D23 20 Years of Adventure- A Mess of A Retrospective

[Sharon&Susan]

With Disney's least visited park in the United States, Disney California Adventure, not likely reopening there's not many ways to celebrate Pressler's park in 2021. In the one and only way Disney is likely going to celebrate the event, Jocelyn Buhlman has written an article for D23 magazine on this "historic" milestone. It's a thinly veiled advertisement as you would expect and doesn't even do a good job of explaining California Adventure for anyone unfamiliar with it.
The Introduction
First half page of the introduction is good enough, telling a story about the Vice President of DCA's daughter and her friends on Soarin' Around the World. The adjectives are a bit fluffy and the story could be about any park that has a Soarin' and not change at all. There's nothing about the story that makes California Adventure special as an opening story in a retrospective of this kind for a Disney Park should.

Second part of the introduction emphasizes the California part of California Adventure (something that's mostly been ignore other than a few exceptions since 2001) and Adventure (Other Disney Parks don't have a sense of Adventure?)

The First Decade
How does this article do on explaining the first decade or so of California Adventure? Badly. As you might expect there's no mentions of the origin of the park other than it being once a parking lot (because it'd make Disney look bad) or even quotes from people who worked on the park. Instead it gives an overview of the park in 2001 so miniscule that you'd get a better one from Yesterland's article on Rizzo's Pawn Shop. It only mentions the California postcard entrance , Paradise Pier's boardwalk, and Mulholland Madness for some reason.

There's no mention of Pacific Wharf, Condor Flats, Grizzly Peak, or Bountiful Valley Farm or any of the pre 2011 changes like Tower of Terror, A Bug's Land, Toy Story Midway Mania, etc. in this section and for most of these no mention for the rest of the article. Also there's more that makes California special than being a state "that has lived in the dreams of countless entertainers", even DCA 1.0 knew that! Jocelyn really needs to watch Disney's own Golden Dreams.

Article makes it sound like the only problem with California Adventure is that having Disney in the name was false advertising.

Also:

The Sun Wheel, once embodied with a smiling celestial body now features Mickey's grinning face and gondalas emblazed with beloved Pixar (another California born company) characters as the Pixar Pal-a-Round.

We're not asking you to visit an imaginary land. (...) We're telling you to be a super hero at Avengers Campus. We're telling you at Pixar Pier to live those stories alongside your favorite Pixar characters.

Buena Vista Street and Cars Land
Don't have much of a problem with this section, other than the SITE PORFOLIO EXECUTIVE thinking the only problem with Sunshine Plaza being "that it isn't Disney enough". Better get rid of Space Mountain too while your at it by your rock solid logic, Jeanette!

(I'll ignore the section on Food Festivals, because I couldn't care less about these)

Pixar Pier and Mission Breakout
Fast, upbeat music goes with a roller coaster. IncredibleTM. Also y'all at Imagineering couldn't figure out a more interesting story than chasing Jack Jack. Some Super villains would be cool on a super hero themed ride...

Same story with music for Mission Breakout. Wow RadTM. No direct mention of Tower of Terror, but implies that it "feels longer" than whatever used to be there, who knows? Also what does the "unexplored gap between Disney Parks attractions and the... Guardians" even mean? What gap? The movie that made the Guardians relevant only came out 3 years before the ride (which is nothing for most IP rides).

This articles wraps up with talking about nostalgia, not now but for the next generation of parents "not far away". The writer ends the article bravely assuming that Buena Vista Street will still be there in 20 years and not replaced with Springfield. Cowabunga, man!

And to all you at WDW Magic, I wish you a Merry Black Friday and a Happy International Ninja Day!

 

[Rich T]

With Disney's least visited park in the United States, Disney California Adventure, not likely reopening there's not many ways to celebrate Pressler's park in 2021. In the one and only way Disney is likely going to celebrate the event, Jocelyn Buhlman has written an article for D23 magazine on this "historic" milestone. It's a thinly veiled advertisement as you would expect and doesn't even do a good job of explaining California Adventure for anyone unfamiliar with it.
The Introduction
First half page of the introduction is good enough, telling a story about the Vice President of DCA's daughter and her friends on Soarin' Around the World. The adjectives are a bit fluffy and the story could be about any park that has a Soarin' and not change at all. There's nothing about the story that makes California Adventure special as an opening story in a retrospective of this kind for a Disney Park should.

