“Here you leave today and enter the worlds of yesterday, tomorrow, and fantasy.”
Since those words were placed above the entrance to Disneyland in 1955, Disney Parks have been about taking guests into incredible stories in unimaginable places. Born from the minds of Walt and his team of Imagineers, Disney’s storytelling has continued to evolve and expand through new eras. Along the way, designers have crafted some spectacular tools for building those stories and places.
First, we took a look at beloved Original Characters created just for Disney Parks; figures known and beloved by all because of their starring roles in theme park attractions.
Then, we explored Original Worlds… lands where Imagineers haven’t just rebuilt places we’ve seen on screen, but expanded them into fresh, real, physical spaces for guests to explore (and eat and shop).
Today, we’ll look at something even bigger: Original Mythologies – the massive, overarching stories that connect attractions, lands, or even parks in larger-than-life continuities; the kind of enormous, carefully-curated narratives that change Disney Parks from “a collection of rides” and into a living place where stories intersect, grow, and follow guests.
1. New Tomorrowland
Location: Magic Kingdom
It’s a tale as old as time… literally. No matter what Disney’s designers did to Tomorrowland, “tomorrow” always managed to become “today.” Disneyland’s original 1955 tomorrowland needed a shot in the arm by 1959, then a full facelift in 1967. Magic Kingdom’s 1971 debut brought about a Space Age-influenced Tomorrowland of its own, setting the tone for the Modern Marvel: Space Mountain. And while those gleaming, geometric, white-and-red, NASA-stylized lands might’ve been en vouge in the ’60s and ’70s, they weren’t exactly timeless…
By the ’80s and ’90s, a new generation of pop culture predictions (like Alien, Blade Runner, Terminator, and even Star Wars) had suggested a new kind of future awaits: a grimy, urban, industrial world driven by consumption, pollution, and overpopulation. The optimistic mid-century futures shown in Tomorrowland looked downright naive.
In 1994, Magic Kingdom debuted a New Tomorrowland, billed as “The Future That Never Was.” Rather than actually trying to predict the look and feel of a distant year (proven time and time again as an impossibility), this Tomorrowland would be the future as imagined from the past: in this case, a pulp comic book-style meta-city of elaborate sci-fi fins, teleporters, robotic newsboys, and metallic trees. By ignoring science and instead focusing on science fiction, the land would be evergreen, and never need another facelift! … Right?
But the most brilliant thing about this city of Tomorrow is that it was imaged as a “real” city, with all of the land’s rides and attractions enveloped into one overarching frame story. The Tomorrowland Transit Authority became the “real city’s” functioning mass transit system, with imaginary lines and stations invented throughout town; the Metropolis Science Center hosted a cutting edge time travel display, the Lost Legend: Timekeeper; and of course, the Interplanetary Convention Center was rented by X-S Tech, demonstrating the interstellar teleportation technology that became a Lost Legend: Alien Encounter.
Ultimately, even a timeless Tomorrowland didn’t last. By time the reinvented land turned 10, its original attractions had all been replaced with Buzz Lightyear, Monsters Inc. and Lilo and Stitch. That made the land’s unified “sci-fi city” style into nothing more than gilded shells. In 2019, Disney began removing the tacked-on ornaments of the pulp comic book style – the beginning of an ongoing process to return to the land to its ’70s-inspired simplicity (which, ironically, came back into pop culture as a nostalgic evergreen view of tomorrow… who knew!). Still, the short-lived and creatively ambitious New Tomorrowland of ’94 was one of Disney’s first attempts at a land-wide continuity that continues to this day.
2. Thunder Mesa
Location: Disneyland Paris
When Disney first announced plans to build a resort outside of Paris, reception was… decisive. Noted French figures launched an all-out media assault on the idea of Disneyland – an icon of American consumerism and commercialism – invading the pastoral Parisian countryside; akin to putting a McDonald’s atop the Eiffel Tower. How could Disney remove the Americana inherent in the Disneyland formula, so rooted in American pop culture and heritage?
Designers behind the French park smartly rebuilt each of the park’s themed lands from a new perspective. Instead of a “living history” celebration of America’s Westward expansion and historic folk heroes like Davy Crockett, Paris’ Frontierland was a world all its own. There, the land is incarnate as Thunder Mesa, an 1860s town infused with literary romance and drama; an idealized, fantasy-infused vision of the Old West more aligned to European sensibilities.
