Making the Tiki Birds Breathe - English 325
You should never ask me about Disney World. Not because I’ll complain about it, but because I won’t stop talking about the rides and shows and scenery and you’ll have to force me to shut up. I’ve been to Walt Disney World so many times that I’ve lost count. When we were very young, my brother and I assumed that all the planes we saw in the sky were headed to Orlando, regardless of what direction they were going. For a long stretch of years, it was the vacation we took, besides trips to Grandma’s house in Michigan. I have a deep sense of nostalgia and love for the place.
However, this affection has changed since my childhood. As a little girl, I enjoyed Disney World for the princesses and the rides, and I let myself get lost in “the magic of the moment.” Now that I’m older, I’ve become much more aware of how far Disney goes to create that feeling in the parks. But seeing what’s behind the curtain hasn’t ruined the appeal for me – in many ways, it’s only enhanced it. Those who are diehard fans know this feeling. For those who have never been to Disney World or only have vague memories, it’s probably best described as the ultimate place to escape from reality.
The story of how Walt Disney World came to be really starts with Disneyland, the first Disney theme park ever built. Located in Anaheim, California, it opened on July 17, 1955 (1). There were difficulties with the funding and construction of the park, and doubts surrounding the viability of such an operation. In the fifties, Disney was not the megacorporation that it is today. However, it became a runaway success. Though popular, it quickly ran into a problem of space. Thousands of people would be coming to see “the house that Mickey built,” so hotels, food joints, and other businesses sprouted around the park, cutting off any extra space. Furthermore, all these businesses broke the mood that Walt Disney was attempting to create in the parks – one could look over the façades of the themed buildings and see advertisements. Over several decades, Disneyland expanded to 450 acres (2), but it wasn’t big enough to hold all the ideas that Walt Disney and other designers had come up with. Enter Central Florida. Chosen for the state’s high tourism levels (2), the area around Orlando was chosen because there were no competing parks and the price of land was low. The company started buying land in 1964 (2), but not as the Walt Disney Company. Instead, they created names of fake companies so that landowners wouldn’t drive the prices up. For a while, there was speculation among Floridians about what would be going on the land – a factory or proving grounds for a car manufacturer, maybe. (It’s only recently that I realized that no one has ever commented on how morally justified it was. It was cunning, certainly, to disguise the company’s identity, but was it a form of lying? Then again, I’m no business major, so perhaps this isn’t even a problem for a corporation.) Eventually, word got out that the Disney was buying the land, but by that point, they had already spent $5.5 million to buy nearly 28,000 acres of land from over 100 property owners. Later, they bought 2,000 more acres of land, bringing the total size of the park to 30,000 acres (2). The park officially opened on October 1, 1971.
The number sounds – and really is – impressive, but it’s hard to grasp that until you’re actually there. I was reminded of how large the park is when my mom, my brother Jacob, and I went there for a return visit this past summer. For full disclosure, I was twenty, Jacob was twenty-one, and my mother would slap me if I revealed her age. (Jacob told his friends that he would be going to Florida for a vacation with his family, but did not say specifically that he would be going to Disney World. Let’s face it, he would lose his reputation with his buddies if he said that much.) In the past few years, Disney World has started a service called “Magical Express,” in which buses will pick up visitors from Orlando International Airport to drive them to their hotels, and even take their checked bags from the airport and deliver them to their hotel rooms later in the day. (Disney loves the words “magic” and “magical”.) As you drive onto the property, the small TV screens on the bus show a video of assorted costumed characters getting into shenanigans around the parks. The video is fairly long – due to the size of the resort, it may take you as much as twenty minutes to get from one location to another, and longer to get from the airport to the hotel. Looking away from the screens and out the windows, you can see how many trees and plots of grass are around you. Disney World is still sitting on acres of undeveloped land – enough to handle any of the plans they come up with in the decades to come. Though the main draw of the resort is the four theme parks, the World contains plenty of other venues. If you have time to go to many other places besides the parks (you probably won’t), there’s the Wide World of Sports Complex, two water parks, five golf courses, and an entire shopping and dining area called Downtown Disney. Besides that, there are twenty-four different hotels on the property, ranging from “value” to “deluxe.” With the massive size and the glut of attractions, the bus system that Disney runs for its resort guests is invaluable. May heaven help you if you attempt to navigate this place on your own.