Second part of the introduction emphasizes the California part of California Adventure (something that's mostly been ignore other than a few exceptions since 2001) and Adventure (Other Disney Parks don't have a sense of Adventure?)

The First Decade
How does this article do on explaining the first decade or so of California Adventure? Badly. As you might expect there's no mentions of the origin of the park other than it being once a parking lot (because it'd make Disney look bad) or even quotes from people who worked on the park. Instead it gives an overview of the park in 2001 so miniscule that you'd get a better one from Yesterland's article on Rizzo's Pawn Shop. It only mentions the California postcard entrance , Paradise Pier's boardwalk, and Mulholland Madness for some reason.

There's no mention of Pacific Wharf, Condor Flats, Grizzly Peak, or Bountiful Valley Farm or any of the pre 2011 changes like Tower of Terror, A Bug's Land, Toy Story Midway Mania, etc. in this section and for most of these no mention for the rest of the article. Also there's more that makes California special than being a state "that has lived in the dreams of countless entertainers", even DCA 1.0 knew that! Jocelyn really needs to watch Disney's own Golden Dreams.

Article makes it sound like the only problem with California Adventure is that having Disney in the name was false advertising.

Also:



Buena Vista Street and Cars Land
Don't have much of a problem with this section, other than the SITE PORFOLIO EXECUTIVE thinking the only problem with Sunshine Plaza being "that it isn't Disney enough". Better get rid of Space Mountain too while your at it by your rock solid logic, Jeanette!

(I'll ignore the section on Food Festivals, because I couldn't care less about these)

Pixar Pier and Mission Breakout
Fast, upbeat music goes with a roller coaster. IncredibleTM. Also y'all at Imagineering couldn't figure out a more interesting story than chasing Jack Jack. Some Super villains would be cool on a super hero themed ride...

Same story with music for Mission Breakout. Wow RadTM. No direct mention of Tower of Terror, but implies that it "feels longer" than whatever used to be there, who knows? Also what does the "unexplored gap between Disney Parks attractions and the... Guardians" even mean? What gap? The movie that made the Guardians relevant only came out 3 years before the ride (which is nothing for most IP rides).

This articles wraps up with talking about nostalgia, not now but for the next generation of parents "not far away". The writer ends the article bravely assuming that Buena Vista Street will still be there in 20 years and not replaced with Springfield. Cowabunga, man!

And to all you at WDW Magic, I wish you a Merry Black Friday and a Happy International Ninja Day!

Wow, that article sounds awful. And that part with them “telling” me to be a superhero makes me want to never, ever set foot in Avengers Campus. Grrrr.

But Happy Black Friday! And I didn’t know International Ninjas were a thing!

 

[Sharon&Susan]

Ironically enough Lomboy's (the only "creative" interviewed in the article) only listed work for California Adventure Pre-Chapek is the launch event for the Drop Tower That Must Not Be Named. Apparently Lomboy always has put a big focus on music with thrill rides, there's even an orchestra!

 

[smooch]

Ironically enough Lomboy's (the only "creative" interviewed in the article) only listed work for California Adventure Pre-Chapek is the launch event for the Drop Tower That Must Not Be Named. Apparently Lomboy always has put a big focus on music with thrill rides, there's even an orchestra!

Perhaps I'm just biased towards the ToT because it is (was) my favorite ride in DCA, but that was a fun looking opening ceremony. The live band sounded really good, the speeches given were short and sweet, and the "lightning strike" of the fireworks was pretty cool. I don't know if I would ever go to an opening like that and wait in such a massive line but it definitely was a fun video to watch all these years later. Still so sad they replaced it with such a cheap overlay just to push their IP into the park when they are building an entire land dedicated to it right next door, and are building lands in multiple parks and shoehorning the Guardians into places they don't belong like EPCOT.

 

[TP2000]

Oh. Jocelyn Buhlman.

