Theme Parks

Some sources do not distinguish much between amusement parks and theme parks, but we will. A theme park is more than just rides and amusements: it is an immersion of visitors into a narrative. While one would like to officially credit Walt Disney with the idea of narrative immersion, to do so would be to ignore little parks like “Santa’s Workshop,” which predated Disneyland (and which was not the first of the Santa parks, but was the only one I ever visited; I was in kneepants at the time). In other words, the idea of creating amusement villages was not completely new.

But the scope of Disneyland, combined with some other things, allows it to take pride of place as the real original that it is. Take away names and descriptors, and it unquestionably stood alone. Disney brought to its design a corporation with a backlog of narrative and the skills to work that narrative into three dimensions, both in attractions and ambience. If any proof that what he was doing was different, think about Sleeping Beauty’s castle. It was pure theme. There was no ride there, no nothing. It was simply decorative, setting the tone of Fantasyland (and, of course, the whole park). In 1955 you didn’t spend money on something in a park that served no useful purpose, but of course, the castle did serve a useful purpose; it just happened to be a new purpose unlike a ferris wheel or a tilt-a-whirl.

The narratives of Disneyland were pretty broad. History, adventure, fantasy, the future, plus an old-timey main street. You could fit a lot of storytelling into those categories. And they did (and still do). Disneyland was of limited space, but if you walk through it now it seems as if there’s something every inch of it, and none of it is wasted. But it was limited, and that’s why WDW came into existence. WDW would solve the problem of space presumably forever. The territory that the Disney corporation bought in Florida was about the size of San Francisco; given that California is able to put all of San Francisco into San Francisco, it is reasonable to assume that this is more than enough space for the Disney folks. And so far this has proven true. They have plenty of room for a lot of parks and a lot of hotels and resort functions. It’s hard to imagine that they would need much more space because even the hardiest WDW fan would eventually run out of either time or interest.

Walt’s plan for Florida was more than just a version of Disneyland in Florida. As we said, he was a dedicated futurist, and his vision included a city (Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow) where all the people who worked at the park would live. The idea is that you have some large industry (in this case a theme park) serviced by a city, all of it planned. With that city, you solve all the problems of city life. You eliminate slums, unemployment, eyesores, traffic jams. You provide well-thought-out living spaces surrounded by greenery, with easy (perhaps underground transit) access to shopping and entertainments and churches and schools. Cars do not interrupt the life of the community. Everyone is happy as a clam in a modernist science fiction environment, and all they need is futuristic science fiction pajamas to finish it off.

This vision of the future, which we saw promoted by the world’s fairs, was not uncommon in the first half of the Twentieth Century. The cities designed by, say, Le Corbusier were not unlike this. The sterility of this vision did not deter anyone, and that sterility was, in fact, one of its great appeals. But in the real world of cities and city planning, sterility (as opposed to cleanliness) doesn’t work. The prosperity of cities is affected through its mishmash of services and offices and apartments and whatnot, the organic growth and decline and rebirth, the rhythm of neighborhoods. Most people don’t want to live on the set of a sci-fi movie. They want to live within walking distance of a decent Chinese restaurant, maybe a park, a newspaper stand and a sidewalk café to watch everybody else.

Promoting his vision of EPCOT was one of the last things Walt Disney did before he died in 1966. See for yourself here. Would this have worked? Hard to say, but probably not. The Disney machine was, as this video (which includes the one above, if you’ve got the time) points out, pretty good at planning large spaces successfully and moving lots of people through them. But a city to live in? A popular idea for a long time that was probably on the way out. Or, maybe the promise of a new age that someone else will have to take on someday hence. Whichever, after Disney died, although the building of Disney World (later Walt Disney World) continued under the leadership of Walt’s brother Roy, the EPCOT idea was put aside and, ultimately, discarded.

But at Disney, nothing is ever truly discarded. Ideas and materials may lie in attics for decades, but then someone remembers them and revitalizes them, maybe as originally intended or maybe as something totally new. The Disney Corp, after WDW was a reality, wanted to move forward, and so they reimagined EPCOT as another theme park. And gave us the Epcot (without the capital letters) that we know today. Curiously enough, this new theme park was, for all intents and purposes, a World’s Fair. Which shouldn’t be surprising at all.