“Here you leave today and enter the worlds of yesterday, tomorrow, and fantasy.”
Great care was taken by Disney Imagineers in ensuring that guests stepping into the parks would feel as if they’d been transported. Disney’s parks and the themed lands within are cinematic and immersive, meant to make you feel like the star of a story. One of the most exceptional – and underappreciated – details in making those worlds come alive is the music that underscores the experience.
If all the music disappeared from Disney Parks, a day at the park would feel incomplete… like a cake without frosting. Below, we’ve collected some of our favorite music loops from Disney Parks – the ever-present but almost-subliminal scores that bring lands to life. Take a listen and put these mixes on your playlists for studying, hiking, writing, and daydreaming.
1. Main Street, U.S.A.
At Disneyland and Magic Kingdom, the promise of leaving our world behind leads to Main Street, U.S.A. – a nostalgic streetscape representing a turn-of-the-century American town. Simplicity is the name of the game here, with ragtime music filling the air.
One listen to this score and you’ll imagine eating ice cream cones sitting on the curb, the flashing incandescent bulbs dancing by night, horse-drawn carriages and the honking of 1900s automobiles, and the overwhelming feeling of having arrived back at the happiest place on Earth. That’s the transformative power of Disney Parks background music…
2. Cars Land
Like many towns along Route 66, Radiator Springs developed in the age of the cross-country family road trip, when sedans set out for the West Coast. And like so many towns along “America’s Mother Road,” it was cut off by the interstate that sliced its way through the country. Of course, by the end of Disney-Pixar’s Cars, the town has returned to its mid-century glory with neon signs along its electric streetscape and a fresh stripe of paint down the relaid backtop.
Cars Land is the one place in a Disney Park where you’d expect to hear music from the not-too-distant past. Almost like a jukebox, the land’s background loop will leave you “twisting and shouting,” believing “it’s in his kiss,” and “getting your kicks on Route 66.” The rock ‘n’ roll influenced soundtrack that would feel awkward elsewhere instead keeps traffic moving down the street as guests shimmy along.
Still, the land’s most spectacular musical moment is a mini-show you won’t find in the Times Guide… Each evening precisely at sunset, The Chords’ “Sh-Boom” plays throughout the land as its neon lights sizzle to life one-by-one in a mini, orchestrated moment that will send chills down your spine and earns applause from the amazed crowd.
3. Tomorrowland
“There’s a great, big, beautiful tomorrow shining at the end of every day.” That’s the promise once made by Tomorrowland, an area seemingly under perpetual transformation. From early days of authentically trying to keep up with American innovation and optimism to today’s “Pixarification,” it may be true that Tomorrowland’s intellectual origins have faded.
But the land’s music – zippy, beeping, booping, and bright – will instantly carry you away to a world of swirling rockets, gliding Peoplemovers, sputtering speedway engines, revolving theaters, and more. And yes, you are hearing teases of the familiar (and not-so-familiar) music behind Alien Encounter, Carousel of Progress, If You Had Wings, Timekeeper, and more all wrapped into the score.
4. Hollywood Tower Hotel
As if the imposing, lightning-scarred ruins of the Hollywood Tower Hotel looming over Sunset Blvd. weren’t eerie enough, background music playing on the vacated hotel’s grounds is positively chilling. As queuing guests pass dry, cracked fountains and gilded signs pointing to long-lost pools and tennis courts, the hauntingly distant echoes of old Hollywood hits reverberate through the vine-entombed property…
There’s nothing inherently scary about the slow, jazzy songs that linger across the Hollywood Tower Hotel – songs that might’ve once drawn couples to the dance floor at the Tip Top Club. But in the shadow of the crackling neon sign and occasional screams, this music loop literally serves to create the perfect atmosphere – mysterious, haunting, and eerie…
5. Grizzly Peak
Located at Disney California Adventure park, Grizzly Peak is perhaps one of Disney’s most beautiful stateside lands. After the unfortunate original “extreme sports in a rundown park” theme from opening day was painted over in 2012, Grizzly Peak emerged as a 1950s National Park of towering evergreens, fire watchtowers, ranger outposts, geysers, flickering lanterns, and misty rivers. It even expanded in 2015 to overtake the formerly military, desert-themed Condor Flats, transforming it (and the Lost Legend: Soarin’ Over California) into a High Sierras redtop runway.
Fittingly, the land’s score is mellow and natural, yet grand and spectacular. It’s cinematic and dramatic, with sweeping strings and flutes that carry guests through the majesty of nature in the shadow of the snow-capped Grizzly Peak itself. Brilliantly, its songs also capture (and in places, interpolate) cues from Soarin’s legendary score by Jerry Goldsmith, feeling lighter than air.