She's one of those vapid, pointless "writers" who have no moral compass and no allegiances to anything except her next paycheck. So she "writes" whatever the boss wants her to, and she makes it sound "AMAZING!" and facts be damned.

Barf.

You would think that in a complete collapse of their entire theme park business model when they are laying off 32,000 people, that the layoffs would extend at least to the Jocelyn Buhlman's of the world. Apparently not.

But it's a nice reminder of why I never joined D23, even back in 2009 when they were practically begging us to join.

 

[Brer Panther]

Pixar Pier invites you to "live those stories alongside your favorite Pixar characters"? It looks more like a bunch of Pixar characters have decided to set up business on a boardwalk to me.

I mean, how does getting a churro from a quick-service location "owned by" Buzz... I mean, SENOR Buzz helps you "live" the story of Toy Story 3? I don't recall there being a scene in that movie where Buzz opens a churro stand...

 

[TP2000]

Pixar Pier invites you to "live those stories alongside your favorite Pixar characters"? It looks more like a bunch of Pixar characters have decided to set up business on a boardwalk to me.

I mean, how does getting a churro from a quick-service location "owned by" Buzz... I mean, SENOR Buzz helps you "live" the story of Toy Story 3? I don't recall there being a scene in that movie where Buzz opens a churro stand...

The entire article by Ms. Buhlman is just soft pablum. It's meaningless and entirely uninformative, and it appears to be written by someone who has very little experience with the subject matter. And who thinks her readers are even less informed than she is and will just believe whatever she writes.

It's also just a very long word-puke of flattering descriptions, like you used to find in brochures (when brochures existed), but it's stretched out into a magazine article.

If this is the type of article D23 is now putting out in 2020 in an attempt to drum up paid memberships to an audience inherently informed and knowledgeable about Disney theme parks, especially in Southern California, I'm reminded why I continually pass up that membership offer.

 

[George Lucas on a Bench]

Who in God's name wants to "Live Out" these "Stories" when they go to Disney anyway? We all know it's fake. Like a housewife watching The Bold, we just want to be entertained, not "Live" [it] "Out." Anyone who "Lives" these amusement rides is obviously delusional.

 

[TP2000]

Who in God's name wants to "Live Out" these "Stories" when they go to Disney anyway? We all know it's fake. Like a housewife watching The Bold, we just want to be entertained, not "Live" [it] "Out." Anyone who "Lives" these amusement rides is obviously delusional.

I never got that cheesy line either. "Live out your adventure".

It seems like something dreamed up in a boring conference room by some Millennial marketing interns who have no idea what they are selling, or what Disneyland was supposed to be, or how it operates day to day.

"Living out your adventure" is not why people go to Disneyland. They go to Disneyland to be loaded into a boat or a train or a jeep or an egg-shaped pod and then taken through a funny/scary/pretty/weird series of scenes and shows, often with a toe-tapping theme song and a big finale'. And only after we pull on the yellow tab and agree to follow the rules.

I don't actually think I am in a burning Caribbean town when I'm on the Pirates ride, and I'm not going to try and climb out of the boat and run around the well trying to save the mayor from drowning.

Honestly, if any of us did try to "live out our adventure" when we were at Disneyland, we'd be kicked out of the park within an hour, if not arrested by the Anaheim Police.

Does D23 and TDA interns really think we are that stupid?

 

[mickEblu]

Who in God's name wants to "Live Out" these "Stories" when they go to Disney anyway? We all know it's fake. Like a housewife watching The Bold, we just want to be entertained, not "Live" [it] "Out." Anyone who "Lives" these amusement rides is obviously delusional.

Up until the early 2010’s we were all more than fine walking by Bengal BBQ to get to the Indiana Jones ride. Now it’s not immersive enough unless it’s named Sallahs Snacks or Mara’s Angry Grill or if it’s Galaxies Edge something like “Meat Suppliers.” Or at least the people creating these things think so. I say they go back to having more broad themed lands and making the attraction queue the portal into the ultra immersive or hyper real theming. The live out your adventure stuff is corny and not really practical to pull off throughout an entire land.

