Do new Disney attractions need to be tied to existing intellectual property?

The degree to which attractions need to be based on existing, proven intellectual property (IP) is the kind of debate that I am generally trying to avoid with this blog. In part because my connection to Disney is forged in happy memories from the past and hopefully more from the future, and so I'm just not that interested in negativity (even when such negativity can often be justifiably held). The other reason in this specific case though is that I actually don't have a strong opinion on this topic either way.

My childhood memories absolutely involve many of the classic attractions based on original IP like Pirates of the Caribbean, Captain EO, the Tower of Terror, or the Carousel of Progress, however, I also loved to look out for anything related to my favourite characters at the time such as those from The Lion King or literally any link back to The Muppets. I begged my parents to take me to Islands of Adventure when it opened, despite not being a big rollercoaster fan at that age, because I absolutely needed to experience just walking around a land based on Jurassic Park.

In short, I think being able to explore lands and characters you are familiar with is one of the great pleasures of visiting an immersive theme park, and I'd argue it would be very difficult to create a land like Galaxy's Edge or the Wizarding World of Harry Potter without hundreds of hours of canon to refer to to build the universe. I also concede that ideally, Imagineering would still have space to sometimes add fresh new characters and stories and not feel restricted by what can sometimes feel like shoe horned attempts to get characters into the parks.

As we track the progress of the various construction projects around the world, what interested me here was (a) the degree to which existing intellectual property really has taken over the parks, and (b) which movie franchises in particular are being used in attractions and what that possibly tells us about what is to come in the future.

The End of Attraction-Original Characters and Stories?

As we all know, one of the great blessings - and sometimes curse - of the Disney Parks is that fans are typically way more invested in how the entertainment product is made rather than simply consuming an output and voting with their wallets. If your local movie theatre stops showing movies you like, you'll probably just go somewhere else or watch a movie at home. If Disney changes something in a Park though, folks have opinions! And this is - generally, I think - a good thing. In my opinion, we need more folks who care deeply about things that are important to them, even if you don't understand why this particular menu item being 86ed is worthy of a 7,000 blog post. This assumes that the complaints are made respectfully and people can move on after disappointment, but in short, I am a supporter of People Who Care.

Now, where I do personally push back is when folks are a little bit liberal with the truth. You can be furious that they took away the fixin's bar from Pecos Bills, but you can't be mad that "they have oversaturated the parks with Moana" when there is, by my count, exactly one relatively minor attraction across all twelve parks.

We can each decide how much IP we'd like in the parks, and that answer can vary over time. I used to be a bit of an EPCOT purist and didn't want much IP in the park outside of perhaps a well place, on message, attraction like the Circle of Life movie in The Land pavilion. But, then I had kids and we spent the better part of a day chasing Princess autographs, eating with Princesses, and seeing some of their favourite characters in attractions, and my once rigid view softened somewhat. Gun to my head, I would still prefer that Guardians of the Galaxy - a great attraction - wasn't in EPCOT, but I also think that the message of the Moana Journey of Water attraction is a solid fit with its ties to conservation, and adding Coco to the Mexico pavilion would make total sense to me.

So, without further ado, the below data is how intellectual property has shifted across a selection of the parks over the last few decades. I was focused on the US parks here because they have been around the longest and tend to have the highest push back from folks who don't want IP messing with their nostalgia. I might come back and visit the remaining parks in a future post.

If you use the opening few years of Disneyland as a reference point then, yes, we've seen a significant increase in the parks. 1969 isn't of course Disneyland's opening day, but I'm using that as a proxy for the "golden era" of Disneyland as by that point we had added attractions which I think today are seen as quintessential Disneyland (and many visitors would probably assume they have been there since 1955). This list includes the Enchanted Tiki Room, it's a small world, Matterhorn Bobsleds, and the Haunted Mansion, and it's perhaps notable that in the 15 years or so after Disneyland opened, Walt continued to refine and expand Disneyland's offerings but didn't immediately fall back on existing IP, but rather allowed Imagineering to forge new paths.

In fairness, the catalog of hit movies and beloved characters wasn't as long as it is today, but it was a pretty deep bench with Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, Bambi, Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, Lady and the Tramp, Sleeping Beauty, 101 Dalmatians, The Sword in the Stone, Mary Poppins, and The Jungle Book all having been released by the end of the 1960s. As it was though, we didn't really see many significant IP-based additions to the park until Michael Eisner's era (1984 - 2005) and if there is a time when things "changed" in terms of putting IP in parks, it's really this period rather than Bob Iger, who tends to be blamed on social media today. At Disneyland, for example, we saw 10 new attractions added between 1987 and 1999 all of which were tied to an existing movie franchise other than Captain EO which was essentially based on the IP on a person - Michael Jackson - rather than a fictitious character. What is perhaps even more notable about that run is that Disney weren't really adding beloved Disney classic characters to the parks, but rather looking to capitalize on the latest trends with Indiana Jones, Star Wars, Toy Story, and Roger Rabbit characters all finding their way into the parks.

In summary, while it's fair to say that we see more movie-IP-based attractions than during those opening decades at Disneyland, (a) I don't think the shift is as dramatic as some suggest, and (b) if there has been a shift, it primarily came in the 90s rather than in the last few years. EPCOT is arguably an exception as I think management did perhaps get more internal pushback on maintaining the "educational" lean of that park.

For the attractions that are currently being built, if we assume they are largely based on existing IP, my second question is which movies in particular are drawing getting their attractions green lit. Anecdotally, I have heard that a mythical "billion dollar" threshold needs to be met before management will pay enough attention, but given that this list includes only two animated features which aren't sequels, that seems like an overly narrow definition. If nothing else, we know that tv streaming popularity will now play a major role too, and this is presumably what is supporting adding two Encanto based attractions to Tropical Americas in Animal Kingdom, despite that movie only doing $256 million in worldwide gross at the box office (it's also, in my opinion, one of the top two or three Disney movies of the last decade, but I assume my own personal rankings aren't carrying too much weight over at Burbank.

In the next post we'll dig deeper on which franchises specifically are being used in attractions, and what that might tell us about future developments.