Bob Iger and Disney Hate America
Disney paved paradise and put up a parking lot.
Three weeks ago, I took a three-day trip to Walt Disney World. Although I did go to Magic Kingdom for a day in March, I had not visited Animal Kingdom or EPCOT in five years. As for Hollywood Studios, I cannot really remember the last time that I visited. When I decided that I would be spending an extended period of time at Disney World for the first time in a while, I knew that I wanted to analyze my experience with the intent on writing about it.
As I planned the July trip, I had confidence that I would have a flurry of observations and opinions for my trip, largely, because so much has changed in Disney World in those five years. Even though many rides have opened since June 2019 — the time of my last multi-day trip to Disney World — I identify two primary, significant changes in that time period beyond all other changes.
In December 2019, Disney opened Galaxy’s Edge (the Star Wars land) in Hollywood Studios.
In January 2023, Disney closed the iconic ride Splash Mountain in favor of Tiana’s Bayou Adventure, which opened to the public on June 28, 2024.
On Monday, August 12, 2024 — Disney announced a new change that I will add to this list. It may have the biggest symbolic and physical impact of Disney World since the opening of Animal Kingdom in April 1998. Magic Kingdom will be closing Tom Sawyer’s Island to replace it with a land themed after the Pixar franchise Cars.
This announcement alone would upset fans of Disney World, but perhaps the most jarring news lies in the fact that Disney is filling in the iconic Rivers of America section and the Liberty Belle steamboat with cement to create physical space for the Cars expansion.
The destruction of Rivers of America and Tom Sawyer Island defaces Walt Disney’s vision of Disneyland and Disney World to a degree that Disney has never done before. As the unsolicited ambassador of Florida to the United States, I have a compulsion to speak on this topic because of Disney World’s integral role in the history and culture of the Sunshine State. Beyond just Florida, this decision says something about American culture as a whole. Lastly, I want to explore Disney’s overall abandonment of Americana in their parks in the past two decades.
The Looming Threat of Epic Universe
Before I dive into these drastic changes in Magic Kingdom and Bob Iger’s jettisoning of American patriotism in the parks, I want to dissect the opening of Universal’s Epic Universe park in Florida and my own experience at Disney World in July. Theme park enthusiasts love to spell doom for the Disney parks. I always have an aversion for declaring death of something as long-standing of American institutions as Disney World in Florida and Disneyland in California.
I have seen much of this commentary in the past two years or so as Universal Studios Florida nears the completion of its third park Epic Universe, perhaps the most ambitious park in the world when it opens. Once this park debuts sometime in spring or summer of 2025, many people believe that this park will overshadow Disney World in terms of thrills and thematic immersion and lead to Universal toppling Disney as the major player in Orlando.
I have doubts about this prediction about Epic Universe because of the inherent advantage that Disney World has as a contiguous resort (or “world”) seemingly hermetically sealed from the rest of Orlando. Disney has infrastructural advantages that Universal will never have, and Disney just has so much more money to invest in parks if they want to do so. Since 1995, Magic Kingdom in Florida has topped the list of the most-visited theme parks in the world, and it is hard to defeat that branding. Before Magic Kingdom took the top spot, Disneyland Tokyo briefly held it in the early 1990s, but — before then — Disneyland in Anaheim sat at the top of the list.
Here is a list of the top 10 most-visited theme parks in the world in 2022, the most recent year that we have. I also see 2022 as a good year because I think that attendance in the parks had largely re-stabilized from the pandemic in 2020 and 2021.
Magic Kingdom (Florida, USA) — 17.1 million
Disneyland (California, USA) — 16.9 million
Universal Studios Japan — 12.4 million
Tokyo Disneyland (Japan) — 12.0 million
Universal Islands of Adventure (Florida, USA) — 11.0 million
Disney’s Hollywood Studios (Florida, USA) — 10.9 million
Universal Studios Florida (USA) — 10.8 million
Tokyo DisneySea (Japan) — 10.1 million
EPCOT (Florida, USA) — 10.0 million
Disneyland Park (France) — 9.9 million
Even though Islands of Adventure outranks every Disney World park except for Magic Kingdom and Universal Studios Florida outranks EPCOT and Animal Kingdom, Universal still has a major gap to close if they want to overtake Magic Kingdom and Disneyland, the two crown jewels of Disney parks across the world. Specifically, Islands of Adventure — the more attended Universal park in Florida — would need to increase attendance by over 55% to match Magic Kingdom a few miles south in central Florida.
That’s a total of 6.1 million more people a year who would need to visit Islands of Adventure. If this already established park at Universal Orlando Resort has a large gap to close, then I cannot imagine that a completely new park can close the gap quickly either. The overarching, cohesive Disney IP will just always dwarf the recognition of Universal IP and even their crown jewel of their Harry Potter lands. Universal opened Hogsmeade in Islands of Adventure fourteen years ago. It took a while for Universal to escape financial doom in the Great Recession and achieve a stable position, attained because of the embrace of Harry Potter.
