Category: Gone But Not Forgotten

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Disney History Gone But Not Forgotten

Disney’s America

Disney’s America was to be a theme park based on American History, which would have been built in the 1990s.

The first location considered for this enterprise was Colonial Williamsburg, but due to the area only reporting seasonal business this never materialized. Another factor in this location not being used was the two-hour driving distance from Washington D.C., where the park’s major clientele were expected to be based.

The second location considered for Disney’s America was Haymarket, Virginia, only twenty miles from the capital. This location was soon confirmed, and, as of 1993, the project was overseen by Mark Pacala, better known for setting up the Disney Vacation Club, and designed by Bob Weis (currently the creative lead for the forthcoming Shanghai Disneyland).

At the official announcement in Haymarket, Weis unveiled a scale model of the preliminary plans for the park. This featured seven themed areas: Presidents’ Square, recreations of a Native American Village, a Civil War fort, Ellis Island, a turn-of-the-century factory town, a state fair and a Midwestern family farm.

Other areas, which were later added to the plans, included Cross Roads USA, which would be the hub of the park, and Victory Field in which Guests would have experienced what American Soldiers faced during the World Wars.

Park attractions would have included The Hall of Presidents (which would have been moved from Walt Disney World, rather than recreated), a film featuring the Muppets telling the story of Immigration, and a rollercoaster ride called Industrial Revolution which would travel through a nineteenth century landscape. This attraction would feature inversions and near misses with blast furnaces.

Construction of the park was called off for a variety of reasons, which were a mixture of public, personal and financial. Public reasons included opposition by locals and historians. The reasons for the resistance was varied, including the park’s name implying that the Nation was owned by the Corporation and the fear of local historical sites (such as Manassas, the location of the two major battles of the American Civil War) being threatened or undermined by their proximity to Disney’s America. More generic worries included important events from history being forgotten, glossed over or not taken seriously enough.

Personal reasons which Michael Eisner (then Disney’s CEO) cited for not going ahead with the project included the death of Frank Wells (then Disney’s Chief Operating Officer), the resignation of Jeffrey Katzenberg (formerly head of Disney’s motion picture divisions) and Eisner’s own emergency quadruple bypass surgery. These three events had occurred within a space of five months, and Eisner felt “it wasn’t fair to subject the company to more trauma”.

Financial reasons for the park not going ahead included unanticipated large amounts being spent to silence the critics (including expenditure on attorneys and lobbyists), a delayed opening date deferring the date when money would be coming back into the company from the park, and the realisation that the park would have to close for four months annually rather than the expected three. The strengthening of the vision for the park brought costs up an additional 40%, whilst projections for the parks revenues –based on a lower than usual attendance in the other Disney parks worldwide- were decreasing steadily.

Several attractions proposed for the park have influences readily seen in other Disney parks. For example, a proposed Lewis and Clark themed water ride led the way for Kali River Rapids at Disney’s Animal Kingdom and later Grizzly River Run at Disney’s California Adventure (DCA).

Likewise, the design for Victory Field inspired Condor Flats at DCA and the proposed Family Farm was practically identical to DCA’s former Bountiful Valley Farm.

In 1995, Disney’s America was briefly mentioned at a three-day brainstorming retreat in Colorado as one of six proposed suggestions for a new park where DCA currently stands.

The final location considered for Disney’s America was Buena Park, a neighbor to Disneyland. In 1997, the Knott’s Family announced they would be taking bids for their theme park Knott’s Berry Farm. If Disney’s plan had gone ahead, they would have transformed their entrance area into President’s Square (incorporating The Hall of Presidents) and would have adapted the iconic Bigfoot Rapids into the Lewis and Clark themed water ride.

This plan did not go ahead due to Disney realizing they would be expected to transport the park’s Guests to Disneyland, and Knott’s Berry Farm’s concern that Disney would change the park to the extent that it would no longer fit in with the ideals of Walter Knott who had died 16 years previously.

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Disney History Gone But Not Forgotten In the Parks WDW vs DLP

WDW vs. DLP: Frontierland (Part One)

My favorite Land in Disneyland Paris is Frontierland, and this article is the first in a series of five comparing it to its Floridian counterpart. I am hoping to cover as much of the this Land as is possible, with the exception of the Railroad station, which I wrote about for a previous article – see http://mousescrappers.com/wordpress/?p=656

Several Imagineers I have spoken to about the creation of this Land have referred to it as “Westernland” (the name given to the version in Tokyo, due to “Frontier” being a term not thought to be as recognizable by its target Guests). Although this could on occasion have been them getting their resorts muddled up, there was a period of time when the name was strongly considered for use in the France park, although the Land’s Art Director, Jeff Burke, claims to have been adamant from day one that “Frontierland” was the only name which should or could be used.

