Frozen Ever After. Jurassic World: The Ride. Hagrid’s Motorbike Adventure. TRON Lightcycle Power Run. Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance. Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure. Despicable Me: Minion Mayhem. Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind.
The rising tide of innovation and storytelling is lifting Disney and Universal to new heights, with a seemingly limitless supply of cutting-edge and spectacular attractions debuting year after year. Still, it hasn’t escaped fans’ notice that nearly all of the projects in the pipeline for major U.S. parks have something in common… It’s enough to cause some fans to wonder aloud, Will we ever again see an “original” anchor attraction at Disney or Universal parks? Or is the future filled with E-Tickets backed by billion-dollar box office hits and popular intellectual properties alone?
When did Disney Parks exchange bold, original attractions crafted by Disney Imagineers for the chance to “RIDE THE MOVIES”? How have the “Content Wars” heated up the back-and-forth battle for the Butterbeer budget? And what, exactly, is going to happen next in the ongoing race keep guests at Disney and Universal parks coming back for the hot properties of today? Strap in as we dive into the history of “riding the movies” and see how this character-infused era has been reimagined as never before…
Cinematic start
H-O-L-L-Y-W-O-O-D. From the glitz and glamor of yesteryear to the box office blockbusters of today, those nine white letters embedded on a hillside have come to symbolize entertainment, wealth, and possibility. “Hollywood” conjures images of lush palm-lined streetscapes, plush red velvet theaters, premiere lights dancing through the sky, and the over-the-top lifestyles of the stars… Lifestyles that maybe – just maybe –we, too, can achieve.
Hollywood has been cinema’s “Tinseltown” since at least 1912, when Universal Studios (among others) was founded there. Three years later, Universal’s world famous Studio Tour opened, offering gawking guests from around the globe a look behind the scenes for the price of just five cents (which included a boxed chicken lunch).
Image: Disney
As the emerging “motion picture” industry moved to Los Angeles, studios drew innovators, actors, and artists like Walt Disney, who showed up in July 1923 (no doubt hoping to have better luck in Hollywood than he’d had in his bankrupt Kansas City-based Laugh-O-Gram Studios). By the end of the decade, sound had turned mere “movies” into “talkies,” igniting the Golden Age of Hollywood that would last for forty years.
The allure of seeing how movies were made was a motivating force for tourism in Southern California. Even for Disney, letters poured in requesting that Walt Disney Productions open its facilities for tours. Thankfully, Walt recognized that there would be little thrill in seeing old men hunched over easels inking animation cels… but requests to “meet” the characters from Disney’s films did get him thinking….
Disneyland (1955)
Image: Disney
Believe it or not, “riding the movies” began in earnest over sixty years ago in Disneyland itself.
Though today we look back and analyze Walt’s 1955 park as an artistic statement based solely on original ideas, it’s… just not right. In fact, stripping away the noble hopes and aspirations Walt might’ve had for his little park, one thing is certain: he wanted it to be popular.
The “lands” of Disneyland weren’t chosen at random, but for their significance to pop culture in the era; the attractions within those lands almost invariably tied to or explicitly featured characters and stories popularized by television shows and films in the ‘50s.
Image: Disney
-
Adventureland barely squeaked away from its intended name, True-Life Adventureland, explicitly name-dropping Disney’s True-Life Adventures docu-series (1948-1960), with the Jungle Cruise poised to be a True-Life Adventure of its own;
-
Frontierland exists solely due to the pop culture popularity of the “Old West” genre in the era, and was built to align with Disney’s Davy Crockett series (1954 – 55) and Zorro (1957), plus American favorites of the era like The Lone Ranger and Tom Sawyer;
-
Tomorrowland – though it opened as a corporate showcase – at least had one Disney-built attraction: a walkthrough of the film sets from Disney’s 1954 film, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
Image: Walt Disney Family Museum
-
Fantasyland was built almost entirely of attractions based on Disney’s animated films, including its particularly well-known Fantasyland dark ride suite recalling Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, and Peter Pan.
So even from the start of “theme parks” we as know them, explicit references to the movies have been a part of their DNA. (Remember that when fans today decry Disney Parks as chasing trends and trying to cram in pop culture.) Yet perhaps the biggest step toward the kind of “riding the movies” we know today came about just north of Disneyland.
