Magic Kingdom is the first Disney theme park that opened in 1971. During this period, the company’s fortunes were greatly enhanced. There were a number of box office successes, most notably The Jungle Book (1967), Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day (1968), The Love Bug (1969), and The Aristocats (1970). Disneyland continued to be developed, with a number of new attractions in 1967 in particular. Most of the successes of the period derived directly or indirectly from projects which Walt Disney had put in train before his death. Walt Disney World became not just a Disneyland-style theme park, but a vacation resort, comprising hotels, camp-sites, and various related recreational facilities.
Film production did not increase in scale, because Roy agreed with Walt’s view that ‘when you try to make more than five or six pictures a year, you begin to lose control of the quality’ (Thomas, 1969:37). Under the troika’s leadership, profits soared from $12.4 million in 1966 to $26.7 million in 1971. The period of the custodianship of the Disney troika essentially came to an end on 20 December 1971 with the death of Roy O. Disney, just a few months after he had presided over the opening of the Florida theme park. With Walt, he had built up Walt Disney Productions into a major US corporation. His role had been that of handling the business side-giving rein to and sometimes reining in Walt’s flights of fantasy.
Walt Disney World is built on 27,400 acres of predominantly reclaimed swampland in central Florida just outside Orlando. As can be seen from a casual comparison with Disneyland, it is vastly bigger than the California park. It is not a theme park in itself, in that it is a vacation resort at which the visitor is expected to spend a large amount of time; the idea has been to turn into a total holiday destination, rather than a place to visit as part of a visit to the region. In order to attain this goal, the company has successively added attractions and theme parks to its land, as well as several hotels, which in particular have grown in number during the Eisner-Wells era (Frenkel and Walton 559).
Whereas the visitor to Disneyland would probably purchase a one-or two-day pass, in Florida a four- or five-day multi-park ticket is the norm. Disney World comprises three main theme parks, two water theme parks, and two minor theme parks. There are three main theme parks: the original Magic Kingdom which Roy opened in October 1971; EPCOT Center which opened in October 1982; and Disney-MGM Studios, which opened in May 1989 (Magic Kingdom 2008).
The two water theme parks are the older River Country and Typhoon Lagoon, which opened in 1989. Both of the parks are heavily themed. A further water theme park, Blizzard Beach, is scheduled to open in 1995. The two minor theme parks are Pleasure Island, an area for nighttime entertainment, and Discovery Island, which is a very open zoo with a special emphasis on birds, and which offers some shows. A third minor theme park, Disney’s Boardwalk, is scheduled to open in 1996. According to Sehlinger, it will be ‘an amusement park in the style of Atlantic City and Coney Island. Game arcades, rides, music, food, and bright lights will render a Disney-clean version of America’s traditional amusement park’ (17).
Unlike the Magic Kingdom which retains the integrity of the narrative enveloping each themed land by restricting the visitor’s view of other lands, in World Showcase many of the countries are visible from a vantage point. Each country is made up of buildings that either stylistically or symbolize it. There is often a marked degree of landscaping consistent with the impression of the nation. The buildings and landscaping serve as iconic signifiers of each of the countries. Each country also has shops selling typical products associated with it and a restaurant (in some cases more than one) (Magic Kingdom 2008). There are often shows on each pavilion’s grounds.
The movement of visitors at the theme parks is highly controlled and as a result, their experience of those parks is controlled. Francaviglia (1981) notes how in Disneyland and in the Magic Kingdom the castle acts as a visual magnet to which people are drawn. People first encounter Main Street (via its main square) and are then funneled to the next open space-the plaza. From there, the visitor has a number of choices, in the form of the different ‘lands’ that can be visited, but the number of routes that can be taken is substantially circumscribed (Chris 8).
A number of writers have described going to the Disney parks as a pilgrimage for visitors. When construing the Disney parks in this way, we find at least two different ways of using the term. One is to use it in a very general way of a feeling of compulsion to visit a sacred region. It is hardly surprising that some commentators should have taken up this framework. Moore (1980) notes how the Disney World pilgrim has to travel through land owned by the Disney company to a huge car park where they leave their cars (which are themselves symbols of identity) and then board the monorail or ferryboat to the Magic Kingdom (the only part of Disney World open at the time Moore made his observations).