Personally, I feel the theming of Frontierland in Paris to be one of the most thorough and in-depth, which is in part due to its size as the biggest Frontierland worldwide. However, much credit must go to the Land having such a coherent backstory, although I suspect that some sections of the storyline may have been retrofitted. However, over time, I feel additions and changes to the Land have contradicted much of this backstory, as did a temporary overreliance on cartoon characters, especially when Woody’s Roundup Village was in operation.

A photo-op from the now defunct Woody’s Roundup Village. Photo courtesy of www.photosmagiques.com

One example of an element of the Paris Frontierland’s backstory which is downplayed more now than in the park’s earlier years is the distinction between the “rich” half of the Land and the “poor” half. Likewise, although the Land is still a hub for Halloween activities, the two halves are no longer changed during that celebration into “Trickland” and “Treatland”.

Recently, although Halloween celebrations in the Paris resort have been more minimal than they once were (and also more Main Street based), during the season, Frontierland still features Pumpkin-Head mannequins, themed bands and the meet-and-greet with Jack Skellington and Sally. In previous Octobers, the Land has also featured face-painting, mummified ships, spooky dinner shows and occasionally an overall re-name/re-theme to “Halloweenland”.

Jack and Sally in DLP’s Frontierland, in Boot Hill Cemetery. Photo courtesy of www.disneyandmore.com

Christmas is also celebrated in Paris’ Frontierland more than elsewhere in the park, with seasonal stage shows, reindeer, Santa’s workshop and a chance to meet the big guy himself.

Other than perhaps during the Halloween/Christmas celebrations, both the Paris and the Florida Frontierland are set in the mid to late nineteenth century. They both feature a generous smattering of props from the era as well as a smoking area, a pin trading location and a shooting gallery.

Attractions currently existing solely in the Paris Frontierland include Legends of the Wild West (a self-guided walking tour of Fort Comstock) and two Native American camps: Pocahontas Indian Village (a play area for younger Guests) and a set of tepees near the Land’s main entrance. In the earlier days of the park, Guests could walk in and around the latter, whereas nowadays they can only be experienced from a distance, although -as of the last few months- smoke has started to come from one of them.

In part two of this article (to be published on Thursday 7th Nov 2013), I shall be looking at the restaurants, shops, theatres and shows of these two Frontierlands, and then parts three to five will look at the “main” attractions of the Paris Land (Rivers of the Far West, Big Thunder Mountain and Phantom Manor) and comparing them to their Florida equivalents. These three articles will be published Nov 21st, Dec 5th and Dec 19th respectively.

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Disney History DL vs DLP Gone But Not Forgotten In the Parks Reviews

Anaheim vs. Paris: Casey Jr. Circus Train and Storybook Land Canal Boats

Early plans for the Fantasyland in the Anaheim park included a roller coaster called Rock Candy Mountain, upon which guests were transported on Casey Jr. style trains. There would be a canal surrounding this, which guests could circumnavigate on miniature boats.

It is claimed that this concept was abandoned when Imagineers thought that visitors may be put off by the sickly looking design for the mountain. However, other sources imply that it was for financial reasons that this wasn’t built.

What did appear on opening day was Canal Boats of The World, known to some Cast Members as The Mud Bank Ride. It broke down often, with employees frequently having to pull the boats along by hand. As part of the spiel, Cast Members had to promise that the ride would be improved over time, with replicas of major world cities being added over time.

Although these cities were never added, one feels perhaps this could have been a precursor to It’s a Small World.

On July 31st 1955, Casey Jr. Circus Train opened nearby, giving riders the chance to see the same pieces of mud from a different angle. As Dumbo the Flying Elephant has not opened yet, Casey Jr. was officially the first Dumbo based attraction to open at the park.

Several portions of the passenger cars had once been part of the chariots on the same Dentzel Carousel that had been transformed into King Arthur Carrousel for Opening Day.

On September 16th 1955, Canal Boats of The World was closed for good, to be replaced with Storybook Land Canal Boats, which opened on June 16th 1956.

Very little about either Casey Jr. Circus Train or Storybook Land Canal Boats has been changed since then, although various scenes on the latter have been altered or replaced. For example, the Sultan’s Palace from Aladdin was added in 1994 in the position of Toad Hall. Toad Hall was re-added to the attraction, at a different location, the following year.

1994 was also the year that the equivalents of these two rides were added to Disneyland Paris. To date, neither of these attractions have appeared in any other Disney parks worldwide.