They people in charge don’t understand that the Bengal BBQ sign with the Tiger on it is more “Disneyland” than anything in Galaxies Edge.

 

[tirian]

With Disney's least visited park in the United States, Disney California Adventure, not likely reopening there's not many ways to celebrate Pressler's park in 2021. In the one and only way Disney is likely going to celebrate the event, Jocelyn Buhlman has written an article for D23 magazine on this "historic" milestone. It's a thinly veiled advertisement as you would expect and doesn't even do a good job of explaining California Adventure for anyone unfamiliar with it.
The Introduction
First half page of the introduction is good enough, telling a story about the Vice President of DCA's daughter and her friends on Soarin' Around the World. The adjectives are a bit fluffy and the story could be about any park that has a Soarin' and not change at all. There's nothing about the story that makes California Adventure special as an opening story in a retrospective of this kind for a Disney Park should.

Second part of the introduction emphasizes the California part of California Adventure (something that's mostly been ignore other than a few exceptions since 2001) and Adventure (Other Disney Parks don't have a sense of Adventure?)

The First Decade
How does this article do on explaining the first decade or so of California Adventure? Badly. As you might expect there's no mentions of the origin of the park other than it being once a parking lot (because it'd make Disney look bad) or even quotes from people who worked on the park. Instead it gives an overview of the park in 2001 so miniscule that you'd get a better one from Yesterland's article on Rizzo's Pawn Shop. It only mentions the California postcard entrance , Paradise Pier's boardwalk, and Mulholland Madness for some reason.

There's no mention of Pacific Wharf, Condor Flats, Grizzly Peak, or Bountiful Valley Farm or any of the pre 2011 changes like Tower of Terror, A Bug's Land, Toy Story Midway Mania, etc. in this section and for most of these no mention for the rest of the article. Also there's more that makes California special than being a state "that has lived in the dreams of countless entertainers", even DCA 1.0 knew that! Jocelyn really needs to watch Disney's own Golden Dreams.

Article makes it sound like the only problem with California Adventure is that having Disney in the name was false advertising.

Also:



Buena Vista Street and Cars Land
Don't have much of a problem with this section, other than the SITE PORFOLIO EXECUTIVE thinking the only problem with Sunshine Plaza being "that it isn't Disney enough". Better get rid of Space Mountain too while your at it by your rock solid logic, Jeanette!

(I'll ignore the section on Food Festivals, because I couldn't care less about these)

Pixar Pier and Mission Breakout
Fast, upbeat music goes with a roller coaster. IncredibleTM. Also y'all at Imagineering couldn't figure out a more interesting story than chasing Jack Jack. Some Super villains would be cool on a super hero themed ride...

Same story with music for Mission Breakout. Wow RadTM. No direct mention of Tower of Terror, but implies that it "feels longer" than whatever used to be there, who knows? Also what does the "unexplored gap between Disney Parks attractions and the... Guardians" even mean? What gap? The movie that made the Guardians relevant only came out 3 years before the ride (which is nothing for most IP rides).

This articles wraps up with talking about nostalgia, not now but for the next generation of parents "not far away". The writer ends the article bravely assuming that Buena Vista Street will still be there in 20 years and not replaced with Springfield. Cowabunga, man!

And to all you at WDW Magic, I wish you a Merry Black Friday and a Happy International Ninja Day!

Between D23 and the Imagineering series on Disney+, the company leads the way with revisionist history.

 

[tirian]

I never got that cheesy line either. "Live out your adventure".

It seems like something dreamed up in a boring conference room by some Millennial marketing interns who have no idea what they are selling, or what Disneyland was supposed to be, or how it operates day to day.

"Living out your adventure" is not why people go to Disneyland. They go to Disneyland to be loaded into a boat or a train or a jeep or an egg-shaped pod and then taken through a funny/scary/pretty/weird series of scenes and shows, often with a toe-tapping theme song and a big finale'. And only after we pull on the yellow tab and agree to follow the rules.

I don't actually think I am in a burning Caribbean town when I'm on the Pirates ride, and I'm not going to try and climb out of the boat and run around the well trying to save the mayor from drowning.

