G – Galaxy’s Edge
When Universal Orlando opened The Wizarding World of Harry Potter in 2010, it changed the trajectory of theme parks forever. The race to use, license, or acquire intellectual property (see, I) to power immersive, cinematic, “Living Lands” was on. Disney’s built many in the decades since, but Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge is meant to be the genre’s peak, reportedly costing $1 billion (more than some entire theme parks) all on its own. That’s not to say it’s not without controversy.
One, certainly, is that – in keeping with Star Wars‘ academically-studied timeline – Galaxy’s Edge is very firmly set in the timeline of the Disney-produced “sequel trilogy” (actually, on a single, specific day between Episode VIII: The Last Jedi and Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker). That means that you won’t find iconic characters like Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Han Solo, or Darth Vader in the land at all. (That probably made sense when the land was being designed in conjunction with Disney’s first, critically-acclaimed entry in the Star Wars cannon, 2015’s The Force Awakens… but seems less smart now that the sequel trilogy ended with a whimper, and more to the point, ended.)
Another hotly-debated choice is that – rather than recreating a planet we’ve “seen on screen” – Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge is set on a completely original planet called Batuu. A forest planet littered with ancient, petrified trees (known colloquially as “Spires”) positioned at the “Outer Rim” of the galaxy, Batuu, we’re told, was once a bustling “last stop” before wild space, until the advent of lightspeed travel left it an impoverished planet of desolate villages. Galaxy’s Edge lets us step into one of them: the trader’s port of Black Spire Outpost. (Realistically, Batuu needed to be invented, because none of the planets seen in Star Wars media so far meet the requirements of a theme park – things like restaurants, shops, bathrooms, and landforms that can hide massive soundstages that the rides take place in.)
It just so happens that our visit to Batuu aligns with the planet’s brief role in the showdown between the fascist First Order (lead by Darth Vader’s grandson, Kylo Ren) and the last vestiges of the Resistance (run by Princess Leia – er, now, General Organa) (see, “U”). Altogether, the idea is that by creating the planet of Batuu, we can “Live Our Own Star Wars Adventure” instead of merely treading in the footsteps of the story we already know. Whether you love or hate the idea, Batuu is a pretty impressive environment, and an interesting concept.
H – Hub
If you haven’t picked up on it so far, Disneyland was a laboratory of innovation. It’s often said that Walt and his Imagineers were “writing the rules as they went.” We’ve already explored some of the ways Disneyland diverged from other amusement parks of the era (like having a single entrance, an admission fee, and Ticket Books – see “E”). But another of the great innovations of the park is its layout: what’s now called a “hub and spokes” layout.
Essentially, guests all enter via Main Street, which forces all guests into the park’s center – a round “Hub.” From there, “spokes” diverge like those on a bicycle wheel. Those spokes are, of course, the pathways into Adventureland, Frontierland, Fantasyland, and Tomorrowland. The idea, though, is that unlike a long, stretched midway of yesteryear, Disneyland’s “hub and spokes” layout makes the park easily navigable. By cutting back through the Hub, even two opposite corners of the park are never that far from each other.
The Hub also includes a fascinating feature. In 1993, Disney Legend and renowned sculptor Blaine Gibson created Partners – a bronze statue depicting an older Walt and Mickey, holding hands and looking down Main Street together as if surveying all they’d accomplished together. (A spectacular companion sculpture called Storytellers was created for the reimagining of Disney California Adventure, depicting a young Walt and an early version of Mickey Mouse as they arrived together in Los Angeles with “a suitcase and a dream.”)
For the theme parks academics among us, the Hub is a fascinating space. As explored by the incredible Passport2Dreams, at the much larger Magic Kingdom, it’s certainly a part of Main Street, U.S.A., as evidenced by little Victorian gardens and wrought iron fencing and fountains that connect it to the land that precedes it. At the smaller and more compact Disneyland, the Hub is a thematic “vortex” – a space where every land collides, leading to some incredible transition spaces and the kind of “naive” architecture Disneyland is known and loved for.
I – Intellectual Property (IP)
Intellectual property is a complex concept concerned with ownership of intangible ideas – patents, copyrights, trademarks, and even trade secrets. Intellectual property (hereafter, IP) is recognized through substantial systems of law in most countries, and yields the idea that people and businesses retain the rights to certain ideas, and are protected from unauthorized copying or usage of those ideas… at least, for a period of time.
