Disney’s California Adventure – Part III: The Unusual Undoing of Imagineering’s Billion Dollar Californian Reimagining

It’s probably worth it to pause for a moment and assess where we’re at in the story of Disney California Adventure. Narratively, it’s easy to see “DCA 2.0” as a sort of pinnacle of the park creatively and culturally. Roundabout 2012 (and unto the opening of Grizzly Peak Airfield in 2015 – where this feature began), California Adventure felt like a park that was, at last, on the right track.

Sure, critics might justifiably say that it was still a “half-day” park – especially compared to the revered Disneyland next door – but almost unquestionably, California Adventure looked like it was poised to continue on its trajectory of detailed, textured, and lovingly crafted lands; that Imagineers had at last unlocked the ingredients to creating a park that really did celebrate the adventures and icons of the Golden State… the Disney way.

Today, it seems almost naive to remember that back then, fans were genuinely certain that the “DCA 2.0” reimagining of the park’s Hollywood Land (above) seemed inevitable.

Of course, we know now that what followed was the “DCA 3.0” era. “Cute but dumb” character overlays like Pixar Pier, Frozen Fun, and San Fransokyo Square, or anchor-less projects like Avengers Campus hadn’t hurt the park, of course, but they hadn’t helped it, either. If you can believe it, in 2022, California Adventure saw an estimated 9 million guests – just 500,000 more than had visited in 2013 (the first full year after Cars Land’s opening). Certainly, that wasn’t the bang Disney wanted for the bucks that it had cost to add Soarin’ Around the World, Mission: BREAKOUT!, Pixar Pier, and Web Slingers.

In 2023, longtime Imagineer Bruce Vaughn (who served as a creative lead on “DCA 2.0,” but left the company in 2016) returned triumphant to the Chief Creative Officer helm of Walt Disney Imagineering and got to work revising in-progress projects across the parks. (It was Vaughn, for example, who allegedly put a stop order on turning Animal Kingdom’s Dinoland into the animated Zootopia and led the charge toward the park-appropriate Tropical Americas, instead.)

Apparently among Vaughn’s edicts was that – with California Adventure’s twenty-fifth birthday approaching – excuses had run shallow. It was time for California Adventure to be a full, standalone Disney Park that earned a full day of a Disneyland Resort visit – or maybe, could be the focus of a one-day, one-park ticket in its own right! The era of “cheap and cheerful” additions was over, and simply stickering IPs over carnival rides could not continue.

Without a doubt, “Phase II” of Avengers Campus was an example of that mindset. So were the other two substantial announcements for the park made in August 2024.

20XX – A Coco attraction

Pixar may be known for its tear-jerkers, but few can match the existential joys and sorrows of the 2017 masterpiece Coco. The Academy Award-winning film follows the story of Miguel – a twelve year-old boy in the Mexican town of Santa Cecilia – who longs for music in a family who rejects it. On el Día de los Muertos – the Mexican “Day of the Dead” holiday – Miguel finds himself transported over the marigold bridge into the vibrant, colorful Land of the Dead, where he becomes embroiled in a musical mystery and learns the importance of remembering those we love, from generation to generation.

Look, neither Cars nor Toy Story; Frozen nor Avengers is set in California. And pretty definitely, Coco isn’t, either. But Coco has been a part of California Adventure for years by way of the “Plaza de la Familia” tradition that overtakes Paradise Gardens every autumn, bringing with it marigolds, marionettes, and mariachi.

Embracing California Adventure’s role as a “festival park,” Plaza de la Familia is a vibrant, rich, cultural hub for the resort’s autumn festivities, inviting guests to indulge in traditional Mexican desserts, music, and culture. And by the way, Californian history and culture is Mexican history and culture. As of 2021, more than 28% of Californians report that Spanish is their primary language at home – a reflection of the state’s deep political, cultural, and historical ties to Mexico and Central America.

