FANTASTIC WORLDS: A Land-by-Land Tour of Park Lore’s Blue Sky, Built-Out, Armchair Imagineered Disney Park

SAN FRANSOKYO

Pitch

Having risen up along the water’s edge, the trail curves to the right aligns with the Torii Gate Bridge – portal to the wonders of San Fransokyo from Big Hero 6.

In the Big Hero 6 mythology, San Francisco was rebuilt after the 1906 earthquake with the help of Japanese immigrants, artists, and inventors whose Asian construction methods and architectural styles added seismic and cultural flexibility to the city. All of it lead to San Fransokyo’s official renaming in the early 1900s, repositioning the city as one built on a foundation of technology, collaboration, and creativity.

I actually wish the film had played more with this alternate-universe futuristic fusion of San Francisco and Tokyo – in many ways, a sort of spiritual sequel to the Possibilityland: Discovery Bay. I decided Fantastic Worlds was the place to do that… here, guests step into this multiversal variant of our world – at once rooted in the past, and yet marked by the future. Japanese temples and compact cars and nanoparticles, all in one place.

Inspiration & Concept

I told you that I started drafting out early concepts of a Disney “Islands” park a decade ago, and back then, a lot of “armchair Imagineers” were swirling with ideas tied to Disney and Pixar’s Monsters Inc. That’s because, back in late 2012, Disney California Adventure had just finished up its $1.2 billion reimainging culminating in Cars Land, the hype train for Monsters University was full speed ahead, and rumors were swirling that the next big addition to the park would be an immersive, “Living Land” style Monstropolis replacing the park’s tired (and a decade later, still barren) Studio Backlot in Hollywoodland.

On one hand, it sounded great, because Monsters Inc. clearly lent itself to the formula and totally fit the scale of the projects being greenlit at that time. It was almost too perfect to imagine passing through a portal into downtown Monstropolis (where you could have a lot of fun with retail and dining and flat rides), and then having a dark ride like Tokyo’s Ride & Go Seek and a suspended family coaster through the Door Warehouse both in California Adventure’s underutilized soundstages, now concealed behind a looming facade of the Monsters Inc. factory.

On the other hand, Monsters Inc. obviously has nothing to do with California, but that’s a ship that’s long since sailed anyway, and even I – an ardent California Adventure apologist – was looking forward to what Monstropolis would include. (Sorry to break the fourth wall, but I’d pay big bucks to see the montrous citizens of Monstropolis perform retellings of Disney and Pixar films in a stage show in the Fangtages Theater on Mossywood Blvd. while I eat plopcorn and drink Cherry Ooze.)

You also have to remember that with Disneyland more popular than ever, California Adventure reborn, and Disney having acquired Pixar (2007), Marvel (2009), and Lucasfilm (2012), it felt like a foregone conclusion that a third park would be built at Disneyland by the decade’s end, that it would probably be “Living Lands” situated around a lagoon, and that the Monstropolis project could very well be moved there where it would join Star Wars, Marvel, and Avatar in a whole new gate. So to kind of head off any official announcements, I added Monstropolis to my own “Islands” park way back then.

I still think Monsters Inc. is timeless enough and theme-park-able enough to have warranted a land, and if Monstropolis had been built at California Adventure (or a third gate), I think it would be one of the better “Living Lands” between Disney and Universal Parks. But when I came back to the idea of finishing my “Islands” park this year, I felt like we’d seen a few equally-compelling “cities” in Disney & Pixar films that were worth considering.

One was definitely Metroville from The Incredibles, which actually isn’t very explored in the films, but has strong enough vibes that I think you could reverse engineer it into a “place” that feels theme-park-able. That mid-century super-spy aesthetic of diners and city parks and ’60s cars and Giacchino’s score and rides that let you blast and fly and train and become heroes… There’s definitely something there, right?

But I recently developed an Incredibles land for my reimagining of Disney’s Hollywood Studios, where I think the aesthetic of a mid-century Technicolor city works perfectly, so I didn’t want to re-use it here. With that idea already taken, I decided to focus on San Fransokyo – a third recent animated “city” that just seems even richer and more vibrant and more perfect for the central message of Fantastic Worlds than Monstropolis.

San Fransokyo has all the makings of a theme park land. It’s coastal, highly-stylized, vast, distinctive, and populated by lots of opportunities for retail and dining. Like the best Imagineered lands, there are layers of history baked into it; a sense of old and new. It feels real, yet impossible. It’s colorful and comic book and futuristic, and requires no knowledge of its source material to instantly be absorbed into the world.

