That's the title of a recent New York Times article highlighting the big changes that have been budgeted ($1.1 billion over five years) for Disney's California Adventure park (DCA), which sits adjacent to the original Disneyland in Anaheim, California. DCA has had troubles from the start, and as of last year the park hosted a paltry 6 million guests compared to its next door neighbor's typical 15 million-plus draw. If you ask the average visitor, or the Disney fan, you're going to hear that it comes down to the theming. The narrative quality of DCA is loose and uninspired, and most of all, that park tends to lack the nostalgic flair that has been Disney's design trademark since 1955.
Well the new plans that Disney has unveiled for DCA demonstrate the power of thematic design, and its strong connection to nostalgic representation. Jim Hill Media reported last fall that one of the major sites for redevelopment is the entrance corridor. At most Disney parks, the entrance mimics in someway the original Main Street U.S.A. treatment at Disneyland. A long, highly-detailed retail block establishes a setting in the past, and draws visitors into another world. This new sense of time and place slows people down as the enter the park, and prepares them to suspend disbelief.
DCA, however, has no such corridor. Instead, a compressed and poppy-postmodern entrance plaza features a cartoonish replica of San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge. I think the imagineers (Disney's term for creative developers) wanted to make it feel like visitors were jumping into one of those loud and colorful postcards shouting "California." However, the effect falls flat, and as a result people tend to dart right through rather than slow down and take it in. So as they explore deeper into the park, they haven't yet decompressed and shut reality out, the way Main Street U.S.A. allows visitors the time to do.
in response, Disney is completely rebuilding the entrance to the park, removing the Golden Gate and all the bright, post-modern, Michael Graves-ish iconography. In its place will be a nostalgic recreation of southern California, the sort of Hollywood that Walt Disney himself would have seen when he arrived from the Midwest in 1923.
This decision raises a very interesting point. What exactly is the connection between thematic design and historical representation? Indeed, Anna Klingmann in Brandscapes, asks towards the end of the book, "Can the concept of theming find its application without resorting to preexisting images, references, and narratives?"
I would argue that it can, that theming doesn't have to be nostalgic, yet it works best when it relies on historical and cultural cues. These cues make for designs that transport the visitor to another time and place. Spaces that completely remove the visitor from everyday life. Walt Disney knew this from the beginning, and it's ironic that the company he founded is just now beginning to re-learn it.