All of that, of course, is just this usually-critical author’s excuse for a potentially-unexpected pronouncement that Coco feels like a slam dunk for California Adventure. And that appears to be what’s on the horizon. D’Amaro’s 2024 announcement promised that permits are filed and a 2026 groundbreaking is scheduled for a new attraction that will whisk guests over the marigold bridge into the Land of the Dead for a joyous celebration of Día de los Muertos. Cutting edge Audio-Animatronics technology will bring the skeletal inhabitants of this world to life, he promised, in a musical journey sure to delight all ages.

Even better, the new Coco attraction will fill a niche California Adventure has long needed filled: it’ll be a tranquil, musical, high capacity boat ride. Yep, though tuned to the IP demands of the 21st century, it looks and feels as if this attraction is laboratory-made to give California Adventure its own equivalent of Pirates of the Caribbean – something D’Amaro said quite explicitly, suggesting that the ride is being drawn from the same fabric that made Pirates or Haunted Mansion. (That would be a very good thing. From the Western River Expedition to the Enchanted Snow Palace, Disney has toyed with returning to the grand-scaled family boat ride for decades, but hasn’t ever followed through.)

The only question left outstanding around the promised Coco attraction (despite D’Amaro’s assurances, aside from whether it’ll really happen, of course) is where exactly it’ll go. The natural fit would seem to be Pixar Pier, where it could be entered via the promenade’s bandshell (which plans said would have a theater space, but is actually just a facade). That would require the relocation of the park’s parade storage building, but such infrastructural rearranging is par for the course at the compact Disneyland – especially given the DisneylandForward initiative’s plans to radically alter the parks’ footprints, anyway.

Though speaking of which, some suppose that the new Coco ride could clandestinely be part of a larger Coco presence at California Adventure that might be located on the new property made accessible to the park through DisneylandForward – an expansion pad likely to be connected to the park’s existing footprint by way of Pixar Pier or Paradise Gardens. We’ll see… And until then, it’s not the only boat ride coming to California Adventure…

20XX – Pandora: The World of Avatar – Cove of the Ancestors

If you’ve been part of the Disney Parks fandom long enough, you know that Avatar has been a divisive presence in the parks for decades. As the thinking goes, a knee-jerk reaction to the imminent opening of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter lead Disney to grasping for something – anything! – Potter-sized. Given that James Cameron’s Avatar had only just become the highest grossing film ever, it fit the bill. Much to the shock of nearly everyone, Disney announced in September 2011 that it had secured the exclusive global rights to build attractions based on 20th Century Fox’s 2009 action flick.

Of course, as anyone will tell you, Avatar –despite its box office dominance – swiftly and infamously disintegrated from public consciousness and left practically no footprints in pop culture. Oops! For years online commentators wrote think-pieces about just how strange it was that the highest-grossing film in history had just disappeared… and how bamboozled Disney must be by having put their eggs in the Avatar basket. Perpetually-delayed sequels and rumors of the theme park project’s cancellation left Disney fans with great schadenfreude, certain that an outside company’s dystopian action movie set on a distant alien world simply had no right to inhabit a park as thematically pure as Disney’s Animal Kingdom.

Obviously, the 2017 opening of Pandora: The World of Avatar proved critics wrong.

Brilliantly severed from the film series, the land invites guests to journey to Pandora as “eco-tourists.” When we arrive on the alien moon (incarnate as the preserved Valley of Mo’ara), it’s to bask in the flora and fauna of this beautiful alien world that our naive ancestors tried to strip for minerals; to convene with the native Na’vi people through their culture and cuisine, and yes, to experience their rites of passage by way of a gorgeous (if too short) boat ride and a genuinely-emotional motion simulator that sees us “link” to an Avatar, soaring through Pandora’s floating mountains and bioluminescent jungles. Suffice it to say – they made it work!

As luck would have it, Disney’s staggering (and badly-timed) $71.3 billion purchase of 20th Century Fox in 2019 put the future of the Avatar franchise in the Mouse House’s hands. That initiated a second round of think-pieces mocking James Cameron’s hubris and the ever-expanding (and ever-delayed) roster of two, then three, then five sequels he promised. So even once Disney formalized Avatar‘s progress (penciling an entry into the every-other-year’s blockbuster Christmas season, trading back and forth with Star Wars) the question remained: with the 3D hysteria of the 2000s long-since abandoned and the first film long forgotten, would anyone show up for an Avatar 2?

