Disneyland

Places of Family Amusement are not new in the world, and there has certainly grown a science to them not unlike that of keeping a travelling circus intact, or maintaining national parks. But more than those who came before them, Disney and his creative team focused on the presentation of Disneyland, ensuring that it would be as controlled and predictable a fiction as their movies, records and television shows had been up to that point.

Walking into Disneyland is like a entering the sweeping shot of a fantasy movie, with an town square reaching forward to a breathtaking castle. Every aspect of the park was said to be planned ahead with the energy of one of the Disney animated features, with artists from various productions brought in to work on the look and style of the place. Actors from many Disney features appear as the voices of birds, announcers and narrators in the park.

But all this wonder hides how extensive the Disney planning really is.

When you enter Disneyland, you are actually on the top floor of a giant complex of underground facilities, providing most of the "heart and health" of the park with security, employee facilities, garbage collection and other important administrative aspects all hidden from view. You don't see garbage stacked outside Disneyland waiting to be picked up, and you never see an employee shuffling out to the lot after a long day. The park has even developed its own nomenclature to insulate gritty details from the public; a protein spill is the code that a child's vomit needs to be mopped up.

It is said that Walt Disney planned the park to the point of the placement of wastebaskets: He supposedly took a snack that might be purchased at a stand, walked until he finished it, and decreed that no trashcan would be further than that distance from any other. There are few places outside of Las Vegas where such grandiose and breathtakingly anal plans would be taken seriously, both in implementation and in believing that such forethought existed. And Las Vegas was nowhere near Disneyland's level for years.

This has caused such urban legends as the "Disney Tapes", where Walt Disney was said to have left film loops to be played after his death for several years, his forward-thinking genius so amazing he could predict what would be awaiting the company in the ensuing years; this is actually a core part of Isaac Asimov's Foundation series of novels, and not the real case. It is thought that promotional films that Disney made before his death regarding EPCOT and other projects were the source of this rumor.

Some Flaws in the Facade

There have been several deaths at Disneyland, more than the company would prefer to admit. The possibility of getting maimed or killed in the park is just something they would rather you didn't concern yourself with.

On Christmas Eve in 1998, Microsoft employee Luan Phi Dawson was killed by a flying metal cleat, ripped from the sailing ship Columbia by a mooring cable. The rope should not have been secured, because the vessel was coming in to the dock too fast to stop. But the rope was supposed to break when it was stretched too tight, in order to prevent a piece of the ship from getting torn off and hurting somebody. (Evidently nobody ever tested this theory.) Lawyers for the park settled with the Dawson family in October 2000 for an undisclosed sum.

Other results of Disneyland have been a wholescale change in how Amusement Parks have had to compete over the years, with larger and larger parks being built across the country to compete with them. Busch Gardens, Six Flags, and other gigantic parks have overrun the tiny tourist attractions of old, and while it may not be a major tragedy to miss out on paying $5 to see an old mummy, playing upwards of $30 to wait around in lines to get on yawning metal thrill rides is no great experience either.

There is worthwhile discussion of the effect that Disneyland has had on the surrounding town of Anaheim.

Even Disneyland itself was dwarfed by Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, whose ambitious plans, massive scale, and frightening governmental aspects are worthy of an entry in itself.

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