“Armchair Imagineering.” For Disney Parks fans, it’s a skill that’s learned early, and practiced often. Almost inescapably, theme park aficianados can’t help but to imagine what we would do if we were given creative control of a theme park we love. And once in a while, we finally decide to put our ideas down and make them real. That’s exactly what lead to my built-out redesign of Disney’s Hollywood Studios, and this project: my armchair-Imagineered, Blue Sky version of California Adventure.
I should say before I even begin that no one “armchair Imagineers” better than S.W. Wilson, whose blog – Ideal Build-Out – contains work that is not only jaw-droppingly, stomach-churningly enviable, but almost inconcievably professional. Be sure to bookmark that blog, and follow @buildoutideal on Twitter for incredible park concepts.
I should also remind you that I know this version of California Adventure isn’t possible! Current Disney leadership would never greenlight most of the ideas I’ve brought here, and there are many practical, budgetary, and operational reasons that this park couldn’t come to life exactly as I’ve designed it. But I have taken care to make my ideas “possible” in the sense that they’re correctly scaled, accurately placed, and thoughtfully developed… so c’mon… be kind. This took a lot of work! So offer your own ideas, concepts, and dreams, not a rude comment.
With that said, today we’ll step through my own, hand-drawn “built-out” version of Disney California Adventure. I hope you’ll enjoy my vision for what could’ve been… Our tour of an “idealized” California Adventure will go land-by-land… But maybe we ought to start with the basics.
The Real California Adventure Story
If you don’t know much about Disney California Adventure, let’s take a second to catch you up…
For most of its life, little ole’ Disneyland was all alone. Walt’s “original magic kingdom” was a little storybook oasis surrounded in the urban sprawl of Southern California. Disneyland and its equally-sized blacktop parking lot were stalwart companions, even as dozens and dozens of hotels, motels, convenience stores, and neighborhoods surrounded them on all sides. So even as Walt Disney World grew, by the early ’90s (above), Disneyland was still just a single theme park mostly drawing intergenerational, loyal locals, road-tripping regional visitors, and the odd Disney historian from afar, and only for a day or two at a time.
Michael Eisner’s plan was to change that. In the early ’90s, Disney announced that a second theme park – the Possibilityland: Westcot – would soon rise on Disneyland’s only expansion pad: its own parking lot. As part of a wide-reaching reinvention, Disneyland would become a multi-park resort, gobbling up available land to add hotels and shopping and entertainment venues around the new Disneyland and Westcot combo.
But plans were soon scaled back. The result was explored in our Disney’s California Adventure: Part I feature, where we stepped into Disneyland’s second gate as it opened in 2001. Suffice it to say, reviews were not positive. Rather than turning Disneyland into an international, multi-day resort the way executives hoped, the cost-conscious and creatively starved California Adventure was a blight that left the park’s local and vocal audience disappointed. Attendance was abysmal, and a decade of “Band-aid” ride fixes only served to temporarily bolster a park that was fundamentally broken – a flat, punny spoof of California lacking the immersive, idealized, E-Ticket quality of Disneyland.
In 2007, under then-new CEO Bob Iger, Disney announced that they were waving the white flag. In an unprecedented move, the company launched a five-year, $1.2. billion redesign effort that would not only add new lands and rides, but that would fundemantally recontextualize the park’s existing lands by making them historic, timeless, textured, and romanticized – the “Disneyland” formula. A modern boardwalk of bland thrill rides became a historic 1900s pier of Victorian architecture and popcorn lights; a run-down forest of extreme sports thrills became a 1950s National Park at its heyday…
And as we saw in Disney’s California Adventure: Part II, all was right with the world. Much has changed about California Adventure since there, but the ideal, imagined version of the park we’re about to explore traces its roots there, to 2012… when California Adventure had found its heart. With a new sense of optimism and a genuinely-Californian story as its roots, the stage was set. So working off of that new foundation, let’s tour the California Adventure that could’ve been….
Buena Vista Street
Buena Vista Street is practically perfect. Combining the best of Main Street and the best of Hollywood Studios’ Hollywood Blvd., this buzzing, 1920s street is a newsboy’s dream. There’s also an awesome narrative piece to the land, in that guests who begin at Disneyland’s Hub actually walk through Walt’s memories of a quiet, charming, turn-of-the-century, Midwestern hometown, pass under the Main Street Train Station, then proceed under the gates of the Pan-Pacific and find themselves in a bustling, buzzing young city twenty years later – literally making Walt‘s California Adventure.
So naturally, the RED CAR TROLLEY stays (and has a more logical route, which you’ll see unfold as we go). But more importantly, I wanted to do something more substantial with the Carthay Circle Theater.
Even though Pixar Pier’s Ferris wheel is often used as California Adventure’s park icon, it’s clearly meant to be the Carthay – the palatial 1920s movie palace that resides at the end of Buena Vista Street. As you probably know, the real Carthay Circle (demolished in 1969 for low rise office buildings) wasn’t just an icon of Los Angeles and the filmmaking business; it was the place where Walt premiered Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs – the world’s first full-length animated feature film. A massive risk that many expected would bankrupt Walt, Snow White instead remains one of the highest-grossing films of all time accounting for inflation, and of course, became the start of Walt Disney Feature Animation.
For that reason, I considered putting a version of Snow White’s Enchanted Wish into the Carthay (there’s really no better a spot) but ultimately decided on a different route…
During California Adventure’s reimagining, every indication had been that the park’s Carthay Circle Theater would contain an exhibit about Walt’s life and his journey to California. Obviously, that was vetoed by a full-service restaurant on level two, and a bar and private club on level one. But in my idealized California Adventure, that level one lobby also serves as the entrance to WALT DISNEY’S CALIFORNIA ADVENTURE, in which guests hop aboard miniature train engines and proceed through Walt’s story via a dark ride housed in the current home of the Disney Jr. stage show.