Suffice it to say that 2022’s Avatar: The Way of Water managed to do the impossible: it nearly matched the financial success of the first film. With the two Avatar films slotted into the first and third positions in the list of highest-grossing films ever (with only Disney’s own Avengers: Endgame between them), Disney decided to double down. Elevating Avatar to a flagship franchise, CEO Bob Iger promised in 2023 (just as the sequel passed $2 billion in box office revenue) that an “Avatar experience” would soon come to Disneyland, too.

As for what that could be, who knew? It seemed that Iger had avoided the word “land” or “ride” intentionally, leaving fans to speculate about every potentiality… Could a copy of 20th Century’s “Avatar: The Experience” immersive walkthrough exhibit could come to Downtown Disney? A copy of Flight of Passage, plopped down in Tomorrowland as a high-tech ACE warehouse? Blue Sky, why couldn’t a boutique Avatar theme park could come to one of the DisneylandForward expansion pads…?

In spring 2023, Iger let the cat out of the bag, stating, “We have one Avatar-based land, Pandora, in Florida; we’re going to put a second one in California.” Even still, fans couldn’t be sure if the Avatar plans were real, or merely more “Blue Sky” fodder meant to satiate fans and blackmail incentivize Anaheim’s City Council to approve the DisneylandForward zoning initiative. But when Disney officially released artwork in April 2024, promising that it was merely a sort of “mood board” for the kinds of things they were considering, it seemed certain that whatever presence Avatar had at Disneyland, it would be substantial.

Rumors swirled that this aquatic rendition of Pandora (based on the Cove of the Ancestors location seen in The Way of Water) could, for example, replace the perpetually-endangered Submarine Voyage area in Disneyland, carving out a sci-fi Pandora thematically nestled right between Fantasyland and Tomorrowland. But let’s face it: Disneyland is a park that’s already packed with E-Tickets – and one of great historical significance that even Disney’s IP-obsessed executives feel a certain sense of discomfort around changing. Not to brag, but that lead to one of my most prophetic tweets.

At the 2024 D23 Expo, we got our answer. Suffice it to say that sometime in the next ten years or so, you’ll have the chance to travel 4.37 million lightyears away from Earth to the Alpha Centauri star system where – orbiting around the gas giant planet Polyphemus is the distant alien moon of Pandora. If you’re keeping track, that’s definitely not California, even if you squint.

But here’s what we know: California Adventure’s version of Pandora will draw inspiration from the sacred coastal spaces of the seafaring Metkayina Na’vi clan featured in The Way of Water (but, we’re promised, also incorporating settings and stories yet to be told in the Avatar universe). Already, that’s a good thing, because just as Animal Kingdom’s version of the land is an elaborate metaphor for Earth’s biodiversity and indigenous people, there’s every chance that California Adventure’s version of the land will be a clear analogue to California’s coastal environments, the stunning species, and the precious habitats they conceal. Yeah, it doesn’t quite blend from Buena Vista Street… but y’know, let’s wait and see what Imagineering can cook up.

Until then, the new land doesn’t have a name. We also don’t know where it’ll be located. (Some suggest that it’ll take shape in the park’s existing Hollywood Land, coinciding with the annexing of the bus loops that Disney’s tried to make happen for years. Others suggest that this is likely to go onto the expansion pads made accessible by DisneylandForward; what else, after all, was all the political trouble of making DisneylandForward happen for if not for something Avatar-sized?)

But we do know some details of what it will contain. The land’s anchor (and as far as we know so far, only) ride will be a boat ride through the wonders and perils of Pandora. Make no mistake – this won’t be a copy of Animal Kingdom’s Na’vi River Journey (which, despite its poetic, spiritual nature, is often criticized for its brevity and its lack of action).