Universal Studio Tour
Image: Universal Studios, via thestudiotour.com
Though Universal had practically invented the idea of seeing “behind the scenes” back in 1915, their fabled tour had come to an end in the 1930s when the advent of recorded sound in pictures meant that movies required quiet, closed sets.
But in 1964, the revived Studio Tour (with guests seated on “Glamor Trams,” above) debuted, redefining what it meant to visit Hollywood. From then on, the multi-hour studio tour became a highlight of any visit to the movie-making capitol of the world, whisking guests through the real production facilities of the fabled studio and giving them behind-the-scenes access to see how filmmakers could use simple special effects to bring movies to life.
Image: Universal Studios
In 1968, the Tour introduced a “flash flood” scene (still in use today) wherein the tram would pull into a Mexican town. Through a bit of “movie magic,” a dazzling Southern California afternoon quickly turns into an unexpected rainshower, then a storm, before a cascading wall of water gushes down the muddy slopes of the hills of town, careening toward the tram. With a “cut!” the rain stops and the scene resets, demonstrating the incredible power of practical (that is, not digital) special effects. And sure – seeing behind the movies is different from riding them…
But the idea of encountering special effects encounters along the tram’s route continued, including in 1974 when that same kind of effects wizardry would be put to use in a different way. That year, the tram’s route began to include a trip through a custom-built soundstage where water, fire, sparks, and massive set pieces made guests feel that they were in the midst of a catastrophic 8.3 scale earthquake from that year’s film, Earthquake.
Image: Universal Studios
The next year, an animatronic of the great white shark from JAWS began terrorizing tram riders in an experience that blurred the line behind special-effects-demonstration and mini-ride. It was followed up with an elaborate soundstage scene from Battlestar Galactica in 1979. And while each scene ended with “Cut!”, Universal’s epic encounters with staged terrors had set a new standard… One Disney would soon follow.
Disney’s Dark Ages (1970s and ‘80s)
Image: Walt Disney Family Museum
It’s well known that, after Walt’s death in 1966, there was genuine and worthwhile discussion about how – or even if – Walt Disney Productions could or should go on without Walt Disney. In the fifteen years that followed, no one had made an exceptionally compelling case for it. The 70s and early ‘80s are remembered today as a dark time for the company, with massive losses dragging down the studio. Disney turned down George Lucas’ STAR WARS, then spent a decade trying to grasp how that film had redefined cinema and blockbusters.
That means that just as Universal’s Studio Tour was placing guests in the midst of rockslides, earthquakes, and shark attacks, back down the road, Disneyland in the ‘70s and early ‘80s was… relatively stagnant. It wasn’t just that tremendous time and energy had gone into the creation of Epcot (1982) and Tokyo Disneyland (1983); it was that Walt Disney Productions was on the brink of collapse.
Image: Disney
The results were disappointments in both live action and animated releases, including financial flops like The Black Hole, The Watcher in the Woods, Dragonslayer, Something Wicked This Way Comes, and The Black Cauldron. Film after film, Disney’s releases just failed to resonate with audiences. The era of Walt’s animated classics was over.
For Disney Parks, the Studios’ decline was doubly painful. For one, the failing finances of the studio productions (Disney’s core business, after all) cooled investment in the parks, leading to an era of “cheap” steel coasters rather than the epic dark rides of the ’60s. But just as painfully, the studios’ lack of compelling content showed that if Disney’s studios weren’t creating the definitive characters and stories of the era, then Disney’s parks would lose their relevance, too.
Image: Disney
Though it’s hard to believe today, in the ‘70s and ‘80s, “Disney” was a tarnished brand; a studio whose best days were behind it, and whose enigmatic founder was seemingly too essential for the company to outlive. By the early ‘80s, reports surfaced that companies were circling Walt Disney Productions preparing for the company to be split with its assets and licenses sold off to separate conglomerates. Until…
Chief Entertainment Officer (1984)
Image: Disney
In September 1984, Frank Wells (left) and Michael Eisner (right) were selected as the new president and chairman of Walt Disney Productions, respectively. (And yes, given that this is the concrete start of Disney’s “ride the movies” mantra, this is the prologue you’ll find in many of our Legend Library features.)
Eisner wasn’t just a savvy businessman with the background to lead Disney; he was fresh from the world of film. In fact, Eisner had been CEO of Paramount Pictures in the years prior, and was responsible for green-lighting some of the very films that Disney couldn’t match, like George Lucas’ Star Wars follow-up, Raiders of the Lost Ark. The idea was that Eisner could be the leader to bring Disney’s brand back from the brink.