I like the idea of this ride being really simple; maybe using newspaper-type visuals, black-and-white images, film reels, headlines, and lighting to tell the story of Walt’s boyhood, to Kansas City, Ub Iwerks, and onward to California, Oswald & Mickey, ending at the Snow White premiere. A short, sweet, personally-scaled, impressionistic biopic ride. Guests would then exit into a small exhibit space… which actually brings us to the next land…
Hollywoodland
It never made sense for California Adventure to host the “Hollywood Pictures Backlot” – a modern Hollywood set of a modern Hollywood – when the real Hollywood and its real movie studios are just an hour north. 2012’s redesign of the land sought to fix that – at least superficially. The land was renamed “Hollywood Land,” modern pop music was replaced with big band standards, and the land’s “punny” shop signs and windows became more historic. The worst offender – the dead end “Backlot” plaza once littered with lighting rigs, exposed steel supports, and grimy electrical poles – was lightly smoothed over.
But the concept art Disney released of a fully redesigned Hollywood Land (above) never came. (To this day, it’s the only area of the park to nearly exactly resemble its 2001 version in most meaningful ways; especially since Tower of Terror was annexed from it to become Guardians of the Galaxy, leaving the land with the embarassing attraction lineup of a Monsters Inc. dark ride, Turtle Talk With Crush, and Mickey’s Philharmagic.)
So while it’s absolutely awesome that Buena Vista Street “flows” into Hollywood Blvd. and that the two lands are narratively connected (indeed, the Red Car Trolley used to offer ads for Hollywood Tower Hotel), the fact that Hollywood Blvd. ends in a massive “Blue Sky” flat (disguising the fly of the Hyperion Theater) means that it feels very unfinished. My plan not only erases that remaining “backlot” motif, but plusses the land’s attraction count with quality things to do.
The timeless, historic Hollywood Blvd. at Disney’s Hollywood Studios is so fantastically effective and evocative as a theme park streetscape, it boggles my mind that Disney didn’t just recreate it from scratch at California Adventure to begin with instead of opting for the Backlot version. So in my ideal California Adventure, that switch would finally happen, aesthetically resetting this land to the 1940s and an idealized streetscape of pastel buildings and neon signs.
So now, gazing down Hollywood Blvd. from the Carthay, you’d see this…
A wonderful, historic streetscape of rooftop billboards, dancing neon, Red Car Trolleys, and – at the street’s end – the historic Chinese Theater with the Hollywood Hills beyond (which are actually layered, textured flats serving to disguise the showbuilding that the Chinese Theater facade connects to. (Enjoy my hasty photo-edit, above.)
As a physical and now narrative continuation of Buena Vista Street (Walt’s arrival), I think it’s fair to use Hollywoodland as the place where the park explores animation further, which, of course, connects to what’s happening here in the Chinese Theater… But we’ll get to that in a second. First, passing between the pillars that serve to separate Buena Vista Street from Hollywoodland, you’d come across…
ONE MAN’S DREAM – a version of the exhibit found at Disney’s Hollywood Studios that would celebrate Walt’s legacy and from Snow White through Disneyland and the Florida Project. This exhibit space would be accessible from Hollywood Blvd., but would also serve as the post-show of Buena Vista Street’s California Adventure dark ride, picking up right where the ride left off and depositing guests in Hollywood, just as Walt himself was.)
Further down the street, I preserved the ANIMATION ACADEMY portion of the current Animation building (the rest of that very, very large showbuilding will be re-used later…), which I think could be used to continue that focus on early animation.
But the land’s true icon would of course be the iconic Chinese Theater (weirdly, another theater-at-the-end-of-a-Main-Street that’s clearly set up to be the park icon, but isn’t at Disney’s Hollywood Studios). That would serve as the entrance to the West Coast version of MICKEY & MINNIE’S RUNAWAY RAILWAY, which is a spectacularly fun ride and a fitting ode to Mickey’s cartoon origins. I added it here for a few reasons:
- California Adventure desperately needs more E-Tickets (which is why it’s absolutely, jaw-droppingly strange that a copy of Runaway Railway is instead being routed to Disneyland, which already has more E-Tickets than any other Disney Park)
- As proven by Hollywood Studios’ version, the Chinese Theater actually makes a really great end-of-the-street weenie, and the transition from an opulent theater into the cartoon world is a really compelling one (the transition from Disneyland’s Toontown into the cartoon world can’t possible be as clever a juxtaposition)
I added a Chinese Garden space (where the current “outdoor lobby” for the Hyperion is) to serve as an extended queue for Runaway Railway when needed and – otherwise – a nice, quiet, green, walled-in break from the urban sprawl of Hollywoodland.
Meanwhile, on the opposite side of the Chinese Theater, I added a small, multi-story SOUTH SEAS CLUB from Disney’s 1991 film The Rocketeer, which is actually a Disney movie, set in California, and even in Hollywood, in the 1940s! It couldn’t be a better fit, and I think this space would add a great jazzy flair to the land’s dining offerings.
You can sort of imagine the South Seas Club offering lounge-like entertainment, perhaps with a bar on the second level. But it might also be interesting to imagine if this club could have a little Rocketeer presence, maybe with an impromptu stunt show every hour or so, or at least walkaround, meet-and-greet characters from the film milling about and adding to the ambiance.
Finally, I wanted to deal with the odd “Backlot” plaza that resides behind the facades of Hollywood Blvd. This is the place where the park is unapologetically “studio,” with big beige soundstages and concrete plazas. So even though I love a solid timeline and a continuous identity for the land, I did go ahead and turn this into a Muppets Courtyard within Hollywoodland. (If it makes you more comfortable, you can imagine this “graduating” into its own mini-land, and that would be fine!)
