2021 – 2023 – The World’s Most Magical Celebration
Disneyland celebrated its 50th Anniversary in 2005 with an international Happiest Celebration on Earth campaign and a golden promotion built around nostalgia, restoration, invitation, and the legacy of Walt Disney himself. Sixteen years later, its younger sister in Florida went… a different direction.
The Most Magical Celebration was just as elaborate in design, with a shimmering, oil-slicked “EARidescence” adorning marketing, park icons, and merchandise across Walt Disney World. But whereas Disneyland’s 50th leaned heavily on the park’s history, music, rides, and founder, Disney World’s 50th was a celebration planned by a very different Walt Disney Company. To that end, it’s really no surprise that the Most Magical Celebration practically avoided any commentary on the parks, their history, or their founder at all.
Instead, the celebration’s emphasis was almost entirely on post-2010 Disney media franchises. The two nighttime spectaculars that launched as part of the campaign (Magic Kingdom’s “Enchantment” and EPCOT’s “Harmonious”) made no mention of the parks they were found within, much less their 50th and 40th anniversaries, respectively. (Only after immense fan backlash – and in the latter half of the 18-month celebration – did Disney retcon a Walt tribute prologue into the “Enchantment” projection show.)
Likewise, fifty golden statues distributed across the parks weren’t of Imagineer-made characters or landmark rides from across the resort’s first five decades, but of Disney + Pixar + Marvel + Star Wars characters. (Of the fifty, only one – Figment – represented a park-specific character, and he was replaced in the associated McDonald’s Happy Meal toy line with a movie character.)
Sure, undoubtedly, some of what Disney had planned for the 50th was scaled back thanks to the 2020 pandemic and its two-fold fallout: the downturn in tourism and attendance, and the slow-down on high-profile projects that saw Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure, Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind, TRON Lightcycle Run, and EPCOT’s reimagining all come untethered from their timelines and lose their connection to the promotion.
But more damningly, the “Most Magical Celebration on Earth” will likely also remain synonymous with its poorly-timed launch of the ill-received Genie+ paid-for line-skipping system, additional-cost “Individual Lightning Lane” add-ons for in-demand E-Tickets, record-breaking “Stand-by” waits for guests who don’t pay extra, the end of Disney’s Magical Express airport transportation, immensely complex tech-based planning with daily 6:55 AM wake-ups, and a host of other cancelled perks and new upcharges that Disney used the pandemic as an excuse to monetize. That’s to say nothing of then-new CEO Bob Chapek’s stated interest in downsizing portions, upping prices, and attracting fewer customers who spend more.
In other words, the Most Magical Celebration fell frustratingly flat both in its forgetting to celebrate Walt Disney World and coinciding with nearly all guest-facing perks evaporating into thin air. If the global ad-campaign was meant to bring travel-hungry guests back to a post-pandemic Walt Disney World, it clearly succeeded based on crowd levels and staggering waits. But if it was meant to leave those guests so impressed that they want to come back year after year? Well… we’ll have to see.
2023 – Disney100: 100 Years of Wonder
Announced at the 2022 D23 Expo, “100 Years of Wonder” was meant to be Disney’s company-wide, all-in, across-the-board marketing campaign for 2023 (and naturally, 2024). Not to be confused with 2001’s 100 Years of Magic (which, you’ll remember commemorated 100 years since Walt Disney’s 1901 birth), 100 Years of Wonder harkens back to the 1923 founding of the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio – the earliest iteration of what would become the modern Walt Disney Company.
22 years passed between Walt’s birth and the founding of the studio; and frankly, the equivalent 22 year span between the 100 Years of Magic and 100 Years of Wonder campaigns have seen The Walt Disney Company change almost unimaginably. Since 2001, Disney has acquired The Muppets, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, 20th Century Fox, and National Geographic, not to mention creating its own in-house franchises like the Disney Princess line, Frozen, Big Hero 6, The Princess and the Frog, and Moana.
So you can imagine why the Disney100 push was meant to be a pivotal one, with every facet of the Walt Disney Company getting in on the action. This wasn’t just a theme park promotion, but a coordinated campaign that saw a refreshed “Disney100” studio vanity logo launching ahead of 2023 film releases, a world-touring Disney 100: The Exhibition, a world-touring immersive projection art installation, and waves of merchandising unrivaled by even the most retail-friendly campaigns of old.