This is the equivalent of the ludic journey of the pilgrim. Moore, then, depicts the Magic Kingdom as a giant area of liminality to which the pilgrim travels and returns from, but within the Kingdom itself, there are many mini-pilgrimages involving the same processes of separation, transition (and presumably liminality), and reintegration. He argues that the sacred nature of Disney World is underpinned by a number of other features (Magic Kingdom Overview 2008).
This park is conceptually very similar to Disneyland. In addition to Adventureland, Frontierland, Fantasyland, Tomorrowland, and Main Street, USA, there is an area called Liberty Square and Mickey’s Starland, which was originally called Mickey’s Birthdayland. This last land was opened in October 1988 to celebrate Mickey’s s sixtieth year in show business. Main Street, USA is mainly about shopping, but it also comprises a cinema. The Walt Disney Story used to be shown on Main Street but was withdrawn in 1993. Frontierland’s attractions include Tom Sawyer Island, Splash Mountain, and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, as well as a number of other features that rarely attract the attention of commentators (Magic Kingdom 2008).
Liberty Square’s theme relates to colonial America during the era of the American Revolution. It has a Haunted Mansion and is a docking point for the Liberty Square Riverboat, a steamboat similar to Disneyland’s Mark Twain. The Square also plays host to the Hall of Presidents in which Audio-Animatronic figures relate to America’s history. Part of it is based on Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln. Fantasyland has Peter Pan’s Flight and various other attractions deriving from classic Disney films.
There is also It’s a Small World and Magic Journeys, a Kodak-sponsored 3-D fantasy film that originally appeared in the EPCOT Center. Tomorrowland has a Space Mountain and World Premier Circlevision: American Journeys. Mission to Mars is a space travel simulation and Dreamflight, sponsored by Delta Airlines, presents a ride that provides a humorous history of flight. Carousel of Progress was originally designed for General Electric for the 1964 World’s Fair (Fish and Jameson 82). It is a show based on Audio-Animatronics which relates how our lives have improved through electricity and electrical goods. It was originally based at Disneyland but moved to Disney World in 1975 (Magic Kingdom Overview 2008).
It has recently been updated and the modern family is given a more contemporary appearance. At the time of writing, Tomorrowland is undergoing a substantial face-lift which will give it new attractions and a more futuristic appearance. Mickey’s Starland is orientated to small children and includes miniature buildings, shows, and the opportunity to meet Mickey (Sehlinger, 1994). In addition, there are around 50 shops and a large number of mainly fast-food eating places. There is a fairly continuous round of shows and entertainment.
Adventureland has a Jungle Cruise, a Pirates of the Caribbean (which was a New Orleans Square in Disneyland), a Swiss Family Treehouse, and the Enchanted Tiki Birds. Real (1977) goes so far as to refer to the way in which Disneyland controls the imagination as ‘brainwashing’. One of the chief strategies for controlling the imagination is selecting out undesirable elements from the purview of visitors.
The theme of control surfaces again here, in that the image with which we are presented is that, in the name of technological progress, corporations should be left to get on with what they know best, which is, of course, one of Disney’s intentions for its own destiny. In fact, individuals seem to disappear from view in the world of tomorrow (Sehlinger, 99). Whereas the past, as depicted in Hall of Presidents and the American Adventure, is all about dreamers and doers (like Walt himself who is one of the participants in the latter attraction’s Golden Dream sequence), the emblems of the individualism-people-do-not figure in the world of tomorrow other than as consumers and beneficiaries of technological progress. (Fish and Jameson 92).
The fact that many attractions exist in more than one park makes generalization across the parks more feasible, although, as we have seen with Main Street, there may still be differences lurking behind the superficial similarities. Moreover, as Fjellman’s contrast suggests, the differences within Disney World may be just as if not more striking than is implied by a comparison of Disney World and Disneyland. Indeed, EPCOT and its messages seem to have greatly increased the amount of interest in the Disney parks, perhaps because it more self-evidently has a cluster of messages than those aspects of the parks which have a greater component of fantasy (Fish and Jameson 77).
The various commentators by and large have viewed the parks as constituting texts to be interpreted and understood. As texts, they have been seen as ripe with meaning and significance (Sehlinger, 85). The parks are not inert texts. Walt always said that the parks would never be finished, and he and his successors have been true to this belief. Not only have new attractions been continually added (while others have been dropped), but also many have been changed and redesigned. The EPCOT Center is in the throes of numerous alterations to its Future World attractions, but the commentators to be discussed have based their observations on earlier versions of those same attractions. Consequently, just as the Disney theme park attractions are continually undergoing change, interpretations of the theme parks need to shift (Sehlinger, 45).