Honestly, if any of us did try to "live out our adventure" when we were at Disneyland, we'd be kicked out of the park within an hour, if not arrested by the Anaheim Police.

Does D23 and TDA interns really think we are that stupid?

Yes. Yes they do.

 

[George Lucas on a Bench]

How does anyone think they're even "Living" the universe of Pixar at Pixar Pier?? Is the storyline that Pixar characters of varying sizes and backgrounds decided to convert Paradise Pier at DCA? But why are Mr. Potato Head and presumably all the toys from Toy Story enormous? Only that window on Main St. ever got the scale right. Shouldn't the toys be frozen if The Incredibles and other "humans" are around?

 

[PiratesMansion]

Up until the early 2010’s we were all more than fine walking by Bengal BBQ to get to the Indiana Jones ride. Now it’s not immersive enough unless it’s named Sallahs Snacks or Mara’s Angry Grill or if it’s Galaxies Edge something like “Meat Suppliers.” Or at least the people creating these things think so. I say they go back to having more broad themed lands and making the attraction queue the portal into the ultra immersive or hyper real theming. The live out your adventure stuff is corny and not really practical to pull off throughout an entire land.

They people in charge don’t understand that the Bengal BBQ sign with the Tiger on it is more “Disneyland” than anything in Galaxies Edge.

In a related vein, one weird change that has really struck me is that at some point, about mid-decade, someone decided that Disney can't just have normal cupcakes with conventional names and flavors, even though they are wildly popular.

No, they have to be "Belle's Magical Cupcake" or "Elsa's Frozenlicous Cupcake." Those probably aren't the exact names, but seriously, people. For the love of all that's precious...it's just a cupcake! It's not like no one would buy them without BRANDING (tm).

It's branding past the point of sense. And for what?

 

[TP2000]

They people in charge don’t understand that the Bengal BBQ sign with the Tiger on it is more “Disneyland” than anything in Galaxies Edge.

BINGO!

Of course it didn't help that Star Wars Land opened to crickets and absolutely no crowds after the first 4 hours on the first day. So it made the already charmless and lifeless land feel even more lifeless and dead. When I made my first trip there in June '19 a few weeks after opening, I hadn't seen Disneyland that dead and empty since a rainy weekday in the 2000's.

The CM's in that land helped me live out my adventure by wearing rather fabulous uniforms while standing around chatting in small groups ignoring what few customers there were, and talking openly about their criticisms of the Disneyland scheduling system and how offended they were to be scheduled to work on the 4th of July.

Also, I overheard that Katie is apparently a very good keg party hostess on a planet called "Fullerton".

But still, I'm hard pressed to think of anything or any experience in Star Wars Land outside of the two rides that imprinted on me as "Disneyland". Disneyland is the opposite of charmless and lifeless, which is exactly what Star Wars Land is.

And I've been on Millennium Falcon: Target Run four (4) times and Rise Before Dawn once. They were good rides, although Target Run fell flat and pointless for me. The people who designed and created Star Wars Land apparently have no idea what makes Disneyland so great, just like the young shilling author of this article, Ms. Buhlman.

 

[SuddenStorm]

BINGO!

Of course it didn't help that Star Wars Land opened to crickets and absolutely no crowds after the first 4 hours on the first day. So it made the already charmless and lifeless land feel even more lifeless and dead. When I made my first trip there a few weeks after opening, I hadn't seen Disneyland that dead and empty since a rainy weekday in the 2000's.

But still, I'm hard pressed to think of anything or any experience in Star Wars Land outside of the two rides that imprinted on me as "Disneyland". Disneyland is the opposite of charmless and lifeless, which is exactly what Star Wars Land is.

And I've been on Millennium Falcon: Target Run four (4) times and Rise Before Dawn once. They were good rides, although Target Run fell flat and pointless for me. The people who designed and created Star Wars Land apparently have no idea what makes Disneyland so great, just like the young shilling author of this article, Ms. Buhlman.

Beautifully said. I remember scratching my head the more we learned about Star Wars Land- who thought it was a good idea to build a land in Disneyland with the sole purpose of making you feel like you're no longer in Disneyland?