I actually relocated MUPPETVISION into a new, smaller theater space. (This space, currently, is a small covered outdoor stage, but if enclosed with a pre-show gathering place along Hollywood Blvd., could serve as a great, perfectly-sized way to return this show to the park.) There’s also a quick-service PIZZERIZZO with balcony seating on the second level.
The former Muppet Vision theater, I’ve repurposed as THE GREAT MUPPET MOVIE RIDE – a dark ride once planned for the never-built Possibilityland: Muppet Studios expansion of Disney’s Hollywood Studios. A simple, family dark ride (which every park needs more of), this attraction tours guests past sets where the Muppets try (and inevitably fail hilariously) to recreate great scenes from cinema history.
So that’s where we’re at so far… Getting the picture? While right now, my version of California Adventure hasn’t drastically diverted from the real thing, it’s managed to “build-out” the park, better using its space and upping its attraction count and atmosphere. That’s the point, and that’ll continue as we go.
Which isn’t to say I won’t diverge from the existing park and its existing foundation. After all, just take a look at what’s next…
Avengers Campus
Look – Avengers Campus doesn’t really fit the brief that Disney laid out when they re-launched California Adventure in 2012. In fact, I’d usually be the person who just completely leaves this land out of my from-scratch park design, insisting Avengers Campus is just a blatant IP-infusion with no effort to match the park’s larger feeling or story. So before I tell you what’s in my Avengers Campus or how I made it “work” in California Adventure, we need to review what (and where) the land almost was…
The 2017 closure of the Lost Legend: The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror and its subsequent transformation into Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: BREAKOUT!, for many, was a sort of “wtf” moment. How – just years after spending $1.2 billion to revitalize California Adventure’s historic, reverent, thoughtful, Californian settings – could Disney transform the Hollywood Tower Hotel into a sci-fi “warehouse prison powerplant” looming over Buena Vista Street?
The excuse then was that Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: BREAKOUT! was merely the first piece of a larger, Marvel-focused presence at the park, and that eventually, it would be annexed from Hollywood Land and make a whole lot more sense in the context of that then-yet-to-be-announced-but-definitely-coming Marvel land.
Behind the scenes, the story is that Disney intended to convert nearly all of the park’s Hollywood Land into a Marvel superhero-themed land. Though, obviously, a golden age Hollywood Land makes more sense in California Adventure (especially post-2012) than Marvel’s modern superheroes, you can’t fight synergy… And given that Hollywood Land was barely touched by California Adventure’s redesign, it made some amount of sense to use the area’s very large footprint (which, frankly, is massively underutilized) to bring Marvel to the resort.
Sweetening the deal, Disney was simultaneously working out plans for what they called the “Eastern Gateway” project, a massive new transportation hub opposite the existing 10,000 space Mickey & Friends parking garage on the resort’s west side.
One of the Eastern Gateways more controversial effects would’ve been a transformed entry experience for guests staying in hotels on Harbor Blvd. After decades of literally just crossing a crosswalk and walking by the resort’s bus loops to get to Disneyland, “off-site” guests would instead be relegated to a very long, unfriendly, roundabout, shoulda-paid-to-stay-in-one-of-our-official-hotels journey.
The new pedestrian route would force guests of Harbor Blvd. hotels to walk under a pedestrian bridge to the resort, then a half-block away from the parks. There, they’d be funneled down a narrow sidewalk between the back of Harbor Blvd. hotels and a looming parking deck. Only then would they pass through new security checkpoints, joining guests dropped off from the newly-relocated bus loops. That security-screened crowd would then walk a half-block back to Harbor Blvd., rising to finally cross the pedestrian bridge they’d passed under three quarters of a mile earlier.
The result of this relocated transportation hub, though, would’ve been that the multiple acres occupied by the resort’s old bus loops would become available for park expansion, opening up area adjacent to California Adventure’s Hollywood Land… just behind its big, underutilized soundstages (the blue outline in the image above)… So basically, if when the Eastern Gateway was finished, Disney could build this big, huge Marvel land on the space previously occupied by Hollywood Land plus the park’s bus loops, and voila – Mission: BREAKOUT! would suddenly make sense.
Only, the Eastern Gateway didn’t happen. The hoteliers along Harbor Blvd. rightfully decried the new entry process as Disney’s underhanded way of cutting off the direct access they’d touted as a benefit for years, and the political chess pieces Disney sought to rearrange in Anaheim fell through. Disney ended up building a second parking deck back on the resort’s west side (the Pixar Pals parking deck, right next to the existing Mickey & Friends deck) meaning no extra land became available on the east side, suddenly sending Imagineers working on the Marvel plan back to the drawing board.
When Avengers Campus finally came online in 2020 2021, it was relegated to the much smaller, narrower parcel of land behind Hollywoodland that had once been “a bug’s land.” The result is that Avengers Campus is six acres – half as large as the park’s still-headlining Cars Land – and generally, not nearly as ambitious as fans had hoped. (Plus, its Rise of the Resistance-equivalent U-Ticket anchor was announced to be coming later, in a second phase that now seems highly unlikely post-COVID.)
Here’s my feelings: I started liking Avengers Campus a lot more when people began to refer to it as California Adventure’s Tomorrowland – a “Silicon Valley” campus of innovation and technology that’s hyper-saturated and kinetic and bright and bold, all wrapped into a story of recruiting the next generation of heroes (that’s us) to test out new technologies and find our place as the thinkers, doers, and protectors of improving our world.
So when it came to my “ideal build-out” of California Adventure, I didn’t mind keeping the Avengers Campus concept or setting! But I didn’t use the space from “a bug’s land” for it, nor did I knock down Hollywoodland. Instead, I envisioned fitting the entire Avengers Campus onto the land that would’ve been made accessible by the Eastern Gateway.
