Not quite sure why this S.E.A. stuff bothers me. I guess it has something to do with the fact that it feels so forced to create this corny, unnecessary overarching meta-ish back story connecting all of the Disney parks with cartoonified looking Jumanji meets Colonel Mustard characters. It comes across as trying to create some sort of interest or following in these characters in a very inorganic way. Anyway, as long as the stuff isn’t mentioned or referenced on the rides I can live with it. I don’t like the direction it’s trending though.
SEA is an interesting conundrum. It seems like the more they do with it, the worse it gets. What started as a mysterious Illuminati-like secret society spanning the centuries around the globe has slowly devolved into a cartoonish band of Phileas Fogg knock-offs.
In its earliest form, it was only at Tokyo DisneySEA, sort of hidden in plain sight (including right there in the park name). There were some insignias and vague allusions to the organization in the Fortress Explorations, but that was really it. It was implied that there may have been a member representing each Port in the park, possibly including the likes of Leonardo Da Vinci, Captain Nemo, Sinbad, and Indiana Jones, but there was no definitive list. The open-ended way it was presented allowed people to fill in the gaps on their own, and the breadth of characters involved (seemingly based in a wide variety of history, legend, literature, and film) made it feel a lot bigger than the sum of its parts.
This began to change with the addition of Tower of Terror in 2006, with its elaborate backstory tied to Harrison Hightower, whose unambiguous name and cartoonish image have set the tone for nearly all of SEA's new members since then. Around this time, a crate with Harrison Hightower's name on it appeared in the Lost River Delta section of the park, furthering the idea that everything in the park was connected through the organization and some sort of meta-narrative.
With the addition of the Leonardo Challenge interactive game to the Fortress Explorations in 2008, SEA became an officially acknowledged part of the park, and with each addition to the story since then, the organization has become less enigmatic, more cartoony, and more homogeneous. Lord Henry Mystic, Barnabas T Bullion, Mary Oceaneer; each one is more ham-fisted than the one before it.
It's been especially unfortunate when retconned on to existing attractions, like Big Thunder and the Jungle Cruise, clumsily adding information that does little to further the guest experience, while focusing on superfluous details that don't match the style of what's already there. It's unclear whether the upcoming Disney+ series will actually include SEA specifically, but it's almost certain that it will retain the sloppy fan-fiction feel that has become associated with the group.
I can understand why fans connected with SEA early on: it had a lot of intrigue and mystery, and seemed to create a compelling secret undercurrent for one of the best themed parks. And I can understand why management liked it, walking the middle line between relying on outside IP and creating original content for the parks. But the overall execution of SEA, especially in the last 5-7 years, has left a lot to be desired. It feels like the more that the Imagineers try to connect to it, the less compelling it becomes.
I really think the Skipper’s Canteen and now the expansion of the prominence of the Falls family shows how they’re trying to hard to make it a “detail” thing. Albert Falls was a punchline but this whole backstory negates the joke it’s based on, turning it into a sincere, but nonsensical, statement.
I ate at Skipper's Canteen within its first few weeks of operation, and a friend who was on the pre-opening team stopped by and pointed out some of more interesting artefacts and certain elements that weren't finished yet. He also pointed out some of the SEA regalia, but said that WDI just sort of put them there on a whim, without consideration for how the facility (and by extension, the Jungle Cruise) connected to the larger story. It was only several months after the knickknacks had been hung on the walls and names printed in the menus that they tried to backpedal their way into justifying their existence with "official" stories.
To me, that experience highlighted that WDI really doesn't have a "grand plan" for what they're doing with SEA. Even after elements are already in place and operating for paying customers, they still haven't figured out what they're for or what they're trying to express. But publicly, they try to sell it as a master-planned vision for an interconnected theme park universe.
