3. Pixar Pier (2018)

Click and expand for a larger and more detailed view. Image: Disney / Pixar

At the semi-annual D23 Japan in November 2017 (just a few months after the opening of Guardians of the Galaxy - Mission: BREAKOUT!) Disney Parks, Experiences, and Products Chairman (and big intellectual property fan) Bob Chapek made an announcement that Disney rumor blogs hadn't even imagined: Paradise Pier would be the next to fall. The land would be quickly and conservatively recrafted into Pixar Pier, a celebration of Pixar stories with four "neighborhoods" of attractions along the boardwalk.

Image: Disney / Pixar

The courtyard in front of California Screamin' would become Incredibles Park, a mid-century-inspired plaza right out of LAX's Theme Building or Walt's Tomorrowland, featuring the seaside, seemingly wooden California Screamin' re-themed as The Incredicoaster. 

The Incredicoaster is built around an (admittedly) contrived story of the Incredibles being honored with a seaside roller coaster rebranded in their name. (In the queue video, Violet groans "Sure, slap our names on an old ride." Edna Mode replies, "Quite normal, darling; corporations call it synergy." Like Rocket's comments on the converted Tower of Terror, explaining away inconsistences and overlays as a joke is now par for the course – much easier than crafting a real story.) 

Image: Disney

Now, the ride's neighbor-friendly "scream tubes" have become more completely enclosed, each containing a show scene of static figures as the members of the Incredibles family race to rescue baby Jack-Jack, whose berzerk powers see him teleport, turn "squishy," phase through walls, catch on fire, and multiply along the ride's course. Surprisingly devoid of movement and life, the Incredicoaster is one example where projections rather than frozen figures could've made a huge difference... Unfortunately, it feels like a net neutral change at best.

Around the existing Toy Story Midway Mania would arrive the Toy Story Boardwalk "neighborhood." That seems a natural fit given the still-starring role of the shoot-'em-up midway ride, especially with its beautiful seaside exterior swapped from sandy peach and sun-faded maroon to a much more attractive white and teal with cherry red accents.

Image: Disney / Pixar

Strangely, though, this "neighborhood" will also transform King Triton's Carousel of the Sea into the Toy Story-complementary Jessie's Critter Carousel that unapologetically ditches the classy, elegant Victorian vibe in favor of cow spots and plastic toy tones. In fact, half of Toy Story Boardwalk doubles down on the newly-freshed turn-of-the-century coastal vibe, while the other half curiously relies on oversized props and figures borrowed straight from Toy Story Land, as if we've "shrunk." 

Image: Disney

The boardwalk's third "neighborhood" is the catch-all Pixar Promenade featuring the rest of Pixar's films (except Monsters Inc., which is in Hollywood Land, Finding Nemo that resides in Tomorrowland, and Cars, which has its own land) recasting the pier's Games of the Boardwalk to exclusively Pixar themes and adding a floating boulder interactive in the style of Pixar's famous bouncing ball.

Most curiously, Mickey's Fun Wheel continues to feature the pie-eyed not-Pixar mouse on the bay-facing side, but was renamed Pixar Pal-a-Round (which must be one of the worst names in the Disney Parks portfolio, right? Why not Animator's Wheel? The Color Wheel? Disney's Wheel of Color?), its gondolas affixed with new vinyl skins featuring famous Pixar pairs.

Image: Disney / Pixar

The final "neighborhood" – Inside Out Headquarters – contains only a single spinning family flat ride. And that, in a nutshell, is the problem. Inside Out was a celebrated, beloved Pixar film exploring the complexities of emotion and growing up, and rather than a tear-jerking dark ride, the Inside Out Emotional Whirlwind is a simple spinning carnival ride.

Paradise Lost & Found

 

Here's the thing – while fans instantly revolted against yet another intellectual property being pulsed into the parks (this writer included), the results of Pixar Pier are... well... decidedly mixed. In fact, Pixar Pier could be the subject of a PhD dissertation on the highs and lows of modern Imagineering.

On one hand, the Pixar Pier transformation actually plussed the land with more of the elaborate Victorian details that it should've gotten back at the park's 2012 re-opening... It features a new entrance replacing leftover '70s metallic turrets with magnificent, whimsical, fantastical, ruby red domes and turrets...

