Walt Disney World has history. A lot of it. Of course, that’s what living fifty years will do for you!
Walt Disney World started big, and it’s gotten bigger. Over the course of its first five decades, the “Vacation Kingdom of the World” has grown from a ‘70s leisure resort anchored by a “Disneyland East” into a pop culture icon surpassing its older sister. Walt Disney World is practically ingrained in the DNA of the Western World. It’s as American as apple pie; as “middle class” as owning a home; as much a rite of passage as a driver’s license.
Hundreds of millions of guests have had billions of formative experiences throughout the parks and their rides – some of which live on only in their memories. Those who visited first as children now bring their own grandchildren, passing Walt Disney World down like an heirloom. Every inch of every square foot of the property has played host to beloved rides, timeless encounters, intergenerational “magic,” and a whole lot of history.
Trouble is, visiting the resort during its historic 50th Anniversary, you wouldn’t know it. Disney seems to have intentionally scrubbed any intentional nods to nostalgia from its campaign, leaving Walt Disney World’s anniversary suspiciously disconnected from… well… Walt Disney World. How did it happen? Well, let’s start by seeing how a half-century celebration can lean into nostalgia, history, and joy, then we’ll explore what just went haywire in Walt Disney World’s once-in-a-lifetime celebration.
The Origin Story
“I felt that there should be something built where the parents and the children could have fun… together.” Practically the Disney equivalent of “In the beginning,” the story of Disneyland is nothing short of an American tall tale. From that park bench to the orange groves of Anaheim; Adventureland and Frontierland and Fantasyland and Tomorrowland and a castle… Images of Walt Disney stepping down Main Street or through the castle’s gates are practically so embedded in pop culture, they feel like a legend.
That origin story – of Walt Disney and his “original magic kingdom” – has always been baked into Disneyland. Among the public, Imagineers, and yes, even executives, Disneyland is hallowed ground; “where Walt walked;” a place that’s treated with reverence and respect; different. Disneyland isn’t a museum, but it is a historic place! Walt’s mid-century ideology is at its core; its scale and scope are limiting to big, boisterous, modern ideas; what’s done there is done in the light of that lamp above the Fire Station…
Walt himself was only around for Disneyland’s first decade but ask anyone: his presence could still be felt there. This was his park. Though new rides and lands came, and the trees grew, and prices rose (oh did they rise!), Disneyland was still something unique; still using that old-timey, Medieval script for its logo, without a hint of the corporate “Disney” giant that had grown behind it in the 45 years since. It was still just Walt’s park.
That connection to its past – and a simple, digestible story – is part of what makes Disneyland so unique. It’s why the park is de facto protected by designers and by generations of local (and vocal!) visitors who literally grew up alongside and within it. Disneyland has always been primed to put its history on display… and boy did that happen…
A Golden 50th
Frankly, Disneyland’s 50th Anniversary couldn’t have come at a worse time. In 2005, The Walt Disney Company was just pulling out of a decade-long nosedive caused by the financial failure of Disneyland Paris’s 1992 opening and the tourism decline after the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York City. The ‘90s and early 2000s had seen a visceral, debilitating decline in the staffing, maintenance, and shine of Disneyland and Walt Disney World as then-CEO Michael Eisner infamously slashed budgets, killed projects in development and swore off any costly, large-scale developments going forward.
In 2003 – just as Eisner was readying to depart before the end of his contract – Matt Ouimet stepped in as President of the Disneyland Resort… a resort transformed for the worse by the rapidly deteriorating care of Disneyland and the resource-sucking opening of Disney’s California Adventure. With the park’s 50th Anniversary looming, Ouimet and his team rallied and did the unthinkable: they turned it around.
Ahead of Disneyland’s 50th, three classics – the Jungle Cruise, the Enchanted Tiki Room, and Space Mountain – were quite literally rebuilt. The dreary, copper-rust remains of the doomed New Tomorrowland ‘98 were exorcised, and the return of the once-sunk Submarine Voyage was announced. Even the resort’s relaunched corporate logo was undone, reintroducing Disneyland’s Medieval lettering across the resort… A campaign focused not just on reimagining the park’s future, but on recognizing and restoring its past.
