There is nothing more resonating with children than a trip to Disneyland. Growing up in the era of the resurgence of Disney television and straight-to-VHS movie releases, it’s one facet that has remained constant throughout my childhood through to present day. Having been to the Disneyland in Paris in 1998, it is still one the fondest memories I cherish.
Today, we were those children giddy to wait in line. Except - we’re responsible adults and bought every fastpast and skip-line option the park offered. Responsible. And the Mouse thanked us for our gracious spending.
We set off on the highway towards Mexico, taking the Disneyland exit near Anaheim and were greeted by a multi-story parking lot the size of a small country. Reading up on the park, post-covid they average around 51’000 visitors PER. DAY.
I knew America like to supersize everything, but this was ridiculous!
After we had parked and memorized where in the maze of metal we had disembarked, we headed towards the entrance.
Edging closer towards the gates, we noticed that we needed to go through a security screening. It was friendly, but more thorough than any airport screening I’ve been through. Sniffer dogs, looking into every bag, zipper, pouch one had on them and then through a metal detector. No fun activity starts without a thorough search it seems.
Once cleared and were passable by Mickeys standards, we boarded a tram towards the main gate.
The size of the park blew me away.
Not only the scale of the venue, but also the amounts of people visiting. It felt like we were going up against Tsim Sha Tsui Rushhour traffic!
Designated Stroller parking. One of many throughout the park.
The biggest attractions seemed to be avoiding baby strollers and mobility scooters, which zipped and darted without any care in the world through the park.
Since the park itself was so large, the amount of people there didn’t really detract from the experience of wandering through beautifully crafted Disney IP sceneries. Of course the Wild West theme of Frontierland bordered Star Wars land. That’s exactly how American history teaches it in school!
Since Disney’s M&A spree under the CEO Bob Iger in the the 2010’s Disney expanded their reach from nostalgia inducing Walt Disney characters and rides to include more adult-centric themed areas, such as Lucasfilms’ Star Wars and Marvel’s, well Marvelverse list of characters and spin-offs.
Just before Covid shut down the world for two years, Disney opened their flagship ride “Rise of the Resistance” - a Star Wars themed ride to the public.
And holy shit, the scale of these rides blew everything away.
Lights, lasers, sound, visual effects and narrative storytelling - these rides were expertly designed to transport you into whatever theme for the two minutes of the average ride duration. You felt like you were actually in the movie.
Which brings me to the topic of visitor engagement, something that Disney has mastered throughout the many years they have operated.
In my previous times going to theme parks, an amusement park ride was just that. A ride. Have a loop-de-loop roller coaster? Call it “The dragon” slap some artsy paint and design on it and presto, you have your themed ride.
Disney jacks everything up to 11. From the employees - renamed to cast members by Disney - wearing appropriately themed outfits, to the waiting lines for the rides.
Most of the rides we weren’t able to skip queues averaged about a 30 minute to an hour wait time. What Disney do to not break the immersion is to have the queue split. Have a queue, then some form of visitor engagement, be it through engagement by the cast members playing a role, or by having some of the rides come with storytelling done by CG characters before you join another queue. Disney did not fail to break the immersion by waiting in a queue.
The Star Wars ride was just that - the pictures above were part of the queue whilst we were pushed into the narrative story of being rebels getting captured by the Imperial Forces. Insane!
We spent a couple of hours bumbling through the attractions, keeping track of which rides had the shortest wait-times and planning our own little cross country route to them.
Of course, I also needed to check out the Matterhorn Bobsled as is seemingly tradition. My amazement was kept in check by excessive yoddeling and the most atrocious attempt at a german / Swiss english hybrid announcer.
The Yeti was a nice touch, as we definitely like to keep our Yeti’s on the Matterhorn.
I won’t go into every ride and every detail of each area, as that would bore you to bits, but I can say the allure of theme parks still holds strong.
Disney still captures the “magic” of childhood, and they do a fantastic job of being able to escape reality for a few hours.
For me, now posing as an adult, my wonderment changed from the Disney “magic” of the rides to how did the engineers achieve this effect - which made analysis every ride even more fun. We had some great time trying to figure out how the effects were made.
I’ll post some more pictures below.
