5. Hollywood Pictures Backlot

Location: Disney California Adventure
Lifetime: 2001 - 2012
Learn more at Yesterland

Disney’s California Adventure had only four themed lands when it first opened. The first was Sunshine Plaza (which we already discussed). The others were Paradise Pier (an irreverent and cheap recreation of a 1990s seaside pier), Golden State (an all-encompassing representation of “the rest” of California) and the uninspired Hollywood Pictures Backlot.

Inexplicably designed to resemble a Hollywood set recreation… of Hollywood… just a short drive from the real Hollywood… the Backlot area was full of “punny” business signs and window displays, cheetah print awnings, and a gritty, intentionally dirty look of old studio soundstages, 2-D façade buildings, and electrical poles. The land’s only inhabitants were a massive theatre hosting standard fare rotating musicals that played to quarter-full houses and the worst dark ride Disney’s ever built: Superstar Limo.

What’s There Now: When Disney California Adventure re-opened in 2012, it brought along with it two new themed lands (Cars Land and Buena Vista Street) while every other land was re-named and given a new identity. Hollywood Pictures Backlot would cease being a modern façade-filled studio and instead became Hollywood Land. Now tied thematically to neighboring Buena Vista Street, the land represents a 1930s “golden age” of Hollywood with the Red Car Trolley whisking guests down the street and to the foot of the glamorous Hollywood Tower Hotel.

The Hyperion Theater at the end of the street now hosts the long-running and wildly beloved Aladdin – A Musical Spectacular which defies typical “theme park show” logic by presenting the story of Aladdin in a 50 minute, Broadway-style production in a lavish professional theater. The remaining “backlot” themed portion of the land was rebranded as the more glamorous Hollywood Studios and cleaned up to more accurately resemble an idealized studio with a charming and classic Monsters Inc. dark ride. All that's left is for a Phase II of California Adventure's remodel to finally replace the sky backdrop with a proper exterior for the theatre as official concept art shows and we'll be golden.

6. Bountiful Valley Farm

Location: Disney California Adventure

Lifetime: 2001 - 2010

Learn more at Yesterland

Perhaps the most laughable of all themed lands ever devised for a Disney Park, Bountiful Valley Farm was a sort of sub-land within the all-encompassing Golden State at the original Disney’s California Adventure. Very sincerely a farm, the area included such engaging attractions as life-sized cow statues, dioramas depicting the history of Catepillar (the farming equipment company, not the insect) and even a lifesized Catepillar tractor that you could climb up and sit in.

The one attraction in the land was It’s Tough to be a Bug, the 3D film based on Disney-Pixar’s A Bug’s Life. Pretty quickly, Disney executives realized that California Adventure had almost nothing to actually do, and practically zero rides for young kids. Empty space south of the park became a new land called A Bug’s Land, absording the 3D film and part of Bountiful Valley Farm.

What’s There Now: The Farm area closed for good in 2010. The land was annexed between "a bug's land" and Cars Land. 

7. Mickey’s Toontown Fair

Location: Magic Kingdom

Lifetime: 1996 - 2011

Learn more at Yesterland

In 1988, Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World introduced a new themed land: Mickey’s Birthdayland. The temporary land was built to celebrate Mickey’s 60th birthday. While clearly constructed to be temporary, it was a charming land recreating the streets of Duckburg and terminating in a large circus tent for a birthday celebration show. Mickey’s birthday could only last so long, though, and in 1990 the last was renamed Mickey’s Starland and Disney’s afternoon cartoon block characters were added.

Following in its younger sister’s footsteps, Disneyland in California added a similar, but much more permanent land in 1993 called Mickey’s Toontown. In 1996, Magic Kingdom decided to make its cartoon-themed land permanent, too. Instead of duplicating Disneyland’s Toontown, designers at the Magic Kingdom reused much of Starland’s infrastructure and developed a new story; casting the new Mickey’s Toontown Fair as a country getaway for the characters, separate from their permanent homes in California.

Toontown Fair had a meet-and-greet inside the circus striped Judges Tent, walkthrough country homes for Mickey and Minnie, and the Barnstormer, a family coaster that cast Goofy as a daredevil pilot crop-dusting his Wiseacre Farmstead. The exaggerated cartoon architecture probably read as "cheap" when compared to the realistic lands throughout the rest of the park. 

What’s There Now: When Disney announced New Fantasyland for the Magic Kingdom, the land formerly occupied by Toontown Fair was supposed to become Pixie Hollow, a land of oversized blades of grass and mushrooms. It would have been home to an elaborate and expansive meet-and-greet for Tinker Bell and her fairy companions from their direct-to-video film series. Fans recoiled at Pixie Hollow and the rest of the overtly princess-themed expansion, so Disney went back to the drawing board.

Toontown Fair was, in some ways, spared, becoming the charming and outstanding Storybook Circus, a turn-of-the-century themed traveling circus area within New Fantasyland lovingly dedicated to classic (and often forgotten) Disney characters. The hyper-detailed land may share a circus tent or two in common with Toontown Fair, but the exaggerated and toon-style architecture is gone, replaced with real brick buildings, canvas signs, and charming allusions that are all class. Most prominently, Dumbo the Flying Elephant was relocated to Storybook Circus with doubled capacity and an awesome indoor playground queue.

8. Old Fantasyland

Location: Magic Kingdom
Lifetime: 1971 - 2012

When Fantasyland opened at both Disneyland (in 1955) and the Magic Kingdom (in 1971), its many charming classic dark rides were concealed behind medieval tent exteriors. Striped awnings with jousting rods as poles and simple marquees did an effective job, but were contrary to Walt’s hopes for the area.

In 1983, Disneyland welcome a New Fantasyland, replacing the aging medieval motif with incredible European facades. Suddenly, Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride was inside a red-brick recreation of Toad Hall; Snow White’s Scary Adventures in a German castle with vines crawling up its exterior; Peter Pan’s Flight inside a Tudor-style manor with an English clock tower outside. Finally, Walt’s dreams of a romanticized Fantasyland had arrived. But at Magic Kingdom, the medieval tents lived on – simple exteriors with dated pastel colors that did little to inform guests of the detailed dark rides within.

What’s There Now: Half of Fantasyland retains the medieval tent style, but a very purposeful New Fantasyland began construction in 2011, dividing the land in half. The eastern half was entirely rebuilt and updated in Cars Land style, with intricate details and new sub-areas (including Storybook Circus). The new style – locked behind stone walls and placed in a lantern-lit Enchanted Forest – contains a whole section of Beauty and the Beast attractions, a seaside village and Mediterranean castle built into eroded cliffs comprising a Little Mermaid area, and a Seven Dwarfs Mine Train complete with cottage that set the forest theme alive.

New Fantasyland, to some, is “style over substance,” with incredibly detailed, themed area but very few things to actually do. Including Storybook Circus, the entirety of new Fantasyland added a net one attraction to Magic Kingdom’s roster. But there’s also the new-age meet-and-greet / show / walkthrough of Enchanted Tales With Belle and the awesome Be Our Guest Restaurant. It’s sort of an evolution of theme parks – detailed environments you want to spend time (and money) in instead of focusing just on rides.