Images: Disney
(And boy did he. Eisner’s leadership kicked off the “Disney Renaissance” – the better part of a decade where Disney released hit after hit at the box office, from 1989’s The Little Mermaid to Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King, Pocahontas, Hunchback, Hercules, Mulan, and Tarzan. The string of animated musicals [most with songs written composed by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman] literally reignited the animation industry.)
But of course, when he came on board in the mid-’80s, Eisner knew that righting Disney’s sinking studios would be a multi-year effort. What he admitted to knowing significantly less about were Disney’s theme parks. Eisner famously visited Disney’s Imagineering headquarters in Glendale, California, where esteemed Imagineers had dusted off old models of the Possibilitylands: Discovery Bay and Western River Expedition, hoping the new CEO would greenlight projects former leaders had axed.
Image: Disney
But Eisner had a different course in mind. Though he admitted to knowing little about Disney’s parks, legend has it that he knew one thing: his pre-teen son Breck had turned down the offer to tour Disneyland, announcing “that place is for babies, dad.” Eisner was horrified, and used Breck’s input to green-light new attractions for the park, like the teen-friendly Videopolis dance club showing MTV music videos.
In short, Eisner had decided that – come hell or high water – Disney Parks would become cool, fresh, thrilling places where today’s young people would want to spend time. And by the way, he suspected that movies might be the way to do it!
Cross-studio relationships (1985 – 1989)
Image: Disney
Just as Walt had stocked Disneyland with the characters and stories that mattered to audiences of the 1950s, Eisner hoped to fill the parks with the characters and stories that mattered to audiences of the 1980s. There was just one problem… Disney wasn’t the one making those stories…
But Eisner had an in with someone who was.
Given that Michael Eisner had personally approved George Lucas’ Raiders of the Lost Ark, it didn’t take much convincing to get Lucas into a meeting. As it turned out, George Lucas loved Disneyland and was out-of-this-world at the prospect of his characters being a part of it. Eisner was excited about the prospect, but incensed at the idea that a Star Wars ride would take years to create.
Image: Disney
He wanted to start Disney Parks’ transformation now, and quickly recruited George Lucas for that, too. Partnering with legendary filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, the duo next recruited Michael Jackson to start in the Lost Legend: Captain EO – a groundbreaking attraction fusing modern music with the world’s leading celebrity for the kind of pop culture infusion Disneyland hadn’t seen since before Walt’s death. While Captain EO signaled a new direction for Disney Parks, it was nothing compared to what would come next.
Without a doubt, the story of “riding the movies” intersects with another of our in-depth industry features, Artificial Worlds: The Rise of Screens and Simulators. Disney Imagineers had been daydreaming about simulators for decades, but only the ATLAS (Advanced Technology Leisure Application Simulator) made it possible. Readapting a military-grade flight simulator, Disney’s version included a cabin that could shake, jostle, pitch, tilt, and roll, perfectly aligned to an in-vehicle projection acting as the “windshield.”
Image: Disney / Lucasfilm
And so, the very next year, Disney and George Lucas premiered the ride that would (literally) change Disney Parks forever. The Lost Legend: STAR TOURS is truly the pivot point of the “ride the movies” story, because it represents the modern start of the era. STAR TOURS whisked guests away from Disneyland and into the Star Wars universe for a crash-course trip that included run-ins with the evil Empire and even the opportunity to recreate the legendary trench run in the mechanical valleys of the Death Star.
For better or worse, Eisner’s risk-taking investment paid off in spades. His two major projects in Tomorrowland proved that Disney Parks weren’t dead; they just needed a pop culture infusion. Now, the flood gates could be opened to allow modern music, modern stars, and modern blockbuster hits into the park in a continuous chase to keep Disneyland “cool.” Would it work? Would it ruin the park? Your opinion probably depends when you first visited…
But we’ve got a little more story to go first.
Movie monsters (1990)
Image: Universal Studios
In 1986 – the very same year that Captain EO made its debut (at Epcot and Disneyland) – another pop culture giant was stepping onto the scene. Back at Universal Studios Hollywood, the Studio Tour’s most elaborate scene yet, the King Kong Encounter, placed guests in the midst of the classic creature’s attack on New York… and via an Audio Animatronic designed by Disney Legend Bob Gurr, at that.