One reason is that as guests would arrive to the resort via this elevated, garden path that slowly descends toward the resort’s Esplanade, I felt that Avengers Campus would actually be a great land for those pedestrians to look down into; a place where it would be okay to “break the fourth wall,” providing guest a glimpse into this training ground from above.
It sort of feels… epic…? to imagine guests walking a raised path alongside this massive, white showbuilding emblazoned with the Avengers “A” logo (gives me the vibes of Denver’s Meow Wolf, above), then being able to see down into this land where heroes are swinging through the sky and guests are climbing and the Monorail is zooming through… Like if there’s a place to be seen from raised onlookers, this is it.
From inside the park, the main entrance into Avengers Campus would of course be from Hollywoodland. There, I pictured a transitionary tunnel “through” the Hollywood Hills backdrop, using the Figueroa Tunnel (made famous in Disney Parks by being used at Hollywood Studios twice: as the lunch tunnel of Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster, and again as the tunnel to Galaxy’s Edge).
Basically, I repurposed one of Hollywood Land’s existing showbuildings to house SPIDER-MAN: WEB ALERT!, which is, of course, the existing Web-Slingers ride. (I’d like to aim higher, but I do recognize that having a no-height-requirement ride in a Marvel land is a must, and that Spider-Man is the hero to carry it.) This would also be the building to house the Spider-Man Stuntronic, which those Hollywood Hills facades blocking view of the stunt from Hollywoodland.
Likewise, I retained the idea of the PYM TEST KITCHEN (a clever way to add “must-try” food to a Marvel land, which otherwise doesn’t bring any particular kind of food or drink to mind).
Since the “story” of Avengers Campus is that it’s a reclaimed Stark Motors manufacturing facility now repurposed as a hero & technology showcase, I added the STARK SHOWCASE – a vaguely-World’s-Fair inspired, small, domed lattice “pavilion” of interactives and exhibits, like the Hall of Armor showcasing each of Iron Man’s Suits, the Treasures of Asgard walkthrough, and more.
At the pavilion’s center would be PALLADIUM PACKS – a glowing spinner modeled after Shanghai Disneyland’s Jet Packs (which are themselves a sort of floorless, thrilling version of the Astro Orbitor), adorned with glowing Palladium cores and spinning at the center of the pavilion’s dome.
In the style of EPCOT’s Wonders of Life, I also added concealed showbuilding behind the dome that could house IRON MAN: ULTRAFLIGHT, giving California Adventure a version of Hong Kong Disneyland’s Iron Man Experience simulator. (I provided enough room for four simulator pods – the same number of Star Tours.)
As for the land’s anchoring E-Ticket occupying that huge, white, A-emblazoned showbuilding looming over Harbor Blvd., I called it AVENGERS: INTO THE MULTIVERSE. Reportedly, the now-likely-cancelled Avengers E-Ticket once planned for California Adventure would’ve used a ride system we haven’t seen before. According to rumor, guests would’ve boarded the Avengers’ Quinjet and been raced off to a battle in the African nation of Wakanda – home of the Black Panther.
There, in the style of all great Avengers films, a massive action-packed crossover event would see the heroes converge. Eventually, guests would apparently be ejected from the Quinjet, revealing that each seat was independently attached to a KUKA Robo-Arm (like Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey) initiating a second phase of the ride wherein guests would fly through massive projected and physical sets.
There’s no doubt that COVID is what grounded the ride, and that its undoubtedly massive budget is what’s kept it from being re-added to the parks’ development timeline even as budgets eased. But allegedly, one of the key issues leaders have taken with the ride is that the Marvel Cinematic Universe moves fast… And yeah, it’s a little short sighted to root a forever-ride in the MCU’s “Infinity Saga” (with the events and hero roster of its first 20-ish films when Iron Man, Captain America, and Hulk would star) given that the franchise has already moved on to the “Multiverse Saga”… and more to the point, that that 15-film arc would itself be past by time the ride opened if construction started today!
So even though “Into the Multiverse” is also a short-sighted tether to this “phase” of the MCU, at least it lends itself to KUKA robo arms thrusting guests through portals, where ride film can be swapped to promote whatever heroes and settings the MCU includes next…
Meanwhile, the very last piece of my built-out Avengers Campus is AVENGERS TRAINING COURSE – a high ropes course that would criss-cross the land, with guests passing from rooftop to rooftop by way of balance beams, ziplines, and more. This isn’t unprecedented – Shanghai Disneyland features a “Discovery Trails” course in its Adventure Isle. Unlikely as it would be to make its way to the lawsuit-happy U.S., the sight of guests scurrying across construction girders just seems too great.
As a sort of “tease” of the land, I also wanted a horizontal “spider climb” net to run parallel to the resort’s pedestrian gateway, so entering guests can physically watch as heroes-in-training deftly climb right alongside them.
Anyway, guests could exit Avengers Campus either back through the tunnel toward the Chinese Theater, or around the back of Web Alert and into the Muppets Courtyard. Either way, my idealized, Blue Sky version of California Adventure would then flow from Hollywoodland into the park’s first fully-original space… Read on…
Discovery Bay
In the 1970s, a brand new land was officially announced for Disneyland. Discovery Bay was meant to be a literary enclave built on the northern edge of the Rivers of America, right at the confluence of Frontierland and Fantasyland. That’s fitting, because as we explored in our in-depth Possibilityland: Discovery Bay feature, this retro-futuristic land would’ve answered the question, “What happened to all those miners who struck it rich in the Gold Rush of Big Thunder Mountain?”