The acreage and the distance all add to the feeling that you’re in a different reality, or at the very least, taking a break from the “real world.” Disney World completely avoids the problem Disneyland had with outside businesses ruining the mood. With large patches of nothing in between the attractions that Disney has created, there’s nothing to distract from the “show.” The comparison between a show and the park is an especially apt one. Disney uses a special kind of jargon, almost like a different language. For instance, the people working there are never “employees.” Everyone, from the concierge service to the waiters to the ride operators is a “cast member.” Furthermore, they are not wearing “uniforms,” they are wearing “costumes,” and these outfits have been specially designed to match whatever location they’re working in. Cast members at the Haunted Mansion will be wearing navy blue and dark green maid’s and butler’s costumes. Skippers on the Jungle Cruise will be dressed in khaki explorer costumes. The thousands of people who visit the parks each day are not “tourists,” they are “guests.” Any area where only cast members are allowed to be is referred to as “backstage.” When watching a show or movie or reading a book, the best that the artists can hope for is that their audience gets wrapped up in the story.
Drawing the viewers out of the story is one of the worst things that could happen. To that end, a large part of what made the Disney theme parks successful was their goal to immerse the guests in a story. Nearly all of the rides are given backstories. Some are easy to figure out – Peter Pan’s Flight is about, you guessed it, scenes from the movie “Peter Pan.” Others, like Space Mountain, have the guests parse out the story on their own. The line for the attraction winds through futuristic hallways. Portholes give views on star fields and space stations. Some walls have maps of different systems in the cosmos, and one area has walls that appear to be checking on the ship’s status. The implied story is that you’re going to go on an interstellar journey in a rocket ship; the reality is that it’s an indoor roller coaster in the dark. Even if a guest doesn’t know or care about a ride’s backstory, those details help create a mood and set a scene.
The best example of a backstory is for Expedition: Everest in the Animal Kingdom. The Animal Kingdom is one of the four theme parks on property, and is focused on animals, nature, and different locations where they can be found. For a long time, this park had no intense rides, so higher-ups decided that a roller coaster would be a good addition. The Imagineers took over from there, coming up with ideas and research. (Imagineers is a portmanteau of “imagination” and “engineer.” They are the ones who come up with the creative aspects of a ride, with some dabbling in the technical side.) The idea they settled on was the yeti, guardian of the mountain, trying to defend his turf from the guests on the train. At this point, the Imagineers could have done something similar to the decades-old ride Matterhorn in Disneyland, which features an abominable snowman: build a mountain, build a track, build a robot yeti, and call it a day. Instead, they decided to dive into their theme and make sure everything was accurate. Several Imagineers took trips to Nepal and brought back prayer flags, statues, and other objects, many of which were placed in the queue of the ride. Despite the fact that there is no evidence of a yeti, the Imagineers consulted experts on what such a creature might look like, then built their largest animatronic yet based on their input. They did enough research that the Discovery Channel could air two different documentaries about the creation of the ride! But with all that, it’s sometimes easy to forget that at its core, it’s just a roller coaster. Why did they even bother with all that work? Impressive coasters have been built without theming. The ride does need to match the theme of the Asia section of park where it’s located, but does that really warrant taking hours-long flights to distant countries?
The answer can be found in a story told to me by a tour guide. I heard this anecdote on a “Backstage Magic” tour that took you behind-the-scenes to see the inner workings of a few rides, as well as places like the laundry warehouse, the greenhouses, and a warehouse called the Central Shop. That last location is where ride vehicles, large installments, ride and animatronics are built. Walking past rows of out-of-place machinery, the guide told us about the creation of the Enchanted Tiki Room in Disneyland. The show is essentially robotic birds, flowers, and tiki statues singing along to music. (It was probably very amazing when it first opened, but nowadays, the birds look ancient compared to modern technology. I suspect the reason the ride still exists is for nostalgic and historical reasons.) As people were building the robotic, singing birds, Walt Disney demanded that the Tiki birds should breathe.
“Why?” asked the Imangineers, “No one is going to notice if they do.”
“Only 1% of the people will notice if the birds breathe, and 99% won’t,” he said, “But if they don’t, then 99% of the people will notice.”
And so, there is a pump in every bird’s chest that causes it to move in and out, and serves no other purpose than that. On that particular trip, we never saw that attraction, but on the most recent visit we sat through the show. Only because I knew to look did I see the birds’ chests move. So, why does Disney World bother with that much work for one measly coaster? They have to make the Tiki birds breathe.