Universal’s innovations were all leading up to something big. For years, Universal had been considering a move to Central Florida, where they could theoretically take on Magic Kingdom and EPCOT Center with a second studio tour, recreating many of Hollywood’s classic encounters. But they knew that if they were going to move into Disney’s backyard, they needed a real headliner to make it worthwhile.
Image: Universal Studios
Steven Spielberg – a frequent Universal collaborator – had been invited to the star-studded opening of Star Tours, riding alongside George Lucas himself. Allegedly, Lucas off-handedly mentioned that Universal could never build something like Star Tours… Which, of course, lit a fire under Spielberg to prove George Lucas wrong. Meeting with Universal’s executives, Spielberg recounted the challenge and offered up his own film as the impetus. Thus, the Lost Legend: Back to the Future – The Ride was born, and with it, Universal Studios Florida officially went into production.
Of course, it wasn’t alone. As the story goes, Michael Eisner was aware of Universal’s plans for a Florida park (from his time at Paramount) and, being a Hollywood man himself, launched a counter-attack. Plans for a filmmaking pavilion in EPCOT Center’s Future World were upgraded to a full-on movie park. And as a preemptive strike against Universal’s plans, Disney even announced that their park would be headlined by –ready for this? – the tram-led Declassified Disaster: Disney-MGM Backstage Studio Tour through real movie sets and staged encounters.
Image: Universal Studios
Ultimately, Disney’s (admittedly underhanded) play probably benefitted Universal in the long run. Since they couldn’t “copy Disney” by having a tram tour as the anchor of their Florida property, they flipped plans for their new park around, slicing out the individual encounters with Jaws, King Kong, and an earthquake and turning each into a full, standalone ride – the Lost Legends: JAWS, Kongfrontation, and Earthquake – The Big One… in some ways, the origin of the fabled “something goes horribly wrong” ride plot twist!
Image: Universal Studios
Combined with Back to the Future, that gave Orlando a studio-themed park with no less than four E-Ticket attractions. And unlike their Studio Tour counterparts, Florida’s full-fledged rides didn’t even hint at showing guests “behind-the-scenes.” Rather, they let guests into those larger-than-life films. That’s why, when Universal Studios Florida opened in 1990, its tagline was… “See the Stars. Ride the Movies.”
Eisner’s cinematic splendor (1986-1994)
The 1990s were a time of extreme highs and lows for Disney Imagineering.
Image: Disney
There’s absolutely no doubt that the “ride the movies” mantra Eisner had kickstarted was working. Though the end of the ’80s and the first half of the ’90s, Disney Parks clearly identified themselves as modern contenders, able to skillfully construct incredible, epic, cinematically-scaled attractions that felt relevant. Think of the masterpiece attractions born of this era, and in particular the ways they let guests “ride the movies” by incorporating highly detailed queues, pre-shows, orchestral scores, and legendary effects to send guests into elaborate new worlds.
Captain EO. Star Tours. Splash Mountain. Fantasmic. Roger Rabbit’s Car Toon Spin. The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. Even two more George Lucas collaborations – the Lost Legend: Alien Encounter and the Modern Marvel: Indiana Jones Adventure.
Eisner was right.
Image: Disney
The combination of Disney Imagineering with the stories and characters and scores and settings that mattered to modern audiences created some of the most compelling attractions to ever exist.
Then, it ended. That’s largely thanks to two debilitating blows to Eisner’s ego. First, the unexpected death of his business partner, Frank Wells (remembered as the Roy to Eisner’s Walt), and the disastrous opening of EuroDisneyland (today, Disneyland Paris). The French resort was imagined as Eisner’s legacy-leaving strategic expansion that instead crashed and burned. Eisner famously became frightened of any large scale projects across Disney Parks, downsizing or outright cancelling any plans left in Paris’s wake.
Eisner’s character invasion (1995-2004)
Image: Disney
Just like that, the epic era of “ride the movies” took an intermission. The rest of the ’90s and the early 2000s are marked not by Eisner’s ambitious cinematic projects, but by play-it-safe attempts to infuse characters into the parks however possible. The result was an era of cartoon invasion, pushing Disney (and then, Pixar) characters into the theme parks in ways fans found frustrating or short-sighted.
Stitch became star of the Declassified Disaster: Stitch’s Great Escape while Magic Kingdom’s Tropical Serenade became the Declassified Disaster: Enchanted Tiki Room – Under New Management to insert characters from ’90s favorites Aladdin and The Lion King.
