knocked it several notches lower, but Kong met his end just a few years after Spidey began his crazy romp through New York, and to my eye Universal Creative has never bettered this dark ride.

The problem is that until the last few weeks I've never really felt I had much to say about Spider-Man. Like Indiana Jones Adventure, it's greatness was so self-evident that there seemed little reason to either pick apart or defend its greatness. However, in mid-2012, Universal Hollywood opened a new take on the Spider-Man ride experience called Transformers: The Ride, an experience re-designed around a new franchise due to Universal's regional control of the Spider-Man character in theme parks. Transformers was such a huge success in Hollywood that Universal brought it over to Orlando, building and opening the east coast version in less than a year. I rode Transformers a lot in Hollywood, and again in Orlando. It's a great ride. But Spider-Man is better.

So, we must ask the question: why? What about Spider-Man makes it inherently better? Looking at it simply on paper, Transformers has an edge in several respects. It's a crazier ride than Spider-Man, taking you directly into a war zone between giant robots. It's got better 3D effects and it makes better sense of some of the gags Spider-Man used. It has Optimus Prime thanking for for saving the world, and I don't care who you are, that's something everyone wants. Its use of flying effects is even more thrilling and convincing than Spider-Man. But it's missing something, too.

Transformers and Spider-Man

Theme Park Insider

First, let's look at Spider-Man alongside its flashy new sister, Transformers: The Ride.

Although Spider-Man's 2012 visual upgrade has helped close the gap between the two rides in many respects, Spidey is still an intentionally cartoonier experience. I often decry tooniness in my articles, but it just works like gangbusters in Spider-Man. Spidey has an immediacy lacking from the usual take-you-inside-the-cartoon visual vocabulary employed successfully by, say, Roger Rabbit's Car-Toon Spin (which it vaguely resembles). Some of this can be attributed to Universal Creative's successful adaptation to the tone of comic books and pulp adventure serials: crazy action with a healthy seasoning of sarcasm. The villains in Spider-Man are absurd: instead of simply trying to kill you for discovering their secret hideout they take time to terrorize you with various objects (electrical plugs, pumpkin bombs, tongues) in a way that makes nearly no sense at all but adds to the sense of lighthearted menace. This same ride wouldn't work with Batman villains.

Transformers, by contrast, almost takes itself too seriously - a trait inherited from the unfortunate Michael Bay movies. Even the fairly likable Transformer we ride in throughout the experience, Evac, could stand to develop a sense of humor. In the preshow video Evac reprimands us: "You can either thank or blame me later!" and on the ride mostly offers helpful advice like "We've gotta get you out of this city!" or "Reverse thrusters! Full power!"

"We've been hit!"

Evac: no Paul Frees, to be sure.

The primary villain of Transformers, Megatron, admittedly not historically noted for being any fun, spends most of the ride playing Rodan to Optimus Prime's Godzilla while occasionally taking time out to swat at scaffolding or pull riders off a building. It's clear that Transformers expects us to take the Megatron threat fairly seriously, and the result is a bit less fun. If anything Transformers makes it clear that Megatron could kill all of the riders very easily, which somewhat undermines the credibility of his threat level when we miraculously survive every encounter. These Decepticons don't seem to be very good at what they do. Because Spider-Man's villains still behave according to the absurd established rules of comic books villains they, paradoxically, seem to pose more of a threat to riders.

And speaking of that threat level, perhaps there's something to be said for rides where we, the riders, are intent on escaping a bad situation rather than charging forward into it. Theme park attractions from the very start have used the "something-goes-horribly-wrong" cliche, and perhaps the theme park default situation of eluding cackling witches, mummies, dinosaurs, snakes, and gorillas is so deeply ingrained that we respond to it warmly but unconsciously. Transformers makes us heroes in a war zone and instead of attempting to escape the Spidey villains we constantly, recklessly endanger ourselves inside Evac. This unconscious lineage perhaps makes is easier to feel invested, and thus alarmed in Spider-Man, which may contribute to the sense of its greater resonance.

I think it's also fair to say that Transformers relies on screens much more than Spider-Man does, which is a difficult thing to try to quantify. Both attractions use 3D screens to drive their narrative, but I think the overall difference has to do with the kind of screens and their staging. Transformers' screen-based scenes tend to involve simulated motion; you careen down a busy street, go through the belly of a robot, and fly sideways through a skyscraper. Spider-Man, largely, uses the 3D screens as extensions of sets to do things that can't be done with sets; exploding walls, endless warehouses, city landscapes. We could call this a "Cinerama" approach vs the "Virtual Back Wall" approach. There are exceptions, of course: Transformers' first few screens are indeed virtual rear walls and Spiderman in its last few minutes as the SCOOP ride vehicle careens through midair is practically entirely screen-based. Yet I think the fact that there is indeed a lot of set-based stuff in Spider-Man is what makes the difference, even if subconsciously. You can still take your glasses off in Spider-Man and still see plenty of stuff.

Transformers is, essentially, a ride through CG action scene where I'm more comfortable calling Spider-Man a dark ride with 3D elements which do things normal rides can't do. Appropriately, Transformers is a far crazier ride experience. When Spider-Man was new it seemed that no ride would ever outdo it for hyperactivity, but both Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey and Transformers are so crazily tightly paced that even modern audiences accustomed to the vomit-cam find them overstimulating.

Along with Transformers' approximation of 2010's cinematic language, it comes with some unique moments which, to me, pose challenges to the "reality" of the theme park experience. Theme parks have always been predicated on the idea that crazy things are happening to you; you survive the burning building, escape the Haunted House, defeat the monster, dodge the rolling boulder. As a result most successful theme park attractions aim for a degree of realism, often manifest as detail. You feel as if you have been transported to exotic environments without the "mediating influence" of a camera lens or motion picture screen.

"I learned this from Hobgoblin!"

