The main reason why everyone comes to DisneySea is the “Mysterious Island” with its two blockbuster rides, the 20,000 leagues under the sea and the Journey to the centre of the earth, both extremely well themed. Don’t expect however huge thrills in DisneySea, Japanese taste for adventure and exotism seems to be limited to experiences that still feel very safe. And like for the new Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey ride at Universal Studios Orlando, theme park imagineers need to resolve the consumer’s dilemma stretched between a desire for adventure and a reluctance for extreme situations.

The little Mermaid section is also very well designed with one of the best themed shop of the park. As Seth Godin puts it, “The product is nothing but a souvenir of your trip to the store, and a reminder of the way you felt when you bought it.”

Various other examples of themes in rides of DisneySea, always perfectly executed!

Shows are also impressive. Even though the stories are always more or less the same. Read my analysis of the heterotopia of Disney World if you are interested to know why.

The park was definitely lacking a level of details in the execution of the themed areas. The budget was too tight it seems. It was nowhere more apparent than on Main Street USA and the Disney castle. The buildings were smaller than in other Disney parks and didn’t have enough details; some looked as cheap as in second class parks.

However, the excitement of the crowd was visible. That along with the Disney train similar to the one of Disney Tokyo and the soundtrack at the entrance gate was enough to put me into the ‘Disney’ mood.

There were a minimum of attractions in Hong Kong Disneyland. I thought it would not be enough to entertain me for a whole day but their choice was actually quite good. The attractions were also slightly adapted to feature more Disney characters and to compensate the lack of classical rides such as Pinocchio.  It was very interesting to see how this Disney Park relies more than any others on symbolism, sometimes only materialized by very simple blocks of concrete. It is a very risky game though, and even if I think they managed to make this park work for now, they should be careful to invest enough if they want to preserve the ‘magic’ of their brand.

Three new massive sections were also under construction and will surely help raise the overall level of the park. Here is a picture from the Tarzan’s tree house of what I think will be the Grizzly trail.

Hong Kong Disneyland is the only one to tolerate natural intrusions in its landscape but I think that seeing the mounts behind the castle works quite well.

I loved the space mountain, the queue was very basic but it’s the first time I tried a revamped version of the ride. The soundtrack adds more to the experience than in any other rides, adding even maybe a little of derision to the theme of space invasion from the 60s. The tempo of the ride and of its special effects is absolutely perfect.

Tomorrowland

This was the advantage of having many Indian visitors to the park, good Indian vegetarian food! I also understood why they decided to build a second park in Shanghai. This one seems to be targeting people from Hong Kong, but also people from Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore and other countries in the region. I guess that the one in Shanghai will target visitors from mainland China.

Adventureland

The jungle river cruise

Tarzan's tree house

“It’s a small world” has been relatively heavily adapted. As I mentioned earlier, they added many Disney characters in the ride, I guess to compensate the size of the park, and maybe even to ‘educate’ the audience. But I can’t stop wondering if it is not also because Disney characters have now succeeded to invade our “small world”. New sections have also been added I think, like the rainforest one, the general feeling is more oriented towards nature and environmental awareness.

This picture is a little blurry but I like it because it shows the many digital cameras. I know that Hong Kong Disneyland did not provide initially enough picture opportunities to the local audience, but they seem to have done a good job at improving that part. I don’t know why, but they put forward characters from Toy Story, Stitch and other more recent films here, probably the conclusion of some clever customer segmentation and marketing studies.

If you want to read more about the subject, check out my other posts on theme parks or my analysis on the heterotopia of Walt Disney World.

In his book “Vinyl Leaves, Walt Disney World and America”, Stephen M. Fjellman analyses Disney World and how it incarnates a postmodern society based on consumerism. Here is a summary of his thoughts.