Golden Mickey Mouse ear hats spread far and wide, including 50 golden Hidden Mickeys spread around the park. Sleeping Beauty Castle was adorned with five golden crowns – each patterned to represent a major attraction from one of the park’s five decades. Historic 50th Anniversary maps became the must-have souvenirs. A special “Disneyland: The First 50 Magical Years” exhibition and film opened in the Main Street Opera House while “Walt Disney’s Parade of Dreams” took to the streets.
“The Happiest Homecoming on Earth” invited guests from around the globe to return to the place where it all started; to come home to a Disneyland reborn. Each of the park’s remaining 1955 Originals was celebrated by painting a single one of its ride vehicles gold – one gold Storybook Land Canal Boat, one gold Mr. Toad buggy; one gold Tea Cup; one gold Omnibus…
At night, “Remember… Dreams Come True” lit up the skies, literally taking guests on a “Grand Circle Tour” of Disneyland with fireworks segments dedicated to each land and the rides (both current and past) that lived there, all narrated by Walt’s friend Julie Andrews.
This wasn’t just a celebration in Walt’s original magic kingdom; it was a celebration of it… A perfect representation of how to highlight the resort’s past and invite generations back to visit, all decked out in gold.
(By the way, Walt Disney World got in on the party, too. The Florida resort ran a concurrent “Happiest Celebration on Earth,” highlighting 50 years of Disney theme parks. Despite it being Disneyland’s birthday, Disney World got the presents: one new attraction “gifted” from each resort – Soarin’ from Anaheim, Lights, Motors, Action from Paris, and Cinderellabration from Tokyo. Cinderella Castle was adorned with a “magical” stained glass window, which showed each of the five Disney Castles on Earth, including the brand new Hong Kong Disneyland’s.)
Let’s see… A golden 50th Anniversary welcoming guests back after a very dark period… Where have we heard that before? And how did Disney World decide to do precisely the opposite kind of anniversary, without a mention of its history? Read on…
The Most “Magical” Celebration?
In a trend started with Disneyland’s 50th anniversary 16 years prior, there really couldn’t have been worse timing for Walt Disney World’s 50th Anniversary. After the September 11th attacks and the self-imposed Dark Age of the early 2000s that had so hampered Disneyland’s, Magic Kingdom’s celebration just so happened to fall in the midst of the global COVID-19 pandemic. (In other words, stock up on supplies ahead of Tokyo Disney’s 50th in 2033 – some other global cataclysm seems assured.) But “The Most Magical Celebration on Earth” must go on…
New Attractions
No one could really fault Disney for missing the deadline on the two E-Ticket attractions theoretically meant to bookend the celebration – TRON Lightcycle Run at Magic Kingdom and Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind at EPCOT. At least that latter has been officially announced to open sometime in 2022, meaning it’ll at least catch the tail end of the 18-month 50th Anniversary. (October 1, 2022 would be a smart move since it’s EPCOT’s 40th and the start of a new fiscal year, but no official date has been given.)
Likewise intentionally delaying EPCOT’s Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure 18 months to become the celebration’s sole attraction anchor makes sense from a financial perspective. If it had opened in May 2020 as planned, the resort would have literally no new rides to show for the biggest celebration in their history, so a single, fun family dark ride is something.
Basically, it’s not Disney’s fault that the 50th Anniversary fell in the midst of a health crisis, and thus, no one’s to blame for the best-practice health protocols the resort’s practicing – like limited admission, park reservations, distanced character greetings, and reduced entertainment offerings. But unfortunately, the ramifications of the pandemic and its timing also created some serious frustrations from an image point of view…
New Upcharges
Unfortunately, the parks’ extended COVID-19 closure also gave Disney license to end several popular, “free” (read: included) services like Magical Express airport transportation, FastPass+, Extra Magic Hours, and complimentary MagicBands, which all re-appeared as optional upcharges just in time for the 50th, earning Disney some deserved negative press when they’d least like it. While their removal does mercifully signal the end of Disney World’s six-month-out-pre-planning-required phase, the almost comedically inept Disney Genie and its hilariously complex Disney Genie+ upcharge counterpart make up for it.
