Does The Disney California Journey Title Nonetheless Make Sense?
Of the six North American Disney Theme Parks, Disney California Adventure is one of my favorites. It’s such an odd little place that it has a appeal that most of the different parks don’t have. It’s not the park with the very best rides, although it has some nice ones. It additionally doesn’t have the historical past that a spot like Disneyland has, however its personal historical past is simply as worthy of observe.
Nevertheless, as a part of that historical past, Disney California Adventure has gone through more significant changes to its core id than in all probability every other Disney park in its lifetime. Solely maybe Walt Disney World’s Epcot has seen as much change in its complete lifetime, and Epcot has been round twice as lengthy. California Journey remains to be an incredible park, however does its identify nonetheless make any sense? With the information that the ultimate space of the unique park, Pacific Wharf, is about to get rethemed, is it time to do one thing that hasn’t been completed since Disney and MGM parted ways and rename a U.S. Disney park?
What Disney California Journey Was Initially Designed To Be
From its inception, Disney’s California Journey had essentially the most distinctive idea for a theme park, probably ever. It was a theme park designed to carry all features of a California trip collectively in a single place… in California. You needed to journey to California to go to a theme park to expertise California.
Okay, the concept possibly wasn’t fairly that bizarre. Disney discovered that folks touring to California on trip would regularly make Disneyland one cease on a bigger trip within the Golden State. So the concept was that if Disney may present all the weather that vacationers have been on the lookout for, they may come to Disneyland Resort, keep there longer and nonetheless get all the things they have been on the lookout for.
So the preliminary format for Disney’s California Journey had areas impressed by the Napa wine nation, Monterey’s waterfront, the Santa Monica Pier, the Northern California Redwood forests, Nationwide Parks like Yosemite, Hollywood and even central California farmland. It definitely succeeded in bringing the totally different elements of a various state to at least one place.
A few of these areas had points of interest within the Disney type, a lot of them simply targeted on meals and beverage from the actual location being represented. Nevertheless, the preliminary response to Disney’s California Journey was not nice. The park fell properly under preliminary attendance estimates, and the adjustments to the park started virtually instantly.
How Disney California Journey Has Modified Over The Years
One essential factor to say concerning the authentic California Journey is that, like Epcot earlier than it, the main target of the park was not on Disney characters or motion pictures. Not like Epcot’s earliest days, there was some IP at DCA. The It’s Robust To Be A Bug 3D film primarily based on A Bug’s Life was there, and Disney references and movies might be discovered within the Artwork of Animation constructing, however that was about it.
This all modified pretty rapidly. Lower than a 12 months after California Journey opened, the park’s least popular attraction, Superstar Limo, closed. It could ultimately get replaced by Monsters Inc: Mike & Sully to the Rescue. Adjoining to the theater displaying the Bug’s Life film, a brand new land devoted to A Bug’s Life was constructed, including rides for youthful visitors, one thing the park desperately wanted.
In 2007, a major redesign of Disney California Adventure started that will value greater than the preliminary park development. It added main areas to the park and fully redesigned others. A part of Vehicles Land have been constructed over the world that after celebrated California farmland. A film concerning the historical past of the state of California was changed by The Little Mermaid: Ariel’s Undersea Journey. Varied different points of interest that remained can be rethemed to incorporate Disney characters, such because the wild mouse curler coaster Mulholland Insanity turning into Goofy’s Sky Faculty.
This redesigning and retheming has solely continued. In 2018, the Paradise Pier space turned Pixar Pier, together with a re-theming of the park’s marquee attraction, California Screamin’ into the Incredicoaster. 2019, in fact, gave us Avengers Campus, changing Bug’s Land. Much more lately on the D23 Expo earlier this month, we realized that the Pacific Wharf space is about to get its personal retheme into Massive Hero 6’s San Fransokyo.
Pacific Wharf was a part of California Journey on day one, and it is basically the final a part of the unique park that has remained principally untouched. Lots of the parts that made up the unique park are nonetheless there, however their direct connection to the Golden State is essentially gone. So does Disneyland Resort’s second gate want a brand new identify?
Ought to Disney California Journey Change Its Title? Sure, Type Of…
At this level, whereas the bones of the unique Disney’s California Journey are definitely nonetheless there, as any individual who visited on day one would nonetheless acknowledge the park, virtually all of it has modified in some vogue, and practically all of it has modified in a approach that makes the park extra Disney and fewer California. That is why I might argue that Disney California Journey really ought to change its identify, however solely barely.
You see, there was one other change again when all these different main renovations have been going down 15 years in the past. It was initially referred to as Disney’s California Journey, however is now referred to as Disney California Journey. It was an odd alternative as a result of different Disney Parks, like Animal Kingdom and Hollywood Studios, nonetheless use the possessive, and DCA ought to as properly.
The identify ought to be modified again to Disney’s California Journey as a result of there’s nonetheless a distinctly California vibe going contained in the park, but it surely’s Disney’s model of what a California-themed theme park can be. To no matter diploma it ever was, California Journey can now not compete with what California really is, but it surely can provide you Disney’s tackle what California can be like by way of a Disney lens.
Pixar Pier nonetheless has related amusements to what you’ll discover on the Santa Cruz Seaside Boardwalk or Santa Monica Pier, however with Pixar characters and Disney’s Imagineers taking these halfway video games to the following degree. You possibly can nonetheless really feel such as you’re strolling by way of a Nationwide Park as you stroll by way of the park with Grizzly Peak on one facet of you and the Grand Californian Resort & Spa on the opposite. And Buena Vista Avenue doesn’t actually seem like Los Angeles did within the Nineteen Twenties when Walt Disney arrived, but it surely appears to be like the way in which you’re feeling prefer it ought to in a Disney Park.
When San Fransokyo opens in a pair years, it can nonetheless have parts of San Francisco, simply in the way in which the town was there in Massive Hero 6. It’s not the actual San Francisco, definitely, but it surely additionally isn’t completely divorced from actuality both.
California Journey is now such a wierd mixture of locations and characters that there is in all probability no identify that may seize what the park is healthier than the identify that it already has, however that strangeness is a part of the park’s appeal. It’s a Disney Journey present in California, and that is all it must be.
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