Image: Disney
Beloved Lost Legends: Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride and Country Bear Jamboree were kicked out of Magic Kingdom and Disneyland, respectively, to make room for Winnie the Pooh, a character who’d experienced a massive revival in the ’90s (with merchandising potential galore).
Then there was EPCOT Center. Eisner infamously inherited Disney’s “educational” theme park when it was only two years old, and immediately seemed to have no clue whatsoever what to do with it. Completely counter to his own cinematic background and his push for including movie properties in Disney’s parks, the ‘90s flood of characters was inevitable.
Image: Disney
Coinciding with the closure of so many of the park’s opening day originals, Epcot (thoughtfully designed to intentionally exclude Disney characters) began to bulge at the seams with character meet-and-greets in the otherwise grounded World Showcase.
Meanwhile in Future World, The Lion King moved into The Land. In the spirit of Captain EO, A-List stars from Disney’s acquired ABC Network shows joined the Lost Legend: Universe of Energy. Plans to put The Little Mermaid and friends into the Lost Legend: The Living Seas could only have been trumped by an even bigger box office catch: Finding Nemo.
Image: Disney / Pixar
Speaking of which, this same era from the ‘90s to the early 2000s saw Pixar characters pop up throughout Disney Parks – as we told in a standalone feature, Disney•Pixarland – with Tomorrowlands across the globe overrun by Toy Story, Finding Nemo, and Monsters Inc.; the stars of A Bug’s Life took up prominent residence in Animal Kingdom’s Tree of Life while “a bug’s land” was a quick-fix save for Disney California Adventure’s lack of family appeal… just the beginning of the “Pixarification” of Disney Parks.
In defense of Michael Eisner
It’s a shame that the elaborate, ambitious, and cinematic attractions born of the first half of Michael Eisner’s tenure aren’t often credited to his name; eclipsed by the flurry of character integrations, merchandise tie-ins, cost-cutting policies, and disappointing decisions that marked the second half. It’s also a shame that Eisner’s “ride the movies” mantra is applied in hindsight to both strategies, when really it only fits his earlier era and yielded some of Disney’s most beloved attractions ever.
Image: Disney
Looking back, maybe we can understand how the man who shaped the modern Walt Disney Company was conflicted. Hit hard by Disneyland Paris’ failure, Eisner seemed to retreat into a world ruled by financiers as never before; brave, cinematic, original ideas he’d once championed – like Splash Mountain, Tower of Terror, or Indiana Jones Adventure – were simply incongruous with his new world view: one where risk had to be mitigated by a box office guaruntee.
In fairness, one could even argue Eisner was simply taking Walt’s own edict to the extreme, pulsing popular characters into Disney Parks to keep them current. And by the way, Eisner himself had spearheaded a new generation of characters – Ariel, Belle, Flik, Stitch, Woody and Buzz, Nemo and Dory, Pocahontas, the Incredibles, and hundreds more! – and wouldn’t it be a disservice to the parks to exclude them?
What Eisner’s era arguably failed to do was to balance quality and quantity. As characters invaded, they pushed out treasured classics; they were inserted in permanent ways before their characters were proven to stand the test of time; they were sprinkled into the parks with little regard for thematic integrity or storytelling, essentially treating every park like a “studio” park where mis-matched characters can coexist without care.
And as Eisner made his rather unceremonious exit from The Walt Disney Company in 2005, a new generation of leaders moved in. If we thought we were “riding the movies” back then, it’s nothing compared to today. Has the balance of “quality” and “quantity” changed? As the size of Disney’s blockbuster films has increased, have their presence in the parks? Will we ever again see a U.S. Disney Parks E-Ticket without a proven intellectual property behind it? We’ll explore those questions on the last page…
A new era (2005)
Image: Disney
When Michael Eisner became chairman in 1984, he inherited a Disney in disarray. His guidance revitalized Disney’s sagging studios and reignited the company’s animation division. His acquisitions of ABC, ESPN, The Muppets, and Miramax modernized and diversified Walt Disney Productions and literally transformed it into the international media conglomerate of the Walt Disney Company…
Unfortunately, in retrospect, Eisner’s legacy is also tied to a frustrating era at Disney theme parks marked by cost-cutting leadership practices, underbuilt and creatively-starved overexpansion, and a moritorium on the kinds of bold, ambitious, cinematic, “ride the movies” attractions he’d initially supported. He left behind a period of sustained decline at the box office, a company overrun with budget-minded executives, and floundering, low-cost theme parks like the Declassified Disasters: Disney’s California Adventure and Walt Disney Studios Park.