As in New Tomorrowland, the rides, shows, and attractions within Disneyland Paris’ Frontierland are all connected in one overarching continuity that explains the founding of Big Thunder Mountain and its connection to an old haunted mansion on the banks of the river… One fractured from the town long ago by an earthquake. We explore that story in a standalone must-read, Modern Marvels: Phantom Manor.
3. The Valley of Mo’ara
Location: Disney’s Animal Kingdom
When Disney acquired the worldwide, exclusive rights to build attractions based on Fox’s AVATAR film, it seemed like a coup; just as Universal put the finishing touches on its industry-changing Wizarding World, Disney had captured something even bigger: the highest grossing film ever. Of course, fans will be quick to explain that AVATAR seemingly flashed out of the zeitgeist the minute it left theaters, leaving practically no memorable quotes, no nameable characters… no footprint in pop culture. That left Disney with the theme park rights to a global blockbuster that no one seemed excited about… Yikes.
Thankfully, when Pandora – The World of Avatar opened, it all made sense. We already celebrated the Original World Imagineers devised to bring the jungle moon of Pandora to life, “zooming in” on the moon’s Valley of Mo’ara. And while the physical place they built is beautiful and gorgeous and spectacularly scaled, the most impressive thing Disney’s designers did in Pandora might not be the place at all, but its mythology.
After all, during the long development process on the World of Avatar, Imagineers had to recognize that rides starring the film’s main characters (what were their names again?) or battling the movie’s villain (who was that?) wouldn’t resonate. Even its “memorable” features (floating mountains, flying dragons, and a tree) are mere hazy memories than fully-formed pop culture staples in most memories. Besides, would tourists want to visit a beautiful moon in the midst of being torn apart by a human-led assault to strip it of its resources? So instead, they smartly severed the land entirely from the film, its characters, and even its plot.
Now, when we visit the Valley of Mo’ara on Pandora, it’s decades – maybe centuries – after the events of the film. Our role is as eco-tourists, traveling to this verdant world lightyears from Earth via the high tech Brava Centauri Expeditions travel company. The seige humans led on this moon ended a very long time ago, and we – as friendly visitors – can look at the rusted out remains of long-abandoned military barracks and laugh at the audaciousness of some ancient ancestor of ours who foolishly tried to strip this moon of its minerals. But our main objective is to explore its flora and fauna; to commune with the culture of the Na’vi and to understand the inherent value they place on nature.
Maybe by seeing the beauty of Pandora, we can better appreciate the beauty of Earth! So although the Avatar film (and its many upcoming sequels) no doubt provide a visual basis for the bioluminscent jungles of Pandora, Disney Imagineers might’ve faced their toughest challenge yet in creating a mythology and purpose for the land that can resonate not only with audiences of 2020, but 2050… long after Avatar and even its sequels have exited pop culture.
New Tomorrowland, Thunder Mesa, and The Valley of Mo’ara tested Disney’s storytellers, allowing them to craft overarching frame stories to connect rides and attractions. But Disney’s three biggest original mythologies are intertwined across the world. They await on the last page…
4. MARVEL Theme Park Universe
Location: Hong Kong Disneyland, Disney California Adventure, and Walt Disney Studios
It’s not every day that a phenomenon becomes so deeply embedded in pop culture, it can last for generations, but at least the first two decades of the 21st century are on track to be remembered as the Age of the Superhero. The formation of Marvel Studios in 2005 revolved around an ambitious and unprecedented idea: to create a massive, interconnected “Marvel Cinematic Universe” of stories with heroes and villains woven between films. Disney’s $4 billion purchase of Marvel in 2009 helped fuel the MCU’s first three “phases,” which $22.5 billion from the first 23 films (yes, an average nearly a billion each).
Given that Iron Man feels as deeply engrained in modern media as Star Wars, you’d probably expect Disney to be constructing ultra-ambitious, Rise-of-the-Resistance-level Avengers attractions across the globe! There’s just one problem. Through a few unexpected twists of fate, Disney doesn’t own the exclusive rights to use their own heroes in all of their theme parks. We broke down the ins-and-outs of Disney and Universal’s co-parenting of Captain America and crew in the special AVENGERS: Custody War feature.