Moreover, I do not buy that Epic Universe will immediately shoot past Magic Kingdom in attendance or cultural relevance although I have great anticipation for the new park. I have confidence that it will be the most immersive park in the world, but the quality of immersion cannot erase over five decades of dominance by Magic Kingdom.
What Do I Mean by “Death”?
I used the provocative word “death” in the title of this article. If I believe that Magic Kingdom will continue to dominate attendance numbers worldwide, how can Disney be nearing “death”? No, I am not speaking of a financial or popularity death. Rather, I speak of a death of vision, largely forged by Walt Disney himself in the 1950s and 1960s when he was developing both Disneyland in California and Disney World in Florida.
My Personal Trip to Disney World in July
Before this announcement to complete deface the Rivers of America in Magic Kingdom, I had the recent context and experience of visiting Disney World in July. I attended all four of the parks and had just a good of a time as I have ever had at Disney World. I particularly was looking forward to visiting Galaxy’s Edge (in Hollywood Studios), which had not opened yet when I went to Disney World in July 2019. I did go to Disney World in March 2024, but I could only visit Magic Kingdom and not Hollywood Studios.
From the standpoint of thematic immersion, Galaxy’s Edge absolutely astounded me. I think that it outdoes all of Universal’s Harry Potter lands, which I believe previously held the title of best themed land in an amusement park. Pandora in Animal Kingdom also comes close, but nothing can beat Galaxy’s Edge. I do not even really care about Star Wars, and I do not think that someone needs to know much at all about Star Wars to highly appreciate Galaxy’s Edge. I have a very surface-level knowledge of the original series and the prequels, and — of the sequels — I only saw The Force Awakens back in 2015. I do not see myself watching the two other sequels anytime soon.
Review of Galaxy’s Edge
Rise of the Resistance
The E-ticket ride of Galaxy’s Edge is Rise of the Resistance, likely the most expensive dark ride ever constructed at an estimated cost of $450 million, and Disney built two of them — one in Hollywood Studios in Florida and one in Disneyland in California. Without a doubt, Rise of the Resistance is the best theme park ride that I have ever ridden. With a price tag of nearly half a billion dollars, Disney could not afford to have a ride that disappoints, and Rise of the Resistance does not disappoint.
The animatronic of Lieutenant Bek at the beginning of the ride might be the best ride animatronic ever made when you consider the entire surroundings of the Resistance ship.
And no ride has a psychological and immersive shock quite as powerful as when the star destroyer abducts you and you walk into a room of 50 realistic stormtroopers standing against you.
Your interactions with the antagonist Kylo Ren provide the perfect amount of suspense, especially, when he uses the Force to control the movement of your ride vehicle, which have an extremely effective trackless ride system. This system maximizes immersion because you cannot see where your vehicle is going next, thereby, increasing the suspense and the stakes. On the other hand, a visible track and route reduce immersion and realism because you can see exactly where you will be going. As much as I love Pirates of the Caribbean, it does not necessarily immerse me as much as it could because I know exactly where the boat is going.
Finally, I would say that the AT-AT walkers in the hangar impressed me the most. They each have a towering height of 50 feet. I imagine that these are exactly what AT-AT walkers would look like if we lived in the Star Wars universe.
Oga’s Cantina
I enjoyed the other ride Smugglers Run, but that is a a simple motion simulator with a screen. I strongly prefer dark rides with practical effects, but Galaxy’s Edge did have one more element that astounded me: Oga’s Cantina. Disney recreated the cantina from the Star Wars films and made it into a bar where you can order alcoholic beverages, themed after the Star Wars universe.
This bar provides a great 45-minute respite from the chaos outside and has the ideal level of immersion as well. Not everything has to provide the thrills of a ride to create that immersion, and I will delve further into that thought once I return to the destruction of Tom Sawyer Island and Rivers of America.
With Oga’s Cantina, Disney clearly did not just want to recreate an unimpressive Butterbeer stand, which Islands of Adventure has at Hogsmeade. Instead, Disney enhances the experience with an animatronic performer and luminescent tanks and liquids to maximize immersion. In addition to the impressiveness of the physical bar, stormtroopers will periodically raid the bar and inspect for members of the “Resistance”, which puts you into the narrative of Galaxy’s Edge. Disney has made a themed land that incorporates you into a story, and — at any theme park in the world — I cannot think of any other land that does so. Even the impressive Hogsmeade in Islands of Adventure does not have a story. Rather, you are just sauntering through the immersive architecture and shops in the land.