When Mickey Mouse was “invented” in 1928, copyright law at the time would’ve protected the character until just 1956 with an optional extension to 1984. For decades, Disney has successfully lead lobbying efforts for extending the amount of time that IP is protected in order to ensure their characters remain their exclusive IP… A battle they finally surrendered to when Mickey Mouse – at least as he appears in 1928’s “Steamboat Willie” – officially entered the public domain in 2023. That means 95 years after his creation, that form of Mickey Mouse can now be used by anyone… (Shameless plug, but pick up your totally-legal “FREE MOUSE” shirt and mug on my online shop!)
IP has been a major component of the Disney story in the 21st century, mostly thanks to the rise of CEO Bob Iger. Nearly as soon as he stepped into the CEO role in 2005, Iger began an aggressive expansion campaign that saw Disney purchase Pixar ($7.4 billion), Marvel ($4 billion), Lucasfilm (aka, Star Wars and Indiana Jones, $4 billion), and 20th Century Fox ($71.3 billion). Whether Iger’s acquisitions were lucky preparation for or the cause of the ensuing “Content Wars” of today is a “chicken or egg?” dilemma, but the effect is the same: we live in an era where every entertainment company is racing to acquire as much IP as possible, to be weaponized on the battlefields of broadcast TV, streaming services, licensing, franchising, and theme parks.
That leads to the question of how IP impacts Disneyland. The answer is, increasingly! Given the hundred billion dollars Disney has spent on “Disney + Pixar + Marvel + Star Wars + National Geographic + Hulu + 20th Century Fox,” is it really any surprise that the directive from on high is to pulse IP into Disney Parks by any means necessary? What we call the “Disney+ Parks” era is an occasionally bleak one, where characters are shoe-horned into the parks in “cheap and cheerful” ways. (For example, Disney California Adventure was criticized in 2001 for having virtually no Disney characters. Today, you’ll find Ariel, Woody and Buzz, Elsa and Anna, Lightning McQueen, Spider-Man, The Incredibles, and Mike & Sully from Monsters Inc.… I guess, vacationing in California?)
If you keep track (and we do), it’s been decades since any U.S. Disney Park has added a major attraction without an IP attached. And whereas Disney waited years and years before giving the major hits of the ’90s “Disney Renaissance” permanent presence in the parks, today’s films are often dropped in as quickly as possible.
J – Jungle Cruise
If Disneyland was initially a time capsule of the pop culture of mid-century America, then it’s no surprise that one of the park’s five opening day lands was Adventureland – a genre whose popularity in the era was amplified by Walt himself. After all, between 1948 and 1960, the studio produced fourteen “True-Life Adventure” nature documentary entries. (Early plans for Disneyland even labeled Adventureland as “True-Life Adventureland.”) You have to remember that in the 1950s, television was giving Americans their first glimpses into the exotic and unimaginable landscapes of Africa, South America, and Southeast Asia, and the animals therein.
Fittingly, when Disneyland opened in 1955, the Jungle Cruise was among its most elaborate and astounding attractions. Legend has it that in order to recreate the misty, unknown jungles of Africa in the mere 366 days between Disneyland’s groundbreaking and opening, the park’s horticulturist, Bill Evans, had the parcel’s orange trees uprooted and re-planted upside down. Immediately upon the park’s opening, Jungle Cruise was an obvious standout. Guests boarded river steamers with candy cane striped awnings, setting off for a spieled tour of the rivers of the world.
But according to Disneyland lore, Walt soon overheard a guest proclaiming to friends and family that they need not ride Jungle Cruise again since they’d ridden it the last time they visited the park. Walt instructed his Imagineers to “plus it.” And so began the Disney mantra of “plussing” rides – even beloved ones! – by returning to them with upgrades, revisions, or improvements, incorporating modern technologies.
That matters a lot for the Jungle Cruise, because it’s been “plussed” a lot. In the ’60s, Walt called on a trusted animator from the studio named Marc Davis to take “a good, hard look” at Disneyland and offer his feedback. Davis returned to Walt reporting that Jungle Cruise lacked humor. Luckily, Davis was just the person to bring it. In a vast revision, Marc oversaw the creation of some of the ride’s most famous scenes – filled with vivid, stylized characters and animals set-up in the animator’s signature humorous set-ups and perfectly-staged vignettes.