The answer is simple: they would’ve pressed onward, heading West to the young port of San Francisco. There, they would’ve used their newfound wealth to the development of a nautical port of inventors, artists, adventurers, and immigrants from around the globe. Discovery Bay was meant to be a steampunk-stylized, turn-of-the-century seaport where you might find hot air balloons, submarines, and sailing ships all parked together at the dock. Discovery Bay never came to be (and in fact, the land remained unused until Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge opened in 2019)…
… But there’s no better place for that to change.
After all, California Adventure is the perfect place for this adventurous, steampunk San Francisco – a sort of “Frontierland” for the park, filled with literary heroes and nautical adventures. Fantasic and otherworldly, yet grounded, historic, and real, this immersive land of coastal treasures would be a great fit for the park and for this space. You can see that I added a lot of water here, and that’s on purpose.
Entering from the park’s “spine”, guests would cross a boardwalk over the water (fed by Grizzly Peak’s waterfall) and enter a street of multi-story facades. I picture this land (and particularly its Wharf area) as borrowing from Diagon Alley – whimsical, slanted buildings painted in earthy purples and greens and oranges; weather-worn and whimsical, advertising seance parlors and inventors and candy shops that may or may not exist behind each doorway.)
And on the left upon entering would reside the SEA MAIDEN – a sailing ship docked in a narrow inlet set against facades of whimsical pierfront storefronts. The area in front of the ship would be a small playground of climbable crates, cargo nets, slides, and more. A gangplank onto the ship itself would lead to multiple levels for guests to discover, including references to the legendary Society of Explorers and Adventurers.
That narrow streetscape would also include the ramshackle workshop of PROFESSOR MARVEL’S GALLERY OF WONDERS. At last giving California Adventure its own Tiki-Room-style Audio-Animatronic show, this concept (extrapolated from plans for the initial Discovery Bay back in the ’70s) would see a whimsical, musical, magical traveler named Professor Marvel welcome guests into his gallery of singing mechanical marvels, enchanted plants, and more, all aided by his sidekick – a fanciful green dragon. (Yes, this concept eventually evolved into the Lost Legend: Journey into Imagination.)
Here, I also included a reborn version of the Lost Legend: The Adventurers Club – a sort of mix of walkthrough, restaurant, bar, and theater that was once found in Walt Disney World’s Downtown Disney. A “living theater” experience, the Adventurers Club earned a legion of fans who still miss the improv-inspired attraction, know its creed by heart, and would love to interact with its cast of original characters… Discovery Bay feels like the place to do it!
The Adventurers Club also serves as a stop on the Red Car Trolley. Yes, the Trolley would make its way through Buena Vista Street, on to Hollywoodland, finally end its route in Discovery Bay, where a trolley would actually make sense! Its entry from Hollywoodland would also be where you would find the two major attractions of the Wharf area.
The first would of course be TOWER OF TERROR: CURSE OF THE HIGHTOWER HOTEL. If you know your international Disney Parks, you’ll recognize this as recasting California Adventure’s existing tower to take on the appearance and story of Tokyo DisneySea’s Modern Marvel: Tower of Terror. Without using Hollywood or The Twilight Zone, Imagineers concocted this adventurous, nautical, mysterious ride that instead sees guests come face-to-face with a stolen idol whose curse dooms any who step into the long-abandoned Hightower Hotel…
While The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror’s story and setting are a more obvious fit for California Adventure, I think positioning this version of the ride as an anchor of Discovery Bay makes perfect sense, and would also create a lovely-looking tower to preside over the park… much nicer than, say, the lightning-scarred Hollywood variation or the pipes-and-satellite-dishes of Mission: Breakout!
The Wharf area would also make use of the very, very large showbuilding that currently houses the Animation building. While I saved the Animation Academy and made it an attraction along Hollywood Blvd., the Sorcerer’s Workshop (very cool) and Turtle Talk with Crush just don’t fit this version of the park, and that space is better utilized as THE FIREWORKS FACTORY – an exciting, colorful, musical, kinetic, interactive family dark ride. Like Tokyo’s Monsters Inc. ride, no scores! Just a joyful tour of the warehouse, setting off sparklers, pinwheels, and lights, all to the tune of a Sherman Brothers-esque song.
Leaving the more grounded Wharf and walking around a coastal lighthouse, guests would arrive in the second, more fantastical “half” of the land, Hyperion Harbor. Wrapped in rockwork, a rising boardwalk overlooks the bay and its literary vehicles, gaining in elevation until it reaches an airship dock…
Accessed via a descending spiral staircase, guests could enter the NAUTILUS GRAND SALON – a new full-service restaurant seemingly set aboard the Nautilus submarine that’s docked in the bay. (In reality, the descending staircase and underwater ‘bridge’ would truly connect to a hidden showbuilding containing the restaurant. This is a trick stolen from Disneyland Paris, where a similarly-disorienting entry experience appears to lead into the park’s Mysteries of the Nautilus walkthrough.)
But the rising path toward the rocky cliffs of Discovery Bay would also lead to two starring attractions…
… First, 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA would bring this sensational, suspended, “underwater” dark ride from DisneySea to California, also paying homage to Disneyland’s own, original Submarine Voyage.
… Second, the park would gain a new starring E-Ticket with VOYAGE TO THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND. Using the rotating boat ride system behind Shanghai’s Pirates of the Caribbean: Battle for Sunken Treasure, this dark ride would see guests take to the seas and explore the trials that await in search of Captain Nemo’s secret lair on Vulcania. A unique, thrilling ride that balances projection and physical sets, the headlining journey would be an anchor for the park.
Radiator Springs
You can say what you want about Cars Land and how this “Living Land” (the first of Disney’s many attempts to match the Wizarding World’s M.O.) fits California Adventure… The inescapable fact is that even if you don’t buy the notion that its celebration of Route 66 and Car Culture and mid-century style warrants its inclusion, it’s still a very awesome land, and a perfect capstone of the park’s relaunch effort.