Image: Disney
That’s why, when Bob Iger became CEO in 2005, he, too, inherited a Disney in disarray.
While Eisner’s solution was partnerships, Iger’s has been acquisition. Iger has essentially armed Disney for the so-called “Content Wars” through the absolutely unimaginable acquisitions of Pixar (for $7.4 billion), Lucasfilm (including Star Wars and Indiana Jones, $4 billion), Marvel ($4 billion), and the entirety of 20th Century Fox (including National Geographic, $71.3 billion), amassing Disney an unprecedented catalogue of intellectual properties in today’s content-driven world.
That would become especially important, because the future of attractions was about to change.
Magical reinvention (2007-2010)
Image: Warner Bros. / Universal
In 2007, Universal announced something unexpected. They had secured the international rights to build attractions based on Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling’s book series-turned-blockbuster film series that had shaped a generation. At first, the licensing deal might not have read any differently than Disney’s licensing of Star Wars back in the ’80s. In fact, early artwork even showed the existing Medieval-themed Merlinwood section of Islands of Adventure’s Lost Continent lightly redressed as a Harry Potter themed village, with the requisite Hogwarts castle beyond.
Image: Universal / Warner Bros.
But when the Wizarding World of Harry Potter was announced, it was something entirely different. Working with Warner Bros. and the real design team behind the films, Universal had painstakingly recreated the snow-covered village of Hogsmeade and Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry beyond… in real scale.
Per Rowling’s requirements, the land was insulated from the rest of the park… it wouldn’t sell “Harry Potter” LEGO sets and action figures, but robes and wands; no Coca-Cola, only Pumpkin Juice, Fizzy Otters, and Butterbeer; no character meet-and-greets with actors dressed as Harry, Ron, and Hermione, just citizens of Hogsmeade selling their wares. Only authentic Scottish dishes would be sold in the restaurant, and each shop would be built to “authentic” (read: cramped) scale, not up-sized for theme park crowds and flow…
Image: Universal
The land’s new ride would be an ultra-high-tech dark ride through Hogwarts and beyond… but the Wizarding World was the attraction. It wasn’t just that Islands of Adventure’s attendance jumped an absolutely unprecedented 65.9% between 2009 and 2011; it was that guests inside were happily waiting in line – not to get onto rides, but into gift shops and restaurants, eager to spend $40 on plastic wands or $100 on “house robes.” Suddenly, “riding” a movie wasn’t enough. Guests wanted to eat where the characters ate; to shop where they shopped; this was a world they wanted to live in.
And just like that, the race was on… Read on as we see how the “ride the movies” era turned into something even grander…
Living lands (2010 – Today)
Ride the movies? That’s so ’90s. Now, it was all about living the movies.
Even by 2010, the race was on as Disney and Universal scoured their catalogues (and those of other studios) to score the next Wizarding World; to secure the rights to build the worlds that guests wanted to be a part of… and it sure wouldn’t hurt if they had a must-have “Butterbeer” or “wand” equivalent… As licensing deals and lands went into production across Disney and Universal parks, the scale of attractions shifted from cinematic E-Tickets to increasingly immersive, habitable worlds drawn from the screen.
Image: Disney / Pixar
First came Disney California Adventure’s Cars Land, recreating to exhaustive detail the neon Route 66 town of Radiator Springs from Pixar’s Cars. (Why Cars? Reportedly, the first film alone – while ranking low in Pixar’s box office scores – garnered nearly $10 billion in merchandising and retail… Ka-chow!)
Aside from two family flat rides and the Modern Marvel: Radiator Springs Racers E-Ticket, the land’s draws include Flo’s V8 Cafe, the edible (and drinkable) “cone”-fections of the Cozy Cone Motel’s quick service snack windows, and of course, plenty of merchandise at Sarge’s Surplus Hut. Cars Land isn’t just one of the most incredible things Disney’s ever designed; it’s also a perfect emulation of the Wizarding World model… though perhaps not finding that “Butterbeer” spark quite yet…
Image: Disney
Next up came the Magic Kingdom’s New Fantasyland, a gradual, multi-phase reimagining of the park’s tournament-tent style land, carving out mini neighborhoods of intricate rockwork, waterfalls, and architecture themed to The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Snow White, and Dumbo. While LeFou’s Brew at Gaston’s Tavern is delicious, it still doesn’t quite best Butterbeer, and the land’s lack of E-Ticket anchor means it’s a gorgeous addition, but not quite a “Potter-swatter.”