So in short, in your Fantastic Worlds, you might swap San Fransokyo for Monstropolis or Metroville or Duckburg or (blegh) Zootopia and I wouldn’t fault you for it, because I think having a “cityscape” land here is a good fit. But I thought it would be a fun challenge to tackle a land that has to at least reasonably resemble the real geography and regions of a real place, and to build a land without any fallback rides to copy and paste into it like I feel that I have for Monstropolis and Metroville. Here’s what I came up with…

Experience

I think it was deliberate that San Fransokyo is the first land encountered after Hallow Vale. I wanted to establish the “flash” between worlds right away, and I think rising along this curving, forested path and suddenly seeing an alternate universe Golden Gate Bridge appear around the bend is a stark message.

Crossing over that bridge and the lapping waves below, guests would be deposited in the bustling streets of downtown, beneath tethered blimps and elevated railway tracks and video screens and torii gates. The parked cars and electric lines and crosswalks would hopefully be a stark contrast to the natural world of Hallow Vale (with only the cherry blossom trees continuing on).

This is a world plucked from futurism and comic books and animation – bright and alive and electric, populated by robots and fish markets and superheroes. The SAN FRANKSOKYO CABLE CAR (green line on the map) would connect all three of the city’s regions – The Wharf, Downtown, and the Institute of Technology – using California Adventure’s Red Car Trolley ride system.

Alternatively, a unique “shortcut” through town would be to walk along the elevated train tracks, repurposed as a second-story garden pathway through the land. (The two stations at either end of the line would house restrooms, stairs, and elevators to make the pathway accessible. It’s more New York City High Line than San Francisco, but oh well.)

Guests who enter the land and turn left toward the waterfront would find themselves at the Wharf. A sort of icon of the land from across the water, the San Fransokyo Ferry Building (above) would serve two purposes.

The first would be as a backdrop of the ‘SOKYO BAYSKIMMERS, bringing DisneySea’s LPS-guided, trackless Aquatopia technology to the park.

Seated in self-driving “rafts,” guests roll through the water in a sort of trackless obstacle course, circling whirlpools and dodging leaping fountains and reversing and spinning in place. (The vehicles are actually on wheels, merely churning through a thin layer of water in a shallow pool, which then cascades into the park’s central Sea of Stars.)

The second would be that the Ferry Building houses the ENBAKADERO FOOD HALL – a downtown market with various food and snack stalls ringed with an interior second floor of balconies and an adjoining lot patio to dine on. This would be your go-to place for pretzels, fruit, waffles, boba, and other fun “urban market” treats.

Further on, I created a wharf-set food court area strung up with Japanese paper laterns – home to the quick service NOODLE BURGER that’s a favorite fast food stop for the Big Hero 6 crew.

Instead of heading to the waterfront, if guests turn right after crossing the bridge and arriving in San Fransokyo, they’d skim along the edge of downtown and find themselves at the Palace of Fine Arts (a San Francisco icon remaining and restored from the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition). It would be interesting to imagine how the history of San Fransokyo might have made a difference in how the 1915 World’s Fair looked, but today, the Palace of Fine Arts is hosting the Pacific Coast Battle Bot Competition… and we’re invited to participate as part of the family D-Ticket BAYMAX BATTLE BOT BLAST!

Ultimately, the ride itself would utilize the Web Slingers ride vehicles (but replace the motion-based targeting with good old fashioned blasters). The “schtick” here would be that after an engineering-design preshow with Hiro and Baymax, guests would move into an engineering lab to digitally design their own Battle Bots, TEST TRACK style! Balancing Strength, Defense, Agility, and Stability with tips from Baymax along the way, guests’ personalized Battle Bot design would follow them onward in the queue, where they’d even see their own creation being pieced together on an assembly line.

Once seated in the vehicles with Battle Goggles, guests would actually see via Augmented Reality as their own Battle Bot designs are lowered into the bot compartments on the outside of the car in front of their seats. With the Battle Bots’ abilities harnessed by guests, they’d proceed through mini-games and challenges (again, think Web-Slingers-meets-Midway Mania) meant to test Strength, Defense, Agility, and Stability, with performance read-outs after each scene. I even imagine a scene where two ride vehicles align, facing each other across a digital battlefield and participating in a wild 4-on-4 melee battle.

Of course, the entire team’s Battle Bots would be put to the test in a final showdown with the ultimate robot, Boss Bot – the event’s nine-year champion armed with secret weapons that randomize on every ride. Naturally, the combined strengths of the team’s assembled Bot Squad would reign supreme, the new Battle Bot Champs of San Fransokyo.

The last little piece I pictured for this experience was the accompanying shop, BUILD-A-BOT. Just as on the ride, guests would begin by designing a robot on a screen. (Tapping of an RFID band would auto-import the robot guests designed on the ride, if they’ve already done so.) Then, they’d take their prepared blueprints to a workbench, where a Cast Member would bring a tray of the pieces and parts they’d selected to be assembled, activated, and programmed in a short, interactive session.

