I guess I was ten months old the first time I went to Disneyland. I don’t remember too much about it – for me, the Disney experience meant Orlando. I went as a preschooler, I went six months after EPCOT opened, I went (briefly) in 1988 – and then the big trips. I went to Walt Disney World three times – 1989, 1995 and 1997 – and each trip had an impact on my life that was totally unforeseeable at the time. They all involved multiple days, staying in the resort, the whole experience.
So my first adult trip to Disneyland in 2001 was a bit of a head-turner. Here it was, the Magic Kingdom, just as it had been – but not really, and not quite. There was this huge mountain in the middle, for one thing, and the castle was smaller, and what the hell is New Orleans Square–? It was new, and interesting, and just different enough to make for a contrast with the Disney World redux trip in 2003, which was itself fraught with peril of only the sort that two weeks at home with the family can create.
And then last October, we went down to Anaheim again, the first of what would become three trips in twelve months. And not only did we have Disneyland, we had Disney California Adventure, which is now officially my favorite Disney park.
California Adventure might strike you as an odd theme for a park. But it works. You have the big boardwalk area, which provides some of the buzz of the Disney Boardwalk in Orlando while calling to mind the Santa Cruz and Santa Monica boardwalks or even the long-lost Playland-by-the-Sea in San Francisco (original home of the It’s-It). You have the replica whitewater ride next to the replica Yosemite lodge. You have the Hollywood area, which captures a lot of what you’d get in Disney-MGM (or whatever it’s called now) in Orlando. You have “A Bug’s Land” which really is the vanguard of incorporating new Disney product that doesn’t really fit the traditional “Magic Kingdom” layout. There’s even a replica wine country trattoria (complete with AMAZING tenderloin) and a faux-winery building that does a great job showing off the early design concepts behind what’s going to be in the park next.
There’s California Screamin’, which is handy if you’ve ever wanted to be shot out of a railgun. As coasters go, this is the best thing – you board the cars, they roll down into position, and no foreplay, no windup – BANG, shot out of a linear induction motor at 55 miles an hour straight up a hill, and the devil take the hindmost. There’s the Animation building, featuring Turtle Talk with Crush, perhaps the greatest interactive movie tie-in of all time – this animated turtle on a huge screen is computer-rendered IN REAL TIME and carries on a conversation with your little kids in full surfer dialect. (‘tcha!!) And there’s Soarin’ Over California, which will absolutely put a lump in your throat and make you proud to reside in the Golden State.
There’s World of Color, which is an amazing feat of engineering that draws on decades of Disney content, and there’s a reason you’re better off buying a dinner package that includes a pass to the VIP area. And in a couple of years, there’s Cars Land, yup, Radiator Springs come to life. Hell, down one alley there’s even a few Victorian homes and a replica Palace of Fine Arts.
Basically, what California Adventure is to me is a completely new Disney experience, new to me in the last year, unfreighted by baggage of years gone by but still alive with that Disney sense of unreality. It’s as exciting as being given a new Star Wars or Indiana Jones movie unexpectedly – only it turns out to be really, really good.
Now I just need that high-speed rail line built…