The adventurous scores continue on the next page…
6. Adventureland
Adventureland’s entrance music loop is just plain fun. The earthy, upbeat score is a perfect fit for the land’s entrance. (It transitions to jazz standards as the 1930s theme takes hold past the Tiki Room, uniting Jungle Cruise and the Modern Marvel: Indiana Jones Adventure into the same time period). While the simplicity and ease of the entrance loop may be at odds with the more dramatic and cinematic score deeper in the land, it’s a perfect retro throwback to the early days of the park.
7. Paradise Pier
When Disneyland’s second gate opened, it didn’t exactly leave its first guests satisfied. We took a walk through the dark days of Disney’s first theme park failure in Declassified Disaster: Disney’s California Adventure. Among the park’s greatest sins? Rather than bringing to life a historic, idealized California (the way Disneyland’s lands take guests to long-lost times and places infused with fantasy), the park was a spoof of modern California, with Paradise Pier acting as a 21st century thrill boardwalk playing the Beach Boys, The Mamas and the Papas, and more.
After a five year reimagining, Paradise Pier was lightly reskinned as a turn-of-the-century Victorian boardwalk of Edison bulbs, elegant seaside architecture, and other historic accents. But believe it or not, the music did much of the legwork as the music loop above proves, skillfully creating an early 1900s feel. After all, as odd as it is to think about, Paradise Pier and Main Street, U.S.A. were set in approximately the same era!
During a second facelift of the land in 2018, it became the unusual Pixar Pier, strangely doubling down on the Victorian architecture, but also dividing into four “neighborhoods” themed to modern Pixar films. It’s an unusual mix made all the more unfortunate because the background music above was replaced with instrumental scores from Pixar films. We at least wish Disney would’ve re-orchestrated them to sound like turn-of-the-century music. But at least we can still listen to the old Paradise Pier loop at home.
8. Buena Vista Street
Another victory from California Adventure’s reimagining? The absolutely stunning Buena Vista Street – a new entrance land custom built for the park and perfectly capturing its new identity of celebrating California’s history.
Themed to a 1920s Los Angeles alive with the bustling electric optimism of the West Coast, the land’s music isn’t too different from the best loops at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. But especially at California Adventure, there’s something transformative about the music set against the Red Car Trolley dinging its way up and down the street, the Carthay Circle Theater ahead, and the elegant ’20s department stores lining the avenue.
9. New Orleans Square
According to many Disneyland loyalists, New Orleans Square is Walt’s magnum opus – the most beautiful classic land you’ll find at any Disney park. And with two of the world’s most iconic attractions in its lineup (Pirates of the Caribbean and Haunted Mansion), it’s easy to understand why. There’s nothing like relaxing on a wrought-iron, vine-covered patio along the Rivers of America drinking a non-alcoholic mint julep and enjoying the sounds of live jazz bands.
The land’s background music loop, too, will make you want to dance the night away. It’s cool, slick, and jazzy, keeping guests tapping their toes as they walk through the land’s intricate backstreets.
10. Innoventions
Though Epcot’s Innoventions music packs a ’90s punch, the electronic influenced score is simply nostalgia at its finest. Quite different from Tomorrowland’s sci-fi chirps and fast-paced score, this music is somewhat more contemplative and inspirational; a perfect fit for what Future World was in the ’90s.
Major reconstruction in the center of Future World is likely to demolish the old, parenthetical Innoventions buildings entirely. It’s likely that a new, more appropriately-21st century music loop will replace this one (which, admittedly, doesn’t jive with the park’s mish-mashed pavilions). The weird thing will be seeing what replaces it… Most fans agree that Future World’s problem is that it’s once-united pavilions are now pulled apart. Some are character-infused; some are headlined by brainless, vaguely-scientific thrills; others are still left in their tired ’90s states. Just as it’s hard to see how they can ever be united again, it’s hard to imagine what music could feel cohesive among such a spread.
11. Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge
It’s hard to imagine a more iconic score than that composed for Star Wars by famed Hollywood composer John Williams (also behind the brilliant and iconic scores of Harry Potter, Jurassic Park, Indiana Jones, E.T., Jaws, and many more). Disney even teased that Williams had composed a custom score just for Galaxy’s Edge. So imagine the surprise when fans stepped into the Star Wars-themed land to hear… well… nothing. Don’t misunderstand – the land is mapped into many audio zones… but none play the music you’re expecting. The land’s entrance portals play gentle, mystical chimes; the village of Black Spire Outpost is mostly filled with the sounds of merchants and ships landing and taking off…
Given Disney’s determination to keep Batuu highly realistic, it makes sense… A cinematic movie score wouldn’t be blasting through a “real” impoverished alien village, right? But the lack of the expected songs has frustrated some fans. The compromise? Inside Oga’s Cantina is DJ R3X (the beloved Droid who was our pilot on the Lost Legend: STAR TOURS), who plays remixed songs that just sound like Star Wars. During the land’s first two months at Disneyland, the DJ’s music has been expanding through the land’s sound zones to play over radios set around the planet – perhaps Disney’s in-universe solution for fans negative response to the unorthodox silence.
