An Ode to Theme Park Anniversaries

My thoughts on the Disneyland 70th celebration

In my last post, I said that I was headed to Disneyland to check out their 70th anniversary celebration. Having just been at the resort in February during a period of fairly heavy construction, I was delighted to see that most of the workwalls had come down, save around the Tomorrowland entrance planter, which I’m thoroughly convinced will be up until the heat death of the universe and Avengers Campus. It’s my understanding that this was not the case for the celebration kickoff in May, with many all-time classics out of commission for some or most of the summer.

Disney has created an expectation with their theme park anniversaries ever since the global celebration honoring Disneyland’s 50th anniversary. Fans expect these events to go beyond marketing taglines and simple decorations and leave the park better than before with permanent additions and enhancements.

And this year is no exception, with an exciting lineup of some new and some returning anniversary offerings (new offerings are listed in bold):

• Walt Disney — A Magical Life

• Paint the Night Parade

• Wondrous Journeys Nighttime Show (with fireworks on most nights)

• Tapestry of Happiness Projection Show

• The Celebrate Happy Cavalcade

• The Sherman Brothers Tribute at the Main Street Cinema

• Better Together: A Pixar Pals Celebration!

• World of Color: Happiness!

• “Celebrate Happy” at Carthy Circle Theater

• New additions to ‘it’s a small world’ and Toy Story Midway Mania

So that’s a pretty long list, and while a large chunk of them are either returning offerings or lower-cost creations, it shapes up to make the 70th a pretty special time to visit the resort.

Paint the Night is a welcome return from the 60th anniversary and is, in my opinion, something everyone should see at least once, and I say that as someone that isn’t the biggest fan of parades (as noted in my previous article). Wondrous Journeys is similarly spectacular and should, in my opinion, become the default nighttime spectacular for the park in the way Happily Ever After is at Magic Kingdom.

I liked most all of the new offerings, even World of Color: Happiness!, which, based on what I had seen and read before arriving, I was expecting to rank at the very bottom of the World of Color variants for me. I wouldn’t say it was great, but it was serviceable as a limited-run anniversary version of the show. I really just hope we go back to the vanilla World of Color at the conclusion of the anniversary celebration.

But all of that is really just appetizers and sides for the main dish: Walt Disney — A Magical Life, which I saw twice during my trip, sitting in different parts of the theater each time. The first thing that jumped out at me was that I wish they had made an entirely new film instead of having Bob Iger rerecord the film from Hollywood Studios’ One Man’s Dream attraction. It’s not that the movie is bad, per se, it’s just not quite balanced and spends a lot of time focusing on Walt’s childhood in what I'm sure to the average guest is an excruciating level of detail. Also, Mr. Iger’s narration leaves something to be desired (and poses the question: will the next CEO rerecord the narration?).

Finally, the curtain rises and we see Walt Disney leaning against his desk in his Burbank studio office. Except it doesn’t really look like Walt Disney; frankly, I think the figure bears a striking resemblance to MyPillow CEO Mike Lendell, but that may just be me.

The odd thing is, it bothered me less than I thought it would. It reminded me of my first time seeing “Saving Mr. Banks” and watching Tom Hanks portray Walt Disney, odd at first, but then I got used to it and kind of accepted it. It helps that the figure has Walt’s mannerisms down to an almost uncanny degree. The movement is so fluid for a figure that size.

The only thing I can think to compare it to is the Shaman at the end of Na’vi River Journey, and she’s huge, which allows for more motors and things that enable her fluid movement. I think this figure, when taken in its totality and separated from whatever your preconceived notion of a Walt Disney animatronic should be, is the most impressive animatronic figure, period. Not just created by Walt Disney Imagineering but anywhere in the world.

The only shame is that Walt isn’t on stage for that long, just under three minutes. This was because the audio of him speaking is actually cleaned-up clips of the real Walt Disney strung together to create a cogent address. At first, I wondered why they didn’t do more to highlight the creative genius of Walt Disney and sort of made it seem like he didn’t really do anything himself, but then my friend Eddie Sotto suggested that perhaps that was direction from the company not wanting anyone to think that Disney’s innovation died with Walt, which I thought was as good an explanation as I could come up with.

Zooming back out, this celebration felt more like an obligatory event on the road to the much more significant 75th anniversary, which I imagine will be quite grand, on par with the 60th anniversary “Diamond Celebration.” I imagine we’ll have a full slate of all-new entertainment offerings, and hopefully, some classics will get new magic sprinkled on them like the Haunted Mansion and some Fantasyland dark rides did 10 years ago.