Defacing Rivers of America and Tom Sawyer Island
From August 9 to August 11, Disney hosted its annual D23 Expo in Anaheim, California. The company holds this every year to make major announcements about upcoming developments in all realms of the Walt Disney Company: film, cruise ships, parks, etc. Based on my choice to write this article, I had the most interest in the parks, and the associated parks panel brought the worst news out of the entire event.
Josh D’Amaro, the chairman of Disney Experiences, gave the presentation on the updates to the parks. Disney Experiences constitutes one of the three major divisions of the larger Walt Disney Company. Although people know it as the division that manages the parks, it goes beyond just the parks and manages the cruise ships, Disney Vacation Club, and other smaller endeavors by the company. This division also includes Disney Storyliving, the company’s foray into themed gated communities.
Experiences vs. Parks
On June 15, I wrote a piece on the dystopia of Disney Storyliving. I entitled it “What Happens After ‘Happily Ever After’? Disney Has an Answer for $2 Million”. In the article, I specifically explored the first development Cotino — in Rancho Mirage, California. I bring up the venture again because it sets the stage for what Disney is doing with their destruction of Rivers of America and Tom Sawyer Island, but the entire idea of Storyliving by Disney demonstrates Disney’s peculiar use of the word “experiences” in the name of this division.
Until 2023, Disney called this division “Disney Parks, Experiences, and Products”, which obviously still has the word “experiences”, but the word “parks” comes first. The fact that “parks” comes first in the name implies that Disney is putting its foremost emphasis on the parks although the division covers many different other aspects of Disney. In 2023, the word “experiences” subsumes the word “parks”, thereby obscuring the importance of the parks to the Walt Disney Company.
For a huge media conglomerate like Disney, we need to analyze the semantics of these branding changes. They do everything for a reason. A shift in branding and naming of a major division signals a broader mission drift by the company overall. Perhaps the change does not necessarily indicate that Disney is abandoning the parks, but it rather indicates that perhaps the purpose of the parks has changed. As I argue in my June article on Disney Storyliving, Disney wants to consume your entire life.
When you see the word “park”, you think of a specific physical place. You go to Magic Kingdom for a day. You go to Disneyland for a day, but you then leave. You might go back to a Disney resort hotel, but — within a few days — you will leave the reservation. You might live nearby in Central Florida, or you might have traveled all the way from the United Kingdom or Brazil to go to Disney World. Either way, your trip is a discrete, finite experience. You enter the park on a specific day, and you leave on a specific day. Once I left Disney World to drive back to Naples, I knew that I was no longer staying at the park. I re-entered normal life.
From a branding and wording standpoint, the word “parks” limits Disney because a park is a defined, geographic location — but Disney’s use of the term “experiences” blurs the lines of reality. When does an experience end? I do not know. An experience constitutes a psychological phenomenon. Sure, you might physically leave Disney World, but you might go home and watch Star Wars on Disney Plus because Galaxy’s Edge impressed you so much. You might go on a Disney cruise next summer. In a few years, you might eventually choose to live in the Disney gated community of Cotino and never escape Disney. All of these interactions with Disney create the experience, and the term “park” limits it. No, the park is distinct from neither the movies nor the cruise. It’s all the same experience really.
As I wrote in my June 15 article about Disney Storyliving in Cotino:
Living is a story, and you can live that story forever. What exactly happens after “happily ever after”? Disney Storyliving happens.
But Disney Storyliving does more than just passively “happen”. You write the story. Disney is giving you the power. You can now write the chapters in your own storybook come to life.
You just have to fork over two million dollars first.
That story extends beyond living in Cotino in Rancho Mirage, California. You can go to Disneyland in Anaheim, stream Disney Plus, and go on a cruise ship. It’s all a part of the experience. You never need to escape the Disney bubble.
Announcements about the Parks
I am underscoring this distinction between “parks” and “experiences” because it establishes a certain irony with Disney in 2024. Their emphasis on “experiences” implies that they want to maximize immersion, and — in a way — they have successfully done that over the past decade. Earlier in this article, I sang the highest of praises of Galaxy’s Edge and, especially, the ride Rise of the Resistance. I can easily sing the same praises of the Avatar land Pandora, which opened in 2017 in Animal Kingdom, but both of these lands came before 2020.
Later, I will expound on the importance of the year 2020, but let’s first go through the major announcements that D’Amaro made at D23 last week for the parks. I will begin with the other parks and, then, end with Disney World — which serves as both the crown jewel of Disney parks and the beating heart of the central region of my beloved Florida. I analogize Florida to a binary star system. We have a population of 22.6 million people and a GDP of $1.3 trillion. All of those people and all of that money orbit around two stars in the solar system: Orlando and Miami. Everything else largely emanates from those two cities.