In the ’90s, the arrival of Indiana Jones Adventure: Temple of the Forbidden Eye saw Jungle Cruise recontextualized. The ride was reimagined and absorbed into Indy’s 1930s time period and frame story – broadcasting jazz standards and period-appropriate radio broadcasts through the jungle, and swapping its candy-cane vinyl canopies for tattered canvas and rust.
Then, in the 2020s, as part of a sweeping push for Inclusion across the company, Imagineers returned to Jungle Cruise to remove the ride’s… well… harmful stereotypes. Caricatures of “natives,” racial stereotypes, and troublesome remnants of mid-century exoticism were erased (while preserving Davis’ brilliant scenes). The refreshed Jungle Cruise draws not just on Indiana Jones Adventure’s frame story (see “T”) and timeline, but mixes in the mythology of the “Jungle Navigation Co. Ltd.” and the “Society of Explorers and Adventures” – S.E.A. – a massive mythology that unites multiple Disney Parks attractions across the globe. The result is that all of Adventureland’s attractions share a swirled frame story, all rooted in the historic and beloved Jungle Cruise.
K – Key Holders
One of the absolutely phenomenally unique things about Disneyland – and indeed, one of the things that vastly differentiates it from Walt Disney World, should you be familiar with the Florida resort – is Key Holders. Let me explain. Entertainment writer Jim Hill famously calls Disneyland “the world’s most famous regional theme park.” In other words, Walt Disney World was designed to be an international destination; the “Vacation Kingdom of the World.” That’s simply not so at Disneyland.
On any given day, a majority – sometimes, a vast majority – of Disneyland visitors come from within 250 miles of the resort; and even more narrowly, a substantial portion reside within 100 miles. Disney World is a sea of strollers, whereas Disneyland is populated – to a surprising degree – by “childless millennials.”
Indeed, you’ll find that a significant portion of Disneyland’s guests are locals. Prior to the pandemic, it was reported that Disneyland had accidentally amassed over one million Annual Passholders. Disneyland is fundamentally a locals park. You’ll find far fewer people making “once-in-a-lifetime multi-day vacations” and far more people who just… well… swing by after work for dinner, or come just to collect a souvenir popcorn bucket and bounce.
So while you may feel a wee bit silly imagining yourself wearing Mouse Ears, you’ll quickly find that not doing so puts you in the minority. Disneyland is a place of camaraderie; where adults don’t feel silly meeting Mickey Mouse. At Disneyland, there’s a sort of collective agreement that we’ll all let go and go along with it without feeling silly or “too cool.” That’s the power of the locals who’ve shaped the park that way. Most visitors to Disneyland grew up at Disneyland. This is a place passed from generation to generation like a treasured heirloom. And that brings about its own plusses and minuses.
The “plus” side is spectacular. Disneyland is known for its “local and vocal” audience, who have on more than one occasion saved attractions from the wrecking ball or forced Disney to reverse unpopular decisions. Disneyland’s visitors feel a sense of ownership for the place; a deep, personal connection, collectively safeguarding the park from the worst instincts of Disney’s franchise-focused executives. The way people use Disneyland is sometimes referred to as “lifestyling” – making Disneyland a part of your week-to-week life, treating it the way the rest of us treated the mall. Being a “third space” is kind of a cool idea, and reflects in the way people visit the park just to stroll around, Instagram, and chill.
Image: David M. French, Flickr (license)
There’s also a few “minuses.” Pre-pandemic, “APs” (Annual Passholders) were known to flood the park in droves, staking out spots for high-demand shows and parades that tourists have only one chance to see. Those descending crowds in the late afternoon and weekends caused gridlock on the park’s infamously tight pathways. Frequent visitors are known to recite pre-recorded spiels along with on-ride narrators, or continue chatting with friends and texting during quiet parts a ride. From a corporate perspective, a particularly awful recent CEO of the company said the quiet part out loud when he said that Disneyland’s high ratio of APs created an “unfavorable mix,” since those locals don’t spend the kind of money on tickets, hotels, food, tours, upgrades, and souvenirs that Disney sees from tourists.
Disney let all Annual Passes expire during the pandemic, then relaunched the program as “Magic Keys” – more expensive than ever, and now requiring reservations that help spread out and limit overcrowding from local passholders. But before you head into Disneyland, it’s important to understand the culture of “Keyholders” – the good and the bad – that make Disneyland a cherished, protected, “locals’ park” with its own unique spirit.