10 November 2008

In this timeless land

The Magic Kingdom’s Fantasyland needs some help. Not so much help, as a direction. Inside the facades of Fantasyland are the stories and magic that dreams are made of. They are told in fantastic manners with one eye on the story and the other on the effects. Yet, the exteriors of these adventures are jumbled, and I am not just speaking about the congestion of guests and strollers that crowd the undersized walkways.

Within the borders of Fantasyland guests are met with snippets of an alpine village, tournament tents, a circus, a rocky grotto, and the Hundred Acre Woods. While some of these could be blended together seamlessly, others seem to rub up against each other in a rough manner. This isn’t what Fantasyland was ever meant to look like, but the addition of an element here or the removal of an element there brought Fantasyland to where it is today.An alpine village with a magical forest along one of its borders seems logical. A castle built near a grotto seems to make sense. Tournament tents in an alpine village, while creating a visual conundrum (browns and tans butted up next to bright purples, pinks and blues), can make sense while occupying the same general space. However, tournament tents in an alpine village while the circus is in town can make even the greatest of multitaskers’ heads spin.Let’s be clear, I am not talking about Dumbo the Flying Elephant when I bring up the circus, but more along the lines of the new circus train, with all of its wild creatures, that forms the new Disney Vacation Club stand. Although Dumbo is seemingly out of place in a castle courtyard, alpine village, or tournament arena, he actually allows us one possible solution to the Fantasyland quagmire, let it all go.

As Walt Disney said of Disneyland’s Fantasyland, “Here is the world of imagination, hopes, and dreams.” I don’t know about you, but my imagination and dreams tend to exist where spacemen walk around dueling dragons. That is to say different pieces of fantasy can exist in a similar area and it not seem out of place. As for what that means for Fantasyland, take away all the facades and let each attraction’s façade speak for itself. Collapse the tournament tents and allow Peter Pan a pirate ship or Never Never Land jungle exterior, put Snow White in a cottage, PhilharMagic should look like a grand concert hall, and Winnie-the-Pooh can exist in a giant Hunny Pot or Treehouse. Sure, that wouldn’t be cohesive, but it would all for the outside of these timeless attraction to mirror the magic inside.Perhaps though, the better answer is to find some way to uniformly envelop the entirety of Fantasyland. Let’s start with Cinderella Castle. Cinderella Castle isn’t going anywhere, period, end of sentence, so Fantasyland would do well to find a motif that blends in well with the castle setting. Castles have towns or villages that wander away from the central courtyard. Villages are known for stopping at the edge of the woods, though in stories the woods tend to be dark and scary places, not a place you would find a Hunny addicted bear. Also, castle-dwellers tend to like views, so a grotto isn’t entirely out of place here either.

This cohesive village theme is not a new concept to Disney Imagineering, in 1983 Disneyland reopened its Fantasyland complete with village setting. I have heard it said that it felt like it had always been this way. Consider for a moment what a bold step it was for the Imagineers to remove the tent facades. Fantasyland was reportedly Walt’s favorite land of Disneyland, and they were redesigning it. They had their fears to be sure, but in the end it seemed the right thing to do.It was the right thing to do then for Disneyland, and it is the right thing to do for the Magic Kingdom now. Let the tournament come to a close, move the circus out of town, and find a way to fit all the dreams a child has ever, or could ever, imagine into a design that is as cohesive as Liberty Square, Tomorrowland, Frontierland, and the rest of the Magic Kingdom.


M.Sedlar said...

It's interesting to read how the Magic Kingdom's Fantasyland is such a mess. Wasn't Florida's Fantasyland designed to be better than Anaheim's? I think I remember reading that in David Koenig's "Realityland." That's why the Florida Fantasyland is more of a corridor, while the Anaheim Fantasyland is built around King Arthur's Carousel. (BTW: The area from the Matterhorn, past the Storybook Canals to Dumbo is one of the worst bottlenecks in the entire park.)

Disneyland's Fantasyland certainly has its charm, so I don't see why the Imagineers wouldn't use that as a template for a Florida makeover.

Josh said...

Hear, hear! Fantasyland desperately needs an upgrade. I know, with the economy where it is, that such a thing is unlikely in the near future, but I really hope it comes to pass soon...