Disneylandland

Disneylandland

A Manifesto by Jacob Surovsky

(An Explanatory Text)

(My Midterm, for further background)

My Day at Disneylandland

Hey everyone, Derek230 here. Long time reader, first time poster. Anyways, I just got back from the hot ticket Disneylandland park for the first time and wanted to share my thoughts and some photos. Okay, here it goes:

Ever since my first time going to Disneyland when I was five years old I’ve been hooked. I love the pastel colors and bakery scents on main street. I love the view of the original Disneyland castle. I love strolling through Frontierland with a giant turkey leg, and catching Space Mountain with no line right after it breaks down, and taking photos with my favorite Disney characters. But as the years have gone by and the crowds have grown--how do I put this--the magic has lost its luster. So when Disney parks announced they were building a new park opposite Disneyland I was hopeful. But what they’ve created has exceeded my wildest expectations.

Disney has always done a really good job of transporting their guests to worlds both familiar and wildly fantastical. Disney’s new park does something just as special. Given the popularity of the original Disneyland park, Disney has built up a park that distills the Disneyland experience into a theme park of its own, appropriately titled Disneylandland.

Disneylandland is simultaneously very familiar and entirely new. I cannot emphasize this enough: Disneylandland is NOT Disneyland. IMO you go to Disneyland to feel like you’re going to outer space or the wild west or the jungle...but you go to Disneylandland to feel like you’re going to the happiest place on earth: Disneyland.

Anyways, with that in mind, here’s my day at the park:

You enter the park on a thoroughfare called “Memory Lane”, not unlike Disneyland’s Main Street (but NOT Main Street). Disneyland’s Main Street is simply a space themed like Walt Disney’s childhood hometown...Memory Lane tells the story of Walt Disney’s childhood and growth into the Disney corporation….set in his childhood hometown. Very different. See below for comparison:

While at the end of Disneyland’s Main Street there’s the original Disneyland castle, at the end of Memory Lane there’s the park’s centerpiece, The Disney Story Through Time and Space. It’s a dark ride that takes you through the complete history of the Disney Company, from cavemen painting Mickey Mouse on walls through the modern age (and some glimpses of the future).  I overall loved this attraction, it’s truly Disney storytelling at its finest, flushed out with animatronics, impressive sets, and a great story to boot. I also love that Disney paid homage to their iconic Spaceship Earth geodesic dome and combined it with the iconic Mickey Mouse ears. It really shows how much they made this park for the fans.

Underneath The Disney Story Through Time and Space is the Ex-Attraction memorial garden, a nice quiet area that commemorates all the bits and bobs of Disney theme park history that have been lost to time. One letdown here: though I searched and searched, I was unable to find any mention of Beastly Kingdom. Oh well.

Once I reached the end of the hub, I decided to turn right down Imagineering Avenue. This area of the park is set up like a “studio” park, offering a behind the scenes tour of Walt Disney Imagineering. This area of the park also offers an amazing tribute to the brilliant minds responsible for building the Disney parks like Disneylandland. I wound up spending a long time in the Imagination Station, an art gallery/museum showing concept art, maquettes, and master plans for Disney attractions worldwide. It’s rare to get such a comprehensive look behind the scenes.

But the real gems of Imagineering Avenue are its two main attractions...Blue Sky: An Airborne Adventure and Backstage Tour: A Peek Behind the Curtain (wow does Disney likes long names for their rides lol). For starters, Blue Sky was a flight simulator kind of like Soarin’ Around the World at EPCOT, but this flight was through imaginary lands that you got to design in the queue. It really took you through the whole park design process and was super thrilling and fun. I spoke to a ride operator and they said with all the different interactive elements there’s over 150 different ways this ride could go. Great for repeat rides.

Backstage Tour: A Peek Behind the Curtain was definitely the E-Ticket of the land in the form of a large scale studio tour style dark ride. This ride follows the often followed trope of “here we go on a simple tour...oh no! Something went wrong!” as we journey through the “Backstage” of Disneylandland. Overall, super fun with some thrilling twists that I won’t spoil here. I can’t wait to see how this ride and this land overall inspire the next generation of Disney Imagineers.

On the opposite side of the park’s central hub is a land called Family Funland. I guess now is a good time to talk about the park’s mascots. While the original Disneyland features all the princesses and pirates and animated characters from Disney’s established lexicon of films, Disneylandland’s mascots look more like you or me. Meet the Johnson family...your everyday family going on a once in a lifetime trip to the happiest place on earth. You’re never alone in Family Funland, every attraction is centered around an experience you’re having with one or more members of the Johnson family.

