Disneyland’s long history is full of oddities that might amaze those of us who missed the park’s first few decades, or who were never able to visit until later years. A lot of those “lost” mid-century novelties were located in Tomorrowland, which underwent several major overhauls in its early years and was home to [...]
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For Disney fans of a critical bent, it used to be easy knowing where to channel one’s rage. Disneyland falling apart from neglect and mismanagement? Blame Paul Pressler and his gang of idiots. Key elements of Animal Kingdom’s master plan left out on opening day? Blame Eisner, or the “pencil pushers”. California Adventure? Blame everyone VP level or above. Once Disney began its long slide into mediocrity, beginning noticeably around 1994 and cratering out about ten years ago, the villain was remarkably consistent and easy to identify – cheapness. Penny pinching. Cutting corners. Basically, the refusal by management to commit the resources necessary to creating new things in the tradition that made Disney great. A lot has changed since then. Management is different at the top, and in many places at the bottom as well. Eisner’s replacement, Bob Iger, seems much more willing to spend on projects that he finds worthwhile and he mended a number of bridges to the creative community that had been burned. John Lasseter of Pixar was brought in as a creative consultant to Imagineering, which many – including myself – thought simply had to be a good idea. Most importantly, money is being invested in the parks; a billion dollars has been poured into an effort to make California Adventure habitable, a long-needed overhaul of Florida’s Fantasyland is underway, and other projects wait in the wings – projects like the Avatar-themed area of Animal Kingdom that surprised everyone when it was announced earlier this year. So, all is well… right? Continue reading The Carsland Conundrum Yesterday, Foxx from Passport To Dreams Old & New tweeted a link to this great cartoon from the 1962 Beany and Cecil animated program. The Beany and Cecil characters were invented by former Warner Brothers animator Bob Clampett, and were originally featured in a televised puppet show called Time for Beany which ran from [...]
With the arrival of EPCOT Center in 1982, Disney was forced to take a look at its pricing structure. The old ticket-book strategy wouldn’t work for this new park, with its megalithic corporate-sponsored pavilions. With every corporation paying handsomely for a seat at the EPCOT table, how could Disney tell one sponsor that their attraction was a D- or C-ticket, when their neighbor’s was an E? Disney had to act like everything at EPCOT was an E-ticket and, to be fair, it was indeed a very different park than Disneyland, with a very different mix of attractions. There’s an obvious difference between, say, a Main Street trolley and the Matterhorn, but how do you quantify the difference between Kitchen Kabaret, Horizons, and Impressions de France? When you add into the mix the fact that the sponsors wanted to make sure that as many guests as possible visited their pavilions, and didn’t want people skipping over an attraction because they were out of tickets, it became apparent that EPCOT simply wouldn’t work with the time-honored admissions system. This led to the rise of the Passport – the all-inclusive, full-day admission. For the first time, guests could enter a Disney park and ride every ride as much as they wanted. It was a big change, and so in Spring of 1982 Disney published this article in Disney News to help explain the new policy: Continue reading Tickets, Please… So, there’s this rumor that seems to be spreading everywhere… People keep suggesting that Imagineering has a plan to – at last – replace the unfortunate Innoventions exhibit at Disneyland with some sort of attraction modeled on the Stark Expo from last year’s Marvel release Iron Man 2. Yeah, that’s totally not a thing. [...] |
 
Essays about the first forty years of Walt Disney World, including two pieces by yours truly. Available in print and for Kindle. |
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