Transformers twice violates the "reality" of the theme park experience and emulates the movie experience, and while I can't say that the result "breaks" the illusion, it is a very odd, unique moment in theme park history. Twice the ride goes into slow motion - exactly as it would were we watching an actual Michael Bay movie in our local AMC multiplex. The action and sound slows down to allow us to register a crucial detail, before speeding back up.

In others words, for a few moments we're no longer doing crazy things like we see in movies, we're doing things that only the motion picture camera can do. This is a new level of collusion between dimensional space and cinema space. Of course there's always been a number of Disney attractions which use not just film language, but film itself to carry an effect. Let's point accusing fingers at Soarin' Over California as Disney's most obvious offender here: we start off pretending we're going to be hang gliding (on a bench), but once we're up in the air - surprise! - it's a movie. And not only that, but it has dramatic music and editing which is central to the whole darn effect of the thing. Soarin' allows us to fly through a travelogue. There's no pretense that it's really an accurate hang gliding simulation.

So it's not as if Universal is "guilty" of imposing cinema rules on its patrons while Disney is "innocent". But I must admit that the slow motion segments of Transformers trouble me, as a theme park partisan and as a cinema person, more than I expect they should. To me it seems that these brief segments (and they are brief, a couple seconds each) require us to make a conceptual leap about the limits of our own abilities than I'm unaccustomed to making in a theme park, which further contributes to my sense that the fairly straightforward Spider-Man is a better and more convincing experience.

Spider-Man and the Complexities of Illusion

Wikipedia

Let's start digging a bit deeper into The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man, and I'd like to begin by talking about its queue.

Islands of Adventure largely has superb queues, and with the addition of Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey is probably the best theme park in the United States for narrative queueing experiences, but it's important here to discuss exactly what having a "great queue" entails. I think the rubric for a great queue is a sliding scale relative to the value and duration of the ride which follows it, and the reason is because an elaborate queue unconsciously signals to a prospective rider that the ride which follows will be a special experience. A simple or crudely themed ride preceded by an elaborate queue will be perceived as a letdown, whereas the best queues link up harmoniously with the ride experience to create a true "first act". Indiana Jones Adventure and Forbidden Journey are two of the biggest, craziest rides ever, so their elaborate queues feel justified. The Little Mermaid ride at Magic Kingdom has a gorgeous facade and queue - better than the ride which follows, in fact. I've spoken to many tourists who felt let down by Mermaid because the queue set them up for an experience far better than the ride delivered. So clearly there is such a thing as "too elaborate a queue".

I think Spider-Man hits the sweet spot exactly. On first blush there isn't too much to it - especially compared to richly textural experiences like the Tower of Terror, but looks are deceiving at Spider-Man. To my eye, this queue is the only area of the "island" the attraction is situated in - Marvel Super Hero Island - where the conceit of "being in a comic book" is successfully carried off. There's a simplicity and directness to the visual treatment of this idea - the slightly weird, flat false doors, exaggerated perspectives, and monochromatic background "details" which convincingly fills in enough of the Daily Bugle to make it seem like a real functioning place while guiding the eye towards the queue video which should be the centerpiece of the experience.

Kongfrontation Queue - Charting UO

Queue videos are something of a dirty idea in Disney circles - just about the best thing I can say about Everest, for example, is that its queue sets up the ride on visuals alone - but overhead videos are a Universal tradition and Universal is especially good at creating them. The reason why Universal rides often (but not always) benefit from queue videos is because of Universal Creative's much more ambitious use of narrative in its attractions.

Disney and Walt Disney Imagineering spill a lot of digital ink about the "storytelling" of their attractions in promotional materials, but the fact is that Disney is just not very good at it. Disney theme park stories tend to break down into two categories of narrative: book report attractions and experiential narratives. Book report attractions are best typified by the new Little Mermaid dark ride at California Adventure and Magic Kingdom, which rely on a sense of participation and closure through familiarity with pop culture texts. Experiential attractions, which can have varying degrees of narrative involvement, are about experiences and places which happen to you as you travel through them, fabricating a new narrative as it unfolds about your experiences. Think of the Jungle Cruise, which can be said to be a story about our experiences in the jungle. Most Disney attractions can be located somewhere on a line that stretches between these two poles.

But when it comes down to the nitty gritty, Disney doesn't tell stories so much as set up situations and build environments, which is a different thing. This is why it's hard to quantify what Disney does so well using the limiting word "story", because most of the actual narrative experiences boil down to "you saw some weird things", or "we went fast".

Universal, on the other hand, has maintained more visible roots as a product of a motion picture company. Their California attraction is less a theme park than a movie studio tour that also has some rides. The vast majority of their attractions are based on some existing property and narrative. They are far more likely to use the "silver screen" as the dominant feature of their attractions. And in a way that Disney largely moved away from in defining their "house style" in the 1950s and 1960s, Universal is far more wed to the ongoing narrative structures of the Institutionalized Mode of Representation in American mainstream film.

It is, after all, a production studio.

Universal attractions use their queueing spaces to set up locations, characters, and ideas which you are then expected to mentally track as you move through the attraction to be able to make any sense of what happens. Some Universal attractions use Hitchcock's beloved "MacGuffin" to drive their events - the Allspark in Transformers, E.T.'s flight home, an ancient curse in The Mummy. If you don't pay attention to what's being said in the various preshow rooms of Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey, then the experience makes literally no sense (to be fair, it only barely makes sense if you do).

Look at the Men in Black attraction at Universal Studios Florida. Taking a cue from the film, it presents itself as a remnant of the 1964 New York World's Fair, drawing on the theme park audience's familiarity with the Carousel of Progress at Magic Kingdom. The introductory room is a ludicrous dusty ugly jumble of stained glass panels complete with a fake attraction entrance to "The Universe and You". As the Sherman Brothers-esque soundtrack swells, then breaks, the attraction is revealed to be a front for a MIB training facility. After an appropriately crazy adventure battling aliens, our memory is "wiped" and the cars return to an unload station... for the fictional "Universe and You" attraction, advocating the idea that aliens, in fact, do not exist. This is all very clever but does not even overshadow or overlap the ride itself, which greatly bests WDI's efforts to create a "ride-thru shooting gallery" attraction. But you can miss the whole thing if you didn't pay attention in the queue and foyer areas.

Spider-Man hits a sweet spot in this case as a great deal of the concepts conveyed in the pre-show are the sort of "narrative housekeeping" that plagues all theme park attractions of its era: the danger of the situation, why "tourists" would be allowed to do this, etc. But the main plot points are conveyed time and again on screen after screen: a group of Super Villains have a green levitation ray and have ransomed the Statue of Liberty. Everything else we need to know is conveyed on the attraction's marquee.

And as for the always-finicky plot point of sending "wet behind the ears tourists" into the seat of danger, Spider-Man here has use of the anti-heroic, absurd J. Jonah Jameson, and his actions are actually in character. We may wonder if Buzz Lightyear would send a group of new recruits into battle against Zurg, but for Jameson it's just another day at the office. Much of the entertainment value generated in the queue comes from the dissonance between his absurd bluster and the obvious danger riders are placed in; at one point he's even seen placing a call for another group of tourists!

Spider-Man queue details with "background fill" paint

I find the rest of the queue to be uncommonly carefully thought out. Ordinarily the "overhead TV screens" method of storytelling grates against the basic situation presented in a theme park, where it rarely makes sense that so many televisions would appear in such an area. Would NEST have quite so many built in video screens as they seem to? But if there's any place where constant narration and visual input of events happening just outside the building in a danger zone make any sense, it's in a news room, and that's where Spider-Man puts us.

Spidey also plays some fun tricks with the state of the Spider-Man "franchise" circa 1999. The queue itself is presented in an elaborated version of the flat facade style of the rest of Marvel Superhero Island, an aesthetic more or less invented (fairly unsuccessfully, let's owe up to it) for the area. The ride itself however has always been presented in a unique CGI look which to me fairly successfully bridges the gap between a flat drawn image and what we would expect to see if we were actually confronted by these comic book characters. In between comes the cartoon.

"Remember me, kids?"

The queue videos are presented in the style of what was then the dominant method most American kids would've been exposed to Spider-Man: through the Saturday morning cartoon. In 1999, this is how we would've expected Spider-Man to look. Because all we see of Spider-Man until he lands on the hood of the SCOOP is through a TV screen, of course he looks the same as he did on TV. When we see drawings of Spider-Man or J. Jonah Jameson in the queue or on the ride, they're drawn in what was then the modern Marvel comic book style, befitting representations of characters in 2D media. The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man rallies all of these media representations of the same character as a way of preparing us for very aggressive encounters with them in the more immediate environment of the dark ride. All of the "faces" of Spider-Man collapse into one face when we finally come nose-to-nose with him.

Spider-Man's meta-textuality is clever and sets it apart not only from everything else in Islands of Adventure, but practically all of the other "enter a fictional world" attractions. It creates a unique Spider-Man that's related and complimentary to but not identical to any other Spider-Man experience; in this way it's fortunate that Universal got this ride built before the motion picture adaptations began to roll out in 2002. Transformers is greatly hampered by being wed to the style and association with the Michael Bay movies which inspired it, although Universal Creative did go to great lengths to make the ride comprehensible to those only versed in the 80's cartoon. Transformers is still affected and informed by a specific source material in a way that Spider-Man escapes. This may account for the increasing sense that Spider-Man is a more timeless ride experience.

What is it that makes a ride timeless over any of the other exhibits and rattle-around trips that drift through theme and amusement parks over the decades? After all, at first it's hard to tell. Haunted Mansion was met with mediocre reviews, Space Mountain and Indiana Jones Adventure caused enough injuries to require modifications, Back to the Future and Jaws broke down constantly, and Forbidden Journey courted controversy with restrictive seats and over-the-top intensity. At the time it seemed like these public dramas would never go away, but time heals all wounds. What is it that makes a theme park ride a lasting classic as opposed to an attraction of its time?

Or, to turn it around, what makes a ride last longer than, say, a popular film? When it was new the big selling point of Spider-Man was the fact that it was in 3D, but 3D is no longer the selling point it was and the lines continue. We can watch 3D movies at home now if we wish but the market for that product has been steadily imploding.

I think the thing that the great classic theme park experiences provide doesn't have a lot to do with the property or the concept or even the details, since time and again those have shown to be variable and open to endless interpretation and variation: it has to do with providing the concept of a "pleasurable illusion".

It isn't that it's a convincing illusion, although it can be, as in the Hall of Presidents. It's that it has to only be convincing enough for us to suspend our belief and pretend we're fooled. Momentarily, our adult credulity dissolves and we fly over London, or with Harry Potter, or slip amongst pirates unnoticed. The intense emotional reaction that sometimes results is as much from the attraction as it is our recognition and joy at feeling unburdened of rational doubt. We know very well we're not actually flying over London, but we want to feel that we are, and we cry.

Spider-Man is the best example of this dynamic in the Universal canon. We know very well that we're looking at 3D images on huge screens but our awareness of this only heightens our appreciation for the cleverness of the effect. This makes the effects into a sort of mental game, and so when those pleasurable illusions defy our expectations in noticeable accumulations of details the result reinforces and flatters our attention.

In a way, The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man gets better the more attention you pay to the details that reinforce the "pleasurable illusion". There's the initial projections that create the shadows of scuttling rats or Spidey swinging on the rooftops above us, not 3D projections but ones that extend and reveal space. 3D characters frequently appear to "stand" on dimensional set pieces, to the extent that some riders think there's more screens in the ride than there are. There's fairly complex spatial cues which go by nearly unnoticed but reveal the extent of the care that went into the conception of the ride. At the start of the ride, Electro notices riders and leaps up onto a catwalk; the cars race under the catwalk to escape. Listen and you'll hear Electro running above the car before he drops down in front to threaten the SCOOP with a high power cable. That's the sort of easy to miss detail that is highly fetishized in Disney circles.

The greatest scene in Spider-Man, where the "pleasurable illusions" are at their most convincing, is the Hobgoblin vignette where the flying villain lobs pumpkin bombs at riders. Thanks to careful considerations of perspective and set design, one of the bombs appears to detonate into the support structure of a bridge, resulting in an actual explosion as the bridge begins to collapse on top of riders. The gag is masterpiece of timing and design, and with nowhere else to go from there, the ride immediately proceeds to its aerial climax.

This is why, fifteen years later, there's nothing quite as great as Spidey landing on the hood of our attraction vehicle to warn us, not even the similar moment in Transformers. It's one of those things that seminally breaks the rules of theme park attractions, like seating ghosts beside us or sending our boat unexpectedly backwards. You can only break a rule once, and so Spider-Man immediately sets us up to expect a new and exciting experience. It doesn't let us down. The ride is a masterpiece.

My California Adventure

Part One: Back from the West

It's become something of a tradition on this blog to wrap up the year around the holidays with what I call the Year End Report, an annual accounting and grading of the resort overall which gives me an opportunity to assess recent additions and do some old-fashioned proactive journalism. Longtime readers of my blog may have noticed that I missed my 2012 round up, and I'm probably going to miss the 2013 one too, which this entry will seek to account for. It may seem strange that, right on the doorstep of the opening of the first phase of Magic Kingdom's snazzy Fantasyland area, this blog should go silent. It wasn't really planned that way, you see, I haven't been in Florida.

I've now returned from a year in California and, yes, Disneyland. Over the years I've worn a number of hats as a Disney specialist: I began as a Walt Disney World tourist, became a Vacation Club member, followed by a Cast Member, and then an Annual Passholder. I've also been at Disneyland as a tourist, a day tripper, and now for the past year an Annual Passholder too. As a result I think I'm in a unique position to speak about Disneyland, as a transplanted East Coast kid and then transplanted back. This article will seek to discuss some of my experiences and thoughts about Disneyland from the other side of the coin. Theme parks change when you get to know them well. Magic Kingdom changed for me as a Cast Member and local, and Disneyland has changed too. No longer the exotic other, I've spent enough time in that park for the last year to think of it as a pleasant hangout and good friend and less as a destination or ideal.

So what is that "Disneyland Difference" you hear people (locals) extolling?  I'd like to take a few minutes to cover the things that stood out most vividly to me, and also some things I'd love to see Walt Disney World start emulating.

Perhaps the thing that struck me most impressively as a local was that I finally understood the one component of Disneyland's appeal to Southern California residents that cannot be appreciated as a tourist: the sense of difference. Los Angeles has been a big city for a long time. You can pull up photos of almost any neighborhood from 1940 on and see a lot of the things you see in LA today: tall buildings, wide streets, pollution. Inside Disneyland, you see almost entirely things you don't see elsewhere in the area: cute, tiny buildings. Structures made of wood, even logs. Spreading trees. Rivers with boats on them. Castles. This is the secret extra ingredient that Disneyland has that Walt Disney World does not. By the time you get into any theme park in Florida, you've already been brought so far down the rabbit hole of the fantasy world that it's not really a huge shock to step onto Main Street. But when you have to drive down I-5 in bottleneck traffic, park in a concrete bunker, then schlep across a mall from 1998, stepping onto that tiny, cute, intimate Main Street is like a shot in the arm. I'm at Disneyland. It makes it that much harder to leave at the end of the night, knowing that you'll be driving back through an urban hell scape to get to wherever home is. It makes the return that much more satisfying.

Los Angeles in Walt's own time

Southern California contributes other things to Disneyland, too. One key item is the weather. Most of the time, when the sun sets in Florida the humidity will linger into the night. Although Magic Kingdom is very beautiful at night, there is less of a sense of the extreme difference that you get at Disneyland, and that difference is just plain due to the location.

Southern California tends to start her days cool, heat up quite a lot during the day, then cool off again at night. The effect of this on your day at Disneyland is seismic. Magic Kingdom's crowds tend to peak in the afternoon, then taper off to be fewer and fewer as the night wears on. At Disneyland, after a period of a few hours in the late afternoon, the heat subsides, the sun sets, the lights come on, and the entire park seems to regenerate into a new form. By 7 pm most of Magic Kingdom is seeing her last busy crowds for the day, but Disneyland is just getting started. Disneyland's Main Street, with its real gas lanterns, tiny size and intimate scale, or Fantasyland, with her cute architecture and close quarters, become at night maybe my favorite places on earth.

It seems like it shouldn't be a huge deal, and I bet many tourists never notice as they charge from attraction to attraction on their itinerary, but I really appreciated it on my casual visits.  It makes it possible to spend many, many hours inside the park - far beyond the two or three I'll spend inside a Walt Disney World park before needing to get out of the frying pan.

And once you've spent an entire day at Disneyland repeatedly, one thing that really makes a difference becomes the food. Although Epcot provides a rough equivalent in terms of quality, selection and availability, Disneyland simply kicks the rest of Walt Disney World around the block in this regard. As a Central Florida local, I've become accustomed to eating in a chain cafe like Panera before venturing into any of the WDW theme parks or, if I must eat at Walt Disney World, absconding to a resort. While the Florida property offers a great array of expensive sit-down meals, Disneyland is so full of good food that it's easier to list the places not to eat than the places to eat.

This is a source of some controversy, but I think there is just no reason for Walt Disney World to operate their food service the way they do except for laziness and cheapness. Even Columbia Harbor House has fallen into the doldrums and the rather decent Pecos Bill specialty burger from 2009 is hardly worth the price anymore, having shrunk to 60% of its size. WDW has effectively instituted a two-tier dining system, where the options inside a theme park involve generic American fare being readily available for a fairly predictable price, or, for a higher price point, going right up to table service. There is no middle ground. Disneyland has burger joints - The Hungry Bear, the Village Haus, and the Tomorrowland Terrace - but practically everywhere else offers above average food for good prices. Defenders have long claimed that WDW patrons won't buy anything else, but the ludicrous lines outside the new restaurant in Magic Kingdom's Fantasyland where not a burger may be found put the lie to all of that.

I find it impossible to believe that a place like, say, the Plaza Pavilion / Noodle Station boondoggle between Tomorrowland and Main Street couldn't attract a good crowd each day with a tasteful refurbishment, a new order station, and a menu of good sandwiches, salads, and soups. Or that the lovely Tortuga Tavern in Caribbean Plaza is incapable of drawing a crowd which is why it's closed. That's reductionist thinking, where the effect becomes the cause. Making better food at Walt Disney World takes being willing to open a place, think outside the box, and keep it open until it catches on.

Disneyland also uses real plates and silverware in many counter service locations. No, you're not eating off Spode - they're decent high-impact colorful plates and the silverware is that awkwardly heavy kind you're used to experiencing at a place like Golden Corral. Still, once you've gotten used to getting a nice fresh salad on a good solid plate with a real fork, paying the same price for Walt Disney World's version in a disposable bowl just feels like a cheap-out. Most Walt Disney World restaurants still have washing machines to service those plates and cups they no longer use, and again, this is the way it is supposed to be. One wonders how much waste Disney is creating by skimping on the reusable plates at take-out locations. Disneyland also still buses their tables - when you finish your meal, you just walk away, and Disney's attentive staff cleans them for you. It sounds small on paper, but isn't Disney supposed to be about the details?

Lens Art by Tom Bricker: Food Stylist

Here's a story for you. In 2005 at Magic Kingdom, the long misbegotten Plaza Pavilion was reworked as the Tomorrowland Terrace Noodle Station. The Noodle Station provided fresh wok meals made to order. The most popular item was the Beef and Broccoli. Because the Beef and Broccoli was so popular, waits for the dish became very long. And because Magic Kingdom didn't budget to rework the Plaza Pavilion's antiquated service window corral arrangement, the wait was very congested and guests, naturally, complained.

What did Walt Disney World do? They removed the Beef and Broccoli from the menu. That was their solution. And so people stopped going to the Noodle Station and eventually it closed. That's the sort of thinking that leads to the poor food situation we have now. It's a true story.

The other thing that Disneyland has that Magic Kingdom is much, much poorer without is live music.

Yes, Magic Kingdom has a big stage show and some strolling entertainment groups - acts like the Banjo Brothers in Frontierland or the Dapper Dans are great - but Disneyland really uses live music like a battery to energize entire portions of their theme park. The jazz bands in New Orleans Square and the rock music in Tomorrowland really affect the entire area they're in and keep these areas of the theme park feeling lively late into the night. The secret here is - big surprise - live music attracts people, and people do things like go on rides and buy food. I bet Magic Kingdom might be surprised what, say, a Dixeland Bandstand in Frontierland or a drumming group in Adventureland may do to keep those areas of the park that seem to empty out after nightfall feeling active.

Some wags, especially those based at the Disney HQ in Burbank, regularly opine through online "sources" (mouthpieces) that the problem here is that good entertainment simply isn't available in poor out of the way Central Florida, but this is pure west coast elitism. Yes, it is true, Disneyland benefits from being located just south of the entertainment mecca of the country, but Florida isn't so bad off. Back in 1971, Disney imported talent en mass because there really was nothing in Central Florida, but how many generations ago was that? Tampa offers a lively rock and Latin music community, Orlando has some great clubs, and a full range of specialty groups. How much willful ignorance does it take to believe that the talent simply isn't out there?

This is really Disneyland's ace in the hole: great food that isn't hard to get and live music. These were priorities of the Walt Disney Company until the late 90s, when Eisner began to hack as much Entertainment Equity out of Magic Kingdom as the park could stand in the fallout of the disastrous opening of Animal Kingdom, which failed to grow attendance in any meaningful way. During the late 90s and early 2000s, a lot of tourists who had been long time visitors stopped going, the new visitors didn't know what they were missing, and people forgot that it was ever like that at all. Disneyland never cut their entertainment, and the balance of the park still very much works. Again, this is the way it is supposed to be.

The rest of the Disneyland experience is really the icing. Yes, there are lots of locals, and yes, they are often annoying. Disneyland has a cult-like devotion of people who began going when they were still in the cradle, and these groups descend at night to engage in Rocky Horror-like rituals. Tomorrowland, for example, has a rotating stock of bands who alternate on weekends, and each band has its own non-overlapping fan base who will arrive to see their group perform. Then there are those who arrive just to see Fantasmic!, or World of Color. Recently, roving bands of "Social Clubs" - whose members dress like Orange County bikers with Disney patches - have been causing a stir  amongst Disneyland employees and visitors alike.

This is not new behavior. Sometime watch Disneyland After Dark and pay attention to the teenagers in the Carnation Gardens bandstand near the end - observe how they're all very much clearly engaging in a practiced ritual. The band leader even asks how many have been to the dance before, and it's most of the crowd. That was in 1962. As a East Coast native to whom a place like a Disney theme park never lost its hint of the exotic, I find this all very bizarre, but then I have my own rituals in each park, as do many repeat guests, including tourists. If they want to watch the band play and I want to take ride 762 on the Haunted Mansion, then the nice thing is that Disneyland has room for both of us.

The final thing that bears some repeating, although it's been very well covered online elsewhere, is the park across the street - Disney('s?) California Adventure. I am not one of those who ever felt that DCA was a bad park, although it was and remains very insubstantial compared to Disneyland - but then, of course, most things do. But Imagineering really did a number on the park, and the importance of the proximity of the Disney castle park and a really, really good second gate park is hard to overstate.

I'm not happy with everything in California Adventure, but the stuff that's good is really good. The Buena Vista Street entrance is the first time in a generation that Disney has totally nailed a park's "introductory statement" and it frankly makes the charming Hollywood and Sunset section of the Hollywood Studios in Florida look like amateur night. The Cathay Circle Restaurant at the end of the street is the best meal I've ever had inside a theme park, for what the opinion of someone who takes photos of theme park street lamps is worth. And DCA's marvelous "Golden State" section - the nice wooded part to the right - has really benefited from a conversion to a "vintage" theme.

Even with an inadequately themed boardwalk section, a Hollywood area that needs a lot of work and the much-touted new Cars area which, impressive as it is, does nothing for me, California Adventure is simply the best "Disney second gate" currently operating in the United States. Animal Kingdom is still unique and beautiful, but Epcot is starting to become a lost cause and the sum total of DCA tramples the Hollywood Studios theme park into dust. Ride for ride, meal for meal, and park for park, Disneyland's two parks offer as much to as Walt Disney World's four, and in many cases Disneyland simply does it better. And it's been a treat to be near that, if nothing else.

--

Part Two: Investigations in the Field ~ Anecdotes and Observations

That Darn Song
Now, I'm one of the very few who prefers to Florida Small World to the California original. Some of that may be simply nostalgia, but I do think the Florida show is tighter, more thoughtfully arranged, and reaches its main point very gracefully, whereas Disneyland's is just all over the place. However, it wasn't until I had been on Disneyland's version dozens of times that I realized how crucial one single, easy to overlook element of the Florida version is, and it has to do with that song.

I've never understood the cult of Small World hate generated by that song. Small World is one of my very favorite attractions of all, in either version, and I highly suspect anyone objecting to an attraction advocating for World Peace on the basis of being slightly sentimental. Still, I think I finally understand that the disgust seems to stem from the California version and has spread East via the internet and other media from there.

The California version of the ride is closely related to the 1964 World's Fair version, which was designed, constructed and installed in under a year - a remarkable feat in any era. The main difference between the two is the addition of Mary Blair's simply stupendous facade, clock tower, and topiary garden. The ride enters and exits under the clock tower, so two tunnels have been added to the start and end of the ride. These additions bring a thirteen minute boat ride nearer to the seventeen minute mark - about as long as Pirates of the Caribbean, and longer if there is a backup at the exit, which there nearly always is.

The 1964 model of the ride was also constructed shortly before the time MAPO began to standardize the construction of animated parts and figures. As a result many of the scenery details and animals in the ride are clearly made of papier-mache and glitter, which makes the later 1990s additions to the ride easier to spot as they obviously don't fit in. Of course, this points towards the accelerated timetable of the construction of the Disneyland version, but this also is indicative of a somewhat seat-of-your-pants approach which spills over into all areas - including the music.

My appreciation of the fact that the 1971 version of Small World only uses the English version of the song in its final room was sharpened by months of riding the Disneyland version, where it is used literally everywhere. You hear it in the entrance tunnel - a shortened version, which uses only the refrain. You hear it again in the somewhat extended England section. It's heard yet again in the African section, a full version is heard in the long tunnel between the South America and Pacific Islands room, then a mermaid gets a solo version immediately afterwards. Since 2009 there has then been an America room after that and that's all before the very extended finale room, then an exit tunnel where the shortened, refrain-only version is again used. By the time you're sitting in a backup in the exit tunnel you've been listening to the English version of the minute-long song for over half of your very long ride.

In many ways the 1971 ride is almost instrumental - there's no vocals at all in the Africa or Pacific Islands sections and the vocals are spotty in the rooms where they do appear. I think this makes the ride much easier to enjoy, along with a snappy pace - a mere eight minutes. It sacrifices the weird and wild texture and crazy invention of the 1966 ride, but I think somebody was paying attention in the interval between 1966 and 1971 - the Florida version's Africa room not only sounds the same way the World's Fair room sounded, but just as in the World's Fair ride, the last thing you see before exiting the final room of the ride is a Cowboy and Indian. In Florida it's a powerful moment - by the time you reach them you've forgotten all about the US and the fact that it doesn't have a representative room while China and Russia do. The significance of this makes more sense if we think of Small World as Disney's response to the Cold War, and especially the Cuban Missile Crisis, which was still fresh in the mind of the world in 1964 and indeed in 1971.

In the 1966 Disneyland version, the Cowboy and Indian were restaged to appear midway through the Finale room, potentially weakening the ride's original message as a prayer of goodwill, which was possibly further weakened by the insertion of the America room in 2009. But the original point is still there in Florida, for those who want to see it, and now that we know that this staging was present in 1964 but altered in 1966, the 1971 version of this cowboy and Indian figure looks more like a restoration. I think it's significant that so much was changed between 1965 and 1971, and no matter which you prefer, it's worth looking at both as something that real thought was put into.

Oh yeah, and that song. Somebody clearly thought it was a little overdone long before the rise of the internet.

The Eye of Mara
Indiana Jones Adventure is one of those rides I could ride three times a day at Disneyland and not get sick of - the other two were Matterhorn and Pirates of the Caribbean, by the way. It's undoubtedly a bit oversold, especially to East Coast kids travelling West, but it's still terrific fun and, I think, very funny. I think of Indy as Tony Baxter's secret remake of Snow White's Scary Adventures - complete with an unstoppable adversary, a bunch of skeletons, a big rock that almost crushes you at the end, and a structure that's more frenzied and impressionistic than strictly literal.

A couple weeks ago there was a flap amongst the vocal AP culture about Indiana Jones Adventure. It related to changes introduced in the first scenes of the ride, where some snazzy new projection mapping was applied to the "Mara" idol at the start. This was greeted well; what caused the flap is that in their tinkering, WDI changed the "voice of Mara" sound effect.

Let me explain. The gag of the ride is that you, the rider, aren't supposed to look into the eyes of this big idol placed at the end of a hall, for reasons known only to designers of thrill rides and confusing South Asian deities. Originally, the fact that you had indeed broken this rule was signaled by a strobe light effect inside the eyes, followed by a stream of smoke emerging from them. This was never a terrific effect, but at least it was a visual indication of a key story point. As the years went on the effect became less and less reliable, and as a result the whole reason to send you bouncing around a dark ride became very difficult to comprehend.

In the 2013 version, the idol actually opens its eyes, changes its expression, then does some crazy projection stuff. In order to allow you to see this, the timing of the vehicles and the voice needed to be redone completely, to slow down and allow you to see the crazy projection stuff. As a result, the voice needed to be re-recorded anyway, which WDI did, while simultaneously trying to make better sense of the scene. The original Mara voice was the same low tone throughout, but the new version sounded welcoming at first, then angry when offended.

"Please place a delicious cake in my hands"

While the new effect was praised, the voice was splattered with tomatoes. Forum posts filled with angry comments, online petitions were formed - all of the usual things which occur when the internet is offended. Surprisingly, within ten days Disneyland responded and removed the new Mara lines - not restoring the original lines, but with new versions which sound very similar, and the brief uproar ended.

Was all of this a tempest in a teapot? Absolutely. Did I agree with all of the complaints? Obviously not. Do I think Disneyland did the right thing? Absolutely. While the changes did not impact my enjoyment of the ride, for many they did, and they made their opinions known, at Disneyland actually responded.

This is the sort of thing Walt Disney World can learn from - the dissatisfied customer of today is not the customer of tomorrow, no matter how small the slight, and maybe it's time for the Florida management team to start sweating some small stuff, too. Now let's be clear here - small stuff is not a two billion dollar tech roll out, an abbreviated show, or a new special effect, but it can be an audio track, a sign, a prop, or a meaningful detail. Perhaps the removal of an inappropriate piece of music from Liberty Square or the restoration of some audio to the Tiki Room. Perhaps more. I know that as much as I lament the loss of Horizons from EPCOT, it's really the accumulation of small stuff that bothers me most of all in the end, inside the theme park - a courtyard that was walled off, a bad music choice in a certain area, or the poor replacement of a classic sign. This is the sort of easy, cheap stuff that Walt Disney World should be more attentive to - and especially those guardians of traditions, the Imagineers. More than anything, Walt Disney World can take some time to let us longtime fans know that they watch our opinions as closely as they do our wallets, and the "Mara voice" flap is one example of Disneyland's ability to excel in this arena.

"Hello? A little assistance here??"

Send in the Gripes
Which is not to imply that Disneyland unilaterally does everything better than the kids back in Orlando. For example, not every attraction is in fantastic shape.

The Haunted Mansion is the poster child for this, looking increasingly grubby and worn out with each passing year. This is probably due to the popular Haunted Mansion Holiday overlay, which foists suspect decor on the venerable attraction for a quarter of a year. With two refurbishments a year scheduled, the Holiday overlay probably eats up a substantial portion of this facility's yearly budget, leaving the classic attraction with badly aligned projections, broken effects, and graveyard ghosts who are impossible to see through the gloom.

The Jungle Cruise was also subject to "improvements" in 2005 which were more in-name-only. The Disneyland version has always been a patched-together thing, and the 2005 effects were meant to bring a more obvious climax to the show in the form of a piranha attack. I've never been a big fan of the piranhas, but even worse was some meddling which changed the layout and staging of several scenes, especially the Sunken City, which came in the name of "naturalism". Marc Davis designed these scenes to make more visual sense than actual sense, but the new versions lack any sense of guiding the spectator's eyes and the river simply looks empty and poorly staged. Many of the animals along the Jungle river have painted and peeling paint, and a crocodile figure intended to be swatted at by a gorilla has now been placed to pop out of the water directly at the boats - leaving the gorilla to swat at a floating box with some plastic bananas on it. At least they have a nice queue?

And, yes, then there's the parking. If you are a tourist, Disneyland is supremely friendly to your needs - everything is right there within walking distance. If you are a local, you're going to be parking in either a big parking garage or lot and being bussed in. If you don't want to ride a bus or a tram, then it's a very long walk to or from the park - longer than one any tourist staying in any of the nearby hotels will ever make.

This is extended fallout from the late 90s, when Disneyland had a gang problem - no, a for real, actual gangs would protect their "territory" on either side of Tomorrowland or make out with their girlfriends behind Big Thunder Mountain problem. In those days the park sat just on the other side of a parking lot alongside Katella and an annual pass cost under $90. One of the big reasons why Disney arranged the "Disneyland Resort" expansion in the way that they did was to enclose Disneyland, California Adventure, and their three hotels in as much of a "box" as they could. If you arrive at Disneyland via I-5 north - ie from Los Angeles, Santa Monica, the San Fernando Valley, LAX or Bob Hope Airport - you're routed directly into a parking garage without ever seeing Anaheim. It's not quite Walt Disney World but it is pretty hermetic.

Proof that somebody had to design it!

The other reason why parking is a problem is because Disney expected to be servicing mostly tourists arriving in a full car instead of Passholders arriving one at a time in individual cars back when all of this was being planned in the mid-90s. Compounding the problem, plans to demolish the Disneyland Hotel and what became the Paradise Pier Hotel and situate parking in a logical location were "value engineered" out of existence, placing the main parking structure in a location that never would have been chosen. Instead of fixing the long-term problematic layout that grew out of Disneyland's initial construction, the "Resort Area" highlighted these problems. No wonder long-time Annual Passholders were fond of remarking for over a decade that they preferred the parking lot to California Adventure.

And, yes, in the past few years Disneyland has begun to suffer from the very same malady that sucked so much of the character out of Walt Disney World in the late 90s. Main Street USA's west block was reconfigured, and the resulting shops are more "Cheesecake Factory" than "Disneyland". The historic Carnation Plaza Gardens were converted to sell Princess merchandise, albeit very beautifully. As part of California Adventure's simply superb Buena Vista Street area, WDI put together very evocative prop windows filled with vintage and historically significant items, which lasted mere weeks until somebody in management realized that this space can be used to sell yet more Disney stuff. Currently filled with circa-2010 potholders and glowering children mannequins, most of the Buena Vista Street windows are now indistinguishable from those found alongside World of Disney a few hundred feet away.

Andy Castro

Most disheartening to me is what is happening in New Orleans Square, the true themed design heart of the park. Designed to house cute shops dotted along quiet sun splashed courtyards, most of the shops are now indistinguishable from those anywhere else in the park. Worse, they're all being squished together - the Royal Courtyard, my personal favorite, has been closed off to make it only accessible from inside the two adjoining shops, as if guests must be corralled directly towards registers instead of being trusted to browse through shops at their leisure. The area has been given over to Pirate merchandise sales and a tarp has been strung overhead, ruining the view of the upper reaches of this area - ie, making the whole reason to have a courtyard pointless. The Disney Gallery, previously one of the best spots in any theme park, has become the exclusive Dream Suite and is now off limits. The Gallery was exiled to Main Street, where it was simply not the same, and sales suffered. It's now been killed off by the displacement of the Disneyana shop, and relegated to a few square feet of wall space in the corner of the Mr. Lincoln lobby. Even the charming Gephetto Toy Shop in Fantasyland is now history.

Of course the internet is now roiling with debate over the impending loss of the Court des Anges at the heart of New Orleans Square, to be made over into an off-limits lobby for an expanded Club 33, the $7,000-a-year "Gentleman's Club" above the streets of New Orleans Square. This is especially bad news because the Court des Anges is literally the defining example of Disney's attention to detail, so well known and beloved that it has been the site of proposals, family photos, and rituals for decades. Disney themselves promoted it as an example of what sets them apart in the 1981 annual report (left). While I understand that Disneyland stands to make a great deal of money by expanding the Club, turning the entire upper section of New Orleans Square - the most defining feature of the defining section of the defining theme park of the world - into a warren of rooms for Millionaires-Only just reeks of bad faith.

Actually a Museum
Despite being located out there for over a year, I actually did very little writing about Disneyland in my year - just this one photo essay from last November. I took some videos and photos, but mostly I spent a long time getting on Disneyland's wavelength, absorbing it as totally as possible. Similar to my "Shrines of the Magic Kingdom" piece, I got very much in tune with certain areas that simply pop with everything great about theme parks.

There's the New Orleans Square Railroad Station and French Market, where one is directly between two of the greatest attractions ever built, and good food and live music is readily available. Simply sitting and watching the Mark Twain take her last trips of the night while the sun slips down behind the Haunted Mansion is my idea of paradise.

In California Adventure there's the Redwood Creek area, wedged between a raft ride and a hotel but which is replete with bubbling brooks, rushing waterfalls, lush pine and even a nature trail up through the mountain, where rafts crash into mine shafts where bats-eyes pierce the darkness and hot springs gently mist the water's surface. It's the one area of DCA that was perfect when the park was new, and although the park has a lot more great places today, it's still the one nearest to my heart.

Then there's the spot in Fantasyland where tea cups spin underneath Chinese lanterns, the Monorail glides by overhead, Matterhorn bobsleds splash into Alpine lakes and boats depart into Monstro's mouth all in the same little spot. John Hench spoke a lot about making theme parks look welcoming, active. Although elbow room is tight, sitting in this area for a minute or an hour is rewarding.

After years of not "getting it" the past year has made me a devoted Disneyland Hotel fan, and as sad as it was to lose Jack Wrather's remarkable Horseshoe Falls, the fact is that it's the only place in the world right now to find Trader Sam's, the best little thing Disney's done in forever. A potent combination of mixed drinks and themed design nirvana, especially for a former Jungle Cruise skipper like me, Sam's is an escape inside the escape - after an hour in its perpetual twilight where the sounds of vintage Jack Wagner music selections play, it's shocking to stumble outside and find oneself in 2013.

Then there's Snow White Grotto, especially at night, which is one of those places that's so perfect that I'm disappointed that Disney cloned it for Tokyo. And given my list above and article above that, I probably don't have to state my love of the Court des Anges, the Blue Bayou right along the water, or the top room inside the Sleeping Beauty Castle Walkthrough.

Even if a year was not long enough to extinguish my love of those places, I don't regret having returned because I do feel like I now know that little extra indescribable thing that Disneyland has and Walt Disney World lost: Disneyland is a museum.

Moreso than nearly any other theme park, Disneyland is replete with weird little details that simply are not repeatable. There's the petrified tree in Frontierland, which not even Walt knew what to make of. There's Lafitte's Anchor in New Orleans Square, which was there by the Golden Horseshoe in 1955 and still warns us not to believe everything we read. There's the replica of the Capitol building made by some guy in the 30s and the displays about vintage fire fighting below the apartment where Walt Disney slept. There's Snow White Grotto, an accident of history, and a bronzed Midget Autopia car below the first Disney monorail track. Everywhere you look there's eccentric touches, weird displays, educational plaques and reminders of the past. Everywhere you look, the attitudes of previous generations have left marks for us to gaze and ponder. Although Disney goes to great length to deny it, this is what museums are.

It's that chill of recognition that I've gotten standing at the foot of the Washington Monument or inside the Smithsonian, that electric spark between you and relevant history. It's very much alive at Disneyland. This is where Steve Martin watched Wally Boag and learned comic timing, right there is where Walt Disney cracked wise with the mayor of New Orleans, over there is where Marc Davis rode a mine train and changed theme design history by not liking it. Magic Kingdom is a darn good theme park, but Disneyland is a national treasure, and every student of themed design, or history, or urban planing, or entertainment art needs to see it, and absorb it, and experience it fully.

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See more videos like the one above at my YouTube page.