In the introduction, Mr. Fjellman makes a reference to the book “Brave New World” from Aldous Huxley. The book describes an utopian dictatorship of happiness. “A good way to make sure that people police themselves is to get them to believe essentially the same stories about what the world is and why the way it is is good, true and beautiful. The world needs to be described, and it needs to be justified by arguments about nature, philosophical principle, history, or the gods. People will find their place in such a world. They will learn what hopes they might reasonably hold for themselves.” The argument of Mr. Fjellman is that it is exactly what our society is trying to achieve, not necessary consciously, but as a matter of fact. His description of Disney World might seem harsh, but it doesn’t contain any anger – the author seems actually to be a fan of Disney World – it is just a realistic description from an anthropologist point of view, not trying to point out guilty corporations, but just stating the facts and how society works.

A Disney shop

Disney is a major corporation that has a vested interest in promoting a consumerist society. Disney World is not merely a collection of fantasies for children, it is actively advocating the utopia of happy consumerism.  “Our lives can only be well lived (or live at all) through the purchase of commodities. As the commodity form becomes a central part of culture, so culture becomes available for use in the interest of commodification, as a legitimation for the entire system. We must be taught that it is good, reasonable, just, and natural that the means necessary for life are available only through the market”.  In this context, here is how Disney world is defined: “Walt Disney World produces, packages and sells experiences and memories as commodities.” Visitors know that when going in Disney World, they get into a place where all their activities are controlled and conditioned (e.g. queues, soundtracks all over the parks, visual magnets like the Cinderella castle) . They know that their experiences and souvenirs will be manufactured and probably not so different from the ones of another visitor. But they still buy the package because they know they will get a very enjoyable experience.

Queues in the Epcot Test Track ride sponsored by GM

Stephen M. Fjellman notices the following:

• Rides are often experiences during which the visitors are inactive. The only way for visitors to do something, take part in the magic, is at the exit, when they land to the souvenir shops. What is purchased then is not only the souvenir, but the only mean for the visitor to take an active part in the magical experience.
• The sentence “If we can dream it, we can do it” from the EPCOT Future world is ambiguous. Who is the ‘we’? Mr. Fjellman argues that the first ‘we’ means us, but that the second one most probably means ‘corporations’. EPCOT is promoting the pursue of new technologies for human good (if not, goods), but even if we dream it, most of us will not build the new technologies, only the corporations having the ability to do so will. So, the message is actually to trust corporations and their technologies.
• Often at Disney World, rides about the future are actually about the past future: the future as it was imagined few decades ago (e.g. space mountain, Spaceship earth). This paradox is tolerated by the otherwise perfectionism of the Disney imagineers because it achieves one objective: provide reasonable credibility to the statement that corporate technology is good for humanity.  Real future technologies are too controversial, old ones are better suited.
• Animatronics are part of the Disney World experience since its creation. Why are they so important to Disney? The idea to imitate humans with robots could be seen as frightening. But again, the goal of Disney is to promote industrial consumerism. Many of its rides are sponsored by corporations such as GM, Exxon and Kraft. All are heavily involved in high technology. So, the human face of animatronics and their harmless appearance makes technology friendly and acceptable to consumers.
• The Disney movies and the Disney rides often alternate scaring or frightening scenes with cute and happy ones. Bruno Bettelheim made the point that this technique used in fairytales is useful for the kids education, it is a “symbolic presentation of difficult and dangerous psychosocial contradictions”. But the goal of Disney is not to educate kids, it is to make money.  Scaring children to then make them happier is a good way to sell more cinema tickets and merchandising .

Vinyl leaves from Animal Kingdom

How come these kind of messages are not consciously detected by visitors? According to the book, it is thanks to cognitive overload and decontextualization.