Disneyland Resort (Anaheim, California):
Out of all of the Disney parks/resorts across the world, Disneyland opened first on July 17, 1955. Disneyland created the mold for all of the parks that succeeded it. In fact, every Disney resort in the world has at least one “castle park”, modeled very closely after the original Disneyland. The most integral similarity between all of them lies in the fact that they have a central princess castle in the park, but they have many overlapping cloned attractions as well. These are the castle parks and their opening dates:
Disneyland — July 17, 1955
Magic Kingdom — October 1, 1971
Tokyo Disneyland— April 15, 1983
Disneyland Paris — April 12, 1992
Hong Kong Disneyland — September 12, 2005
Shanghai Disneyland — June 16, 2016
The model must work because Disney has spent billions of dollars (adjusted for inflation) six different times over six decades on three different continents. The concept clearly has a degree of cultural universality. Out of the top ten most attended theme parks in the world, four of them are castle parks. The top two in the world are Magic Kingdom in Florida and Disneyland in California.
At D23, D’Amaro announced that Disney would be debuting an audio-animatronic of Walt Disney himself at the Disneyland Park in celebration of the 70th anniversary of the park. Disney will put the Walt animatronic in the same attraction as Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln, the first audio-animatronic that Disney ever made.
Disney opened its second park in Anaheim — Disney’s California Adventure — on February 8, 2001. Disney’s California Adventure will get an Avatar-based land, which Animal Kingdom has in Florida. Their Avengers Campus — based on Marvel’s Avengers — will receive two new attractions, including one that tours Tony Stark’s lab. Visitors will be riding in a robotic arm as Universal uses in their multiple clones of the ride Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey throughout the Universal parks worldwide.
Disneyland Paris has two parks: Euro Disneyland and Walt Disney Studios Park. Euro Disneyland opened in 1992, and Walt Disney Studios Park opened in 2002. Euro Disneyland did not receive any major attractions, but Walt Disney Studios Park will receive a flume ride based on the 1994 animated classic The Lion King. Disney made sure to clarify that they were basing the ride on the 1994 original version and not the photorealistic 2019 remake. Even though the 2019 version is the highest-grossing Disney film of all time. It grossed $1.7 billion worldwide and stands at the ninth highest-grossing film of all time.
Shanghai Disneyland and Hong Kong Disneyland will both receive attractions based on Spiderman, an IP that Disney acquired when it purchased Marvel in 2009. We do not know exactly what type of Spiderman attraction Hong Kong Disneyland will be getting, but Shanghai Disneyland will get a rollercoaster.
Disney World (Florida): Disney World had the most announcements out of any resort. This makes sense since Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Disney agreed on a 15-year development deal for the parks on June 12, 2024. After a quarrel between the governor and Disney for the prior two years, they agreed that Disney could invest up to $17 billion in the Florida parks over that 15-year span. This figure gives me confidence in Disney’s future dominance in Florida in the next two decades despite Epic Universe’s imminent rise. The figure of $17 billion dwarfs the $1-2 billion that Universal will have ultimately put into Epic Universe by its opening next year.
All four parks at Disney World received some sort of announcement. EPCOT will be reopening Test Track (really a second reboot and redesign of the ride) in 2025 and receiving a space-themed lounged underneath Spaceship Earth. At Hollywood Studios, the motion simulator ride Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run in Galaxy’s Edge will receive a new mission.
Hollywood Studios will also get Monsters Inc. Land, which will include a long-awaited E-ticket attraction based on the iconic door chase scene in the 2001 Pixar film. The attraction will serve as the first suspended rollercoaster in the history of Disney parks.
Animal Kingdom will get its first new attractions since the opening of Pandora in 2017. Disney is re-theming DinoLand USA into a land called “Tropical Americas”, which will better coincide with the other continent-based lands in Animal Kingdom: Africa and Asia. Disney will be replacing the opening-day ride Dinosaur with a new Indiana Jones ride, taking a note from the popularity of that ride at Disneyland in California.
The same Tropical Americas land will receive a dark ride based on the 2021 film Encanto, which takes place in Colombia. Disney will also re-theme the attraction in the Tree of Life. Next year, a show based on the 2016 film Zootopia will replace the attraction It’s Tough to Be a Bug, based on the 1998 Pixar film A Bug’s Life. This re-theming makes sense as Disney will be releasing a sequel to Zootopia in 2025.
None of these updates so far in Disney World seem very controversial. They just are seemingly standard updates that we should expect of a theme park. All the attractions seem like good ideas, but the controversy came when D’Amaro made announcements about Magic Kingdom, the flagship park of Disney World and the most-attended theme park in the world.
For a year or so, Disney had floated the development project “Beyond Big Thunder”, which refers to development a plot of swamp behind the rollercoaster Big Thunder Mountain Railroad in Frontierland.
