Progress City, U.S.A.

I feel that I am perhaps the last individual in the Disney blogosphere to post any sort of public comment about the recent controversy surrounding the rumored changes to Disneyland’s version of it’s a small world. This is due to a number of reasons, but mostly, as a grizzled veteran of Eisner’s last decade at the helm of the Walt Disney company, I have attained a degree of scandal fatigue. Quite simply, I have seen so many desecrations and obscenities foisted upon the art of themed entertainment and design that I have become inured to such grand disappointments.

I fought in the Toad Wars of 1998, had the first website devoted to saving Horizons and wrote a letter so incensed by Journey Into YOUR Imagination that I got a call at home from the then Vice President of EPCOT Center. I watched Disney built a park with amazing theming but little to do (Animal Kingdom), minimal theming and nothing to do (California Adventure) and no theming and nothing to do (Disney Studios Paris). I consider Hong Kong Disneyland something of a gated botanical gardens. After wands and hats and Pop Century, I had no store of indignation left.

Young revolutionaries on the barricades - the last Toad-In, September 7, 1998.
I seem distracted.

But just as things looked bleakest, there was a ray of hope. Paul Pressler left to destroy another company. Michael Eisner left to hang out with Bette Midler and trade baseball cards. John Lasseter and the Pixar squad rode in on their white horses to give the triage badly needed by a dying WDI and dead Feature Animation department. Even Bob Iger, Eisner’s hand-picked successor, proved me wrong and wound up not being a proxy for the departed CEO but a fairly bold new leader who embraced a far more progressive view of new technologies than his predecessor. Surely, everyone would live happily ever after.

Still, all was not well. The management purges and noxious politics of the last decade had left Imagineering paranoid and factionalized, split between the embattled creatives who had managed to survive in the hope of better days ahead and those who, bolstered by political maneuvering and their ability to “play the game” successfully had risen through the ranks. Not since the Augean stables had an organization so desperately needed a flushing out of the dross and a complete rebuilding.

While change came, however, it came slowly. Sub-par attractions still filtered out into the parks, and more alarmingly, newly announced attractions started to have a noticeably Pixar-centric tilt. The “toonification” of the parks amped up in earnest, and areas that once whisked guests away to adventure in fantastic but real-world settings became new venues for promoting the Franchise of the Month. It seemed that at our moment of greatest triumph, the folks from marketing had won after all. The parks were going to become ads for character merchandise, and the days of the great non-”property” rides like Pirates or Mansion might never return.

Oh noes.

There remained reasons for optimism, though, and obviously a great deal of wonderful, devoted and creative staff continue to try their best to keep the company living up to Walt’s ideals. I’ve tended to cut them slack even in times of irritation, and even though I might disagree with their choices I’m usually eager to see where they’re going in the hopes that the ship will eventually get turned around completely. So, for a while, my crusading came to an end.

Recently, though, rumors emerged of something so strangely unnecessary, blinkered and contrary to both good taste and Disney legacy that I felt that old activist drumbeat once more. Something had been planned so purely based in concepts of “marketing” and “brand awareness” and intended to move merchandise that it can’t help but to raise the hackles of fans. Something that strikes right at the nexus of several “sacrosanct” movements in Disney park history, and something that was neither asked for or needed.

So why not? Once more into the breach, dear friends. Start your petitions and phone calls, emails and letters. Grab the pitchforks and light up those torches, because they’re going to screw around with it’s a small world.

(more…)

Here’s some bits and bobs to clean out my stack of interesting stories that have been piling up…

First, we have Mickey Mouse from the Year 900!!!

The “Stuff From the Parks” blog has posted this fascinating diagram from 1954 of a proposed layout for Main Street at Disneyland. Notable are the early ideas for shop themes, the Nautilus set walk-through in the Opera House and accompanying animation studio demonstration, and most interestingly the International Street concept that would never be built but resurfaced nearly thirty years later as World Showcase at EPCOT Center.

One of the stories that kind of slipped under the radar recently was that Scott Trowbridge, vice president of Universal Creative Studios, was hired away by Walt Disney Imagineering and is now the new vice president of creative research and development. This is big, big news as Trowbridge was senior show producer on The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man, a perennial contender for the title of best dark ride ever created. This is a huge coup for WDI and I can’t wait to see what it leads to.

Staying in the parks, about.com has an interesting talk with Imagineer Tony Baxter about Disneyland’s new Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage and the path that the attraction took from the original Submarine Voyage’s senseless closure in 1998. While a great story, it underlines how my ‘home park’ in Florida has suffered from the lack of a powerful champion in WDI’s brain trust.

MiceAge tours Tokyo Disneyland and Tokyo Disneysea, as well as providing a look at some rare conceptual art for EPCOT Center’s Spaceship Earth.

John Lasseter talks about animated shorts, WALL-E, and Pixar’s future slate and animation’s chances at the Oscars. WALL-E has started having sneak previews, and Leslie Iwerks’ documentary The Pixar Story has started a round of public screenings.

Women build shrine to Cars on Route 66!

Disneyland in Malaysia! Disneyland in… Siberia? Malaysia and Siberia might want to call Hong Kong, who’s going to have to bail out the faltering Hong Kong Disneyland, which continues to fall below attendance expectations due to the glaring lack of any actual amusement in their amusement park.

Finally, I should mention the passing of renowned Imagineer and author Bruce Gordon who died November 6th at the far too young age of 56. Gordon was a fan favorite at various conventions, and authored or co-authored a number of authoritative books on Disney parks, animators, and imagineers. He was currently working with the Disney family on The Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco and had a number of books in the pipeline for publication. He will be greatly, greatly missed.

And… this. Umm…

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