Pardon Our Dust: Disney's California Adventure
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Next up is the remodeling of the park entrance and Sunshine Plaza. Beginning this summer WDI will begin replacing the facades for all of the stores along the entrance corridor. It is likely that construction crews will operate on each side of the boulevard separately (and not concurrently). The Golden Gate Bridge will be altered once the monorail ceases operation later this year. The overall look will evoke the architectural styling of California with Mission and Arts & Crafts which will dominate the new entranceway to mirror Peter Dominick's majestic Grand Californian. However Tim Delaney's iconic mural tile-work is likely to be spared in its entirety. The entire project should be completed by late spring 2007.
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The titanium hub-cap at the heart of Tim Delaney's Sunshine Plaza will be removed. This is particularly ironic in that the material-of-choice was specifically selected as it would not fade for 7,000 years! Sadly the icon will be removed. However it is highly unlikely that Golden Dreams will be transferred to a smaller theater at this location. Tom Fitzgerald's show suffers from the park's underwhelming attendance figures and an overly intricate entrance that does not effectively convey the attraction within. The problem is that WDI do not currently have anything on the agenda for this space and therefore have opted to keep the status quo (hence the recent paint-job on the exterior). It would make no sense to leave such a large building (and one with such a showy entrance with the Palace of Fine Arts dome) sitting idle. However the idea of Golden Dreams as an introduction to DCA is popular amongst management. A transportation-themed hub is the most likely concept to replace the Sunshine Plaza to add some kinetic energy to the area. This would thematically fit with the stationary train (that hold Bur-r-r Bank Ice Cream, Baker's Field Bakery and Engine Ear Toys).
Personally I have mixed feelings about this entire project. I can appreciate that people do not feel that the entrance plaza is welcoming or even evocative of the California spirit but I do feel that the capital expenditure could be invested better elsewhere (particularly on new attractions in the San Francisco building and Paradise Pier). I do not see any commercial benefit to place-making this part of the park next. Guests are unlikely to turn away when they reach the esplanade based on their first impressions. Another striking irony is how the entire look of the area came into being in the first place. No-one (and I mean no-one) at WDI wanted to be art director on the entrance. Conceptually the design team could not reach a consensus about how the park should unfold. Up to the plate stepped Tim Delaney who was already trying to finalize his Paradise Pier section of the park. He had little time or resources with which to conceive of the "postcard" vision of the entrance. The sun is always behind the icon hence the innovative (and usually defunct) heliostats to direct the sunlight on to the sun icon. It would (and will) be immensely difficult to create another park icon in that space due to the sun. Now another design team will be given the opportunity to create a warm and inviting environment for DCA guests.
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Despite numerous rumors Block Party Bash isn't being retired any time soon. There are several possibilities open to the future of this parade. A rehashed version will debut at Disney-MGM Studios as early as later this year (although more likely to be early next year). Disney/MGM Studios management believe that Block Party Bash has the high energy that their park needs (and the existing Star and Motor Cars parade seriously lacks) and have been lobbying hard to get the parade packaged off to Florida. Disney Creative Entertainment have designed another Pixar parade featuring all of the Pixar characters that will definitely run at either DCA or Disney/MGM Studios but the final decision on which coast the new parade will debut has not yet been made.
No change to Disney's Electrical Parade is expected but there is big news on the horizon for Paradise Bay. In the Disney's Animal Kingdom Pardon our Dust article I mentioned that park management believed that the most immediate concern was extending guest stays into the evening. For DCA that anxiety is even more pressing and acute due to the number of dining facilities. Disney's LuminAria proved that a lagoon show could capture guests inside the park later in the day although the pyrotechnic approach caused too many problems for guests and cast members alike. Disneyland management at the time had no interest in ensuring LuminAria's success and hence the show only ran for one brief holiday season. Hence DCA could be about to get a new show that is simply the cutting edge of design and technology.
I recently spent time with a creative bunch of folks at WET Design. You may not have heard of this innovative Sun Valley, CA business but you will have seen or heard of their work. WET Design is the design concern at the heart of aquatic architecture. WET were responsible for both the Bellagio Fountains in Las Vegas, NV and the Caldron at the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympic Games. WET Design has proposed a new fountain show at DCA that will blow your mind. For the first time the engineers have been able to create fountains that take physical forms beyond the projection fans typical of Fantasmic! The current working title for the project is Disney's World of Color and the show script calls for the opening title sequence of the TV series to be reproduced by WET Design. It appears that everyone's favorite Disney Creative Entertainment director Steve Davison is firmly behind the project and is the driving force at WDI. Although other sites have already mentioned the lagoon project I'm told that it is highly unlikely that World of Color could debut this year. At present the show has not been approved by management and Davison is currently immersed in the final few months of his Mythica project for Tokyo DisneySea that will be unveiled in July 2006.