Space Mountain and Mickey Mouse

 First of all, happy Victoria Day to my faithful commenter Cory Gross!

What exactly defines a Disney-quality theme park experience? There seems to be broad agreement that Disney is the gold standard in theme park design, but what exactly does WDI do that gives its output that little extra edge? Does it even do anything all that differently anymore, or is it just coasting on its reputation? Something that troubles me a bit is the tendency for the mainstream public to judge attractions according to just two factors: 1) how kinetically exciting (fast, bumpy, etc.) is it, and 2) does it feature characters I like? Hence a phrase I have coined which also serves as the title of this post: Space Mountain and Mickey Mouse.

It's easy to be dismissive of this mindset, to brush these people off as ignorant, imperceptive, shallow, or whatever buzzword gives you the maximum sense of superiority over them, but I am coming around to the idea that it's largely not their fault. Nor is it entirely WDI's fault. Or even Upper Management's fault, although as the ones with the lion's share of the power to change it, they need to own it.

The “Space Mountain” half of the equation is easy enough to explain: it's part of the overall cultural emphasis on speed and thrills. You could probably get an entire series of essays out of examining the reasons behind this larger trend, but that's not the kind of sociology project I'm suited for. I'd rather tackle the “Mickey Mouse” portion, which seems to me to be less obvious, and therefore more interesting to speculate about.

I'm starting to think it's actually, at least in part, a generational thing.

I am a Gen-Xer, but a younger one. I was born in 1977, smack dab in the middle of Disney Animation's post-Walt Dark Age. Throughout my childhood, Disney's Golden and Silver Age features were much better known and more highly regarded than its recent output, which was both rare (four years was the typical span between new features) and distinctly sub-par. The theatrical re-releases of classics* got more attention and acclaim than the new releases. The result was that I came to think of “Disney movies” as a known, fixed quantity.

Perhaps needless to say, Disney was not a big deal in the larger culture when I was little. Most people didn't think much of it at all. Certainly most of my peers didn't. If you didn't live convenient to a Disney theme park, the company didn't have much to offer you on a regular basis.

Disneyland was also pretty static during that period, but more germanely, what was there had all been built with the assumption that rides based on movies should be relatively simple projects, and the big bucks and technological whiz-bang should be reserved for original concepts. During my formative years, Disney didn't often build new attractions, never built new attractions based on recent movies (because the recent movies weren't any good), and had a history of pouring most of its theme park effort into rides and attractions that had nothing to do with any movie. The result of this was that I grew up thinking of Disneyland as something quite apart from “Disney movies,” and something much grander at that.

By the time The Little Mermaid launched the Disney Renaissance and suddenly Disney Animation was the hot thing in town again, I was twelve. Childhood over, more or less: hello adolescence. That Disney was suddenly releasing new, high-quality animated features on a yearly basis was a sea-change. I had never imagined this to be possible.

But to people five or ten years younger than me, who would eventually come to be known as Millennials? This was normal. They do not remember a time when Disney was not fantastically productive and at the top of the entertainment heap. They do not remember a time when Disney's theme parks had a higher profile than its movies. Disney capitalized pretty quickly on the success of the Renaissance films by adding them to the parks—albeit largely on the level of live entertainment—and now a whole generation has grown up expecting that when Disney releases a hot new movie, we'll be seeing aspects of it at Disneyland in pretty short order.

To Millennials, Disney movies are the main attraction, and the theme parks are spinoffs. If the parks are not hyping the movies—the newest, shiniest, hottest movies—then how do they justify themselves?

And there's another factor, one that I don't think I've seen mentioned before. The Disney Renaissance marked a return to quality, but it also marked the start of something entirely new for Disney Animation: well-defined protagonists.

This is not to say that Disney had never produced an animated film with a strongly characterized lead before, but the most evocative movies tended to have relative blank slates as their stars: Snow White, Pinocchio, Alice. These characters' simple personalities meant that they could be established quickly,** and then turned loose to interact with gorgeously animated worlds and the usually much more entertaining side characters and villains. It also made them easy for audiences to project into, which in turn made the films in question ideal for adaptation into classic dark rides, where the guests take on the role of the protagonist and share their experiences impressionistically. Being in the presence of the main character is not the draw for these movies, so they don't have to show up in the ride much (or at all) in order to recreate the feelings associated with said movies.

Starting with the Renaissance, however, Disney protagonists began to be more charismatic, with defined, complex personalities and uniquely expressive animation. As far as the theme parks were concerned, this turned out to be a mixed blessing, since it increased guest demand for attractions featuring these characters while making the movies less suitable for adaptation into traditional attraction forms. By no coincidence, this is when the “character meet-and-greet spot” concept really took off—when seeing characters became an attraction in and of itself.

To Millennials, this too is normal.

And then Disney partnered with Pixar, and the parameters of what constituted a “Disney character” became hopelessly blurred, a situation that was only exacerbated years later when the company started buying up every major media IP they could get their hands on. And that brings us to basically where we are today, when the majority of Disney theme park enthusiasts (which is not the same as the entire set of people who enjoy visiting the parks) think primarily in terms of which of the company's vast portfolio of film (and sometimes television) IPs would make for the most exciting rides.

It's not their fault. It may not be anyone's “fault” per se. But it's an attitude that sometimes genuinely alarms me, such as when someone on a message board declares that the Matterhorn is “pointless” as it is and should be remade as a Frozen ride. Or when a popular YouTuber makes a video wherein he scoffs at the popularity of Figment over in Epcot because “he's not from anything.” (Really? An incredibly creative, sophisticated, and inspirational ride isn't anything?) Or when someone opines that Tomorrowland is just fine the way it is, because Star Wars and Toy Story and Nemo are all popular franchises.

I've mentioned a few times on this blog that Pixar, in particular, is not a theme in the theme park sense. But you know what? Neither is “Disney”—at least, not in the way that most people think of the brand nowadays. It made sense for Walt to name the park after himself because it really was the culmination of all his multifarious ideas and so that he would get the accolades for coming up with it, but he made sure to carefully organize those ideas: the themed lands. Just being based on a Disney property won't make an attraction fit if the supporting environment isn't there.

And while I'm at it...faster does not equal better. Just saying.

* This was a thing that happened often, before VCRs became a standard household appliance.

** This was a big concern back when the average length of an animated film was like 80 minutes or less.