Cory's Top 5 Disney Parks and Attractions - #1: Disneyland USA

The classic, the original... Disneyland USA takes my top spot for favourite Disney theme park. It's not the biggest (Magic Kingdom), and not necessarily the most advanced (Tokyo Disneysea) or the best laid out or most attractive (Disneyland Paris), but it is the Disneyland. This is the park that Walt built, that he walked in, that is rooted in legend and engrained in that period in the mid-Fifties when the Disney company rose to its post-war heights. This is the park that all other Disneylands and Magic Kingdoms are a version of.

I've made the case before that Disneyland should be a museum, which was to say that you cannot separate what makes Disneyland great from what makes it historically important. It is the first custom-built theme park as well as Disney's first theme park. It made innovations like tubular steel roller coasters and audio-animatronics and a daily operating monorail. It is a place of artistic and engineering excellence merged together and dedicated to the noble goal of being "a source of joy and inspiration to all the world." Disneyland is an integral part of America's mid-20th century milieu, a product of that same glorious era for the company that produced some of Disney's greatest animated films like Cinderella, Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, and Lady and the Tramp, and Disney's first live-action films like Treasure Island and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and when the company almost single-handedly sold televisions to every family in America with the Walt Disney's Disneyland television series, The Mickey Mouse Club, and Zorro, and when they invented the modern documentary with the True-Life Adventures and People and Places series. Disneyland even played its part to convince Americans to go to the moon!  

Disneyland is entitled to some sentimentality and nostalgia. Would that it were as good as preserving its history as it is at milking that sentiment! Nevertheless, while I may have a list of grievances at things demolished and replaced with substandard attractions, or simply not replaced at all, or growing encrustations of things that are not Disney in Disneyland, there is still an indelible charm to the original Disneyland. Its modest scale compared to other similar parks almost gives it the feel of a delightful, whimsical dollhouse. It is every childhood daydream come to life, from cowboys and jungles to princesses and space ships.

Cory's Disney in Review 2015

After my lament that 2014 did not hold enough things to warrant a "top five" list and just going ahead this year with an elaborate listing of my top five favourite Disney parks and top five favourite rides in each, it turned out that 2015 also warranted a top five in its own right! The following is my brief list of things that the company really knocked out of the ballpark this year.

#1: Cinderella
Disney has heeded the call of live-action remakes of fairy tales with a vengeance. After last year's dreadful Maleficent and the upcoming Beauty and the Beast, Tim Burton's Dumbo, another crack at The Jungle Book, Winnie the Pooh, and A Night on Bald Mountain (somehow) they are on top of things. Though Disney may be prepared to drive live-action fairy tales, superheroes and space knights with laser swords into the ground with multiple releases each year, sometimes they do end up actually being pretty good. Cinderella, directed by Kenneth Branagh, was just such a case. Rather than try to revise the fairy tale, which crippled Maleficent, they chose to play it straight and elaborate on it instead. Everything in the story is nicely fleshed out, the Prince actually has a character arc, and the difficult subject of how to "have courage and be kind" in the face of the world's cruelty is dealt with admirably. Aesthetically, Cinderella was sumptuous. Hopefully Disney keeps playing it straight like this.

#2: Galavant
This might not be fair given that Galavant was a mid-season fill-in for Once Upon a Time on ABC and not technically Disney (well... technically it is Disney, but it's not the Disney brand, you know?). To be honest, though, of all the stuff anything associated with Disney did this year, Galavant was pretty awesome. Short, sweet, musical, self-aware, and hilarious, it hit all the right notes, so to speak. The only time it went off the rails was in the last episodes as it decided to string things along for a second season instead of neatly wrapping up the first. I can forgive that, though, since it's so much fun to watch the rest of the time.

#3: Trader Sam's Grog Grotto
Unfortunately our honeymoon in 2014 did not dovetail with the opening of Trader Sam's at Walt Disney World's Polynesian Village Resort. That's a darn shame, since I'm a huge Jules Verne fan and would love to get my hands on one of those Nautilus Tiki mugs. Trader Sam's Enchanted Tiki Bar at the Disneyland Hotel is perhaps my favourite restaurant on any Disney property (at least it's right up there with Walt's at Disneyland Paris), so extending the franchise while adding references to WDW's defunct 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea ride is an exciting prospect. Our field scouts have reported back that it is a whole lot of fun... At least for as much as they remember.

Photo: Disney.

