What’s In a Name?
Last week, a series of photographs, like the one below of the new eTicket attraction under construction at Disney’s California Adventure (DCA), began popping up like spring flowers around the Internet. The photo was part of the initial posting of a breathlessly titled discussion, Toy Story Midway Mania!!!! The Sign is up!!!!
The picture that launched a thousand comments.
Image copyright© MiceChat. All rights reserved.
Posted shortly afternoon last Friday in the Disneyland Resort discussion forum at MiceChat, which also hosts the o-meon discussion forum, it quickly generated thousands of page views and over seven pages of comments and debates about what the exact name of the new attraction is or should be. Similar debates burned through billions of pixels at virtually every Disney discussion board on the web.
The confusion over the precise name of DCA’s multimillion-dollar, high-tech shooting gallery isn’t just limited to Disney theme park fans.
The new attraction will debut later this summer on both coasts: at Disney’s Hollywood Studios in Walt Disney World Resort in Florida, and along the Paradise Pier midway in Disney’s California Adventure at Disneyland Resort in California. And that’s where the confusion originates.
While the Toy Story-themed attractions will be very similar, the names of the two 3-D, arcade-inspired dark rides will not be. In Florida, it will be called Toy Story Mania!
In DCA, the new attraction is the first part of a Victorian-style amusement park retooling of Paradise Pier, which makes it the centerpiece of the park’s midway. Hence, the name Toy Story Midway Mania!
On Monday the rest of the sign was installed, however, by that time the "name" debate was in full swing.
Image copyright© MiceChat. All rights reserved.
The confusion over what to call each attraction comes from the Disney Company’s desire to fuse the individual identities of its global network of theme parks and resorts into a single brand of “Disney Parks.” This makes it possible for one department to coordinate the marketing and promotion of the new eTicket attractions for both resorts.
What you end up with is one resort creating the promotional material for both versions of the attraction, with originating publicity office, Walt Disney World Resort, using the name of the Florida property’s ride in press releases. Thus, an online debate is born.
Small World, Big Debate
In his February 26 MiceAge update, our friend and colleague Al Lutz followed up his earlier story about the ten-month-long overhaul of Disneyland’s iconic It’s a Small World attraction.
After first reporting that the ‘60s era flume used to ferry guests past the singing children of the world was to be replaced with a deeper flume, along with a new fleet of boats, all designed to accommodate the ever increasing girth of Disneyland guests. Lutz added that Disney Imagineers were also planning to “plus” SmallWorld’s interior by adding Disney characters to scenes throughout the attraction. He went on to say,
Another big change, but perhaps less controversial, is now planned for the Rain Forest scene that used to inhabit the curving flume between the Polynesian room and the Grand Finale room. That eclectic collection of furry animals in shimmying plastic rain showers and a small quartet of masked musicians and dancers representing Papua New Guinea are now set to be replaced by an entirely new scene representing the good old United States of America.
As it turns out, the potential removal of the It’s a Small World Rain Forrest scene is becoming a lot more controversial than Lutz anticipated.
In an open letter to Disney executives published on blogspot RE Imagineering, Kevin L. Blair, in no uncertain terms, took the company and Walt Disney Imagineering (WDI) to task.
Blair, a former WED (now WDI) employee, is the son of legendary Disney color stylist, artist, and designer Mary Blair. Her unique color and styling greatly influenced such Disney productions as Song of the South, Make Mine Music, Melody Time, So Dear to My Heart, The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, and Peter Pan.
Like Walt Disney, Blair never lost her ability to relate to children, so when it came time to design an attraction featuring the children of the world, Disney choose Blair to design It’s a Small World.
Speaking on behalf of his mother’s legacy as an artist and the entire Blair family Kevin Blair had this to say,
As the head of the Blair family I cannot urge you strongly enough to abandon this idiotic plan and instead upgrade the boats and return the ride to it’s original classic form, design and colors. The desecration of Mary’s art is an insult to Mary Blair, her art, and her memory, and to the entire Blair Family itself.
Preservation of cherished childhood and family memories has always presented the Disneyland Park with a unique set of problems. From the beginning, it was intended to be an entertainment enterprise, not a museum. Disney himself is frequently quoted saying, “Disneyland will never be completed. It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world.”
This begs the question of how to go about honoring the legacy of one of the world’s great artists within the confines of a theme park.
The unmistakable look of a Mary Blair design from the Disney short The Little House.
Image copyright© Disney. All rights reserved.
The Disneyana community has also taken to the Internet by the thousands to debate this issue as well; they’ve even gotten the attention of the Los Angeles Times and celebrity news(?) site TMZ.com.
Here’s what some of the folks at MiceChat have had to say about the future of It’s a Small Word:
I'm no big fan of Mary Blair. But I recognize how iconic her work was, what an enormous influence it had on Walt and the projects he oversaw, and how much it channels a particular 1960's aesthetic zeitgeist. So I've had no choice at this point but to see the attraction in a different light.
So for these reasons I'm going to have to ally myself with the camp of recalcitrance to “plussing” Small World.—Zoe N
I don’t mind the addition of Disney Characters on the ride, heck its been so long since I have been on IASW that I hardly remember any of it.—Oswald the Rabbitt
If there are any overriding tenets that should govern attraction design and maintenance, it should be sticking to your theme. Not sticking to a theme is what has created many of the current missteps. Slowly but surely, characters are finding their way into every aspect of the park, not for the purposes of plussing, regardless of what they may claim, but for the purposes of cross-marketing. A blatant money making ploy, rather then a well-thought out creative business plan.
That's a distasteful method of business for Disney. And one that will only hurt them in the long run, and us in the short term.—Digital Jedi
MiceChat founder DustySage seemed to sum up the views of many MiceChatters this way:
I think that if they do it right, Small World could be a much more entertaining attraction than it is now. It is a good ride, and a classic ride, but if it was plussed in the right way (think of the new Jungle Cruise enhancements at DL rather than the the (sic) craptacular Tiki Room Under New Management at WDW) - it could be a great ride. It sounds like all they are planning to do is integrate a few Disney characters into the existing show scenes. That doesn't really bother me. Much like they did by adding Jack Sparrow into Pirates. I enjoy Pirates, Mansion, and Jungle Cruise much more since they have all received the "Plussing" treatment.—DustySage
Earlier this month at this year’s Annual Meeting, Disney CEO Bob Iger told shareholders that the company plans to do more to strengthen its relationship with its extensive community of online “fans and aficionados.”
If he’s serious about this, Iger may want to hasten those efforts, since online polling at TMZ.com and various Disney discussion boards indicate that nearly a 2-to-1 majority of Disneyland fans agree with Kevin Blair that his mother’s iconic artwork with its adorable singing moppets should be left as originally created.
It is a small world after all.
[As a direct result of the purchase of Pixar Animation Studios by the Walt Disney Company, C. W. Oberleitner now owns two shares of stock in the Walt Disney Company.—Editor]