The tweet above from Scott Gustin shows the land behind Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, so most people thought that — if Disney was going to build major new attractions at Magic Kingdom — it would be developing previously undeveloped land behind Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. Therefore, Disney would not have to destroy anything already in Magic Kingdom. Disney World’s biggest advantage over Disneyland in California is the space. In Florida, Disney does not have to destroy attractions in the same way to create new ones as Disneyland often has to do. Along with the lack of snow, Walt Disney decided to buy the huge plot of land in Central Florida to construct his second theme park for this very reason.
This year’s D23 finally gave us specific information about what “Beyond Big Thunder” actually meant, and D’Amaro announced two new lands in Magic Kingdom: Villains Land and a land based on the Pixar series Cars. The Villains Land, based on the villains of the Disney films, elicited great applause as it adds a dark element previously missing from Magic Kingdom. Disney is clearly creating this land to compete with the land Dark Universe in Epic Universe. Dark Universe is one of the four main lands in Epic Universe, and Universal is basing it on the classic Universal Monsters franchises.
However, the Cars land engendered the most ire because, as I have said, Disney is paving over the iconic Rivers of America and Tom Sawyer Island to create the Cars land.
This graphic from DSNY Newscast shows where Disney might develop the two new lands in Magic Kingdom. The yellow region for the Cars land destroys Tom Sawyer Island and the southern and most visible part of river, and the purple region for Villains Land destroys the northern extent of the river.
When I saw this news, I immediately started to believe that Disney was actively trying to scrub all patriotic elements of Disney World from the park. Disney also was abandoning all efforts to create beauty in a park to maximize capacity through a purely dollars-and-cents profit maximization lens.
What Disney’s Destruction of Rivers of America Says
Loss of Beauty
It’s hard to quantify the profit value of putting natural beauty in a theme park. Okay. I know that it’s all artificial, but — in the United States — we have a rich history of making artificial beauty in public spaces. Central Park in Manhattan perhaps serves as the best and most notable example.
Earlier, I pointed out how successful and universal Disney’s template of a castle park has become. The first four castle parks (out of six total) feature iterations of Rivers of America. Disneyland in California, Magic Kingdom, and Tokyo Disneyland all call it “Rivers of America” despite Tokyo Disneyland obviously being in Japan. These three parks also have a Tom Sawyer Island. Disneyland Paris calls its analogous river “Rivers of the Far West” and puts Big Thunder Mountain Railroad on the island where Tom Sawyer Island would otherwise have been.
Each of these four parks has a Frontierland (although Tokyo Disneyland calls it “Westernland”). Walt Disney dedicated the land as a “tribute to the faith, courage, and ingenuity of the pioneers who blazed the trails across America”. This is a very emphatically American part of the park. All four of those parks has an iteration of Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, and all of them besides Disneyland Paris has had a Splash Mountain. Disneyland in California and Magic Kingdom in Florida have converted their versions of Splash Mountain into Tiana’s Bayou Adventure. Only Tokyo Disneyland has kept Splash Mountain for reasons that I will explain later.
Regardless, the Rivers of America section serves as an iconic nucleus of this part of the parks. It evokes nostalgia about Americana even at the parks in Paris and Tokyo. Each of these four parks has an equivalent of the Mark Twain Riverboat (called Liberty Belle Riverboat in Magic Kingdom). Mark Twain’s 1876 book The Adventures of Tom Sawyer serves as a staple of literature for American children, and children in each of those parks can engage in adventure in the equivalents of Tom Sawyer Island, now getting demolished in Magic Kingdom.
I can easily envision consultants in a fluorescent-lit office in Burbank, California, calculating exactly how much lost revenue and capacity Magic Kingdom incurs every hour by continuing the operation of Tom Sawyer Island and choosing to not pave over Rivers of America. I am sure that they did intensive market research about Cars serving as the best IP to plop onto the cement that will fill the river, but getting rid of an integral water element destroys the ambience of the park. Magic Kingdom becomes a concrete maze. Imagine the heat beaming off the asphalt in Cars land in the balmy Florida summers.
The destruction of the river in Magic Kingdom strips the “magic” away from Magic Kingdom in the effort to maximize capacity. Think about the 12 acres that the water and the island waste. Think about the two E-tickets that we can squeeze in there. Think about the quick-service restaurants. Think about the plastic Tow Mater toys that we can sell. The river has an unquantifiable benefit to all park-goers, and getting rid of the more “magical” elements could easily lead to a decline in attendance to these parks in the future and an increase in attendance to Epic Universe a few miles north of Disney World.