That’s just part of why a recent Theme Park Tourist poll found that over a third of our readers say they’re done with Disney World, and this time they mean it – probably not the place executives hoped they’d find themselves at the launch of their global marketing campaign. In other words, Disney started 2021 with plenty leveled against it and against its “Most Magical Celebration on Earth.” But to make matters worse, fans were surprised to find just how little Walt Disney World’s historic celebration seemed to celebrate Walt Disney World history….
New Statues
As part of a viral marketing campaign leading up to the 50th, Disney slowly announced – one by one – fifty new statues that would soon take up residence around Walt Disney World. Made of gold and coated in an iridescent shine (befitting the celebration’s shimmering color palate), the statues would stand like memorials around the four parks – 50 odes to 50 years. Instagrammable, shareable, and merchandisable, it’s easy to imagine these statues taking up the same role that the golden vehicles of Disneyland had; testaments not just to rides left from opening day, but rides of the past, present, and future! The attractions that have made memories for millions and millions of guests over five decades!
No such luck. One-by-one, the statues were revealed to be… you guessed it… Disney, Pixar, Marvel, and Star Wars characters. Just two of the fifty represented characters designed by Imagineers for the Parks – Orange Bird and Figment – both of whom were swiftly and dutifully replaced with movie characters in an associated 50-toy release through McDonald’s Happy Meals.
Here at Theme Park Tourist, we did a little thought exercise and art project by imagining which 50 rides we would’ve cast as golden statues, and we came up with a pretty good list (see our Magic Kingdom selections above)! Why shouldn’t those statues have been landmarks of the rides that have shaped the parks? Why shouldn’t there be an ode to 20,000 Leagues in Fantasyland? A statue commemorating Alien Encounter in Tomorrowland? A golden memorial to Body Wars outside the Play Pavilion at EPCOT? The Great Movie Ride on Hollywood Blvd.?
Unfortunately, this simple opportunity to showcase a little Disney World history, appeal to fans, and memorialize the resort’s most beloved rides – past, present, and future – in a really beautiful way was skipped for… characters.
And that’s just the start…
New Nighttime Shows
Two requisite nighttime extravaganzas launched on October 1.
It’s probably not fair to hold EPCOT’s Harmonious up as a harbinger of the 50th. Like Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure, the show was actually meant to debut last year but was rescheduled to launch in October 2021 to bolster the otherwise empty list of new offerings. Perhaps best understood as a “high-tech, no-holds-barred, international World of Color” (but in our opinion, lacking the emotional flow or abstract artistry), Harmonious brings some of Disney’s lesser-nighttime-spectacular-ized films to the forefront (think Hercules, Moana, Hunchback, and Coco) in what’s theoretically a nod to World Showcase’s pavilions.
It’s somewhere on the good-to-great scale depending on whom you ask… but at the end of the day, it’s yet another “nighttime same-tacular” that could just as easily play at Magic Kingdom or Hollywood Studios or Animal Kingdom. Especially positioned as an offering of the 50th, one has to wonder if its temporary, placeholder predecessor – “EPCOT Forever” – at least made more self as a self-referential celebration of the park and its history. In a year when looking back would make sense, EPCOT hosting a show with “One Little Spark” as its recurring motif makes a lot more sense than yet another show about wishing and dreams and animation and… characters.
The second, Disney Enchantment, can’t quite so easily be forgiven… It is definitely a show devised specifically for the 50th Anniversary by nature of including the custom-made anthem of the 50th, “You Are The Magic.” To be fair, its first and perhaps most irredeemable sin is replacing “Happily Ever Ever,” a similarly-scaled castle projection show and fireworks extravaganza that’s pretty agreeably “better” in just about every way.