Image: DAPSMagic

...the land's color scheme is entirely re-cast in exuberant jewel tones, replacing the metallic blue and sandy pink of Paradise Pier with breathtaking reds, vibrant seafoam teal, and crisp white; new interactive elements and surprises await around the land, with the last vestiges of California Adventure "1.0" removed. So while it makes no sense that a 1910s boardwalk would feature the branding and stories of a 21st century movie studio, it's commendable the way that Disney Imagineers finally snuck in the early-1900s sweep that the land started to recieve back in 2012.

Put another way, the pieces of Pixar Pier that succeed seem to do so in spite of the Pixar brand and not because of it.

After all, the "lows" of modern Imagineering are on display here, too. We already mentioned that, confusingly, Disney doubled down on the classic Victorian styling while also adding intentionally disjointed "neighborhoods" of oversized toys and 1960s architecture. But the worst offenders are still out there like...

Image: Disney / Pixar

Señor Buzz' Churros. We can't even imagine how this concept made it past the initial sketch! And then there's... 

Image: Disney / Pixar

... and truly disappointing additions like...

Image: Disney

How can these oddities (seemingly designed just as photo-ops) co-exist with a project that intentionally maintained and expanded the turn-of-the-century Victorian styling?

"It's all about story"

Disney's own marketing tells us that it all comes down to story, story, story. Well then, let's read:

• In 2001, the original Paradise Pier's story seemed to be that we'd simply ventured to a modern California boardwalk of off-the-shelf carnival thrill rides, neon signs, and Californian puns meant to poke fun at California's coastal surfer culture. "The time is now, the place is California. Enjoy!"

image: Disney

• In 2012, it was re-opened as a historic, idealized, turn-of-the-century boardwalk populated by Victorian architecture, strung popcorn lights, ragtime music, and classic, pie-eyed Disney characters presented in their most vintage and nostalgic forms. In "Disney" speak, we'd traveled back in time to a romanticized and idealized turn-of-the-century pleasure pier.
• In 2018, the opening of Pixar Pier changes that story yet again. To fans' best estimate, the new "story" that powers Pixar Pier would be that the Walt Disney Company – an international media conglomerate – and its Disney Parks, Experiences, and Products division (overseen by Chairman Bob Chapek) owns a California amusement pier and has decided to overlay the highest-grossing films from its 21st century Pixar intellectual properties across the rides and attractions there. 

Well, at least it doesn't take much imagination...!

Image: Disney

Altogether, Pixar Pier may seem relatively harmless – especially since so many good changes accompanied the overlay. But it's yet another strange infringement upon the Californian story that Imagineers just spent five years building. Moreover, it adds to the theory that today's changes to California Adventure are simply short-sighted moves by management to incorporate Disney brands quickly and cheaply.

Why design the park to veer so closely toward Walt's California Adventure, only to double back and strip it of its period-appropriate dressing and the attractions that seemed custom-fit for its celebration of Californian stories, history, and legends?

And while Pixar Pier may be the oddest addition yet, it's not the last to "break" California Adventure's historic billion-dollar redesign...

4. Marvel Avengers Campus (2020)

Throughout the development of Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: BREAKOUT!, fans rioted against the concept with some pretty defensable arguments... Like, why would a futuristic sci-fi fortress be looming over the recently-reborn 1940s Hollywood Land? Why would The Collector's "museum" have the unmistakable architecture of 1920s art deco? Would the Red Car Trolley now have stops at Buena Vista Street, Carthay Circle, Hollywood Blvd. and a "space warehouse prison power plant?"

Image: Disney / Marvel

Disney's answer was a vague promise that an entire land dedicated to Marvel superheroes would eventually take shape at Disney California Adventure around the seemingly misplaced tower. Insiders say that, originally, those plans centered on Marvel heroes replacing Hollywood Land entirely. Suffice it to say that the political pieces necessary to make that happen in Anaheim failed to fall into place, leaving Disney's expansion plans for California Adventure's footprint unlikely.

Plans quickly migrated. It's Tough to be a Bug and the rest of "a bug's land" closed forever in 2018 as "Stark Industries" walls appeared around the formerly forested (er, clovered?) space nestled between Cars Land and Hollywood Land. 

Image: Disney / Marvel

At Disney's semi-annual D23 conference in 2019, the details were made official. While the new Avengers Campus land wouldn't exactly match Galaxy's Edge for detail, it would have a (bare minimum, thinly veiled) "excuse" for existing within California Adventure. How? The land's setup describes it as a modern Southern Californian recruitment center established by the Avengers to train the next generation of heroes... us. Sure, fans will groan about the seeming creative cop-out of a land with a "the time is now and the place is here" setting.

But Avengers Campus will offer some substantial experiences. When the new land "begins recruitment" in 2020, its sought-after new attraction will be a family-focused interactive (read: shooting) Web Slingers dark ride. What's curious, though, is that leaked plans for the ride (which is being duplicated at Disneyland Paris) indicate that it'll re-use the basic premise and layout of Toy Story Midway Mania... a ride that exists just a few hundred yards away in Pixar Pier!

Aside from Guardians of the Galaxy - Mission: BREAKOUT!, the other new offer from Avengers Campus (in true "Wizarding World-emulating" form) will be a restaurant and microbrewery somehow centered on Ant-Man, a cavalcade of character meet-and-greets, and exceptional "streetmosphere" said to include spontaneous rooftop stunt shows and maybe even the debut of Disney's "Stuntronics."

Image: Disney / Marvel

A follow-up phase II will also introduce an anchoring E-Ticket based on The Avengers, set to place guests in Quinjets and fly them out to a battle in the African nation of Wakanda from Black Panther.

If you – like us – are still asking "What does that have to do with California?" you're in the 1% of people who have energy left to fight for California Adventure. In any case, at least we can be grateful that Disney didn't construct a Marvel-themed land that outright recreated New York. 

Image: Disney

And while the extermination of "a bug's land" for Avengers Campus did save Hollywood Land, we can't help but hope that Disney Imagineers plan to return to the land with a big payoff. Now, sans Tower of Terror, Hollywood Land is an anchor-less area of the park that never got the "DCA 2.0" overlay it needed. The concept art above, for example, was released in the lead-up to the park's reimagining, but never came to be. Perhaps a historic rebirth for Hollywood Land would be a fitting balance to the invasion of heroes?

Unraveling or re-weaving?

At least for now, that's the whole story of Disney's California misadventure – there's perhaps no park on Earth that's seen more change in the first two decades of its life than Disneyland's second gate: from incoherent modern thrill park to story-centered Disney jewel... and maybe, back again...

In retrospect, we have to wonder: what was the point of that grand re-opening, and why revitalize Hollywood Land or Paradise Pier if the plan was always to infuse them with intellectual properties? Or was that not always the plan, but a recent re-direction? If so, at whose request? Do the changes Disney's made to California Adventure add to the park's success long-term? Or are they "cheap and cheerful" overlays made permanent; the park's 10, 20, or 50 year health be damned?

And for that matter, is the park still a California adventure?

After all, in the few years since its re-opening with an intentional, whole-park, Californian narrative, Disney California Adventure has become a park of beautifully decorated themed lands that exude the history and magnificence of California’s story, people, and places… but the attractions in those lands are themed exclusively to Cars, The Incredibles, The Little Mermaid, Toy Story, Marvel, Monsters Inc., and Frozen with the towering Guardians of the Galaxy tower looming over it all where once had been an elegant Hollywood hotel… a fitting visual for the park’s current state.

By the way, when all's said and done in 2020, the park will have eight themed lands: Buena Vista Street, Hollywood Land, Cars Land, Pacific Wharf, Grizzly Peak, Avengers Campus, Pixar Pier, and Paradise Gardens Park (the leftover elements of Paradise Pier stretching from Paradise Gardens Grill through the Golden Zephyr, Goofy's Sky School, and The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Undersea Adventure). 

Image: Disney

Disney's designers were right – Disney California Adventure did change everything about Disney Parks. Its flawed foundation was a lesson taught via the school of hard knocks, and the park's revered rebirth seemed to signal that Disney executives had gotten the point... Disney can do what no one else can. It can transport guests to magical, idealized, romantic versions of our past; it can weave together seemingly disconnected stories across lands, parks, and even continents.

Image: Disney

When Disney California Adventure re-opened in 2012, it was well on its way to being a cohesive piece of thematic art – a pinnacle of the power of Imagineering. Newly reborn with a thoughtful, careful, creative, and distinctly Californian narrative, the park appeared poised to grow into its harmonious new identity.

Image: Disney

The influx of Marvel and Pixar may be the status quo now at Disney Parks across the globe, and perhaps it's better that those properties be plopped into California Adventure than be plopped into Walt's Disneyland... And yet, we still can't help but worry that executives' directives may risk unraveling the $1.2 billion effort that was just infused into the park, undoing the careful creative foundation Disney California Adventure was gifted... 

All we can do is watch and wonder as Disney California Adventure evolves yet again.