Disney is a corporation that need to maximize profits. I get that. That often requires destroying old parts of the park, but this decision completely demolishes the original dream of Disneyland and Magic Kingdom, which cherished Americana. I emphatically did not make that claim when Tiana’s Bayou Adventure replaced Splash Mountain as you can read in my June 7 article titled “Florida Man vs. Disney Adults and Splash Mountain”. Splash Mountain was not integral to Walt’s vision, and replacing it doesn’t irrevocably alter the landscape of the world’s most popular park. On the other hand, paving over Rivers of America makes Magic Kingdom unrecognizable. Bob Iger clearly does not see eye-to-eye with Walt on the role of Americana in the parks.
If Disney has decided to pave over Rivers of America and Tom Sawyer Island at Magic Kingdom, will they do it in California, France, and Japan too? France is a bit strange because Big Thunder Mountain Railroad lies on the island, but they could easily pave over the river. Is Disneyland in California immune to these changes? Perhaps Disney treats that park differently because Walt actually remembers that one? At this point, I think that Disney would destroy whatever it needs to destroy to put in a new IP. Magic Kingdom does not have the same space issues that Disneyland does, yet Disney is destroying the river in Magic Kingdom. Therefore, why would they not do it in the more space-deprived park in Anaheim? They easily could.
Does Bob Iger Hate America?
Here I am getting into my most cynical and conspiratorial takes on Disney’s decision to destroy the Rivers of America and Tom Sawyer Island. I contend that Bob Iger is getting rid of these parts of Magic Kingdom because he and Disney executives hate America, or they — at least — have no allegiance to America as Walt did in the 1950s and 1960s when he was developing Disneyland and Disney World.
Walt’s Patriotism
We can see Walt’s patriotism in the parks today. I demonstrated some of this patriotism in his dedication to Frontierland in Disneyland from 1955, but many attractions at Disneyland and Disney World center on educating the American youth about our history. Sure, Frontierland presents the American West in a fantastical way, but it is rooted in Walt’s love for our country.
At Disneyland and Magic Kingdom, you first enter into Main Street, USA — a romanticized version of Walt’s hometown of Marceline, Missouri. Maybe it’s kitschy, but it’s a theme park. It’s saccharine. Literally. Disney pumps the scents of waffle cones and ice cream throughout Main Street, USA. Nonetheless, it shows a love for his country even if it is a rose-colored nostalgia from his youth.
Walt’s first audio-animatronic wasn’t an IP. It was Abraham Lincoln. He presented the animatronic at the 1964 New York World’s Fair before he took it to Anaheim in 1965. Disneyland has been running his show — Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln — ever since. Magic Kingdom has an analog — the Hall of Presidents — which features an animatronic of all 45 U.S. presidents accompanied by a video about the history of the presidents in the beginning. The animatronics of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln always speak, and the animatronic of the incumbent president gives the final speech.
Neither Moments with Mr. Lincoln in California nor Hall of Presidents in Florida receive the most traffic compared to other attractions, but they serve as a reminder of an old time in the histories of Disneyland and Magic Kingdom. The Hall of Presidents is even within a land in Magic Kingdom called “Liberty Square”, which amalgamates architectural styles from colonial America, accompanied by the steamship. All the rivers have a steamship evocative of the mid-19th century.
The Splash Mountain Problem
The problem with the steamship is that it alludes to a vague time in the mid-19th century. It’s not quite clear the exact decade to which the steamship and Tom Sawyer Island refer. Why does this matter for the 19th century? Well, we could be in the antebellum South, before the abolition of slavery, or the postwar South during Reconstruction. Therefore, a critic could say that Disney is idolizing this time period. By extension, Disney is promoting slavery and/or Jim Crow segregation laws after the Civil War.
Splash Mountain had the exact same problem, on which I elaborate in my Splash Mountain article. I gave a link to it earlier in this article. Disney based Splash Mountain on its 1946 film Song of the South, controversial because of its depiction of former slaves and romanticization of the South at that time. Furthermore, the anthropomorphic animals have distinctly African-American voices because, for the most part, African-American actors were voicing them. The most prominent depiction of a former slave came with the live-action character Uncle Remus, who looks fondly on his past, implied to be when he was a slave.
Uncle Remus never appeared on Splash Mountain. Only the animated anthropomorphic animals did, yet Disney closed Splash Mountain in both California and Florida in 2023. The steamboats, Tom Sawyer Island, Rivers of America, and Frontierland could see a similar fate, and we are obviously already seeing that fate in Magic Kingdom. On the other hand, the characters from Cars cannot be problematic. They’re just anthropomorphic automobiles. It is convenient to destroy the entire land and replace it with an inoffensive IP and denude it of any reference to American history.