But quality, flow, and story aside, the biggest issue with Disney Enchantment is that here – at the park that’s turning 50 – the show makes approximately zero attempts to actually… you know… celebrate Magic Kingdom. Whereas Disneyland’s “Remember…” was a literal masterpiece in the way it used the park as the IP (and by the way, is still in the park’s seasonal fireworks rotation), Disney Enchantment is your standard singalong projection show, even sharing a majority of its films with Harmonious! (We reviewed both shows – including pointing out their unfortunately same-ness, in a standalone feature.)
Neither of the two new nighttime shows positioned as thee landmarks of the 50th even seem to recognize that they’re set in parks with nearly a century of combined history… “EPCOT Forever” and “Remember… Dreams Come True” actually feel like a pretty perfect duo compared to the relative copy-paste shows ostensibly meant as celebrations…
But it’s no accident. After all, though fans may be disappointed by the direction Disney World’s 50th went, they certainly couldn’t be surprised… On the last page, we’ll look at the reasons we think the 50th Anniversary left out the history of the parks themselves and where Disney can go from here…
Nothing about Walt Disney World’s 50th Anniversary seems to be a celebration of Walt Disney World. Instead, nearly every “new” thing – from rides to shows to statues – seems to outright ignore nostalgia entirely and instead focus the 50th Anniversary of a place on the IPs controlled by its parent company. That may disappoint you… but does it really surprise you? Probably not. And to our thinking, there are a few reasons why Disney World decided to make its historic celebration about something other than itself…
1. Disney World’s origin story is messy
Let’s get one thing straight: part of what makes Walt Disney World so unique is that its story is significantly less concise than Disneyland’s. Unlike the California park – whose origin resides among the great American fables, and who stayed pretty much unchanged for its first fifty years aside from a new neighbor 46 years in – Disney World’s history is… well… messy.
It probably begins with that construction-wall-ready quote: “Here in Florida we have something special we never enjoyed at Disneyland – the blessing of size. There’s enough land here to hold all the ideas and plans we can possibly imagine.” Indeed, you can’t really tell the story of Disney World’s Disney World-ness without starting at Walt’s dissatisfaction with Disneyland, which is kind of a rough start…
I know, I know – there are great pictures of Walt pointing to maps of Central Florida, and to blueprints and ideas about his “Florida Project”! Likewise, Disney does like to tell the story of how the company cleverly came to own so much land near Orlando through some eyebrow-raising business dealings, and will occasionally even boast that the company has government-like control over itself… But it’s a much more “corporate” story than Disneyland’s, isn’t it?
And from that starting point comes Walt’s relative (and largely unacknowledged) reluctance to build a Disneyland East at all… Even today, fans are apt to ask “What would Walt do?” about any given addition to the parks, but those who study Walt’s life recognize that by the mid-’60s, he’d largely moved on from theme parks altogether! By then, he fancied himself an urban planner whose E.P.C.O.T. would change modern society forever – something much more consequential than rides. Of course, E.P.C.O.T. never happened, and to make matters worse, Walt passed away in 1966 – five years before the opening of the property that bears his name. That’s… kind of a tough sell, too.
His brother, Roy – truly the stabilizing force that saw Disney World through to completion – is surely acknowledged, but rarely heralded as the project’s savior as he should be. Probably in part because Roy pressed forward with the project at a time often called the “Disney Dark Ages” – an era of major financial loss that nearly ended the company altogether, and the kind of critical self-assessment Disney doesn’t often make… all part of a “messy” origin story.
2. The rest of Disney World’s history is messy, too
Despite being younger than Disneyland, Walt Disney World arguably has more history. Quite unlike the protected, historic status of Disneyland, Walt Disney World was (and remains) an entertainment laboratory! Dissimilar parts from the ‘70s, ‘80s, ‘90s, 2000s, 2010s, and 2020s that – depending on whom you ask – either coexist, clash, or come together in beautifully random ways.