Instead, California Adventure’s Avatar ride is believed to use the same ride system developed for Shanghai Disneyland’s one-of-a-kind Pirates of the Caribbean: Battle for Sunken Treasure. This unique system allows boats to alter speed, maintain precise show timing, slide down drops, and change its direction to orient itself forwards, backwards, or even sideways against the direction of travel.

That’ll be important, because if California Adventure’s version of Pandora can house just one ride, it’ll need to encapsulate both the beauty of Na’vi River Journey and the thrills of Avatar Flight of Passage in one – and ideally, bring something genuinely its own to the formula, too. If concept art is to be believed, the ride will do just that – traveling indoors and out, passing jaw-dropping Na’vi Audio-Animatronics, and being wrapped in gargantuanly-scaled screens as Shanghai’s Pirates so astoundingly does.

If you’re counting – and you know we are – 2024’s D23 Expo penciled in a pretty astounding four new rides set to come to California Adventure – Avengers: Infinity Defense, Stark Flight Lab, a Coco boat ride, and an Avatar boat ride anchoring a Pandora land. Even more astounding, three of those four look teed up to be what we’d definitively call E-Tickets. If that comes to pass, it’ll give California Adventure more E-Tickets than any “non-Castle Park” in the Disney Parks group – yep, even DisneySea.

A note on naming

And thus begins the conversation anew: is it time to rename Disney California Adventure? When all’s said and done, after all, this’ll be a park whose anchor attractions are themed to The Avengers, Cars, Coco, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Avatar – not a one of which, you might notice, has anything at all to do with California.

But in what I think is an appropriate ending to the story of California Adventure (so far), I think it’s helpful to remember that in the 2020s, a simple truth permeates Disney Parks: for better or worse, none of them are really about anything. “DCA 3.0” – and its highs and lows – aren’t a uniquely California Adventure problem; they’re the new way of the (Disney) world.

This, after all, is the age of the “Disney+ Park,” when Disney’s leadership have decreed that the highest and best use of Disney’s theme parks is to be elaborate “brand loyalty centers” whose history is more a frustrating burden than a gift. Cynical as it may sound, each park’s aspiration is to be a “global hub where Disney stories, characters and franchises come to life.” That statement could very well be the “theme” of EPCOT, or Hollywood Studios, or Shanghai Disneyland, or Magic Kingdom, or Animal Kingdom, couldn’t it?

By nature of reading this, you almost certainly would prefer that California Adventure had stuck to its “2.0” guns, emerging from the 2020s as something closer to my built-out, armchair-Imagineered version of California Adventure (a park with a real San Fransokyo! Pop-Up Pier! Pacific Point! Hollywoodland! Discovery Bay!) than the one we see now in the “DCA 3.0” era. Trust me: me too.

But I’ll tell you something: Disney California Adventure is still a park with the Carthay Circle Theater as its de facto icon. This is still a park with a 1920s Los Angeles as its “Main Street;” with Grizzly Peak at its core; with San Fransokyo and – soon – Coco as celebrations of Californian immigrants, customs, and culture; with a beautiful Victorian boardwalk – even one peppered with anachronistic Pixar characters! Sure, Avengers and Avatar are left-of-center additions whose concocted connections to California are inherently paper-thin… Even still, in the age of the Disney+ Park, California Adventure is at least as thematically-pure and true-to-its-name as any other Disney Park. That may not be saying much, but it says something.

This is not a park that should be renamed “Disney-Pixar Studios” or “Disney XL Park” or a “Disney Cinemagine Kingdom,” and no one who steps foot on Buena Vista Street or Grizzly Peak or Cars Land or even Pixar Pier could ever earnestly say it should be. This isn’t a park of drag-and-drop IP lands. Despite it all – its ups and downs – this is a park where past and future swirl; where optimism and disappointment coexist; where eras of leadership are on full display, intermingling in spaces that are occasionally incoherent and occasionally brilliant; where California and Disney and Pixar ebb and flow in a continuous ballet. It’s not a Disney Adventure World. It’s Disney California Adventure.

Highs and lows

There’s perhaps no park on Earth that’s seen more change in the first quarter century of its life than Disneyland’s second gate: from incoherent modern thrill park to story-centered Disney jewel… and maybe, back again… And that’s just the story so far.