#4: Fantasyland's Refurbishment
Alice in Wonderland was the first of Disneyland's Fantasyland attractions to be refurbished with a new suite of effects last year, and the trend continued this year with Matterhorn Bobsleds and Peter Pan's Flight. I'm not an unquestioning aficionado of video projection mapping being used on rides... What you gain in the flexibility of video you lose, if done poorly, in the feeling of genuine dimensionality. Themeparks in general seem to be growing much too reliant on projection screens rather than practical effects as the bones of an attraction, leading to a comparable drop in the effectiveness and immersiveness of said attraction. Alice in Wonderland is a bit too guilty of that problem in a few places. But when used well, much like CGI in a film, it can accent and add life to an attraction. In the case of the Matterhorn, they support the excellent new Abominable Snowman animatronic. In Peter Pan's Flight, Tinkerbell gets a more sustained presence in showering you with pixiedust, and there is a nice bit of cinematic recall on the face of Big Ben. Between the three refurbished attractions, it looks like Imagineers have a handle on what they're doing, boding well for Snow White's Scary Adventure, Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, and Pinocchio's Daring Journey.

Concept Art: Disney.

#5: Grizzly Peak Airfield
The problems with Disney California Adventure were well-known, as were the problems with Condor Flats specifically. Though a tribute to the aerospace pioneers of Edwards Air Force Base, the desert setting was uninviting and suffered from poor sightlines with the Grand Californian Hotel. With the arrival of Cars Land, having another desert section was redundant, so Imagineering went ahead and revitalized Condor Flats as an extension of Grizzly Peak Recreation Area. In turn, they finally ditched the Nineties extreme sports theme and went back to the golden era of the Great America Road Trip of the Fifties and Sixties. I love nature, National Parks, and their history, so all of this sounds good to me!

Honourable Mention: Tomorrowland
Regardless of what the movie was actually like, I know my fair share of Disney fans (myself included) who just wanted Tomorrowland to be a success for the sake of Disneyland's Tomorrowland. It seemed like this part-nostalgic reminiscence building up an artificial backstory for Walt Disney and the true-life Tomorrowland could have helped rescue that region of the themepark from the ever spreading encrustation of Pixar, Marvel, and Lucasfilm. Unfortunately it didn't do as well as we had hoped, which is ironic given that the movie is largely about our own lack of faith in optimistic futurism. Apparently it really doesn't sell. Nevertheless, the movie was decent in its own right. Its presentation of techno-optimism was balanced, in the end, with a recognition that technological progress also needs progress in artistic, environmental and social values to go with it. It still left a slight aftertaste of Objectivism, but nothing like what I feared it might to begin with. As it goes though, when I like a movie - even a little bit - it tends to do poorly. So, uh, sorry Disney.

Cory's Top Five Disney Parks and Attractions - The Runner-Ups

Over the past four weeks we've taken a look at four of my top five favourite Disney theme parks and my top five favourite attractions in each. Before we look at my #1 favourite Disney park in the world - and I'm sure you can guess what it is by now - we'll take a gander at the lower brackets. What are my bottom four?

Cory's Top 5 Disney Parks and Attractions - #2: Disneyland Paris

Disneyland Paris has seen its share of problems, from poor public perception to low investment in maintenance to an ageing set of attractions. There are also attractions found in other Disney parks that are conspicuous in their absence here, like the Jungle Cruise and Enchanted Tiki Room. Nevertheless, Disneyland Paris is, in my opinion, the perfection of the Disneyland concept.

Disneyland Paris was the fourth Disneyland, Magic Kingdom-style park to be built after Disneyland USA, Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World, and Tokyo Disneyland. The latter two, while having their own innovations like Liberty Square and World Bazaar, were still based fundamentally on the same model as the original, which makes cohesion a bit touch-and-go. Disneyland Paris was redesigned from the ground up for two main reasons. One was the necessity of adapting the park to a more refined culture that was already suspicious of Disney. Second was seizing that opportunity to simply rethink Disneyland.

The mark of having to appease France's cultural gatekeepers is all over Disneyland Paris. It is felt most keenly in Discoveryland, their re-imagining of Tomorrowland. Originally this was based more heavily on the influence of French author Jules Verne, with three whole attractions - Space Mountain, Mysteries of the Nautilus, and Le Visionarium - based explicitly on his life and works. They also pulled in the Hyperion, the airship designed by a French aeronaut in the film Island at the Top of the World, and appealed to motifs from Leonardo Da Vinci and H.G. Wells. The opportunity seized here was to address the problem of Tomorrowlands always becoming out of date. By appealing to Retro-Futurism, that is no longer an issue.

