Sir_Cliff
Well-Known Member
This really sums up perfectly what I really love about Disney parks at their best. Particularly your point about how the Imagineers were able to mash things together from different times and places in a way that literally made no sense but cognitively made perfect sense to guests. That's honestly one thing that doesn't worry me so much about a PatF Splash Mountain at MK: a Louisiana bayou area wedged amidst the Rivers of America and Frontierland is exactly the sort of thing Imagineering would have done from the very beginning and been able to communicate as part of the same broad theme of Frontier. The fact there has been so much discussion of that thematic inconsistency makes me think people haven't quite grasped what makes the rest of the park so engaging.
There is certainly room for more than one type of park, but I 100% agree that the strict literal emphasis on story and, more recently, immersion is misguided in this respect. It really surprises me Disney doesn't seem to have gone back to see what makes the original model of DL work so well in so many different times and places. Instead of trying to read and distill the culture, they seem intent on simply immersing people in different environments. Increasingly, those environments are one film or a franchise, so if you don't feel anything about the specific film or films you're just left admiring the execution.
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