We could use the same logic about the Hall of Presidents. How many problematic men get an animatronic? Twelve presidents — including the deified George Washington and Thomas Jefferson — owned slaves. Why do they get representation in the attraction? Once you get rid of Washington and Jefferson, isn’t it just easier and cleaner to get rid of all of them? Does Donald Trump really deserve an animatronic (although he already has one)? Besides, we can always say that the attraction takes up valuable space and stops Disney from maximizing profits, the only non-problematic action from Disney’s perspective. As long as you maximize profits, you can do anything. (I will be diving more into that truth at the end of the article.)
The Last Surviving Splash Mountain
Disney may have closed Splash Mountain at Disneyland in California and Magic Kingdom in Florida, but Disney initially had three iterations of Splash Mountain at their parks across the world. The one in California opened first on July 17, 1989. The one in Florida opened on October 2, 1992 — but, one day before on October 1, Disney opened another clone of Splash Mountain in Tokyo Disneyland.
While Tiana’s Bayou Adventure replaced Splash Mountain in both Disneyland and Magic Kingdom, Tokyo Disneyland never replaced their version. They have made no announcement to do so, and I do not think that they will replace it in the near future. When I was first researching Splash Mountain for my June 7 article, I saw that Tokyo Disneyland never closed their version, which intrigued me. Why was Tokyo Disneyland different? Did the Japanese visitors just not find any offense in the IP from Song of the South? After all, I did know that Disney only released Song of the South on home video in Asia. Despite all these possibilities, wouldn’t Disney just close all of them down? Disney Plus was releasing new content about Princess Tiana anyway. Even if Japanese visitors did not find offense in Splash Mountain, surely Disney would want to stick newer IP in its Tokyo park to promote Disney Plus.
I soon found out that Disney does not own the Japanese parks, which include Tokyo Disneyland and DisneySea. A Japanese company called the Oriental Land Company (OLC) has 100% ownership of the Tokyo Disneyland resort. There is only one other Disney resort in the world (out of the six) in which Disney does not have majority ownership. I will end with that park, but I want to delve a bit into Tokyo Disneyland.
Unlike the other Disney parks, OLC licenses the IP from Disney to use in Tokyo Disneyland and DisneySea. When OLC wants to make new attractions in its two Disney parks, they simply contract Disney Imagineering to do it. I don’t want to explore the history of how this strange agreement emerged, but it gives OLC complete creative control over the Disney parks in Japan. OLC gets the best of both worlds. They can decide what they put in the park, and they get the quality and skill of Disney Imagineering to realize those ideas.
Meanwhile, other international Disney parks like Disneyland Paris serve at the pleasure of the Walt Disney Company in Burbank, California. The executives in Burbank decide what will go into Disneyland Paris. Consequently, the OLC is not a victim to the cultural whims of the suits in Burbank. If they want to keep Splash Mountain in Japan, they do not have to capitulate to the “Great Awokening” of Disney over in the United States. This has also led to a general care for quality in the park instead of foisting IP onto the visitors as the parks outside of Japan too. For this reason, many people see DisneySea in Japan as the best Disney park in the world.
Disney Gives the Keys to China
I bring up Tokyo Disneyland because I want to contrast it with another international park in Asia: Shanghai Disneyland. Asia is a huge market for Disney, but Japan and China obviously have starkly different cultures, economies, and politics. For the most part, Japan is a free-market, liberal democracy — similar to the United States and France — whereas China is a communist dictatorship.
In Japan, Disney did cede control to another entity to own its parks, but the Oriental Land Company is still a private corporation. Conversely, when Disney chose to build a park in mainland China1, they were forced to cede control to the Chinese Communist Party if they wanted to build a park in Shanghai or anywhere else in mainland China.
Unlike in Japan, Disney still has ownership in Shanghai Disneyland, which opened in June 2016 — but Disney does not have majority ownership. The Shanghai Shendi Group has a 57% stake in the park while the Walt Disney Company only has 43%, and the Shanghai Shendi Group is a Chinese corporation controlled by the Chinese Communist Party. To get market share in China, which has a population of 1.4 billion people, Bob Iger had to cede control to the Chinese Communist Party, and Disney rarely ever cedes control.
Tokyo Disneyland is the only exception, and that would never happen again in a free market country. If a hospitality company in Australia wanted to build Melbourne Disneyland, Disney would never cede ownership to that company. If Disney wanted a park in Australia, then Disney gets full ownership, but China is an exception. Bob Iger and Disney will do anything for China.
As a result, Shanghai Disneyland does not have certain elements of other castle parks. It does not have Rivers of America. It does not have Main Street, U.S.A. You can find both of those elements in the other international parks but not in Shanghai. The Chinese Communist Party emphatically did not want any romanticization of America in their park.
Regarding the park, Iger has marketed it as “Authentically Disney, distinctly Chinese”, yet we can’t find much American in the park. Bob clearly wants to make Disney a brand that transcends and defenestrates American patriotism while Walt wanted America embedded into every Disney park.