As far as executives are concerned, Disney100 must’ve been the perfect promotion. After all, the celebration could appease ultra-loyal fans with nostalgic and historic nods to Disney’s founding and Walt himself (for example, each month ShopDisney released a decade-specific, chronological collection), while also serving as a vehicle to promote modern franchises plucked from the Disney+ home screen – y’know, Disney + Pixar + Marvel + Star Wars – all blasted out across Disney, ABC, ESPN, Hulu, and beyond.
It’s funny – at Walt Disney World, the “World’s Most Magical Celebration” was roundly criticized for seemingly ignoring the theme parks it ostensibly was meant to celebrate and instead focusing so heavily on Disney, Pixar, Marvel, and Star Wars. Maybe it was just too early to the party, because the Disney100 celebration actually feels like the right time and place to focus on those franchises, characters, and stories… if it’s done right.
And largely, it was done right at Disneyland. There, Sleeping Beauty Castle has been decked out in royal purple and platinum medallions. Coinciding with the opening of Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway (a wonderful ode to the Mouse who started it all) and the return of the “Magic Happens” parade, the resort launched two new nighttime shows, each explicitly meant to tie to the 100 Years of Wonder messaging.
At Disney California Adventure, “World of Color – One” absorbs the corporate mandate to bring Disney + Pixar + Marvel + Star Wars to the fore (and in fact, touts being the first Disney nighttime spectacular to feature all four brands, never mind that the result was a pretty predictably ambling mess).
Meanwhile, the spectacular “Wondrous Journeys” at Disneyland served as a love letter to animation from “Steamboat Willie” to 2023’s Wish. In fact, “Wondrous Journeys” notably included allusions to every single one of Disney Animation Studios’ 62 releases… yep, even the stinkers! The show’s strength is proven by the fact that even Disneyland’s most loyal fans didn’t mind the animation-focused show where park-specific shows are generally preferred.
Coinciding with the campaign’s launch, Disney also adjusted some policies, pricing, and procedures. In Florida, that included returning free parking to Disney Resort Hotels, including on-ride photos in the Genie+ upcharge service, and relaxing some Park Reservation requirements for Annual Passholders. In California, it includes free on-ride photos for all guests and the softening of Park Hopping restrictions.
(Though positioned as Disney100 “perks,” they were more likely responses to Disney’s increasingly-aggressive up-charging and its alleged cataclysmic impact on surveyed guests’ satisfaction and intent-to-return. The changes couldn’t hurt, but they also can’t quite disguise how many perks visitors have lost in the last decade.)
Like all things modern Disney, it’s easy to denounce the Disney100 promo as a “cheap and cheerful” effort that’s big on synergy, merchandise, collectibles, and IP-integration. And no doubt, this was a campaign developed by the Chapek regime, even if his time at the company came to an unexpected end before its launch…
For those of us who don’t mind facing the realities of Disney, though, Iger’s surprise return and the flurry of fandom it inspired doesn’t quite tell the whole story. Behind the scenes, Disney’s 100th year was no party. We should remember that Disney was in the midst of a historic hiring freeze that included thousands of job cuts as the company tried to make streaming profitable and fought tooth and nail to avoid giving its union-backed Cast Members even one more cent in pay… All when Disney’s theme parks earned a record $7.42 billion in Q4 of 2022 – a 36% increase over the same period in 2021 – largely on the back of wildly unpopular but highly-lucrative formerly-free add-ons like Genie+.
In other words, Disney100 really wasn’t the greatest time to be a fan of The Walt Disney Company.
Still, as a campaign alone, you’ve got to hand it to Disney100. In it, Disney seemed to have found a winning formula that allowed it to burn both ends of the candle – celebrating its history and its present in highly-merchandisable, highly-emotional ways. It’s something of a natural bookend to the #DisneySide campaign, even, showing just how far we came in Disney becoming a lifestyle brand to which people feel allegiance and gratitude.
Speaking of which, though the celebration has ended, if you’re looking to celebrate Disney100 on your own terms, we collected a cross-country roadtrip of historic Disney-related destinations outside the parks where you can follow in Walt’s footsteps and relive his journey to the studio’s founding a century ago.