First up in Family Funland is one of the most ingenious attractions Disney has ever developed, and an absolute improvement on their original park. Every time I go to Disneyland I’m always hoping for that perfect photo in front of the Disneyland castle, but unfortunately there’s always so many other people in the way. That problem has been solved in the Disneyland(s): A Pop Up Instagram Museum attraction. Here Disney park’s most iconic photo ops have been recreated on high resolution photo backdrops allowing you to get the most perfect shots.

I admittedly spent a lot of time here finally getting the perfect photos of myself at Disneyland’s most popular locations (purple wall anyone?). After all, what’s the point of going to Disneyland if you don’t take pictures of you for all your friends to see?

Next up in Family Funland there were a couple of basic flat rides clearly designed to fulfill the “kid friendly” quota but nonetheless with their own fun twists. There was a basic spinner called Help I Am Surrounded by Screaming Children where you spun midair past chaotic imagery of babies crying as real wailing recorded at the parks was played. This ride really let you get into the psyche of the Johnson parents as they try to have the perfect Disneyland day with their kids. There was also Parking Lot Derby, a heavily decorated stock bumper cars ride themed like the Disneyland Resort parking lot (nice way for the kids to experience the stress of finding a spot for a change).

Across from Parking Lot Derby is one of Family Funland’s thrill rides….a Vekoma Coaster called The Fastpass.

The Fastpass replicates the feeling of speeding past the long standby line of any popular Disney E-Ticket attraction and going straight to the front by launching you at 60+ miles per hour across Family Funland past all the other patrons waiting in lines. It’s a super fun ride that perfectly captures the thrill of snagging that hard to get fastpass for Space Mountain or Indiana Jones. It’s no surprise the wait time was well over 2 hours for it all day….good thing I got my Fastpass ;)

After some high speed thrills, it was time to go on the latest in the line of classic Disney dark rides with Where’s Grandma? I mean, we’ve all been there. Family trip to Disneyland, and you lose a relative in the park. Well now you get to hop on your handy dandy Disneyland accessibility golf cart and speed past iconic Disneyland scenery (in classic blacklight cardboard cutout form) and look for Grandma Johnson. It’s a heartwarming ride that puts a smile on every rider...and a great break from the heat.

Right before lunch, I grabbed a quick ride on the Rope Drop...a familiar experience for a veteran park attendant like me. When you get to the park at opening, they hold the crowds back with a rope before the lands are officially open. On the Rope Drop they lift you 200 feet in the air and then drop you, representing the rush to the front of the line. It offered great views of the whole Disneylandland Resort and was a great way to work up an appetite.

My lunch stop of choice was the Johnson Family Character dining, the premiere dining option in Disneylandland. While in Disneyland you can pay a premium to dine with beloved characters like Mickey, Donald, and Goofy...here you can dine with Carl, Ruby, Elmer, and Donna Johnson! They have quickly turned into my new favorite Disney characters.

After a filling lunch, it was time for the final attraction in Family Funland called Hey! You Can’t Drive a Car In Here! If you know Disneyland then you know there’s lots of attractions where vehicles of different kinds go off-road and drive through places they’re not supposed to. This ride pays homage to all of them. Think of it as Roger Rabbit’s Car-Toon Spin meets Indiana Jones Temple of the Forbidden Eye meets Dinosaur meets Expedition Everest meets Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride meets Pinocchio's Daring Journey meets Snow White’s Scary Adventures meets Pooh’s Hunny Hunt meets Mission Breakout meets Aquatopia. I liked this ride because why ride all seven of those when you could just ride this one?

Now it was on to the crown jewel of Disneylandland, the Theme Park Showcase. The Theme Park showcase allows you to visit every existing Disney park around one lagoon in different pavilions (similar to the World Showcase at Epcot). Each pavilion offers photos, models, and displays of the different parks, as well as dining options unique to each of the parks (where else can you get Dole Whip but here). It was a lovely way to spend the rest of my day looking at all of my favorite sights from around the world. I just wish I had planned my day a bit better and not blown my appetite on lunch right before because you KNOW I would have eaten all of those snacks at every pavilion if I had the room.

Well, that’s my complete experience at Disneylandland. With the theming and masterful storytelling on display this has to be one of my favorite parks. I love that I can finally have the experience of enjoying a peaceful day at Disneyland without dealing with all that Disneyland nonsense. I’d recommend it for first time visitors and long time fans alike.