In a June 2016 article in The New York Times, David Barboza and Brook Barnes report on the opening of Shanghai Disneyland. It is titled “How China Won the Keys to Disney’s Magic Kingdom”. Barboza and Barnes chronicle Iger’s gradual capitulation to the Chinese Community Party. The article states:
Mr. Iger, Disney’s chief executive, took a corporate jet to Shanghai in February 2008 to meet with the city’s new Communist Party boss, Yu Zhengsheng. Over dinner at a state guesthouse, Mr. Iger offered a more conciliatory approach, setting the tone for the next phase of talks.
After that, Disney substantially dialed back its demands. In addition to handing over a large piece of the profit, the control-obsessed company would give the government a role in running the park. Disney was also prepared to drop its longstanding insistence on a television channel.
For Disney, such moves were once unthinkable. Giving up on the Disney Channel meant abandoning the company’s proven brand-building strategy. “We’re kidding ourselves if we think we’re going to get everything we want,” Mr. Iger recalled saying at the time.’
But Disney is sharing the keys to the Magic Kingdom with the Communist Party. While that partnership has made it easier to get things done in China, it has also given the government influence over everything from the price of admission to the types of rides at the park.
From the outset, Disney has catered to Chinese officials, who had to approve the park’s roster of rides and who were especially keen to have a large-scale park that would appeal to adults as well as children. The Shanghai resort, which will ultimately be four times as big as Disneyland, has a supersize castle, a longer parade than any of the other five Disney resorts around the world, and a vast central garden aimed at older visitors.
In short, the Chinese Communist Party has a say in everything in Shanghai Disneyland. It even has the tallest castle out of any Disney park in the world, and I bet that the Chinese Communist Party required that to be the case. In a June 2016 interview with Arthur Levine of USA Today, Bob Iger gives some chilling quotes about his fraternization with the Chinese Communist Party.
I didn't want to build Disneyland in China. I wanted to build China's Disneyland for a number of reasons. From the very beginning, I wanted to act like we were respectful, invited guests in China. One way to show respect was to infuse this place with elements of the familiar, with elements of Chinese culture. Not only could [Chinese visitors] relate to it, but they could be proud of it and could have a sense of ownership. I thought that was important. Music throughout the park has Chinese elements. A number of shows that are performed here were conceived of in some form by Chinese people. The Tarzan show, for example, was developed and directed by a woman named Lee Xining who envisions and tells the Tarzan story with Chinese acrobats. There's no Main Street U.S.A. It's Mickey Avenue, but it doesn't say it's in the U.S., which was purposeful. We wanted [the land] to feel like it could be here in China.
When Levine asked Iger about how Shanghai Disneyland will relate to his legacy as Disney CEO, Iger said:
I don't think about legacy. Maybe after I leave, I'll be able to reflect. But nothing else [during my tenure] comes close in terms of my personal involvement. That includes everything from managing the relationship with the [Chinese] government, to the business side, and to the creative side. To say that it's a passion project would be an understatement. You don't put 17 years of your life into something without believing in it. I think given the amount of time I've invested in this and given its significance to the company – and to the world in some ways – this is extremely important in terms of how my tenure, perhaps, will be assessed as a CEO of this great company. I'm very proud of it.
Final Thoughts:
Iger sees Shanghai Disneyland and getting in bed with the Chinese Communist Party as the crowning achievement of his tenure. No other government has as much say in a Disney park as China does, so that influence could easily spill over into the United States. I think that Iger’s relationship with the Chinese Communist Party is leading him to scrub the Americana from his parks as he is doing with the destruction of Rivers of America and Tom Sawyer Island. It is deliberate. Sure, he wants to maximize profit and capacity, but he also wants to change society to a globalist monoculture, which does not romanticize anything about a characteristically American media company.
Bob has the same exact position that Walt had: the CEO of Disney, yet everybody seemingly deifies Walt. He is getting a permanent animatronic in Anaheim. I am speculating, but I wonder if Bob ever resents that this dead man who had the same position as Bob does now gets the deification. I wonder if Bob wants to have his own indelible mark in history to try to match Walt. If Bob did, a good way to do that would be to undo the heart and the patriotism that Walt put into the parks and the rest of the company.
Finally, this is not just a critique of Disney, but so many American companies seemingly have stronger allegiances to China than the United States. Filling in Rivers of America with cement is just the beginning of the American erasure in Disney. The “Magic” in Magic Kingdom might be dead.
Before the opening of Shanghai Disneyland in 2016, Disney had already opened Hong Kong Disneyland in 2005, but Hong Kong is not on mainland China. Hong Kong was pretty much autonomous. At least it was in 2005 when the park opened there.