Cars Land is great. Seriously. It doesn’t need much. So all I did was “plus” it with a concept that was initially part of the land’s plan before Pixar’s Cars became the central driving force behind it (right) and actually remained part of the plan during Cars Land’s initial development (above). My ROUTE 66 DRIVE-IN DINER simply takes the concept already expertly used in Hollywood Studios’ Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater and applies it to the Cars universe – literally such an obvious idea, I’m surprised it wasn’t brought as a Phase II of Cars Land when Rollickin’ Roadsters was installed.
Since the plot of land once envisioned as home to the Drive-In Diner is taken in my park by the transition to Discovery Bay from Cars Land, I simply have guests enter it through some Taillight Caverns by the courthouse, emerging in the desert at sunset, just as the trailers begin to roll.
Obviously, it would be fun to see trailers of great Hollywood classics, sci-fi B-movies, and Disney animated classics as they would exist in the Cars universe (with cars in every role). Would the main character in The Little Mermaid be half-car, half-submarine? Otherwise, no changes needed to Radiator Springs.
Grizzly Peak
But walking down Route 66 does return us to the park’s spine and the hub in front of the Carthay Circle Theater. From there, if we take the last unexplored spoke, we’d arrive in Grizzly Peak – again, beautifully and mercifully reset to the 1950s during the park’s 2012 reimagining. That image got even stronger when, in 2015, Imagineers swept through the Condor Flats “desert” area that had survived the redesign and officially integrated it into Grizzly Peak as Grizzly Peak Airfield, spreading gray rock and dense evegreens across the whole, combined area.
In the farthest edge of the land, I used the totally empty (except for restrooms) “San Francisco” rowhouses to conceal a new COUNTRY BEAR JAMBOREE, accessed from a lodge along the Grizzly Peak Bypass trail. Disneyland actually did have its own copy of the Modern Marvel: The Country Bear Jamboree, but the space was used for the Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh dark ride in 2002. Since then, fans have been begging for the Bears’ return, and given that they’re often seen meet-and-greeting in Grizzly Peak, it’s a spot too perfect to pass up.
So much of Grizzly Peak is taken up by the mountain itself, and the raft ride that descends along its cliffs and waterfalls. The problem is, Disney has never really figured out how to use white water raft rides to great effect. (Neither Grizzly River Run, Kali River Rapids, nor Shanghai’s Roarin’ Rapids really feels like a must-ride).
Grizzly River Run, in particular, is weirdly devoid of… anything. While the 2012 land-wide redesign stylized the ride as a rustic family adventure instead of a modern extreme sports rally, there’s almost nothing to see along the ride’s course when even a few animatronic forest animals would help.
I went ahead and renamed the ride RAMBLIN’ RIVER RUN, to add some music and comedy. That could definitely be provided by the Country Bears, themselves, but the much more fun option would be the lean into the period-appropriate 1950s shorts star Humphrey the Bear. Humphrey is already a sort of “Easter egg” in Grizzly Peak, but some of the character’s comical vignettes (see above) would lend a great sense of humor to the ride, and communicate a lot in the chaotic instant that boats spin past.
Naturally, I returned SOARIN’ OVER THE GOLDEN STATE – a new, California-focused ride film for Soarin’.
Finally, I used Grizzly Peak as the long-standing excuse to bring MYSTIC MANOR to Disneyland. Developed for Hong Kong, this incredible, trackless dark ride is generally regarded as one of the best creations of Walt Disney Imagineering, and certainly among the most astounding modern rides on Earth.
We explored the making-of and experience-of the ride in its own in-depth Modern Marvels: Mystic Manor feature, but long story short, the ride sends guests through the international collections of a kindly retired S.E.A. member (connecting Grizzly Peak to Discovery Bay) when his playful monkey companion accidentally unleashed a magical music box whose tunes bring the global antiquities to life. There’s no reason Lord Mystic couldn’t have retired to an eclectic manor in the High Sierras rather than one in Papua New Gineau, and seeing that manor emerge from the redwoods and evergreens as you pass through the land would be quite a thrill…
And just like that, we’ve arrived at the last lands of my reimagined California Adventure… Read on…
Lantern Gardens
As part of California Adventure’s 2012 reimagining, the park’s Paradise Pier had its clock turned back to the turn-of-the-century, becoming a Victorian-age seaside boardwalk and pleasure gardens. In 2018 (and as part of that “DCA 3.0” push that seemingly undid so much of the success of “DCA 2.0”), the major section of the land – the boardwalk arcing around the lagoon – became the happily anachronistic Pixar Pier. While the Pixar Pier project obviously released a sum of funds needed to complete the land’s aesthetic shift to a beautiful, turn-of-the-century pier, it also stuffed that newly-redecorated land with odd, non sequitor “neighborhoods” stylized after Pixar’s highest-earning franchises.
However, part of Paradise Pier did not become Pixar Pier. The lagoon-side aquarium housing a Little Mermaid dark ride wouldn’t be so easily “Pixar-ified,” so it was spared. So, too, were the Paradise Gardens Grill dining area, three “classic” seaside flat rides (the Golden Zephyr, Jumpin’ Jellyfish parachute tower, and the Silly Symphony Swings) and the Goofy’s Sky School wild mouse carnival coaster. Now arbitrarily cut off from the larger land they were initially a part of, this odd little sub-area was designated Paradise Gardens Park.
Obviously, having two turn-of-the-century seaside amusement park-stylized lands next to each other is… odd. Especially because they’re not really distinct enough to know where the line of demarkation is between them. There’s not even any signage to tell you you’ve passed from one land to another. So I tried to give this mish-mashed area an indentity as Lantern Gardens – a sort of cultural festival area for the park.
I went ahead and kept THE LITTLE MERMAID: ARIEL’S UNDERSEA ADVENTURE in the turn-of-the-century aquarium that faces the bay. I suppose you could drop another Disney or Pixar story in there, but I don’t mind the ride. It fits the vibe, it’s cute, and it’s a rare appearance of the Disney Princess franchise in Disney California Adventure. Would I prefer if we dropped an entirely different Little Mermaid dark ride in its place? Yes. But it works.
The only problem with the land’s three seaside flat rides is that they don’t match. In “DCA 1.0,” that made sense, because the original Paradise Pier was basically supposed to look like a real boardwalk, which would indeed mash together rides from today and a century ago. The result was a Golden Zephyr plucked right from the ’20s, the jellyfish-themed parachute tower that I guess was meant to evoke The Little Mermaid indirectly, and then the ultra-modern Orange Stinger yo-yo swings (which were beautifully shifted to a classic Mickey Mouse-topped Silly Symphony Swings in “DCA 2.0”).
I just envision them getting a matching visual package. The GOLDEN ZEPHYR doesn’t really need a change; Jumpin’ Jellyfish can become the REEF JUMPER, pulling away the stylized, carnival-like seaweed ornamentation and becoming a classic boardwalk parachute tower, and the SEASIDE SWINGS, losing their character applique to gain a more classic, turn-of-the-century look.
As for what to do with the Goofy’s Sky School wild mouse, I wasn’t entirely sure what to do here. I’d hate to reduce the park’s ride count, but as we all know, roller-coasters-themed-as-roller-coasters don’t have a great track record at Disney Parks. So your in your ideal build-out of California Adventure, you might keep it, or re-theme it. Even an unthemed version would, I guess, fit with the three classic seaside rides.
But even if it’s a fun enough add to the park’s family capacity, I envisioned it being replaced with FIESTA DE FAMILIA CON COCO – a “Festival of the Lion King” style musical performance that seemed to fit the vibe of this land as a beautiful, warm, cultural celebration, ready for holiday overlays and food festivals. Lots of warmth and joy and lamps and strung-up lanterns and food… Not a bad little area! Thinking bigger, this little plot of land could probably be used for something else entirely… but as far as a reasonable re-use of what’s there, I think it’s fine!
As for the amusement area known today as Pixar Pier… Well… Let’s remember its history before we see my imagined fix for it.
Pier Problems
Story, story story. If you ask Disney’s PR team, every single thing in Disney Parks is all about story. And say what you will about Paradise Pier – it had a a story. In the park’s early days, the story was surely that the time was now and the place was California; that we were stepping into a “real” Californian boardwalk as it really would’ve looked roundabout the New Millennium – a mix of classic seaside rides, stucco walls, neon signs, modern thrill rides, and fried food vendors. Sure, you can argue that that setting and rides like Mulholland Madness, the Sun Wheel, and the Orange Stinger weren’t very “Disney,” but there was a cohesive setting and story at play.
The park’s redesign thoughtfully turned back the clock, grafting Victorian architecture and Edison bulbs and wrought iron onto the land, even sweeping across its rides and removing modern ornamentation in favor of classic, pie-eyed Disney characters on Mickey’s Fun Wheel, the Silly Symphony Swings, Goofy’s Sky School, etc. So at least visually, there was a strong story at play here, too: that – just like at Disneyland – we had been transported to a time and place that never truly was, but always will be; a sort of romanticized, idealized vision of what a turn-of-the-century boardwalk might’ve been like. Story? Check.
The land’s third overlay – Pixar Pier – debuted in 2018 checking all the boxes of a Chapek-era project: it’s highly “Instagrammable”; “cheap and cheerful”; “cute but dumb.” While aesthetically, Pixar Pier doubled down on the gorgeous Victorian style initiated in 2012, it doesn’t bother to make any sense of it, cramming in nonsensical neighborhoods themed to The Incredibles (filled with mid-century architecture), Toy Story (with Toy Story Land-esque “giant” props), Inside Out (with literally just one spinning carnival ride), and “Other” (with the same Mickey-faced Ferris wheel, now nonsensically named the Pixar Pal-a-Round).
For a writer, Pixar Pier is an abomination. If it has a story, that story must be that The Walt Disney Company operates an amusement boardwalk, and in 2018, decided to overlay its popular and high-earning Pixar film franchises on the rides and attractions there. (I mean, life imitates art, right?) Only that could explain the presence of these juxtaposed stories and styles and the scapegoat “neighborhoods” that populate the pier. It’s silly, and a step backwards. So in my California Adventure, I tried to restore a strong sense of story and setting to this pier… but I didn’t revert it to Paradise Pier.
Pop-Up Pier
Instead, I envisioned Pop-Up Pier, recontextualizing this seaside collection of amusements into the setting of a classic, black-and-white, 1930s Mickey Mouse short. When we arrive on Pop-Up Pier, it’s as visitors to a cartoon world, full of life and energy and mischief, packed with odes to those shorts and the pie-eyed classic characters who inhabited them. Yes, this is a testament not only to California’s boardwalks, but to the adventures of Mickey and friends in Walt’s earliest cartoons; a part of his California Adventure.
In fact, as guests cross the bridge onto Pop-Up Pier and pass by the INK & PAINT CLUB full-service restaurant, they’d actually see the full-sized STEAMBOAT WILLIE docked in the inlet of the bay, gently dipping to and fro in the water in time with the land’s peppy, big band, classic cartoon soundtrack. (The boat actually plays a role in the plot of the land’s re-themed roller coaster, but we’ll get there in a minute.)
