Pictures from Disneyland – February 2014

As far as first impressions go, California Adventure now offers one hell of a a good one. Buena Vista Street is arguably the single most effective area in the entire park, and is made even more impressive given that it used to be the staggeringly lousy Sunshine Plaza. Walking onto Buena Vista Street for the first time in 2012 was awe inspiring in the most literal sense, and it remains a beautiful and well executed land.

#DingDing

When trying to make a theme park environment feel like a living, breathing place, a few key elements go a long way towards selling that illusion. One of these is live entertainment. We’ll get into more specifics later, but acts like the Five & Dime and the Citizens of Buena Vista Street help complete the illusion by having people who seemingly live and work in this place.

Another important element is kinetics. Walking into a place and seeing movement helps it feel more dynamic and less like an oversized diorama. Buena Vista Street’s Red Car Trolley fills that role nicely, and lends a great deal of authenticity to the area.

California Adventure’s Tower of Terror suffers a bit in comparison to its counterpart at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. It’s a scaled down version dropped into a somewhat awkward location as one of many band-aid fixes Disney tried to implement during the first several years of DCA’s life. It doesn’t have the grandeur or showmanship of the original in Florida, but it’s still a welcome – if not ideal – addition to the park.

On a macro level, this Cars Land an area that is almost overwhelming in its attention to detail and dedication to selling the illusion of being in the world of CARS. It takes a place that never existed and makes it real, and even if you’re not a fan of the CARS films, it’s still an impressive feat. However, there are a few small things that hold it back from true greatness. While the land works on a macro level, it sadly doesn’t have the same richness of detail that many Disneyland’s lands do. You see it, and you take it all in, and then it’s done. There are none of those subtleties that reveal themselves over time. Another big issue is music choice. This is a larger topic than I have space for here, but just as score and songs function in different ways in film, so too does instrumental area music work differently than actual songs. While area music fades into the texture of the space and enhances the feeling of it, songs call attention to themselves, and should be used sparingly and in the proper context. The songs in Cars Land work in opposition to the immersion and suspension of disbelief the area tries so hard to establish, and ends up becoming grating. It also lessens the impact of using “Sh-Boom” for the lighting ceremony at dusk.

Similarly, Radiator Springs Racers is an incredibly impressive attraction with a few noteworthy issues. The biggest being that the big set piece in the middle of the ride is… a scaled-down version of the place you walked through to get to the ride. Still a fairly strong attraction, but held back just slightly from true greatness.

I actually took time to stop and watch this full show. I can’t resent the show too much because I’m not the target audience and the target audience appears to enjoy it quite a bit. I will say, though, that it’s excruciatingly long, and frustratingly located in a high traffic area. Ideally, shows like this would have broader appeal, but I’ll settle for having it not in the middle of a four-way intersection.

Next to Buena Vista Street, Paradise Pier is the most extensively re-themed area of the park, and it’s mostly successful. Areas like Paradise Garden, Paradise Park, and the section of the boardwalk near Toy Story Midway Mania are actually pleasant places to spend time. Unfortunately there are a few areas left that very clearly reflect where the budget ran out.

Another show I watched for the first time: Instant Concert! Just Add Water. I like this one a lot. It’s short, but it’s a fun and clever way to utilize the World of Color infrastructure during the day.

Grizzly Peak and Condor Flats received the least amount of changes during the expansion, but they were also the two strongest areas of the park from day one. Their biggest problems are that they’re completely walled in allowing virtually no room for future attractions, but that’s an issue that goes back to the dumb layout of the park and is unlikely to ever be completely fixed.

I love Carthay Circle as the icon of DCA. It’s a perfect complement to Sleeping Beauty Castle, and a neat structure in its own right. The only issue I take with it is what’s inside. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy Carthay Circle Restaurant and Lounge quite a bit. The food their ranges from good to excellent, it’s well-themed, and it’s a benefit to the park at large. However, the fact that the park’s icon is a movie palace and it houses an expensive restaurant rather than something movie related creates a bit of thematic dissonance. It’s a minor quibble, to be sure, but it’s still worth mentioning.

Remember how I talked about parts of Paradise Pier showing where the budget ran out? Well, it’s clear that they’d burned up pretty much all of the budget before getting to Hollywood Land. Sure, some of the more egregious bad puns are gone, and the Red Car Trolley extended from Buena Vista Street helps as well, but this is still a really bad area of the park. Hopefully Disney brings this up to par with the rest of the park sometime in the near future, and hopefully they don’t do so by turning part of the land into Monstropolis as some rumors have suggested.

Also, the fact that Mad T Party is ugly and loud doesn’t help anything.

“a bug’s land” is another example of a band-aid solution that was applied to the park early on. As far as band-aids go, this one isn’t altogether terrible. The theming is nice – albeit inconsistent in scale – but the majority of the attractions here are basically worthless. You have the world’s tamest bumper cars, you have a teeny-tiny Mad Tea Party style spinner without the ability to control your own spin, and an elevated spinner. Heimlich’s Chew Chew Train is the only one that has any amount of charm to it, but it’s still kind of dumb and staggeringly short. This area has served its purpose, but it has now outlived its effectiveness. It’s time to see something more substantial take its place.

While most areas of Disneyland are beautiful at night, I wouldn’t necessarily say they’re better at night than they are during the day. However, Cars Land and Paradise Pier both improve dramatically after dusk.

Last month I posted pictures from the exterior of the Thor: Treasures of Asgard exhibit in Innoventions. This month I actually went and did the meet and greet. In general it’s fun, and the Cast Member who plays Thor does a good job, but the whole thing feels decidedly temporary. I admire the effort in showmanship of using the Bifrost to transport guests to Asgard, but the effect is somewhat weak, and while the throne room is impressive given the size of the exhibit, the illusion is far from complete. It feels like an exhibit designed for a convention rather than a theme park, which fits the tradition established by Iron Man Tech, but is still somewhat disappointing. Marvel is one of Disney’s biggest properties right now, and instead of taking full advantage of it, they’re just kind of phoning it in.

A fog bank rolled in right at the end of the night.