"Fake" as manifested in Pirates, Haunted Mansion, Tom Sawyer Island, etc., is more than fine, it's necessary for Disneyland to be what it is. "Fake" is required in order to give people experiences that they couldn't otherwise have, and to make things look like they otherwise wouldn't (Big Thunder Mountain, for example. I'll even throw the Jungle Cruise in as a place where "fake" is okay, because there's no way to deliver the experience that the Jungle Cruise wants to give you by using real animals.)

Where "fake" becomes a problem is when it substitutes for reality in places where reality would have been more than adequate. The one example that really hits home for me is the first one I cite. In the Canada pavilion, Disney could have more easily finished their film with a real, authentic Canadian folk song than write their own song. Then we'd actually be getting a slice of the real Canada, which is supposed to be the point of the film and, indeed, of Epcot itself. But they didn't. Why they did that, we can only guess, but this approach can sometimes feel like the folks at Disney think that their take on Canada is more compelling than what Canadians themselves can come up with.

"Disney Magic" works when it enhances what it's applied to. (Undoubtedly, Big Thunder Mountain is a better coaster than it would have been were it just unthemed steel.) But in the Canada pavilion, they put some extra "Disney Magic" on the movie, and the result is worse (regardless of what you think of the song itself, which is certainly pleasant), less authentic than it could have been, in a park whose goal is to deliver at least a little piece of authenticity.

My point with this "mistake" was that Disney hadn't come out with any rides like Pirates of the Caribbean or Haunted Mansion in the forty years since they premiered...and given their stature, doesn't that seem like quite an oversight?

Some of the responses to this point ("What about Epcot rides like World of Motion?" and "What about Indy and Tower of Terror?") got me really thinking about what I was trying to say here. The first question was easier for me to deal with. World of Motion and the other Epcot attractions aren't about immersing you in atmosphere; they're trying, documentary-style, to tell a story through dozens of vignettes, all with distinct locales. That's very different than Pirates and Haunted Mansion, and I'll argue that makes the Epcot attractions completely different sort of experience than Pirates.

The second question was tougher. While writing the article, I was able to draw a clear distinction between a ride like Tower of Terror and a ride like Pirates, because of the former's much shorter length. That might sound like a silly distinction to make--does the length of a ride really make it into a different kind of ride entirely?--but I felt that it did, in the sense that the length of time that you spend immersed in the ride directly impacts the experience. But the more I thought about it, the more muddy my thinking became: what if you count the time you spend in the queues for Tower of Terror and Indy, which are in fact far more rich in detail than anything in the actual ride for Pirates or Haunted Mansion? Maybe the distinction isn't as clear as I thought...

Furthermore, I remembered one Disney ride that I think clearly falls into the Pirates/Haunted Mansion mold, and that's Tokyo DisneySea's "Sindbad's Storybook Voyage." Though it uses a cuter, animation-like visual style, there's no doubt that it places the rider into a world and immerses the rider for a long (in fact, very long) time.

 

So: Disney has used this formula at least once* in recent history...and perhaps rides like Indy and Tower of Terror aren't as far-removed from Pirates and Haunted Mansion as I had thought. Regardless, I'm going to stand by my contention that Disney hasn't mined the Pirates/Haunted Mansion formula to nearly the extent it could. These two are the defining Disney theme park rides; that they're still regarded as the pinnacle of theme park attractions forty years after their opening indicates a missed opportunity.

And, of course, people's hackles get raised when I suggest that Epcot might be one of Disney's biggest mistakes. Commenter F-Ticket (comment #33) told a beautiful story about how performing in front of Spaceship Earth felt like the culmination of his childhood dreams. Of course, that's an amazing feeling that is no doubt genuine, and I don't mean to suggest that the emotions people have for the place aren't real, or even misplaced.

I just can't help feeling, however, that Epcot would be a better place had it not been burdened with an edutainment mission that is, in practice, fantastically difficult to achieve. I think even Epcot's staunchest admirers would admit that the park has had a very hard time living up to its ambitions: ambitions that, to be honest, didn't come from Walt Disney (what he was looking for was completely different) when that money might have been used in other ways that could have provided every bit as much joy, without the corresponding headaches and bumps in the road.

No doubt that there are tons of other mistakes that I didn't list, but HansReinhardt (comment #55) listed one that I think could be very prescient: the possible mistake of opening a theme park in China. The verdict is still out on whether Disney made some bad choices in how it invested in this park, or whether the idea is bad to its core, but clearly there is something here that needs to be fixed. (I don't think any municipal or federal government anywhere in the world is chomping at the bit any longer to have a Disney theme park in their district, and that's something that may haunt Disney for a long time to come.)

I have no illusions that I've put an end to any of the arguments I started, but hopefully I've made myself a little more clear. And for those of you who still don't agree...see you on the discussion boards! Thanks for reading, and thanks especially for your useful comments!