Resistance to Disney charm is futile
Despite his initial cynicism, Graeme Tuckett is well and truly won over by Disney’s magic.
‘So, how far are we now from Disney World,’’ I ask. Steve the driver has been a complete legend. From the time he picked my sleep-deprived self up from Orlando International Airport until now, 20 minutes of banter later, he’s been a one-guy fount of knowledge on all things Disney.
Steve grins back at me in the rear-view mirror. ‘‘You noticed how them signs on the freeway changed to yellow and purple ones a few miles back? Well, that means you’re in Walt Disney World. You’re driving on Walt’s road right now, sir.’’
Disney bought this land in 1964 and 1965, via hundreds of separate transactions. All told, the combined parcels added up to about 104 square kilometres. Or, as Steve likes to put it, ‘‘that’s twice the size of Manhattan, sir.’’
The land had been a part of the once-vast territories of the native Seminole people, but they had been driven away at gunpoint in the mid-19th century. When Walt bought it, it was mostly unoccupied and undeveloped swamp, prone to flooding, and happily flogged off for as little as $100 an acre.
Walt died in 1966. His three-pack-a-day habit did him in at 65. It was left to brother Roy Disney to delay his own retirement to oversee the construction. The first attractions and hotels were open for business in 1971.
Today, Walt Disney World in Florida is the most popular vacation resort on the planet. It sees a million people a week through the doors. The World contains four theme parks, more than 30 hotels, two water parks, and several golf courses. It employs more than 74,000 people fulltime, and countless more contractors.
This place is, literally, another world. And I have a week here.
I’m here to write about one attraction.
The new Star Wars-themed interactive ride Rise of the Resistance, which opened on December 5.
We – a gang of eight, loosely termed ‘‘the
Australian media’’ – were previewing it the day before it opened. Before that, we were free to roam.
First up is the Animal Kingdom. It’s already dark when we arrive and the place is glowing. The paths are alive with luminescence. The centrepiece of the entrance is the massive tree of life.
By day it’s a hell of an impressive piece of sculpture and visualisation, even in a place that is not exactly short of scale and jaw-dropping craftsmanship.
But, by night, this complicated and resolutely three-dimensional structure becomes a massive video screen, somehow hosting seemingly twodimensional images from Disney classics, as well as waterfalls, swarms of butterflies, and a couple of unexpected polar bears.
I know a tiny bit about making illusions with light, but I can’t begin to imagine how Disney’s ‘‘imagineers’’ (Walt did love his cutesy jargon. Just go with it) have made this work.
Our host Craig, who has been working for Disney for more than 30 years, tells me the display changes with the seasons. I’d come back just to watch that light show again.
We walk on, and the sheer scale of the place starts to open up.
Animal Kingdom is 230 hectares. Most of them are devoted to a real zoological park, with African lions, gorillas, tigers, giraffes, and a host of other African and Asian wildlife living in recreated natural landscapes.
Florida does a pretty good job of imitating an equatorial climate and the 40,000 imported trees and millions of plants, grown from seeds imported from 37 countries, are thriving.
Every other park I visited during the week put on a fireworks display, every single night, of at least the size of Wellington’s Matariki show.
Animal Kingdom, because of its most important guests, is the only Disney park in the world that doesn’t.
Later that night, over a couple of beers in a hotel bar that seemed to be floating in the middle of a lake, I got chatting with a couple of genuine rollercoaster tourists.
Kim and Brian had come here to ride the rollercoasters and maybe join the expected sixhour queues that the opening of Rise of the Resistance will host. (Disney then surprised the world by rolling out an app-based ‘‘virtual queue’’ system that actually worked. Google it.)
Earlier that night, the couple had ridden Animal Kingdom’s Expedition Everest rollercoaster, and had been a little underwhelmed.
‘‘Shee-it’’ says Brian, as only Americans do, ‘‘we went on one up in Carolina that dropped us 300 feet [91.4 metres] at 95 miles [146.4km] per hour. Nothing compares.’’
(I worked out later that Brian was talking about the Fury 325, in Charlotte, North Carolina. It does indeed drop its cargo 99 vertical metres at 153kmh. Note to editor: I’m free next week.)