The end result is that no Marvel-themed lands will (probably ever) be built at Walt Disney World. However, Marvel is moving into Disney’s other properties… just not in as grand a form as you might imagine. A riff on the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the so-called “Marvel Theme Park Universe” connects Disney rides into one standard timeline; a reality slightly skewed from the timeline of the films.
First, a corner of Hong Kong Disneyland’s Tomorrowland is being gradually annexed into a world of its own. Like the mid-century, World’s-Fair-influenced Stark Expos orchestrated by Tony Stark’s father in Iron Man flashbacks, Hong Kong Disneyland was selected to host a modern Stark Expo. Its two pavilions (cast as “The Iron Man Tech Experience hosted by Stark Industries” and the “S.H.I.E.L.D. Science and Technology Pavilion”) see guests invited in as tourists, but exiting as heroes after having been drawn into villainous attacks.
Two other Avengers areas (at Disney California Adventure and Walt Disney Studios Park) are instead cast as Avengers Campus, with intertwining stories that present them as recruitment centers set up in Anaheim and Paris to enable the next generation of heroes (that’s us) to test out cutting edge technologies.
Both will include Web Slingers: A Spider-Man Adventure inviting guests to test out spider-tech themselves (thanks to the Worldwide Engineeing Brigade – W.E.B.). Each will also have its respective anchor attractions: in Paris, an Iron Man redux of Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster, and in California, the Guardians of the Galaxy overlay of the Lost Legend: Twilight Zone Tower of Terror that initially opened back in 2017. That ride introduced a very new kind of mythology to Disney Parks… one well-known by comic book fans: an alternate universe.
As fans of the highly episodic Marvel Cinematic Universe know, the epic events of Avengers: Infinity War and its climactic follow-up Endgame centered around Thanos’ acquisition of the Infinity Stones that, with a snap of his finger, eliminated half of all life on Earth. Naturally, the event and the Avengers’ response to it significantly altered the lineup of the Marvel movies going forward, with pivotal deaths, resurrections, and introductions that will guide the series’ next phase.
So when on the timeline is the Avengers Campus set? Easy. It’s not. In comic speak, it’s an “alternate universe;” a sort of narrative spur that officially is set in a reality like the Marvel Cinematic Universe, except (according to Disney Live Entertainment director, Dan Fields):
There’s no snap. What I mean by that is we want there to be some conflict, but we don’t want anyone to feel that there’s an apocalyptic threat to the end of humanity. Our friends in the studio do a great job with that. So we want the conflict to be a little more accessible to the daily guests here.
In other words, when we’re recruited in the Avengers Campus, it’s to shoot some webs, try oversized food, and buy Spider-Bots, not to sacrifice ourselves in a cataclysmic, civilization-ending battle. Characters gone from the films will still be meeting-and-greeting on-campus, and it’s likely they’re being armed with canon-friendly, puzzled responses to questions about their deaths.
The idea is that both the Avengers Campuses and the Stark Expo in Hong Kong have a mythology all their own. While it’s possible that the so-called Marvel Theme Park Universe will be a bit looser than other mythologies, we still expect a great deal of internal consistency between the California, Hong Kong, and Parisian lands… it’ll just be a different reality than we know from the movies.
5. Batuu
Location: Disneyland and Disney’s Hollywood Studios
While Avengers Campus relies on an “alternate universe” to excuse its inaccuracies against the films, Disney’s Star Wars land isn’t willing to make any exceptions that would deviate its core story from the movie series. To that end, the planet Batuu is more than just an original “place” devised by Disney Imagineers; it’s an entire world rife with its own original mythology. That’s probably no surprise given the intensely academic and studied timeline that governs all things in the Star Wars universe, but unlike the intergalactic travels of Star Tours, Galaxy’s Edge achieves the most exalted status in the Lucasfilm library: it’s canon.
That means that planet of Batuu, the village of Black Spire Outpost, and the forest encampment of the Resistance are as official as anything seen in the film. An extensive history of the planet was created to explain every detail you’ll see on your visit. Broadly, Batuu is a planet on the outer rim of the galaxy that once served as a major fueling and supplying port before the advent of lightspeed travel turned it into a remote flyover. (Yes, it’s Radiator Springs… in space.)