Casey Jr. Le Petit Train du Cirque is very similar in design to its California counterpart. However, truer to Walt’s original intention, this version is billed as a roller coaster, although (due to it never being reliant on gravity) officially it is a power coaster, Disney’s only one to date.

Although both versions have a top speed of approximately 14mph, the Paris one feels faster due to being a shorter ride (two and a half minutes, as opposed to California’s three and a half) and has several rises and falls whereas Anaheim features only one “lift”.

In most ways, the ride experience is identical. Both feature trains of seven cars, a rearrangement of the Frank Churchill/Ned Washington song from the movie and cages which can make the rider feel claustrophobic.

The Paris version does however have a “going backwards” option, a synchronised on-board audio system (the first coaster in the world to feature this) and it goes closer to the Canal attraction. The two attractions are more closely intertwined, and in some instances –such as the Beast’s Castle- shows propping not visible on the boat ride.

Le Pays de Contes de Fées (which translates as The Land of Fairy Tales) is, conceptually at least, very similar to Storybook Land Canal Boats. Both feature miniature models of scenes from Disney movies –although the films in question are not always the same- and travel in a dyed waterway with music playing throughout to set the atmosphere.

Both versions feature boarding by the side of a faux-lighthouse. The Californian one used to be a ticket office, whereas the one in France is used mainly as storage for cleaning utensils.

The France version does not have an on-board guide. Likewise, it does not have dialogue emerging from any of the models nor is it powered by motors.

All the boats in the Anaheim ride are named after Disney characters. This is the case in France too, although the latter uses their French names. There are 20 such boats in France and 13 in the States; although both versions rarely have all in circulation at any one time.

All of the boats in France are named after female characters, whereas in California, there is one named after a male: Flower, the skunk from Bambi.

The Paris equivalent features a Rapunzel scene –maybe the Imagineers were presupposing Tangled- and a tiger-mouth entrance to the “Cave of Wonders” scene but no Monstro.

 

Portions of this article first appeared in my musings for DLDHistory.com in March 2011.

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Disney History DL vs DLP Gone But Not Forgotten In the Parks

Anaheim vs. Paris: Pinocchio’s Daring Journey

Paris’s version of the Anaheim attraction “Pinocchio’s Daring Journey” is known as “Les Voyages de Pinocchio”, which translates literally into The Journeys of Pinocchio. Although the French name has never changed, in the early days of the Park, the attraction was known as “Pinocchio’s Fantastic Journey” for the benefit of English speakers, although now (as with several other attractions in the park) one name, in one language, is used for all Guests, regardless of their mother tongue.

For the sake of this article, I shall be abbreviating the name of the Anaheim attraction to PDJ and the Paris version to LVP.

Both are dark rides, which can be found in Fantasyland. Both last just over two minutes, although the woodcutter’s cart in which you travel, supposedly carved by Geppetto himself, seats four riders in PDJ and six in LVP.

The queue area for LVP is the bigger of the two, and bizarrely features a half carved duck, but has fewer details, flags or lights.

The attractions themselves are pretty similar experiences, going through the same scenes in the same order. PDJ has more Hidden Mickeys, such as in the spilt popcorn and in the carvings of the end scene; LVP has more hidden “donkeys”, thematically implying the true nature of “Pleasure Island”.

PDJ has a lot more dialogue throughout the attraction. What little dialogue LVP has is in French (including the lyrics to “An Actor’s Life for Me” in the opening Marionette scene). Even when Geppetto yells the sole word “Pinocchio”, it is done in a French accent rather than re-using the original audio.

On the whole though, I prefer PDJ. This is because LVP doesn’t use a hologram for the Lampwick scene, and has a slower, and thus less scary, emergence of Monstro.

 

Portions of this article first appeared in my musings for DLDHistory.com in December 2010.

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Disney History Gone But Not Forgotten In the Parks WDW vs DLP

WDW vs. DLP: Tomorrowland vs. Discoveryland

Other than its geographical position (to the right of the Hub, with direct connections to only Fantasyland and Main Street, U.S.A.), at first glance Tomorrowland in Florida’s Magic Kingdom seems worlds away from its cousin Discoveryland in Disneyland Paris.

The layout is very different, as is the theming (Florida is a “space port” whereas Paris is a reflection of how nineteenth century visionaries imagined the future) and the dining experiences are incomparable.  For the sake of brevity, I will not discuss these eateries, nor the shops, arcades, characters or shows.