Image: Warner Bros. / Universal
In 2014, Universal bested itself with a second half of the Wizarding World: Diagon Alley, set at the neighboring Universal Studios Florida park – the first piece in that park’s gradual transition away from “studio” styling and toward immersive lands that’s since seen Springfield U.S.A.: Home of the Simpsons, offering must-try food and drink from the long-running Fox series.
Image: Disney
Just as the Wizarding World readied for its debut, Disney gobbled up the rights to James Cameron’s AVATAR, right as it shattered box office records to become the highest grossing film of all time (surpassed today only by Avengers: Endgame). Certainly, they couldn’t have imagined that the 2009 film would somewhat awkwardly disappear without leaving so much as a footprint in pop culture… But construction moved forward at Disney’s Animal Kingdom, and in 2017, Pandora: The World of AVATAR debuted.
The massive, cinematic lands whisks guests to the distant moon of Pandora with its floating mountains and bioluminescent alien jungles, cleverly severing the land from the (largely forgotten) film by setting it decades and decades after. Cleverly, the land is not an exact recreation of a place seen in the film, but rather an expansion of that cinematic world: the Valley of Mo’ara… A pattern that controversially continued in this biggest such project to date…
Image: Disney / Lucasfilm
The “magnum opus” was meant to be Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, which debuted at both Disneyland and Disney’s Hollywood Studios in 2019. Though it’s lumped into the same grouping as the Wizarding World, Galaxy’s Edge attempted something much more nuanced… and controversial. Rather than recreating one of the dozens of planets seen in the ever-expanding Star Wars universe, Galaxy’s Edge is “set” in a remote trading village on the planet of Batuu, never seen in the series’ films or shows.
In other words, just as quickly as Disney had adopted the Wizarding World model (for Cars Land and New Fantasyland), they promptly dropped it, opting to instead build lands inspired by and expanding upon the worlds seen in beloved films, but not brick-for-brick recreations…
This original world features Star Wars staples (including… yep… blue milk and opportunities to build Lightsabers for just $200 a piece), but purposefully leaves guests to create their own Star Wars story rather than reliving a specific film. Like the Wizarding World, it’s a land of merchant “stalls” run by the citizens of Black Spire Outpost, a Star Wars-style “Cantina” bar built at “local” scale, and in-universe merchandise like Droids and “hand-sewn” plush creatures rather than LEGO sets or action figures (even if, oddly, guests who purchase Jedi robes or First Order tunics can’t wear them in the land without violating Disney’s costume rules…).
Image: Disney / Lucasfilm
Batuu was created in immense scale and with unprecedented realism… some of which has rubbed guests the wrong way. By necessity of its timeline (in Disney’s “sequel trilogy”), Darth Vader is long since dead, and Han Solo is no where to be seen… even on the land’s Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run attraction. In the spirit of photorealism, the land’s soundscape is made of landing ships and alien conversations, not the iconic Star Wars score you’d expect. Exhaustive “live action role-playing” detail prohibits Cast Members from deviating from Batuu lingo or answering common guest questions, and “in-universe” food names (like “fried Endorian tip-yip” and “shaak roast”) proved too incomprehensible for guests, resulting in name changes to “Endorian chicken” and “pot roast.”
But don’t worry… Disney did manage to squeak Coca-Cola into the land via Aurabesh-language “alien” bottles.
