parktrotter

We finally got an extended look at California Adventure, the newer park next to Disneyland. The park has been there a while now, and I think I understand why attendance has been a disappointment for the company. We don’t come here often, and when we do, I want to do two things: relive my childhood visits and recreate them for my own children. Those pursuits keep us entirely in Disneyland proper.

One other problem: the architects did a magnificent job recreating California environments in the California Adventure park. Behind the big roller coaster (”California Screamin’”) is a little plot of terrain that is supposed to evoke beach dunes, and it is uncanny: it could so easily have come out looking like sand in a kitty litter box, but instead looks just like a real dune. The landscape around the Grizzly Peak Recreation Area looks like an actual Sierra forest, or close enough; the trees are redwoods, I think, and combined with the ferns planted all around them, they make for a convincing imitation. The steaming landscape next to the Grizzly River Run looks just like the thermal areas in Lassen Volcanic National Park. And so on. And here’s the problem for me: the park recreates a bunch of places that I’d rather be instead of being stuck in greater LA, and that leaves me depressed.

So I was vaguely disgruntled even at the start of our visit, and was genuinely pleased when all the rides we went on were–fun, I guess the word is. We went on Soarin’ Over California, watched the Muppets 3D extravaganza, and then Lewis and I rode the carousel while Jen and Dustin went on California Screamin’. We in fact went on Soarin’ and Screamin’ twice–and time now for an obvious joke about how Disney can afford the g’s and should provide them. We finished with the Toy Story Midway Mania ride, which was frankly an excuse to use the Toy Story character licenses in an almost random fashion. I kept my irony firmly in check and enjoyed myself.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS