Harold's Lost World of Snow

"It will be going the same speed it always has, but it will seem faster." - John Hench, Disneyland Line, December 1977

In 2003, I took my first trip to Disneyland, and Disneyland is one of those places that rewires the way you think. Besides absolutely taking my head off and stuffing it back on in a new way thanks to their incredible Pirates of the Caribbean - still my favorite ride ever - I discovered one of the great loves of my life: the Matterhorn Bobsleds.

I've spent a long time thinking about the Matterhorn, and a long time riding it, and it's one of those rides where I find my ardor for the experience cannot be contained by a logically structured essay. I suspect many folks are the same way about certain things: they can't say why they like it so much, but they do. I probably have never loved a roller coaster more than I love the Matterhorn, which says a lot about my priorities.

For one, comfort isn't one of them. The Matterhorn was rough in 2003, and after installing new bobsleds apparently made out of pottery and saran wrap in 2012, it got rougher. Those 70s Arrow Development sleds didn't seem to sit as low to the track and had better shock absorption, but the 2012 bobsleds are like a gigantic speaker pushing vibrations right up into your posterior. I haven't really cared; I've kept riding the thing, my feet pushed into the nose of the car, my hands gripping the handle bars, body tense and ready to absorb the pain.

I do it not because the Matterhorn is a great rollercoaster, or even because it's a landmark roller coaster. The Matterhorn, along with the 1975 Space Mountain, shakes you like a rag doll, which modern coaster enthusiasts absolutely do not like. They prefer their terror to come from drops and g forces, not being rocked around like a dead cat in a barrel being sent over Niagara Falls. As I said, I don't much care for roller coasters. I love the Matterhorn not at all because it's a coaster, but because it's an amazing experience, and there's only one of them in the world.

It's hard to say how much I would have liked the 1959 Matterhorn, with its hollow interior. What can be said is that the decision to enclose a roller coaster inside of an artificial mountain is one of those Walt Disney ideas which has become so ubiquitous in our culture that it is almost impossible to imagine a world where it does not exist. I'm fairly certain Walt got the idea from the Rutschebanen at Tivoli, a sort of scenic railway that dashes in and out of a scenic alpine mountain (with a fake cow in a field on top!). But as usual at Disneyland, the scale of the effort and the decision to combine it with a world famous peak made all the difference. The Matterhorn turned the idea of a fiberglass mountain into a genre, and Space Mountain would make it into an institution.

There is also just something about the other-worldlyness of the Matterhorn that works in some impossible to articulate way. The way it rises up and hooks with the little shadow just under its peak added by Fred Joerger - the way it hangs there against the hazy California sky, seemingly always further away than it really is. You can walk all the way around it, something you cannot do with any other stateside Disney mountain. That fact, and its central location, transforms the Matterhorn into something that exists for the pleasure of everyone, even those who do not ride. This is landmark design for pleasure, and it's been repeated endlessly since - I'm certain that the size and dreamy unreality of the Matterhorn is the basis for the height and effect of Cinderella Castle in Florida, for instance.

And yet all of that is literally just on the surface, what was put there in 1959. What I really love is the 1978 version, which in my opinion is an absolute stone classic in how to perfectly structure a themed experience, and do it so simply it's almost subliminal.

Storytelling in three dimensions is hard, and even harder because it rarely needs to conform to dramatic beats. Instead it could be said that most successful rides need to introduce a dramatic situation directly involving riders, then build and riff on that situation in a variety of interesting ways. Riding bobsleds down a fake mountain is pretty interesting already, but the wrinkle of introducing a rampaging monster really pushes the Matterhorn over the top. The idea supposedly goes back to Walt Disney, but how easily it could have turned out wrong.

Lets begin on the approach to the Matterhorn from the Hub. As we draw near, there is a surprise: the trees part, and a huge waterfall comes into view. The waterfall instantly suggests that there is going to be more going on in the Matterhorn than we expect, yet the Matterhorn looks picturesque, inviting with its alpine trees and flowers. A mountain stream winds around the base of the mountain, which somehow looks like cold mountain water thanks to the contrasting landscape around it.

Yet thats not quite the whole story. The whole top of the mountain is open, effectively turning its upper echelons into a gigantic loudspeaker which bellows out the unearthly roars of its resident monster. Even less comforting is the whistling wind which can be heard everywhere around it. This is the introduction of the dramatic conflict of the ride; the Matterhorn looks peaceful, welcoming, and charming, but.....

For my money no other theme park deployment of this concept comes even close to the raw elemental energy of this juxtaposition - the Matterhorn looks welcoming and inviting while also warning you to stay away. In the 70s, WED did a lot of this sort of stuff, and perhaps the wolf howl that emenates from the Florida Haunted Mansion and the booming cannons which once heralded the facade of Pirates of the Caribbean are predecessors. But those were really just atmosphere, whereas the approach to the Matterhorn initiates the dramatic conflict which will inform your entire experience: what's gotten into the Matterhorn?

The 1978 Matterhorn operated on the principle of suspense, and so the dramatic thrust of the story (will I escape?) mapped perfectly onto the build and release inherent in all coasters. This was an experience where the physical sensations of being on a coaster really meant something. The slow approach, the cheerful yodeling music, the wait at the bottom of the mountain ready to be released into the pitch black interior all built up anticipation. Of course all rides create anticipation, but the cheerful gemutlicheit of the Alpine landscape had an edge to it thanks to those unearthly roars.

The fact that the ride was going to be scary was announced instantly by the lift hill's perpetual gloom. The long monster roars were interspersed with screaming sounds, supplied by a speaker. The suspense of the lift hill is briefly released once the bobsleds peak and slowly begin to head downhill, then replaced with another kind of suspense. One of the best Disney jump scares of all time - the glowing eyes in the dark - illuminate with a ferocious roar, and now the rest of the ride is a long downhill slide where you are never entirely sure where the Snowman will be next. I've been on the Matterhorn probably a hundred times and I still sometimes forget exactly where the second Harold is.

Harold is one of the best designed theme park monsters of all time. The original design is a perfect distillation of a monster; long white hair offsets his blue face and hands, defining a fierce looking body shape as a silhouette, instantly comprehensible as a threat. Long hair above the eyes de-emphasizes the forehead, making the creature seem less human. Two thirds of the face is an open mouth full of teeth, the white teeth highlighted against the dark scream of a face. The nose is tiny, almost invisible, and the eyes are asymmetrical, making the yeti seem fantastical, an appropriate resident of Fantasyland. Harold was literally reaching hands, a mouth full of teeth, glowing red eyes, and almost nothing else.

But the thing is, nothing else was needed. Under the best circumstances you could get maybe 5 seconds to look at him, and those key elements: mouth, red eyes, reaching hand read perfectly from a speeding bobsled. As Ken Andersen told the E Ticket in 1993:

"You didn't need a lot of animation because you were moving. You were moving so darn fast that what you did was supply the movement for the characters."

That was the brilliance of Harold: he hardly moved, but he looked and felt alive. The long downhill escape, as well as his sudden reappearance, caused riders to fill in with their imaginations far more than was really going on.  More than any mountain-dwelling monster who has suceeded him, Harold really felt like he was chasing you, popping through secret caves and dashing down rock wall faces in an effort to cut you off. The physical structure of the ride itself worked perfectly to put you off the wrong foot; was that roar coming from ahead of or behind me?

The Matterhorn was a long build of suspense, followed by a chase down to the bottom, the splash of the glacial pond the release of the tension. Compared to the Matterhorn, Big Thunder was one damn thing after another and Space Mountain was just weirdness, but the Matterhorn felt like real peril, and it was peril created with some light-up eyes and three figures that moved only just enough to create a sense of motion. It was, in its own way, brilliant.

I didn't really start to understand just how good the Matterhorn was until Expedition Everest opened at Animal Kingdom a few years later. I admit that the Matterhorn created in me false expectations of a suspenseful, "boo" kind of experience, which Everest really isn't. Beautifully mounted, the attraction doesn't introduce its dramatic conflict until over a minute into a three minute ride. It's nearly another minute until we see the shadow of the Yeti, who honestly seems more interested in tearing up railroad tracks than chasing riders, and there's a final confrontation mere seconds before the ride ends. But the real thing that I couldn't believe when I rode Everest in previews, the thing I walked off the ride saying, is that the multi-million dollar yeti was gone by so fast you could barely register that he moved at all. Fusty old Harold inside the Matterhorn gave just about as good of a show at a fraction of the cost, and his mountain had actual caverns inside it!

For my money, Disneyland's new Snowman figure has the same issue. He looks terrifically fierce, and he snarls and lunges at the cars, but the pure, streamlined, communicative power of that goofy 1978 figure has been lost. The new figure has a visible forehead, which makes him look a bit more human, and his mouth opens and closes, a detail often lost because you're by him way too fast. He seems almost realistic, and to me this makes the new Snowman less visually appealing, less like an appropriate resident of Fantasyland.

But really the biggest issue is that those reaching hands are gone. The new Snowman is grabbing the ice wall around him like he's climbing out of a cave, but that image of him reaching for the cars was really important. Look at the silhouettes; there's no comparison.

The new guy seems like less of a threat; when you pass him a second time, he's twisted around to the side as if he isn't even expecting you to come upon him. He's louder, and he looks meaner, but its harder to feel like he's really and truly out to get you.

The trouble is that the window of comprehension for understanding something you coast by in a bobsled can be measured in micro-seconds, and the new Snowman just doesn't cut it. Blaine Gibson had fully absorbed this fact of theme park life and was a master at sculpting figures just the correct side of impossible to read in a flash. Think of all the figures in Pirates of the Caribbean, sculpted in mid-smile or mid-scowl. Think of the Hitch-hiking Ghosts, with their hugely exaggerated extended thumbs.

Think of how much artistic skill it takes to correctly draw attention to something as small as a thumb.

Blaine sculpted Harold's scowling face in a permanent scream for a reason, and he gave him huge reaching hands for a reason, and grossly exaggerated their size so you couldn't miss them. That version of the Matterhorn's monster was fit for the job.

On a similar track, the same team in 2015 removed the ice crystal scene and replaced it with a new hoard of destroyed Matterhorn ride vehicles, like bobsleds and skyway buckets. The previous ice cavern scene was nothing amazing, but you could look over and see the crystals and hear the music and instantly understand that you were looking at some crystals. The new scene just looks like some random stuff, and you're past it before you can figure it out. Worse, nobody going into the Matterhorn fresh in 2020 (2021?) is going to understand what they're looking at, making it a weird in-joke that doesn't really look like anything. That's a shame, because most of the Matterhorn is spent looking at snowy rocks, and anything to make it feel a bit more like a real place was a help. Like the Snowman figure upgrade, it was a great idea on paper, but in practice is a misfire.

From This 2014 Video

But the change that really stings me is moving your initial encounter with the Snowman to the lift hill. This makes some sense, but those glowing eyes were truly a perfect jump scare, and set the tone for the rest of the downhill chase. The slow ascent up the mountain in the pitch darkness listening to the wind howling built up terrific suspense, increased by the fact that Disney pumped in occasional scream sound effects to this scene. Was it another rider on the coaster, or was it....?

Then, the lift hill crested, and the first few moments of the ride were gentle. You relaxed. Then Harold's eyes lit up in the darkness and scared the tar out of you. I screamed on my first ride. And then you spent the rest of the ride on edge, expecting Harold to come bounding out at you again at every turn. That was the moment the ride had been building towards since you first laid eyes on it with its beautiful flowers, glistening waterfall, and baleful whistling wind.

I'm sure new riders enjoy the Matterhorn plenty, and I'm not here to make some absurd claim like Imagineering "ruined the ride". It's still lots of fun. But the previous version changed the way I look at theme park rides because of how much it was able to do with so little. That 1978 refurbishment, when you get right down to it, was a lot of rock work, three figures that only barely moved, some sound effects, and light-up eyes on a stick. But they totally transformed the tone and feeling of the Matterhorn, and gave it unique shape and rhythm. And they did it without changing the track.

And that's what the Matterhorn became for me, a kind of yardstick I use to measure all other rides: did the designers get the absolute maximum out of what they chose to build? I find this useful because it de-emphasizes the tech and the design density that Disney and Universal tend to get caught up in and looks simply at effect. Does what they spent money on really work?

The Matterhorn brought Harold to life with the simplest means, and did so in a way that was straightforward, understandable without words or preshow videos, and easy to maintain. The new version is flashier, but in sacrifing that elemental sinplicity of what was done in 1978, it is in my opinion significantly less powerful.

Because that's something that maybe gets lost in discussing the Matterhorn; it is one of the great scary Disney rides. Harold was designed to startle jaded 70s teenagers - who may otherwise have brought their business to a place like Magic Mountain - and did so in a way that was not so intense you couldn't still bring a six year old on the ride. Harold has moved out now, and try as I may, I've never quite warmed up to the new guy. The Matterhorn I fell in love with at 18 is now another resident of Yesterland, and I miss it dearly. That hollow wind still blows in my heart.

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While I have your attention!

I thought I'd take some time to answer a few questions I've been getting recently about this site and to explain what the future holds for it.

I should probably begin with some context: this site, and text-based blogs generally, are enjoying a fraction of their old readership.

Time was, I could spend 2 weeks writing and editing a post that would reach an audience of over 20,000 people. Today, my posts are averaging about 2,500 people and capping out at around 7,000 on the high end. And the fact is, I haven't met a single person under the age of 25 who is a self-professed retro theme park fan who learned about them reading sites like this. They've learned everything they know on YouTube. It's fair to say that the time of the informational blog seems to have passed. 

Which is why I wrote a book. That book is one reason I began posting shorter form pieces (like music loops) in 2015. The past few years have been weird for this blog, and this year has been a desert. This is because I've been seriously perusing getting the thing published since last November and the complexities of doing that have taken up all of the spare time I used to devote to writing blogs.

The good news is that the book is coming out this year; my next post will be its announcement! The bad news is that given the time commitment of writing blog posts vs the work that goes into writing a book, it makes more sense to write more books. I've already begun work on my second book, and now that I have a publisher, I hope to get it done in 2-3 years instead of 5 years this time.

This site has seen a spike in readership since the pandemic began, and its been wonderful seeing old readers and new coming back to enjoy my writing. I never wrote a word on this site for money or fame, and I have no intention of stopping writing. I actually have about four unfinished pieces right now that have been either delayed by work on my book or other issues. 

So basically: more content is coming! I thank everyone who has stuck it out with me or has just recently discovered my stuff. It is amazing to me what this little writing exercise has turned into, and I want to keep it going as long as possible.

So till next time: stay cool, my friends.

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.

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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.

--

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

What the Hell Do You Kids Think You're Doing?

During the Christmas break I took the opportunity to re-read John Hench's very interesting Designing Disney, which led me back to Karal Ann Marling's The Architecture of Reassurance, and it has been lo many long years since I have opened that large volume!

Marling's book has been attacked in some circles for writing over the heads of the readership (a comment which reflects more poorly on the reader than the author to my mind), and to be sure it is not a perfect or not even necessarily fun book. Marling's central section is somehow without focus and fails to build an argument even if she makes a number of invaluable critical observations along the way about WED Enterprises, "Medallion City" and EPCOT Center. I'm not entirely sure if this chapter in question is an aesthetic overview or a chronological history, and in fulfilling both needs she actually doesn't quite fulfill the requirements of either, but let's be honest folks - The Architecture of Reassurance is an important book.

It concludes with three fantastic essays which ought to be re-read by anybody who takes the work of WED Enterprises and WDI seriously, the best of which is an excellent critique on the art of critique itself, called Forty Years of Overstatement by Greil Marcus. I won't reprint even a word of it here such is my admiration for this effort, but as he points out, the theme show has a (fifty year!) head start on anybody attempting any kind of coherent critical analysis - the form has yet to produce a scholar who has written a fully articulated account of it's forms, meaning, values and effects.

This got me thinking.

I believe much of this stagnant critical function comes from the fact that of the significant works on the art form itself - among them Vinyl Leaves and The Architecture of Reassurance - not a single critical scholar has yet to develop a useful vocabulary about what each articulated element in a themed show actually is, in the way that film scholars have been doing for 80 years now. Very little successful discussion of any item, area or psychological effect can actually succeed if there is no word for the item in question to begin with. Furthermore, nobody can build a counter-argument against a false analysis if nobody has pinned it down yet with an interpretation and applicable term.

In themed design, filmic vocabulary is useful and desirable, as in this pleasant snippet from Marling's book:

"But as the "doom buggy" winds its' way up into the attic, past the vestigial bride, the scene shifts to a cemetery, outside the Mansion. The terror arises as much from the violation of the dramatic unities, the abrupt turning inside out of the building, as from the graveyard tableau itself... By switching the point of view spasmodically from interior to exterior, however, the movie metaphor is deepened and amplified. Instead of the bookish, linear narrative of Main Street, the Mansion opts for the cinematic jump cut. Continuity and reassurance are first established and then abruptly denied, for an emotional effects that floats free of narrative..."

Marling, pgs. 114-115

But the theme show is a much more complex art than that of film, really the next step, and an overabundance of such interpretations actually close off more avenues of approach than they open up. We need a better system to measure success or failure.

The problem is that a vocabulary cannot simply be agreed on and them used by everyone all at once, for a useful mode of critical discourse to arise from such discussions one must present arguments which codify into terminologies which can be entered into the public space of common discourse. And outside of terms like weenie, show, environment, atmosphere, setting and others, currently one is adrift in a harbor of smilies: "like the Haunted Mansion", "Pirates-like", "Toad-style" and more.

This, I believe, is the biggest hurdle towards developing the theme show into a critiqueable art, with an applicable vocabulary and an established list of representative classics.

So in the way of clarity here, and in the way of acknowledging what the hell I'm doing, I'd like to here re-affirm the intent of this blog and to repeat, now that I have an audience, my first post.

I would like this blog to be an outlet for my writings on the Disney Parks, their masters, their use of space, design, their successes, their failures, their histories, how they work, how they guide attention, how they relate to film and other media, and all other aspects of this not new but not yet understood art form. And I hope to do justice to them.

As an introduction... a quote.

“The tat and kitschy quality that comes across in flat pictures dissolves when you go through those turnstiles. The lath and plaster is solid, the cardboard is so tough you never see it wobble. The paint is fresh, the flags flutter, the bands play, the people laugh and cry out for more, more security, more nostalgia, more happiness, more memories of a world better than our own. […] Is this bad? Is this, as critics say, like a drug, an escapist immature fantasy generated by an immature showman for cash? Or is it a work of art, as The Wizard of Oz or Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs or Singin’ in the Rain are works of art, commercially manufactured products that transcend their age and have a meaning to themselves as all great works of art should have?”

pg. 321, Robin Allan, Walt Disney and Europe.
Indiana University Press, Bloomington. 1999.