Image: Disney
Still, the extremes of Galaxy’s Edge are enough to cause industry followers to wonder how far “immersive” can and should go… Even if it reaches for the essence of the Wizarding World model, does Galaxy’s Edge fall short specifically because it’s an original world and not a recreation of one seen on screen? While Imagineers’ commitment to realism was astounding, it may be impractical to commit so entirely to bringing a world to life… We’ll have to see how tinkering changes Galaxy’s Edge (and Disney’s next phase of “live the movies” lands) for the future…
Meanwhile, full lands themed to Frozen, The Avengers, and Zootopia are on order for Hong Kong Disneyland, Disney California Adventure, Shanghai Disneyland, and Walt Disney Studios while Universal cranks out lands dedicated to Transformers, Despicable Me, Jurassic World, Kung-Fu Panda, Nintendo, How To Train Your Dragon, and more. In other words, though we’ve shifted from “riding the movies” to living your own cinematic adventure, the trend toward bringing to life worlds straight from the screen doesn’t seem to be slowing…
Balance…
Image: Disney
In fairness, the modern Disney Company’s catalogue of brands, characters, stories, and content is sincerely limitless… and hard-won. Which perhaps explains Parks, Experiences, and Products chairman Bob Chapek’s frustrating pronouncements, like at the 2019 D23 Expo when he reiterated that fans have been “heard loud and clear” that they want more characters in Epcot. Most revealing of all, though, was his comment to the press at the opening of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge when pressed on Disney Parks’ IP-assault:
“We’ve got the wealth of riches, we’ve got an embarrassment of riches, and we don’t want to do anything that anybody else can do. A lot of times people say, ‘Why does everything have to have a franchise orientation?’ Because that’s our barrier to entry. Because if any of our competitors had our intellectual property, guess what? They would be doing the exact same thing we’re doing, but they don’t have it. We do. So we’re going to build it.”
Image: Disney
Is he wrong? Of course not. It seems that Chapek is simply saying out loud what Eisner merely seemed to suggest… And despite fans frustrations and annoyances, it’s undeniable:
- It would be illogical to leave Disneyland Paris’ Lost Legend: Space Mountain – De la Terre a la Lune themed to a public domain Jules Verne novel just so a few fans can fawn over it when Star Wars is earning billions at the box office.
- What company would build the Modern Marvel: Mystic Manor at California Adventure when Radiator Springs Racers has a franchise behind it that’s earned well over $10 billion in merchandising alone?
- It doesn’t make good business sense to have Paradise Pier sitting around and taking up space when Pixar Pier can sell Jack Jack’s Cookie Num-Nums and draw in guests with the built-in marketing of Toy Story and Inside Out.
Image: Disney
- It would be outrageous to leave the Lost Legend: Twilight Zone Tower of Terror in a park when Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: BREAKOUT! has a built-in fan base and connects to the highest grossing film of all time.
- Building Mysterious Island and the Modern Marvel: Journey to the Center of the Earth at Animal Kingdom would be tantamount to robbing shareholders when AVATAR broke box office records.
Chapek seems to feel – perhaps correctly! – that it would be a dereliction of his duties (remember, Vice President of Parks and Products) to leave money on the table by eschewing Disney’s hundred-billion-dollar acquisitions from the last three decades in favor of original characters and stories. And in terms of value to shareholders… he’s right. Arguments about the long-term vision or strategy for individual parks or lands are simply not even at the table.
Image: Disney
There are at least two differences between Eisner’s incorporation of movies and Iger’s.
- Quality. Whereas Eisner’s insertion of characters was all about quantity, at least under Iger’s watch, Disney’s character infusions have reached incredible heights from Cars Land to Galaxy’s Edge. While there are also uninspiring lows like Pixar Pier and Toy Story Land, at least there’s evidence that Disney will spend big to bring movies to the parks when they want to.
- Position. Almost invariably, Eisner’s later character additions came from a place of fear; fear of another devestating miss like Disneyland Paris, and comfort in the certainty of a blockbuster to remove a “barrier to entry.” Meanwhile, Iger and Chapek seem to approach “bringing movies” to life from a position of power, recognizing the industry-leading catalogue Disney owns and believing (rightly or wrongly) that seeing those properties in the parks is what people want.
Perhaps like Cynthia Harris and Paul Pressler – the budget-conscious, cost-cutting executives Eisner surrounded himself with – Chapek will be remembered as a tone-deaf executive championing bare-bones staffing, merchandising, and flavor-of-the-week film overlays over long-term sustainability or storytelling. But for the modern Walt Disney Company, “riding the movies” has simply evolved.
Image: Disney
Love it or leave it, the foreseeable future of theme parks mirrors the entertainment industry as a whole, where content is king. He who owns the license owns the world – in this case, the worlds of Harry Potter, Cars, Avatar, Toy Story, Star Wars, Frozen, The Avengers, Zootopia, and beyond. From this moment on, Disney Parks are places to “live the movies…” At least, the ones with a signature drink or must-have accessory baked in…