But, for me, Expedition Everest hit the spot. No, it’s not the pure rush of terror that roller junkies crave. But it is fun, with a roaring yeti and a brilliant everything-goes-dark-and-then-you-rollbackwards section that actually freaked me out for a moment, until I realised the kids behind me were still cheering, and I figured I was probably going to survive the night after all.
It wasn’t until two days later, riding the Slinky Dog Dash in Toy Story World that I’d enjoy a coaster more.
Toy Story World also has a completely mad 4D ball-shooting ride called Toy Story Mania, which reduced me to a giggling kid for the duration.
If you get the chance, ride Expedition Everest at night. The lights of Orlando and the rest of Walt Disney World sparkling in the distance, beneath one of those only-in-Florida sunsets, make for a stunning backdrop to the fun.
There are boat trips, stage and light shows and other attractions for days in the Animal Kingdom.
But the showstopper is the Avatar-themed
Flight of Passage. The ride is a 3D simulation of riding a banshee, the flying dragons of Pandora. But nothing in those words, or anything you have heard, can prepare you for the sheer beauty and thrill of it.
Wellington’s Weta Digital worked for four years to create the 3D film that is the main component of Flight of Passage. It was worth every second. I went back three times, and would do it again.
Tuesday was all about Epcot and the Magic Kingdom. These are the original Walt Disney World parks, with The Magic Kingdom opening in 1971 and Epcot in 1982.
The Magic Kingdom is everything you imagine when you think ‘‘Disney’’. It was conceived as an East Coast recreation of Disney’s original Anaheim Disneyland, which had been in business since 1955.
Legend has it Walt had noted that while most of his Disneyland visitors came from nearer the West Coast, nearly three-quarters of North Americans lived east of the Mississippi.
The Magic Kingdom feels and plays like exactly what it is, a bigger, newer, and even more spectacular version of the 1955 park that was its inspiration. This is old school, Main Street USA, barber shop quartet, that duck’s not wearing pantsstyle Disney.
But if you look a little closer, there are some seriously 21st-century flourishes, too. The entire park is built off the ground, to accommodate a series of tunnels that link every attraction.
Florida’s groundwater level is so high (the whole state sits on a bed of porous rock), that digging tunnels was impossible.
While you’re thundering around the Thunder Mountain rollercoaster (do it!) or just wandering through the surprisingly enormous Cinderella Castle – Walt Disney World’s version of the absolutely iconic Fantasyland Castle at Disneyland – it’s kind of cool to remember this whole place is floating two storeys above the ground, even before that rollercoaster starts its climb. Wednesday arrives. Rise of the Resistance day. It is afternoon before the technicians are ready, but it doesn’t disappoint.
I was expecting another Flight of Passage-style motion simulator, but the reality is far different.
Rise is an immersive, theatrical experience, full of human actors, animatronics and real interactions. It is every bit as impressive as expected, but also like nothing I’ve seen before.
Listen, when the editor emailed to ask if I was up for this trip, of course I said yes.
I also knew there was a part of me just a little cynical of the whole exercise.
But the truth is, I liked this place a lot. I liked the obvious and unfakeable enthusiasm the crew and performers have for the place. I liked that every crew member I met had been promoted from within, and how some of the most senior managers started out as cleaners and shuttle drivers.
I liked the obvious and blazingly successful commitment to diversity and inclusion across all ages, races, sizes and genders among the crew, too. Disney has been getting it right (or, at least, better) on screen these past few years.
The recent commitment to consult the indigenous Sami people of northern Europe on how their culture and music was depicted in
Frozen 2 was a long way past the ‘‘woke washing’’ we expect from Hollywood.
So while I might still grimace at the hideous irony of an Avatar ride built on land from which the original inhabitants had been driven by armed settlers and soldiers, I could at least get behind some of the trajectory Disney is on today.
The company is also on track to reduce carbon use to half of its 2012 levels, by next year.
The solar farm near Walt Disney World – yes, it is shaped like Mickey’s head – produces enough clean electricity to power two of the four parks. And more are being constructed.
The truth is, the place and the people won me over in ways I wasn’t expecting. If you’re anything like me, I can pretty much guarantee this place will shatter a lot of your preconceptions.
I’d go back tomorrow.