• Someone is constantly overloaded by stimuli in Disney World, “it is with the overriding of visitors’ capacities for making discriminations that Disney metathemes may take effect.”
• Disney World is a patchwork of enchanted medieval castles, colonial history, future technologies, Moroccan markets, zoos, characters from Disney cartoons, American presidents, rides sponsored by car manufacturers, Mt Everest, astronomy, dinosaurs and so on. It is the world summarized. But the trick is that if you remove an element from its context, it loses a lot of its meaning. “By pulling meanings out of their contexts and repackaging them in bounded informational packets, decontextualization makes it difficult for people to maintain a coherent understanding about how things work.” It is then easier to tell the Disney history: “Idealized United States as heaven, history is decoration. Colonialism was fun, the colonized cute (but a little stupid). How nice if they could all be like us – with kids, a dog, and GE appliances – in a world whose only problems are avoiding Captain Hook, the witch’s apple.”
• “The Disney strategy is to juxtapose the real and the fantastic (real birds mixed with fake sounds of birds), surrounding us with the mix until it becomes difficult to tell which is which.  A kind of euphoric disorientation is supposed to set in as we progressively accept the Disney definition of things. We are asked to submit to a wilful suspension of disbelieve in the ostensible interest of a complete entertainment experience.”

I personally love Disney world. I agree with the analysis of Mr. Fjellman, but after all, this is not so shocking for someone already leaving in such a consumerist society. What is much more worrying is the trend to build everything like Disney World: hotels, cities, even museums. The risk is to forget that Disney World is only one vision of an utopian society of happiness, a corporate one. Life is so much more than that.

Do you think this article is fair to Disney World? Would you like to defend the park against some of the claims made here? Or do you think the reality is even darker?

Futuroscope

Though I’m a big fan of themed ride experiences and am working in media innovation,  I never visited the Futuroscope park of Poitiers. It’s a little more than an hour away from Paris by TGV, so I decided to address this gap during my previous trip to the French capital. What makes the park unique is in my opinion the mix between new technologies and the French cultural exception. Let me explain why.

Futuroscope is the second biggest theme park in France, after Disneyland Paris resort. It is radically different from other theme parks as it focuses mainly on simulators and audio-visual experiences. The look of the park is also unique with its futuristic buildings from Denis Laming.

Futurist

augmented reality

The park doesn’t have the budget of Universal Studios or DisneyWorld and I was surely not expecting to see the best rides on earth. The Futuroscope is more a place of innovative experiments, on a small budget. There, you can test rides which will probably become available on a bigger scale in major theme parks. For example, the Dances with Robots manufactured by Kuka gives a first idea of the sensations one might expect from the Wizarding world of Harry Potter ride due in 2010. Another example is the Future is Wild developed by Future immersion, which will surely inspire new rides with its smart use of real settings, augmented reality and interactivity.

But beyond those technical  innovations, the Futuroscope also incarnates the French cultural exception. The movies such as Dynamic Vienne, the Wings of Courage or Destination Cosmos are combining high technology for mass consumption with a real French personal touch. The narrations are more elaborated and less gimmicky than what you could see in a typical theme park. They genuinely put more emphasis on the education and sensitivity, but still manage to be enough entertaining for everyone.

Dynamic Vienne by Olivier Chavarot is a simulator not using the usual digital images but instead old fashion acrobatic stunts. The movie is a little old, 1993, but is still one of the best simulator movie I have ever seen. Car racing is a great way to get thrilled and this movie masters the genre.

The wings of Courage by Jean-Jacques Annaud is a 3D movie with, exceptional fact, a real story. It attempts to go further than giving you a blast. The 3D makes everything look more real and the story feels much closer to you.

Destination cosmos in the planetarium does also go beyond showing the public a series of spectacular blowing pictures. It takes the time to drive the audience to a much more thrilling sense, the infinity of the universe.  It is in fact a US movie and is called Passport to the universe (music from Stephen Endelman). It is usually played in museums and I found some bad reviews on the Internet saying it is too slow. Culture is not only about production but also about perspective and selection. It is in that sense that playing a show like this in the Futuroscope adds to its French particularity.

Sculptures

On the down side, the futuristic lay out of the park makes it a little cold and monotonous. The sculptures from Toutain help to make it a little bit warmer on that respect. I was there at the autumn season and they could have also better adapted the park to a low attendance (by for example focusing on one lively area instead of letting the public spread all over the place at night, with most of the shops / restaurants closed).

Christophe Bruchansky