 

[TP2000]

In a related vein, one weird change that has really struck me is that at some point, about mid-decade, someone decided that Disney can't just have normal cupcakes with conventional names and flavors, even though they are wildly popular.

No, they have to be "Belle's Magical Cupcake" or "Elsa's Frozenlicous Cupcake." Those probably aren't the exact names, but seriously, people. For the love of all that's precious...it's just a cupcake! It's not like no one would buy them without BRANDING (tm).

I agree with you. But... in their defense, I think this is more a casualty of the Instagram Age that personified the 2010's and is still going strong.

The true creatives in Glendale didn't invent those ridiculous cupcakes and nauseatingly flavored Instagram foods. That has to be the work of inherently less creative middle managers in TDA and their executive leadership desperate to prove to Bob Chapek that they can rustle up new revenue streams.

Disneyland didn't invent the hokey Instagram Food craze, they simply capitalized on it a few years after it got going in the popular culture. Kind of like how they jumped on the Beanie Baby thing in the 90's, or pins in the 00's, or tried pathetically to make Duffy a thing here.

What I think we can blame Disney's senior executives for however, is the public and unabashed use of the phrase "Instagrammable Moments" in their marketing material and public statements.

 

[Sharon&Susan]

Some more "magical" quotes:

Walt didn't expect us us ever as Imagineering to stay stagnant in the way we looked at anything... and I think that's the spirt of California and that's what the spirit of adventure is--- and really that's what unique to California Adventure

Not being stagnant shouldn't really be the designating mark from any US Disney park.

We've spent a lot of time adding more Disney to Disney California Adventure. I think the adventure was always there and we're leaning into it more then ever

How did it take so long as a civilization to create a Thanksgiving tamale?

Imagineering faced a challenge: Transforming an attraction that was already well loved. The breakthrough was when Lomboy.... had an Aha! moment. "We said Oh my gosh what if we added music"

Had nothing to do with trying to get that superhero IP into the parks for years and finding an opportunity to do so with tying it into a brand new movie and doing a cheap reskin. Honest!

This is the first time we've added humor into a thrill type E Ticket

And Splash Mountain or Star Tours don't count? Or are we only counting "meta humor", which Universal's been doing for decades in their rides.

 

[George Lucas on a Bench]

There's humor in all thrill E Tickets since the beginning. You're not supposed to be miserable on the Matterhorn. You're supposed to laugh and go "Wooo!" And once they added a Jim Henson-esque bigfoot mannequin with a strobe light? Hilarious.

 

[lazyboy97o]

They need to drop the immersion aspect. Being realistic for the world they are trying to create isn't always entertaining. In Pandora's case it works. Tatooine was designed to have a trash/worn-out future look when they made the film, doesn't mean it is a place people want to visit.

Would people actually want photos in Batuu if it wasn't (semi) based on a movie? Pandora is a great photo spot regardless of if anyone knows what the source material is. A run down criminal operated town isn't a great photo spot.

As a poster here mentioned back when GE was opening, imagine if Harry Potter Land at Universal was called "Professor Doug's Wizard School" where it was just some random location based in the universe of Harry Potter, instead of Hogwarts, with no Harry Potter characters and only used characters from the Fantastic Beasts movies. That's effectively what Disney did. They bought the rights to the Star Wars movies just to make their own brand new location anyways, with their own brand new characters filling it too. I don't get it...

Immersion cannot be dropped. It is a core, defining aspect of themed entertainment. Stories that are not just observed but entered as built space, stories that surround us and inform everything we can sense. That it has become an overplayed buzzword used to distract from poor design decisions does not make it the problem.

The Wizarding World is not really analogous to Star Wars. The locations in the Harry Potter books are far more important to the story than specific places of Star Wars. The Wizarding World of Harry Potter - Hogsmead is a case of the guests pushing for more immersion. Hogsmead, outside of Olivander’s, had a convoluted conceit of an open house in the town and school allowing muggles to visit. Universal thought guests wouldn’t play along with pretending to be magical but they did. While the clones of Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey keep the muggle open house dialogue the subsequent attractions have all dropped that premise and instead guests are wizards.