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Disney Parks fans have spent the last decade complaining that California Adventure has become “too much Disney, not enough California.” And yet here – with Big Hero 6 – seems to reside the answer! San Fransokyo is distinctly Disney, and authentically Californian insomuch as the setting (like the best of “DCA 2.0”) has real history and actual culture behind it while also being timeless, filled with character, and like a great environment to explore.

Image: Disney

Put simply: San Fransokyo feels immensely “theme-park-able,” and its inclusion in California Adventure sort of feels like a no-brainer! A from-scratch theme park interpretation of the land would even bring to life real Californian landmarks – like the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco's iconic street cars, and the Ferry Building of the Embarcadero – just re-stylized to fit this sci-fi superhero fantasy world. So why aren’t people happy? Well… In this case, it seems like fans are fairly frustrated not by the content, but by the delivery…

Image: Disney

The idea of a San Fransokyo land at Disney California Adventure may conjure images of an entire "Living Land" of cross-streets, wharfs, trolleys, dining halls, and docks; a bustling cityscape to serve as a “Tomorrowland” for the park, anchored by a thrilling E-Ticket ride where you take the skies alongside the Big Hero 6 team to fight a comic-book-inspired kaiju that’s arisen from the Pacific.

But… nope.

Reimagining Pacific Wharf

Image: Disney

The long and short of it is that the name “San Fransokyo” is merely being added to one of the park’s existing spaces – Pacific Wharf. Inspired by San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf and the waterfront of Monterey, Pacific Wharf is a rare, nearly untouched remnant of “DCA 1.0.” But despite that, there’s nothing really wrong with it.

Pacific Wharf is what you might call a “gentle but functional” section of the park, essentially made up of a row of wharf-style buildings set against a rocky inlet of the park’s Paradise Bay. Though it was upgraded from a sub-section of the park’s all-encompassing “Golden State” land to full, standalone land status in 2012, Pacific Wharf is – for lack of a better term – a well-dressed food court. Three quick service eateries share its large, open eating space.

Image: Disney

The land contains just two “attractions” (in the loosest terms): a Ghirardelli chocolate retail space and a genuine Boudin sourdough bread bakery that guests can walk through, learning the process of how sourdough is baked (complete with a sample). There are no rides in the land, and no space to add any. (Pacific Wharf is entirely surrounded by Cars Land, Pixar Pier, and the park’s Performance Corridor.)

So how exactly will Pacific Wharf magically become a theme park version of Big Hero 6′s dynamic, technological, futuristic sci-fi superhero metropolis with a rich invented history all its own? Well…

The Problem

Image: Disney

“San Fransokyo” will come to life at Disney California Adventure by, essentially, changing some of the Fisherman’s Wharf painted billboards to Japanese, replacing a beer truck with an outdoor Baymax meet-and-greet, and stringing Asian paper lanterns across the food court. That may sound cynical, but frankly, it’s about all Disney can do to turn this otherwise pleasant corner of the park into a cartoon-ified, IP tie-in.

Image: Disney

Oh, and the transformation will also turn the existing iron bridge into Pacific Wharf into a poor man’s proxy for the Asian-influenced version of the Golden Gate Bridge from the film, basically by just building religious Torii gates over the existing bridge and painting the whole thing “International orange”.

(As “DCA 1.0” historians will tell you, that will make this the park’s second squashed-and-stretched, cartoon-proportioned version of the Golden Gate Bridge… A weirdly fitting landmark for the “3.0” era and its return to comic book aesthetic.)

At best, we can see calling this transformation “cute but dumb” – an oddly common refrain for Disney California Adventure’s most recent wave of quick, low-cost IP overlays. Much of the land won’t change at all, including – at least for now – its eateries. (It seems inevitable that its Asian, Mexican, and Deli restaurant will be renamed for “in-universe” eateries in Big Hero 6 like Noodle Burger and Lucky Cat Cafe, but so far that hasn’t been indicated.)

Image: Disney

At worst, you might accuse the land of being downright unnecessary; a “label slap” about as authentic, essential, and thoughtfully integrated as Frozen diapers, Moana cereal, or an Inside Out carnival ride. You can look at the issue both ways and still wonder what the point is: Does Pacific Wharf need an IP? And is the Big Hero 6 franchise really served by having its name applied to Pacific Wharf? 

And for that matter, does even a redecorated Pacific Wharf really serve as a stand-in for San Fransokyo? Doesn’t the relatively simple re-skin serve as a “brand withdrawal” from Big Hero 6? After all, this is not the city we saw in the film; nothing close. (Disney did smartly edit the land’s name from “San Fransokyo” to “San Fransokyo Square” re-opening, which at least suggests that this is just one small part of the city, suggesting that the actual downtown we saw on screen must exist just beyond the wharf district we can visit.)

Image: Disney

That leaves San Fransokyo Square an unusual project… but frankly, not an unexpected one. The era of “DCA 3.0” is upon us, leaving the park with lands that recall historic, idealized places and times from the Golden State’s history, but where the rides inside those lands are exclusively themed to The Little Mermaid, Monsters Inc., Spider-Man, Cars, The IncrediblesGuardians of the Galaxy, and more…

At least Big Hero 6 is a film that’s actually set in California, and that even leans into Californian history and landmarks! But is this the way to bring this film to life? Would you say that California Adventure’s San Fransokyo Square is shaping up to be a plus, a minus, or something in between?

 
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