The cool thing is that that finished, activated Battle Bot could then physically join guests on the ride. During the design pre-show, the design station would recognize the presence of an activated Battle Bot, download the design digitally, and switch interfaces so that instead of designing a bot from scratch, guests can spend the design time adding unique upgrades and add-ons to their design. (This feels like a good middle ground between Web-Slingers add-ons that enhance the ride but don’t give you anything real, and Batuu’s Droids that are cute and personalized, but don’t have any benefit in the land.)

The final area within San Fransokyo would be the campus of the San Fransokyo Institute of Technology. This is the collegiate campus that serves as the laboratory and test ground of some of the brightest and most determined young people in the city, and perhaps best exemplifies the land’s fusion of tradition and innovation.

Standing at the center of campus is the Hamada Memorial Expo Hall – home to TECHNOVENTIONS. This double-sided-entry facility is an open hall of interactive elements, virtual reality experiences, “Home of the Future” student invention submissions, and walkthrough-style laboratories where you can get a glimpse into the “technoventions” of tomorrow developed by SFIT faculty and students today.

I thought that the unique comic book setting of SFIT might actually lend some timelessness and humor to the Innoventions concept, and turn interactive elements and exhibits into pieces of a bigger whole. Touring labs and being part of students’ projects sort of gives a throughline to the experience rather than feeling so disjointed and so rooted to an attempt to showcase technologies of tomorrow.

But of course, all of the activity on campus is centered on the glass-enclosed Robotics Lab, where SFIT’s most enterprising students are eager to show off their most cutting-edge inventions. The queue leads through the building’s atrium and study spots. They’re all empty of students, because today is a big day. As part of the Expo, we’ve arrived to see the unveiling of a game-changer: the Gyro Sled. These AI-piloted, seismic-stabilized, gleaming white four-person super-jetpacks were designed by SFIT students to serve as evacuation vehicles in the event of another earthquake like the one that struck back in the early 1900s…

And unsurprisingly, we turn out to be in just the right place at just the right time. When a tremor shakes the school, guests are hurried off to the lab to hop aboard their own Gyro Sleds to take to the skies over San Fransokyo. Trouble is that this tremor wasn’t caused by an earthquake at all… BIG HERO 6: KAIJU CLASH is the land’s anchoring E-Ticket.

Using the same KUKA Robo-Arm ride technology that powers Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey, this dark ride mixes physical sets and projection screens with a high-flying, free-wheeling ride system. Along the way, guests join the Big Hero 6 team in a battle against a gargantuan Kaiju creature risen from San Fransokyo Bay. It’s a wild, aerial race that including close encounters with the creature.

Finally, I felt that San Fransokyo and the SFIT Technoventions Expo offered a smart place to squeeze in a few flat rides that would up the park’s ride count, increase its family capacity, and avoid the “Hollywood Studios conundrum” where a park is made of nothing but E-Tickets. So, adjacent to the Robotics Lab are a few thrilling attractions decked out in the glowing tech aesthetic of their associated heroes…

First, there’s HONEY LEMON’S CHEM COLLIDER– a reskin of Tokyo’s Happy Ride with Baymax (above; see also, Mater’s Junkyard Jamboree or Alien Swirling Saucers) that places guests in Honey Lemon’s giant molecular orbs to spin, swing, zip, and twirl in a mad, chaotic chemical reaction.

There’s also HIRO’S NANOFUGE – a “Himalaya” spinning ride (same model as Hong Kong’s Slinky Dog Spin) stylized as a power generator. As it spins, a growing cloud of Nanobots appears to emerge from the ride’s center, spinning in a kinetic Astro-Orbitor style display.

Finally, the GOGO XLR8R is a Zamperla Disk’o Coaster, with guests 40 guests positioned facing outward on a circular platform, which spins as it’s accelerated back and forth on an airtime-hill track, leaping over its own entrance. (I considered putting a smaller Intamin Half Pipe coaster – like Disneyland Paris’ RC Racer – in this spot, but I liked the visual of the longer ride as a backdrop to this little mini land, and it’s a perfect compliment to Gogo’s spinning discs.)

Here’s what we’ve got so far. As you can tell, San Fransokyo is a big land. Partly, that’s because it’s a world I really want to explore, and one that I think lends itself so well to Disney Parks. It’s Marvel, but also Disney Animation; it’s action-packed, but light and fun. As a result, between the Cable Car (a nice A-Ticket), the Bayskimmers (maybe a C-Ticket), Bot Blast (a D-Ticket), Kaiju Clash (an E-Ticket) and the three flat rides of the Expo (three solid B- and C-Tickets), I feel like San Fransokyo has a great spread and a very nice balance of experiences.

On your way out of San Fransokyo, you’d pass beneath the collegiate towers of SFIT where a bridge across the Sea of Stars leads onward to another Fantastic World…