I renamed the park’s body of water TECHNICOLOR BAY. That, I thought, would actually make a really compelling setting for the nightly WORLD OF COLOR as the celebration of animation and emotion and color that it is. Likewise, I turned the land’s central Ferris wheel – still adorned with a pie-eyed Mickey – into THE COLOR WHEEL with rainbow-hued cabins and a shimmering nighttime lighting package.
The land’s flat rides become fun odes to classic cartoons… MICKEY’S MULTI-PLANES sends guests swirling around in curcles aboard crop-dusters (while also serving as a testament to Walt’s multiplane camera and the first Mickey cartoon produced, “Plane Crazy”), giving the park a Dumbo equivalent experience.
Nestled in the final helix of the roller coaster is DONALD’S BEACH PICNIC SPIN – a “teacup” equivalent set on a giant picnic blanket stylized after Donald’s 1939 short, “Beach Picnic.” Similarly, I’ve transformed the land’s carousel into the MERRY-MELODIES-GO-ROUND, housing creatures from Disney’s “Silly Symphonies” series. (The name of the ride is itself an homage to Warner Bros. historic musical cartoons.)
Given that this land is “built-out,” it also contains three major rides.
First is MICKEY’S MIDWAY MANIA. If you didn’t know, Mickey was initially meant to be the host of this attraction until Toy Story won out… But I think there’s something wonderful about an early model Mickey in a straw barker hat and cane being a host for this ride, inviting guests to “step right up” and try their luck at midway games. (Remember, California Adventure’s Midway Mania makes sense in the context of the pier, anyway, so leaning into it here would be a very good decision in my mind.)
Not only could you have a lot of fun with playing classic midway games with characters like Clarabelle, Ortensia, and Horatio as hosts, but this ride could also be built around a larger premise of bringing color to the pier, perhaps by having a game with Techicolor Paintballs that would add color to the scene as guests play. I don’t know… there’s fun to be had with this concept! (And of course, there’s got to be a hot dog stand on the pier outside.)
Ahead of California Adventure’s “re-opening,” Disney CEO Bob Iger made a hilarious and historic move, trading legendary sportscaster Al Michaels from Disney’s ESPN to Universal’s NBC in exchange for regaining the legendary lost character, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. (A good sport about it, Michaels reported that he expected that as a result, he’d be a Trivial Pursuit answer one day.) The character Walt developed before Mickey (but famously lost to Universal, forcing him to develop the Mouse instead), Oswald’s return was a big deal in animation circles, and Disney did activate on it in a cute way.
At least in 2012, Oswald sort of became the “unofficial” mascot of California Adventure and its Buena Vista Street… Which makes sense, since canonically, Mickey wouldn’t have existed yet at the time the land is set. While you could get Mickey plush and Mickey ears at Disneyland, California Adventure instead offered Oswald ears and plush… a very, very cute and clever distinction between the parks! Oswald and his merchandise can still be found at his eponymous gas station on Buena Vista Street, but I wanted the character to have a proper attraction.
I pictured OSWALD’S ASTOUNDING ADVENTURE as a fun, tongue-in-cheek dark ride that would follow Oswald’s global adventures during the 80-ish years that the character was absent from pop culture. Perhaps a suspended dark ride (like Peter Pan’s Flight), guests would load into hot air balloons, taking off from the animated pier and traveling across the cartoon globe, seeing Oswald trying out careers as a jungle explorer, cowboy, gas station attendant, opera singer, and more, all while sadly watching Mickey’s star rise. Finally, a dejected Oswald would get the call from Mickey to join him at Disneyland, leading us back to the pier where the two would meet at last.
Finally, I had to imagine what do to with the land’s central roller coaster. I don’t think the “Incredicoaster” project was wrong to try to add story beats to the ride, but the execution surely leaves something to be desired. So I reimagined the ride as ROLL-O-COASTER RESCUE, basically bringing guests into a full-on Mickey short.
Now, as guests board the roller coaster and make their way down to the water’s edge for the launch, they’d pull up right next to the docked Steamboat Willie. There, embedded screens, Mickey and Minnie would be at the railing, waving, “yoo-hoo”ing, and cheering guests on. But then, Pete would burst out of the galley, grab minnie, and zip off. “Oh no!” Mickey would shout, “Let’s get ’em!” With that, the coaster would launch, dipping and twisting and diving through comical set-ups as Pete makes off with Minnie and we (and Mickey) follow behind.
I kind of like the idea that as guests climb the coaster’s second lift hill, Pete they’d see Pete plant TNT ahead of them, with fog, light, and sound seeming to “explode” the coaster’s structure just as guests crest the hill. Guests could pass through scenes of construction chaos and other ridiculous traps set by Pete along the rides course. Cute moments like that could make this a very fun, very thrilling, and very cartoon-y ride, all culminating in Pete being captured and Minnie and Mickey re-uniting.
That would wrap up a whole lot of adventures on Pop-Up Pier… a land that’s now both an ode to Californian boardwalks, an homage to the early days of animation, and rich with story and setting that fits the other immersive lands in this park.
Golden State of Mind
And there you have it – my complete, “idealized” California Adventure. Sure, this park isn’t perfect. But with 30 rides, 12-ish dark rides, plenty for thrill-seekers, and a whole new host of family rides, too, I think that this California Adventure would fulfill its destiny as a perfect counterpart and complement to Disneyland. Just as rich, just as storied, just as “built-out…” it would be a park of history, fantasy, and imagination, while still acting as a tribute to the Golden State and its stories.
Sure, this version of California Adventure isn’t possible, and for lots and reasons. But that’s what an “ideal build-out” is all about. It’s a dreamy, Blue Sky, imagined version of what could’ve been… So now we’ve got to ask… What would your ideal California Adventure look like?
Let us know your ideas in the comments below, visit my idealized reimagining of Disney’s Hollywood Studios next, and keep an eye out for other Armchair Imagineered build-outs on Theme Park Tourist soon!
