Disneyland is obviously the better park but why do I feel like I’m in a better mood when I walk into DCA? I think it comes down to 3 things…
1. Walking into BVS with live music (Five n Dime) playing often is delightful.
2. Wider walkways and fewer pinch points = less stress.
3. Less pressure to do stuff. This one is more personal. Usually DCA is my mid afternoon to early evening park. I’ve already done some rides at Disneyland. Less options = less stress too. Kind of like old school cable vs 15 streaming platforms where I watch nothing. I feel like I have less of an agenda at DCA and I’m just more present.
I think for me what it comes down to is that DCA is a more comfortable, spacious environment to be in and sometimes that's just easier and less stressful. I love Disneyland, and it's the main reason I go, but so often it can be ridiculous
just to move around because the walkways simply were not designed for how many people want to be in that park. When I bring people with me to Disneyland, I caution them that while Disneyland is great, at least once a day it will feel like Times Square on NYE. I've had to shove family members into emergency Tiki Room showings to avoid crowds/anxiety/stress meltdowns. DCA is not nearly as good of a park, but it's so much easier to breathe, and sometimes that's what you need. In that way, it can be a more pleasant visit than DL.
Fewer adults acting like children in all the wrong ways. Fewer classic attractions being ruined/mishandled. A feeling that one is stepping into a work in progress with many possibilities for genuine improvement instead of feeling the dread that a beloved classic area is going to get worse. And no rotting PeopleMover tracks.
There are a lot of reasons to get annoyed at the way Disney, to many fans, doesn’t treat DL with the love and care it deserves. At DCA, there’s more of a “What the hell, a lot of this is stupid, but it’s still a pretty fun park” atmosphere.
This might be reflective of my age and/or when I started frequently going to the parks, but I actually get MORE irritated by the way so many things that were just fine at DCA only a decade ago have been downgraded, particularly Soarin', Screamin', and the Pier, but even things like the Animation area with the full walkthrough and the zoetrope, the way I used to be able to reliably find decent Disney theme park books at Off the Page, A Bug's Land, the 3D shows, The Hyperion shows (eventually they'll put something there, but as the theater's still empty now...), Monsters Inc not having FastPass/Genie and being something you could reliably do in 15 minutes-I miss all of those things. A lot. There have been changes I've seen at Disneyland in that time that I don't care for (still not happy about the auction scene, for example), but nothing to the level where the attraction or area has been ruined or permanently tarnished in my estimation. When it comes to Disneyland Park itself, I'm more upset about post-2020 food option reductions than anything that's been done to the attractions or atmosphere, all of which feels pretty well intact to me.
At Disneyland, while there are definitely missteps and things that could be better, it feels like there are still people who are trying, on some level, to maintain the legacy and integrity of the place. At DCA, it just feels like 2016 hit and they collectively and instantaneously decided "lol whatevz SHOVE IN THE IP Y'ALL!!!111!1" and let 'er rip. The park was never on Disneyland's level, but in 2015 it was a pleasant, cohesive place to be that seemed to be actually trying to become something better. Now it just makes me sad.
I just put Emperors New Groove on for my son for the first time. I myself have only seen it once. Anyway, I prefer computer animation to most of the hand drawn animation from the 2000s. It all just comes across like Disney Afternoon quality. I’m not sure if these were design choices or new processes to cut costs but it definitely makes the transition to computer animation feel less bothersome.
Maybe it's the open canvas software? It works well in Tarzan, but most of the traditionally animated films released after that (at least through Home on the Range) just have a look that feels fake, airbrushed, or like it's somewhere halfway between full hand-drawn animation and full computer animation. Emperor's and Stitch have always looked fine to me, but the rest of them feel indescribably off.