 

THE TIMEKEEPER

In 1994, a new color scheme in Florida’s Tomorrowland did bring the two Lands closer stylistically, as did the opening of The Timekeeper, an attraction which bore more than a passing resemblance to Le Visionarium (an opening day attraction at DLP, two years previously). Nonetheless, the Land’s artwork and backstory became more the vision of tomorrow dreamt of by 1930s comic strip characters, rather than that imagined by Jules Verne, H. G. Wells and their ilk.

Although the 360 degree film shown in Le Visionarium and The Timekeeper were pretty similar to each other, there were a few subtle differences, such the inclusion of a scene featuring Gérard Depardieu as an airport worker in the former and a view of the New York skyline in the latter. [Ironically, both of these scenes were temporarily removed: the Depardieu scene due to the 2000 Concorde crash; and the NYC section soon after September 11th 2001].

Aside from the main film, there were several other differences between Le Visionarium and The Timekeeper, including the exterior (which in Paris featured a flying car), the pre-show video and the audio.  Although the Paris attraction’s show was in French, there were headphones for guests wishing to listen to the show in English or German. The English audio was not the same as the version used in the Florida version, which was a lot more upbeat, utilizing the voice talents of Robin Williams and Rhea Perlman.

Over time, Florida’s color scheme has changed again, and The Timekeeper has closed (as it did in Paris) and the two Lands feel less related than ever before.

 

ASTRO ORBITER

One Discoveryland-inspired 1994 Tomorrowland change which is still in place is the re-theme of the aerial carousel Star Jets to the Astro Orbiter. This is based on Paris’s Orbitron Machines Volantes, commonly known just as Orbitron. Both attractions have twelve height-controllable rockets with zodiac signs on the tails rotating around a spinning “planetarium” which makes the ride feel faster than it actually is.

Whereas the WDW version is raised, thus affording beautiful views to the rider (especially at nighttime), the DLP version is slightly sunken, surrounded by “meteorites” and serves as the Land’s main weenie.

 

SPACE MOUNTAIN

The Paris version of Space Mountain (known in full as Space Mountain: Mission 2) is remarkably different from the Florida version. The exterior design is more steampunk, there are inversions, the rockets go in sets of six each seating four (whereas WDW’s rockets are in sets of two, each seating three), the pre-show is less interactive and there is no pre-launch tunnel of light or no post-ride robots.

Although there are two separate loading bays in both Paris and Florida, in the former these meet up and travel on the same track, whereas the latter has two separate “rides”, called the Alpha Track and the Omega Track.

The main lift in Florida is relatively slow, albeit with plenty to look at. In Paris this section is much faster. You are supposedly being catapulted out of a cannon [The Columbiad] and into space. This portion of the attraction is covered from the elements, but is visible to those outside, which adds to the kinetics of the Land.

The coaster section in Disneyland Paris feels the faster of the two. This may be due to its track length (including storage and maintenance) being 1.1km whereas Florida’s is almost triple this. The visuals are, in my opinion, a lot more interesting though, featuring more near-misses and an easier plot to follow.

Both have a Fastpass option, are manufactured by Vekoma, and have onboard audio (though Paris uses the SOBAT system whilst Florida utilizes Starry-O-Phonic Sound).

 

OTHERS

Paris does feature an Autopia, closer in theming to its Anaheim namesake than Florida’s speed-orientated Tomorrowland Speedway. DLP also has a Buzz Lightyear attraction, which is practically a carbon copy of the Anaheim one and so misses out on many of the cooler details which appear in Florida, such as three-headed dinosaur, the wall of Z’s, the rotating light effect or the domed screen.

Paris has no version of the Tomorrowland Transit Authority PeopleMover, Walt Disney’s Carousel of Progress, Stitch’s Great Escape! or Monsters, Inc. Laugh Floor. The nearest it has to the latter two is Stitch Live!, in Walt Disney Studios Park, which uses similar technology and audience interactions to MILF, but caters more towards younger children. (In 2009, there was a live stage show in Discoveryland on a mobile stage by Space Mountain, in which Stitch was the DJ, but the less said about that, the better).

Likewise, there are several attractions in Discoveryland which have no equivalent in Florida’s Tomorrowland.  These include Videopolis, Discoveryland Station and Les Mystères du Nautilus. This last attraction sounds like it may have been similar to Fantasyland’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea Submarine Voyage, and (whilst based on the same source material) it‘s closer stylistically, thematically and plot-wise to a 1950s walk-through attraction once housed over in Disneyland.

The two other attractions in Discoveryland which do not exist in Florida’s Tomorrowland (although they exist elsewhere in WDW, as well as in California’s version of the Land) are Captain EO and Star Tours. NB, DLP has still got the original version of Star Tours, rather than the “The Adventures Continue” upgrade existing stateside.