2025 – Celebrate Happy
Walt Disney World’s 50th (in 2021) infamously forgot to celebrate Disney World at all, pretty much ignoring the resort’s history and founder in favor of promoting exclusively Disney and Pixar IP from the decade prior. You would’ve been forgiven at that point for shrugging and saying, “Well, this is a different Disney than the one that created Disneyland’s nostalgic, park-centered 50th and 60th. I’m sure next time Disneyland has an anniversary, it’ll also be entirely IP centered.”
But – surprise! You’d be wrong.
Technically, a 70th anniversary isn’t a major one. (The 75th in 2030 will be.) Even so, Team Disney Anaheim did unveil a substantial promotional campaign around the 70th… and gloriously, it puts the park front and center. The so-called “Celebrate Happy” campaign may not make grammatical sense, but it’ll bring a suite of “plusses” to both Disneyland Park and Disney California Adventure, including a new theme song (“Celebrate Happy,” performed by Disney alumni the Jonas Brothers), a “Celebrate Happy Cavalcade,” and the “Tapestry of Happiness” projection show on the facade of “it’s a small world.”
Now listen, this is a different Walt Disney Company than we knew in the past, so the days of giveaways and freebies are long gone. No one would dare expect “Year of a Million Dreams” style promotions given that we’re paying for FastPass. And yes, Disney’s marketing is definitely elevating merchandise and snacks to major components of the celebration… but it’ll also coincide with some actual great things, too!
Disneyland Resort has been in a major entertainment drought with literally all of its theater spaces (Fantasyland Theater, Hyperion Theater, even the Disney Junior Theater) empty. That won’t change… but Disneyland will welcome back the much-missed Wondrous Journeys fireworks show and the Paint the Night parade while California Adventure will restore its Better Together: A Pixar Pals Celebration parade.
Specific to the celebration itself, we’ll see World of Color Happiness! (which seems like it’s missing a punctuation mark but according to the style guide, isn’t), as well as some “plusses” to rides, including a 70th Anniversary game added to Toy Story Midway Mania and Dante and Miguel from Pixar’s Coco joining “it’s a small world.”
Entertainment aside, two very park-centric additions for the 70th look likely to be permanent. First, the Main Street Opera House will welcome Walt Disney – A Magical Life. The show is controversial (it’ll include an Audio-Animatronic of Walt Disney, despite the distaste for the idea expressed by his surviving family), but is meant to humanize the larger-than-life entertainer who – let’s be honest – even Disney fans sometimes imagine as more of a symbolic figurehead than a person.
The show will apparently culminate in Walt’s ideas for Disneyland, serving as a beautiful prologue to a day at the park. (During the celebration, the show will run continuously. After, Disney has promised that it’ll enter a rotation with “Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln.”)
The other sweet and wonderful addition comes to it’s a small world. Before his passing in May 2024, Richard Sherman (one half of the prolific Sherman Brothers who wrote countless Disney Parks classics) penned what we deemed a “final verse” for the Brothers’ legendary tune, “it’s a small world.” The tear-jerking new addition couldn’t arrive at a better time for humanity…
Mother Earth unites us in heart and mind,
And the love we give makes us humankind,
Through our vast wondrous land,
When we stand hand in hand,
It’s a small world after all
A short film made about the verse will be shown in the Main Street Cinema, and the verse itself will officially be added to the ride. For those in the know – admirers of the Sherman Brothers’ outsized impact on Disney Parks and those aware of how their songs serve as embodiments of Walt’s legacy – it’ll be a very sweet and sentimental addition for the anniversary.
“Celebrate Happy” is poised to be a really nice event – and one that tees up far greater ambitions for the 75th that’ll follow soon after. After all, by then, we may be looking at a Disneyland Resort that includes an Avengers E-Ticket, a Coco dark ride, and an Avatar themed land at California Adventure… and by then, it’ll likely we’ll know about major projects for Disneyland Park, too.
As for what the next century of Disney or the next seven decades of Disney theme parks will bring? We can’t be sure yet… but this much seems certain: we haven’t seen the last of Disney’s promotional campaigns.