The marks are seen elsewhere. Fantasyland skews even more deliberately European, with overt references to authors like Charles Perrault. The design of Sleeping Beauty's Castle was forced by the reality of authentic castles down the highway, and original blue-sky ideas included replacing the castle entirely with a Retro-Futuristic tower. Adventureland also skewed towards European stories - Swiss Family Robinson, Treasure Island - and the European colonial experience rather than the images of Hollywood and American topical exotica (hence no Enchanted Tiki Room). Main Street USA was tweaked to take place in the Twenties rather than the Turn of the Century, and its two walkthrough arcades (addressing the practical problem of moving people around when it snows) refer to Jules Verne-style invention and France's gift of the Statue of Liberty.

Doubling down on these alterations, Imagineers went further. Frontierland was taken beyond a vague theme to having an actual storyline. Frontierland and Adventureland were flipped, so that Adventureland lay beside Fantasyland. This change allowed them to cluster Pirates of the Caribbean, the Jolly Roger and Skull Rock, and Peter Pan's Flight together into a pirate-themed mini-land. It is one of my favourite areas of any Disney park. The landscaping at Disneyland Paris is stunning, as is the architecture. The castle walkthrough was more elaborate, and there is a greater emphasis on walkthroughs in general. I suspect this is partly because those are cheaper to maintain, but they also reflect a more European attitude. Disneyland Paris isn't a carnival for thrill ride seekers. It is more of a genteel stroll through a beautiful park. Copenhagen's Tivoli, second-oldest amusement park in the world and inspiration behind Disneyland, has its share of rides but is also renowned as a beautiful pleasure garden.

Perhaps the reason why I like it so much is that I myself prefer the "genteel stroll through a pleasure garden" to the mad dash after E-tickets. Sure I would like it to have the Jungle Cruise or Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, or a real Haunted Mansion, but it has a solid foundation. Whatever the reason, I would go to Disneyland Paris again and again and again.

Christmas in Disneyland

Ashley and I were considering doing a trip to Disneyland next year, having let the post-Walt Disney World overload work its way through our system. The announcement that Star Wars Land was being built and therefore the Rivers of America, Mark Twain Riverboat, Tom Sawyer Island, Disneyland Railroad and Fantasmic would all be shut down for the next two years or so forced our hand. As of January, if we wanted to go it wouldn't be worth going until 2018 at the earliest. Therefore, as soon as we were done our shifts at work on Monday, we hopped on the bus to the airport, landed in Orange County about 10:30pm, hit the ground running to Trader Sam's, and then spent the next three days enjoying the parks despite the unseasonable cold snap.

Cory's Top 5 Disney Parks and Attractions - #3: Tokyo Disneysea

What can be said about Tokyo Disneysea that hasn't already been said by so many? This park designed by and licensed from Disney but owned by the Oriental Land Company is one of the best theme parks in the world. It is arguably the best from a technical perspective. Tokyo Disneysea is a masterpiece of Imagineering, housing a plethora of wonderful rides and having been designed from the ground-up along a central, engaging theme. Virtually everything in Disneysea "works."

That central theme, and what I find most enchanting about Disneysea, is the wonder and adventure of discovery and exploration. Every attraction in one way or another reinforces this theme. It is not merely about the ocean, but where the oceans take us. You can go along with Sindbad on his storybook voyage, or journey with Captain Nemo under the sea or to the centre of the earth, or investigate a temple with Indiana Jones. Even the Tower of Terror reinforces this theme, in its own satirical way. The stories of each ride are not driven by violent conflict per se, but rather, the thrill and happenstance intrinsic to exploration. Not only does the park have a unifying theme, but there is a tapestry of interweaving stories throughout the park. One of the major ones is the fate of Atlantis, which begins with a few picturesque but unobtrusive ruins lining Mediterranean Harbour and resolves in the depths of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

Oh yeah, and it helps that it has an entire section with two attractions inspired by my favourite author and one of my favourite Disney films!

The Star Wars Prequels In My Head

Ever since The Phantom Menace came out in 1999, and shortly before that caused some people *cough cough* to lose interest in Star Wars altogether, fans have taken it upon themselves to articulate not only what was wrong about the prequels, but how they could have done 'em better. With Episode VII due shortly in theatres, I felt I might as well use this venue to dish out what has been lingering in the recesses of my mind for 16 years.