But it goes even further. The markets and forests of Batuu – and the particular happenings there on the day you visit – are ingrained into the timeline and stories that power the entire Star Wars universe. During your visit to the village of Black Spire Outpost, you’re participating in one particular day, forever looping in time (just like how it’s always “Race Day” in Cars Land). Our visit to Black Spire Outpost occurs late in the year 34 ABY – between the events of Episode VIII: The Last Jedi and Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker. In true Star Wars fashion, Disney’s official setup for the land’s story is presented in the format of the series’ iconic opening crawl:
It is a dark time for the RESISTANCE.
Following the devastating Battle of
Crait, the freedom fighters have fled
with General Leia Organa to an
undisclosed location.Meanwhile, hunted by the FIRST ORDER
and Supreme Leader Kylo Ren, a band
of Resistance supporters has established
a temporary outpost on the remote planet
of Batuu, thanks to scouting by
Resistance spy, Vi Moradi.Here on the Outer Rim, the Resistance
is rebuilding and searching for recruits
to join the cause and help save the
galaxy from tyranny…
That’s especially important for Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance – the land’s ultra-E-Ticket – which invites guests to join in the Resistance at a pivotal moment. Abducted by the First Order, riders find themselves lost aboard Kylo Ren’s Finalizer Star Destroyer, managing a last minute escape just as the Resistance cripples the cruiser (you know the scene…).
Obviously, Ren and General Hux escape to the new Steadfast command ship… But officially, it was this embarrassing setback that caused Hux to be placed under the supervision of General Pryde, causing his allegiance to Kylo Ren to falter… and leading to the events of The Rise of Skywalker! Yes, the ever-entangling mythos of Star Wars actually relies on the offscreen events guests live firsthand on Batuu… Phew!
So while Avengers Campus is willing to create its own fluid timeline and “alternate universe,” you won’t find Darth Vader or Luke Skywalker on Batuu. At least, not yet…
6. S.E.A. – The Society of Explorers and Adventurers
Bar none, there is no richer or more spectacular a mythology ever developed for theme parks than the cross-continental, millennia-spanning story of S.E.A. – The Society of Explorers and Adventurers. With a manifesto hidden in time, S.E.A. is purported to be as legendary as the Illuminati. It’s a hazy collection of figures known and unknown who are part of a secret society dedicated to enlightening the darkest corners of the globe. From Renaissance-era fortresses to modern archaeological finds, hints of S.E.A. exist in Disney rides, shows, and restaurants around the world.
Just imagine: the proprietor of Trader Sam’s Enchanted Tiki Bar pinned to the wall an article celebrating the 1930s discovery of the Modern Marvel: Temple of the Forbidden Eye by Indiana Jones, which Jungle Cruise skippers point out as they sail past. Meanwhile, the Jungle Cruise Skipper Canteen restaurant (operated by the Jungle River Navigation Co.) has a secret dining room hidden behind a bookcase, reserved for S.E.A. members; one of whom wrote a letter to the president of Pleasure Island’s Lost Legend: The Adventurers Club, commenting on the fatal curse of Harrison Hightower, the thieving millionaire behind the Modern Marvel: Tower of Terror…
So do all of these attractions take place in their own massive, connected mythology? Naturally, it’s enough to drive Imagineering fans bonkers, continuously building, expanding, and refining a timeline of interactions and references that seem to indicate a much larger (if largely unofficial) “expanded universe” giving Marvel’s a run for its money!
And that’s just it: the brilliance of S.E.A. is that it’s a built-in viral marketing mystery; a frame story used in several of Disney’s best attractions. The story of S.E.A. forms an international scavenger hunt inciting Imagineering fans to play a game of storytelling hide-and-seek, grasping at straws and assembling new clues to make sense of it. From Tokyo DisneySea’s version of Soarin’ to Hong Kong’s Modern Marvel: Mystic Manor, the ever-growing story even involves a ride at Walt Disney World… Make the jump to our special S.E.A. – Society of Explorers and Adventurers feature to dig into the details.
Altogether, these five mythologies are just a few of the larger-than-life, interconnected worlds created by Disney Imagineers. Which others have you noticed to draw multiple rides, attractions, or even restaurants together?