It’s this attention to detail that changed the focus of my affection for the parks. In some ways, I feel that I should be worried over how much control Disney has over those acres, or guilty because Disney is a megacorporation and therefore (according to popular sentiment on corporations) evil. But it takes so much effort to pull off these illusions of place and mood that I have a hard time criticizing them. And just like the breathing of the Tiki birds, every minor detail has to be in place. When I was younger – possibly late in my elementary school years – I looked down at the pavement in the Asia section of the Animal Kingdom and noticed that there were imprints of bicycle tracks and leaves in the pavement. My mind didn’t comment on it, in the sense of, “They put in that much detail,” but merely accepted it and moved on. That’s the goal, really, to create a seamless reality for the guests to experience.
The Disney parks are not so much a “virtual” or “alternate” reality so much as they are a different version of reality. It’s a happier version, a safer version, a cleaner version. It’s clean not just in the literal sense (though the janitorial staff does exemplary work), but in a metaphorical sense. The parks tend to gloss over the darker aspects of themes, or are blissfully (perhaps deliberately) unaware of inaccuracies. Adventureland in the Magic Kingdom, for instance, isn’t so much a reflection of actual exotic locations so much as it is what designers in the 1950s and 60s perceived places like Africa and the Polynesian islands to be like. Similarly, the Polynesian Resort is more of a postcard Hawaii than any real island. Main Street U.S.A. is the first “land” of the Magic Kingdom, and the avenue that leads to the iconic castle. It’s a bright, cheery town at the turn of the twentieth century, and based off of Walt Disney’s memories of his hometown in his boyhood. A place so clean and organized never really existed, but it’s nice to think about and walk through. The entire premise for the Hollywood Studios Park is built on this idea. One of the plaques near the entrance says, “We welcome you to a Hollywood that never was – and always will be.” The park has the aesthetics of the glamour of Hollywood before World War II. Here, beautiful actors make the best films, and every up-and-comer makes it big. No one needs to be told that this could never happen, in neither the past nor the present, but it’s a nice illusion to spend a day in. Perhaps only the smallest children believe that they’re really in a castle, or the Tiki birds do speak and sing, or that they just escaped the Yeti, but even older visitors can enjoy the setting.
That’s the mysterious addictive quality of the parks, what Disney calls “magic.” It’s the chance to ignore the real world for a while, to take a break from problems and stress.
Sure enough, I get oddly excited when I see pictures of the park. In the Magic Kingdom, Disney is expanding Fantasyland to add attractions based on the Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast. Of course, there were plenty of pictures of the soft opening, and my (long-suffering) roommate had to sit through me cooing over the scenery and the design.
“Oh my gosh, it looks just like the movie! I want to go there so bad now…” I whined over blue and gold pictures of the restaurant in the Beauty and the Beast area. “Carmen, look! They took the time to make a waterfall! And look at those rocks, they look so real!”
This is one of the few occasions where she has given me an “I think you’re crazy” look. Books, movies, TV shows, and comics are completely normal things to be a fangirl for, but theme parks? Not so much.
When I went on the trip this past summer, I wasn’t completely sure why my brother was going. For my mother, I knew that she enjoyed the parks and had plenty of nostalgia of taking us there when we were children. As for Jacob, I couldn’t tell. My best guess was that he was in it for the rides. It had been at least four years since the last time he’d been, and it was interesting to see him react to everything again. One thing stuck with me: after getting off Dinosaur, a thrill ride that ends with a dinosaur’s head with large pointy teeth leaning out to nearly eat the car, he commented, “You know, the Carnotaurus seemed a lot bigger when I was kid.”
“You were smaller,” replied my mother.
That wouldn’t be the first time he would make such a comment. For him, some of the rides seemed smaller, slower, and less scary. Was it that he lost the “magic?” In some ways, I had, too – Peter Pan’s Flight didn’t seem nearly so magical to me now that I noticed the repetitive motions of the animatronics, the garish black light paint, and the tricks the designers played on the viewer’s perspective. Did Jacob enjoy himself? I’m sure he did, on most of the rides, at least. For the ones he didn’t like, he got a kick out of being snarky. It was only two months later that I finally asked him what he thought about the place.
“Disney was cool back when we were kids,” he said, “But we aren’t kids anymore.”
Works Cited
(1.) Unknown author. “Over the last almost 60 years Disneyland has become a household name.” DLDHistory.com. <dldhistory.com/2k11timeline.asp?Page=16>
(2.) Walt Disney World News Department. “Walt Disney World History.” The Walt Disney Company, 2009. <www.wdwmagic.com/walt-disney-world-history.htm>