The role of corporations in the Disney theme parks became more pronounced after Walt persuaded Pepsi-Cola, General Electric, and Ford to sponsor attractions for the 1964 World’s Fair, but it was greatly enhanced by the construction of sponsored rides and attractions at EPCOTs Future World pavilions. Interestingly, the only World Showcase exhibit which has a corporate sponsor is the American Adventure (American Express and Coca-Cola).
Presumably, the various sponsors have felt that their association with Disney would provide high-profile publicity for the corporations themselves and their products (Sehlinger, 89). Similarly, the World of Motion ride demonstrates the successive improvements in modes of conveyance leading up to the General Motors cars that people mill around just prior to exiting from the pavilion. Having been on a ride in which the visitor has been propelled through dioramas representing millennia of progress in locomotion, he or she is given ample time to dwell on the company’s latest products (Fish and Jameson 79).
Magic Kingdom has been constructed in such a way that it has a very direct appeal to families and to the adults within those families. Perhaps one of the reasons why many Americans revisit the parks, often many times, is that parents know that they too will have an enjoyable experience, since a great many of the attractions are designed for them, if not exclusively, then at least in part The involvement of adults in the Disney experience and more specifically targeting that experience to adults as well as children has been crucial to the success of the parks.
The most obvious aspect is that adults are more likely to want to go to the parks when there is something in it for them. it was also important for Walt that adults were engaged in the experience of the parks. He noted when he took his daughters to the old amusement parks that adults frequently looked bored while their children played. He did not want a park where adults sat around looking uninterested since they would not want to visit again, but also by engaging their interest he would be more likely to get across to them some of the themes that he wanted Disneyland to symbolize and to announce.
Also, engaged parents would be more likely to consume-to-buy merchandise, drinks, and food which are in many ways the key to the profitability of the parks (Sehlinger, 43). By contrast, EPCOT is a park in which the child, especially the young child, occupies a more peripheral position (Sehlinger, 99).
Future World perhaps has more interest in children, but it is cloaked in emphases about corporations and the future which seem more likely to register in adults than the young (Sehlinger, 58). In World Showcase, however, the child is almost displaced, since, with the exception of such attractions as the small number of rides (in Mexico and Norway) and the American Adventure, much of it involves gazing at models of buildings or landscapes. While some of these may be familiar to children, such as the Eiffel Tower, others are less likely to be so, for example, St Mark’s Square in Venice. The British pub, the German beer-hall, and some of the waitress-service restaurants also seem more geared to the wishes of adults than of their offspring (Frenkel and Walton 559).
In sum, the parks differ in their degree of appeal to adults. In Disney World, the Magic Kingdom is more obviously child-centered. The ‘lands’ with their concentration on an adventure, fantasy, and for Americans at least, the near-mythical period of the frontier conjure the kinds of image that have a specific appeal to children. Children can discover the new anew while adults enjoy the memory of that discovery as children (seeing Peter Pan, Swiss Family Robinson, Cinderella, and other Disney films which have spawned attractions) as well as nostalgic recollections of the kind of place symbolized by Main Street and of encountering images of US presidents while at school. The child-centered nature of Disney World’s Magic Kingdom has been magnified by the addition of Mickey’s Starland, an area of child-like scale and with specifically child-like interests.
Works Cited
- Chris, C. Beyond the Mouse-Ear Gates: The Wonderful World of Disney Studies. Afterimage, 23, (1995): 8.
- Fish, S., Jameson, F., Inside the Mouse: Work and Play at Disney World. Duke University Press, 1995.
- Frenkel, S., Walton, J. Bavarian Leavenworth and the Symbolic Economy of a Theme Town. The Geographical Review, 90, (2000: 559.
- Magic Kingdom. 2008. Web.
- Magic Kingdom Overview. 2008. Web.
- Moore, A. ‘Walt Disney World: bounded ritual space and the playful pilgrimage center’, Anthropological Quarterly, 53 (1980):207-18.
- Real, M.R. Mass-mediated Culture, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1977.
- Sehlinger, B. The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World, New York: Prentice Hall, 1994.