Each of the resort’s four theme parks and dozens of resort hotels represents entirely different eras of design and the whims of entirely different executives at the helm. Every park outside of Magic Kingdom has gone through fairly significant identity crises that they haven’t necessarily emerged from yet – the accumulated horrors of California Adventure without the foundational rewrite or happy ending. That makes it hard to tell the story of EPCOT, Hollywood Studios, or even Animal Kingdom without some admission of waywardness or reconciliation, so instead, they just… don’t tell the story. Because… it’s messy.
Similarly, without the built-in reverence and protection of Walt’s presence, Disney World has contributed far, far too many very good attractions to our Lost Legends collection, often in very regrettable ways. Among those who do know Disney World history, there are plenty of open wounds and decisions that – in hindsight – were very obviously not good. Celebrating the past opens those wounds and acknowledges those decisions that are easier to leave forgotten, which can be… messy.
Monorails, buses, Skyliners, boats, and taxis reveal the often piecemeal process of building the world’s foremost entertainment destination. But as anyone will tell you, it’s not always pretty! Doctoral theses could be written about the resort’s many (sometimes painful) growth spurts; how new grafts onto old; how the behemoth property tries to smooth over its seams and disguise its history… because… it’s messy.
About the only really fitting medium for telling the story of Walt Disney World is something like the Iwerks’ Imagineering Story docu-series, which can tell the warts-and-all story of the parks within the context of the shifting Walt Disney Company around them. Without that context, nothing about Magic Kingdom, EPCOT, Disney’s Hollywood Studios, and Disney’s Animal Kingdom really seem to go together or make a cohesive whole, and the outright messy history of Disney World’s ebbs and flows just doesn’t translate well to a nice, clean, nostalgic history as Disneyland’s does.
3. Disney World thinks more globally, less locally
If you ask any Disney Parks aficionado what makes Disneyland and Walt Disney World different, their first answer will definitely be “size.” But somewhere in the top three, they’ll almost certainly hit on the idea of “audience.” Even today, Disneyland retains that regional audience it started with. Especially thanks to its intensely loyal local base, Disneyland’s culture is that of a “locals park.” Seasonal overlays, cultural celebrations, and nods to the past are ever-present, keeping generations of locals engaged with the park like a tradition.
Walt Disney World is a tradition for families, too, but on a much different scale. Disney World actively avoids seasonal overlays precisely because its audience in general visits much less regularly (think, every four years) and tracks changes at the parks much less closely. Disney World’s audience is continuously refreshed versus the regional crowd in California. It’s filled with guests from around the country and world, who – on the whole – have less stalwart allegiance to the parks’ histories or past rides.
Ask a stranger at Disneyland what used to be on those tracks in Tomorrowland and nine out of ten could probably tell you; ask a stranger at Disney World what used to be where The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh is now and you’re likely to get a lot of confused stares. Disney World has a different audience, and while the resort has its brilliant historians, loyal fans, and very practiced locals who hold its history in the same high regard as Disneyland’s equivalent, they are – on the whole – a much smaller subset of visitors. Which means…
4. Walt Disney World doesn’t think people care about its history
The vicious cycle of downplaying Walt Disney World’s history has, of course, led its visitors to not know Walt Disney World’s history. What other outcome could there be? Whereas Disneyland puts its history in the front window, then encourages its audience to care about it through nostalgic celebrations, odes to the past, and reminders of the park’s importance, Walt Disney World largely buries its history, then shrugs and says “I guess people don’t care.”
Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Walt Disney World’s leadership believes that their audience just doesn’t care about the resort’s history, so why bother celebrating it? We’ll counter with this: if the resort celebrated its history more, then its audience would care about it. Whether its a golden statue of Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride outside of the Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh or a fireworks show with segments themed to Magic Kingdom’s lands…
Of course young people today don’t know Dreamfinder and don’t like Figment… because they don’t know them! A nostalgic Walt Disney World would send walkarounds of Dreamfinder “re-introducing himself” to a new generation, and have “One Little Spark” serve as the central song and message of a nighttime spectacular; new Monorails dressed in ‘70s style; highlighting 1971 original resorts; throwback park maps; turning the Main Street Opera House into an ode to Walt and Roy; building a recreation of the Walt Disney World Preview Center at Disney Springs, complete with ‘70s decor…
After so many years of burying it, of course, people don’t understand or care about Walt Disney World’s history… until you show them why they should. It’s a shame that Disney can’t (or won’t) figure out the chicken-or-egg here.
5. Disney in 2021 isn’t Disney in 2005
It’s easy to rationalize why Disney celebrated the same anniversary so differently between Disneyland and Walt Disney World, which we’ve now spent a whole page doing. It’s definitely true that Walt Disney World’s origin story and history since isn’t as “concise” or “tidy” as Disneyland’s; it’s also definitely true that Disney World’s stuck in a chicken-or-egg situation with nostalgia and whether or not its unique audience cares.
But frankly, the biggest reason for Walt Disney World’s nostalgia-free 50th might just be that 2021 Disney is gonna 2021 Disney, you know?
In 2005, the Wizarding World was barely a glimmer in the eyes of Warner Bros. and Universal; Iron Man hadn’t gone into production yet, and Disney wouldn’t buy Marvel for four years or Star Wars for seven. Pixar was an independent studio with Cars on the docket, Netflix was still two years away from streaming, and the iPhone didn’t exist. In 2005, Disney’s biggest brands were their own – the classics of Walt’s time and the movies of the Disney Renaissance. In other words, 2005 was quite literally a lifetime ago; far, far removed from the “IP Wars” we’re in now, long before corporate acquisitions and streaming and content catalogs mattered to companies or their general public.
Disneyland’s 50th Anniversary was the overture to Bob Iger’s tenure. Walt Disney World’s is the opening act of Bob Chapek’s. Chapek oversees a very different Disney with a very different structure, very different priorities, and a very, very different plan. So while we can wax poetic on how nostalgic and historic and fan-friendly Disneyland’s anniversary was, there’s every chance that if it were to take place today, Californians would be looking at golden statues of Groot and singalong nighttime shows, too. We can hope and think and wish and believe that Disneyland is still different – and indeed, it may be – but ultimately, Bob Chapek and Parks Chairman Josh D’Amaro appear to see the parks not as content themselves, rich and ready for activation, but as content delivery methods – literally, a place to bring Disney’s IPs to life.
Magic Once More
It’s a shame that Walt Disney World went the way it did with its 50th. Arguably, it’s true that for most guests to the Florida resort, the whole point of visiting Walt Disney World is to see characters come to life. Period. But think again of the chicken and egg… The rich, nostalgic, memory-filled history of Disney World isn’t presented to them because they don’t care about it… and they don’t care about it because it’s not presented to them!
It really feels like the 50th Anniversary would’ve been the perfect time and place to make a shift; to lean into Disney World’s wacky ‘70s origin and its many eras of growth and change. This would’ve been the year to celebrate that original “Vacation Kingdom” core by highlighting it separately on maps; to offer “throwback” meals; golden statues commemorating long-lost rides; nighttime shows reflecting on the role of these parks in pop culture and the families who’ve been changed by them; “Year of a Million Dreams” style stays in 1971 resorts; a year for Imagineer-made-IP to shine bright with Dreamfinder and Figment as the resort’s hosts; a celebration of the past and its role in the resort’s future.
Let’s face it: if it didn’t happen during the 50th, it’s not going to. It looks like, for the foreseeable future, Walt Disney World’s four parks will continue their march toward sameness, diligently covering up their pasts and instead highlighting Disney, Pixar, Marvel, and Star Wars, history be damned.
