For all the locals who regularly frequent DL...How does all the SoCal/hollywood theming of DCA make you feel? Is it too familiar, fake looking, or less special because you happen to live where you live? Technically you could see lots of the real thing with a quick trip up to actual Hollywood/L.A. and other areas in southern California where the architecture and enviroment is where BVS gets its inspiration from.
I'm a native Southern Californian, who also lived in about a dozen other states during the latter 20th century, and I've been back in SoCal for over 15 years now, so I'll try and speak for us locals. :wave:
The California "theme" of DCA really doesn't come off as being any less special, because quite frankly the way Disney has presented it makes it either so whimsical as to simply be witty and wacky (like the faux Golden Gate Bridge at DCA's entrance from 2001 to 2010). Or, it is done so theatrically and perfectly that it becomes a much better version of the reality that ever could have existed, or that still does exist, up in the large urban core of Los Angeles and Hollywood.
One way to explain it would be to ask an old person who grew up in Marceline, Missourri in 1905 if visiting Main Street USA at Disneyland was any "less special" or seemed too "familiar" or "fake looking". A visit to Main Street USA, after all, is a famously themed, squeaky clean, glowing tribute to Walt's hometown of Marceline where he grew up in the very early 1900's.
This is what Marceline's Main Street looked like in 1905 when Walt would have been taken into town by his mother.
Mud streets, with no Custodial CM in all-white to whisk away the horse droppings (you don't really think those are big Easter Eggs all over the street, do you?). Dusty wood sidewalks. Dingy and dimly lit stores. Black telephone and electric cables strung over the streets from creosote-covered wood poles. And not a 3 o'clock parade in sight! The reality of Marceline circa 1905 really has nothing in common with Disneyland's Main Street USA. :lol:
While some of Los Angeles has been cleaned up in recent years, most of the touristy "Hollywood" things are found in the urban core. It's no more dangerous to go there than any other big city in America (crime in urban LA is actually statistically far safer than Orlando
http://www.areaconnect.com/crime/compare.htm?c1=Los+Angeles&s1=CA&c2=Orlando&s2=FL ), but it's not anything like a Disney experience.
While it can be fun and relatively safe to visit Hollywood, much of what Disney has presented in DCA as representing Hollywood was either torn down decades ago, or never really existed in the first place.
This view of DCA's
Hollywood Boulevard, for instance...
In comparison really has very little in common with the modern and
very real Hollywood Boulevard found 35 miles north of Anaheim today.
As for Buena Vista Street coming to DCA in 2012, the only thing directly copied from an actual building is the Carthay Circle Theater.
Carthay Circle Theater movie premiere, San Vicente Blvd., Circa 1929
Sadly, the Carthay Circle Theater was torn down in 1969, and is now the site of two 1970's cement low-rise Class B office buildings with leasing problems and vacant storefronts.
Original site of Carthay Circle Theater, San Vicente Blvd., Circa 2011
If anything, having a faithful recreation of the Carthay Circle Theater in a Disney theme park in Southern California makes us locals
burst with pride to know these architectural gems will live and breathe once again, and will be seen and acknowledged by new generations that never knew them, or old generations that forgot about them.
As for the rest of Buena Vista Street, the Imagineers at the D23 Expo explained at great length in their 90 minute presentation that the buildings and architecture and vibe of Buena Vista Street would not copy any actual buildings that ever existed in Los Angeles. However, they did explain that they have spent literally thousands and thousands of hours of research on the architecture and environment of that era, and that Buena Vista Street would be a loving tribute to the Los Angeles architecture of that era. The chief designer even explained that he purposely put five different architect-Imagineers on the project to design different sections of the street, so that it didn't look or feel like it was master-designed by one single theme park guy. Instead, it is supposed to have the feel of growing organically while being designed by different people inspired by the same time and place; Los Angeles in the Roaring 1920's.