At least for now, where we’ve landed when it comes to Disney’s California misadventure is a park made of eight lands: Buena Vista Street, Hollywood Land, Avengers Campus, Cars Land, San Fransokyo Square, Grizzly Peak, Pixar Pier, and Paradise Gardens Park. (Interestingly, not one remains from the park’s Opening Day just over two decades ago.)

Disney California Adventure today is an unusual mix of old and new. Some parts of the park – like Hollywood Land – still reek of “DCA 1.0” when budgets were low and imagination scarce. Others – like Buena Vista Street, Paradise Gardens Park, and Grizzly Peak – recall the park’s 2012 rebirth and its focus on the kind of immersive, idealized M.O. it sought to make the park’s standard.

Then, post-2012 additions – like Avengers Campus, Pixar Pier, San Fransokyo Square, and soon, Avatar and Coco – double down on the texture and depth, but essentially unroot their “DCA 2.0” selves and re-tether their identities not to timeless California, but to Disney’s modern IP library in weirdly-uneven ways.

To question whether or not that’s a smart long-term strategy – i.e., “Will Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: BREAKOUT!, Pixar Pier, San Fransokyo Square, or Pandora be as timelessly relevant in 20, 30, or 50 years as the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, Paradise Pier, Pacific Wharf, or a 1940s Hollywoodland might’ve been?” – is hardly worth asking. Because right now – in the age of the Disney+ Park – the mandate is simple: Disney + Pixar + Marvel should find their way into Disneyland’s closest equivalent to a catch-all “studio” park via whatever means necessary.

One-off, piecemeal swaps are the name of the game. Following Universal’s well-trodden footsteps, Disney seems content to measure attractions’ lifetimes in seasons rather than decades if that’s what it costs to keep blockbuster brands in the park in real time. In other words, it doesn’t matter whether Guardians of the Galaxy will still reign over California Adventure in twenty years; when the time is right, the ride can simply be swapped to whatever IP is hot at that moment.

For the last decade or so, it’s often felt that no one was really in the driver’s seat; that the era of master-planned, interconnected, intentional, high-quality expansion was over, and that one-off, piecemeal swaps were the name of the game. We’re weirdly hopeful that the return of Bruce Vaughn at Imagineering might right some of those wrongs, returning to the foundational potential of California Adventure and filling its remaining expansion pads wisely…

And that, in some ways, brings us full circle. Today, two decades of addition and subtraction have yielded a park that’s practically unrecognizable from its Opening Day form. It’s been “plussed” by more rides, more E-Tickets, more dark rides, and more characters than anyone could’ve imagined; it has an entirely different lineup of lands; a different name; a different logo; and yes, a different spirit that can be felt throughout…

But perhaps more than ever before, Disney California Adventure is a park that’s wildly uneven. Within reside the highs and lows of Imagineering on display; sweeping eras of master-planned, cohesive connectivity, juxtaposed with areas left behind to “DCA 1.0” or artificially advanced to the new ethos of “DCA 3.0.”

It’s a park that largely still offers beautifully-decorated lands that exude the history and magnificence of California’s storied places… but then fills them with rides themed exclusively to Cars, The Little Mermaid, Spider-Man, Toy Story, Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo, and soon, Avatar.

California Adventure is a park where Buena Vista Street is reigned over by a “warehouse prison power plant” grafted with pipes and satellite dishes from Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy; where a turn-of-the-century pier has its carnival rides “label-slapped” with The Incredibles, Toy Story, and Inside Out; where a 1940s Hollywood will either become a portal to – or be entirely replaced by – a distant alien moon; where even a food court must become a stand-in for the animated, technological metropolis from Big Hero 6.

Does it work? Does “DCA 3.0” come together despite the oddities inherent in its different eras and IP overlays? We’ll let you decide. And until then, we’ll just have to get used to seeing Spider-Man, Iron Man, Mike & Sully, Woody & Buzz, Elsa & Anna, Miguel, and Ariel enjoying a getaway in the Golden State.