The New Pleasure Island
American millennials and zoomers with newfound levels of disposable incomes are becoming the puppet Pinocchio.
Disney’s Significance to Every Florida Man
In my August 21 article “Bob Iger and Disney Hate America”, I recounted some of my experience during my multi-day trip to Disney World in late July. I had not made an overnight trip to Disney World since May 2019 — before the opening of Galaxy’s Edge in Hollywood Studios. Therefore, I had not made a trip to Disney World since I graduated college and entered the realities of a full-time job a a tax-paying adult.
Perhaps, most importantly, I had not visited Disney World since I began this publication “Florida Man vs. The World”. I saw this opportunity to visit Disney World as an intellectual endeavor perhaps even more so than a vacation for entertainment and thrills as most visitors to Disney World do. I admit. I am not normal. The vast majority of Disney World visitors are just seeking fun for their families as normal people do whereas I view it as an ethnographic study, albeit a very unstructured and unscientific one. This is all anecdotal evidence and confirmation bias, people!
Why do I write so much about Disney? Am I a Disney adult? I really do not think so, but I made a “hard launch” on this Substack publication with my June 8 article “Florida Man vs. Disney Adults & Splash Mountain”. In it, I write:
Why do I see this [article] as a hard launch? Well, the topic of Disney World quite comfortably falls under the umbrella of the exact sort of content that I want to cover on this publication of mine. With Florida Man vs. The World, I seek to encapsulate the mythos of the Sunshine State. Since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, I think that Florida has reached a level of significance to the cultural zeitgeist of the United States in a way that it never had before.
…
I love Disney World. In a broad sense, it embodies a post-WWII American ethos, but – in a simpler sense – it’s just plain fun. The Florida of today would not exist without the opening of Disney World in 1971. It’s just an axiomatic fact about our history. Along with the advent of air conditioning, Disney World fomented the explosion of population and economic growth that has occurred in the past half-century in Florida.
In other words, if I am going to serve as Florida’s unsolicited ambassador to the United States, then I have an obligation to discuss Disney — but, within the context of just the rides, I had the most excitement to visit Galaxy’s Edge in Hollywood Studios. I already articulated my strong praise for Galaxy’s Edge in that August 21 article about Bob Iger, but — to recapitulate — I see it as the best themed land out of any theme park that I have visited. It usurps Hogsmeade in Islands of Adventure1 and Pandora in Animal Kingdom — the two lands that I originally saw as the best. I especially sung high praises on the E-ticket ride Rise of the Resistance. I even declared it as the best amusement park ride that I have ridden. It cost $450 million. It better be the best.
Oga’s Cantina in Galaxy’s Edge
Despite all the great strengths of Galaxy’s Edge, something did bother me — Oga’s Cantina — which is serving as the kernel of this article here today. In the August 21 article, I did praise it. I think that I still stand by all those praises that I made two months ago, but I began making darker realizations about Oga’s Cantina as my trip fell further back in the rearview mirror.
What is the precise purpose of Disney creating Oga’s Cantina? Sure, it evokes nostalgia from the Star Wars series. It fully immerses you in a way that only Disney does. Even though it is not the cantina from A New Hope, it suffices, but the nostalgia requires an additional element for Disney to hit it out of the park and hook in guests. Well, Oga’s Cantina offers alcohol, so … you can get drunk.
Nothing is novel about a bar, but this bar intertwines the childhood, fantastical nostalgia with adult inebriation. When you watched Star Wars as a child, you could not get drunk. You were a child. As an adult, now you can get drunk, but — when you reach the age of majority — you give up a sort of fantastical optimism imbued in every child.
Maybe somebody should reconcile this issue? Why can’t we have the best of both worlds? The naive innocence of childhood with the opportunity for indulgence and decadence in adulthood? If anyone could make such a fantastical land for this objective, Disney could do it, and they did so in Galaxy’s Edge with Oga’s Cantina.
Sure, for many years, you have had the ability to procure alcohol at Disney World. Since its opening in 1982, EPCOT has always served alcohol as much of the park’s theming revolves around food from each of the represented countries:
Canada
United Kingdom
France
Morocco
Japan
United States (American Adventure)
Italy
Germany
China
Norway
Mexico
Hollywood Studios (originally Disney-MGM Studios) and Animal Kingdom have too always served alcohol since their openings in 1989 and 1998, respectively. Only Magic Kingdom didn’t start out with alcohol. It opened in 1971, but it did not start serving alcohol until 41 years later in 2012 when the Be Our Guest restaurant began serving alcohol at dinner. Since then, Magic Kingdom has gradually expanded the availability of alcohol at the parks.
On the other coast of the United States, Disneyland has always had much more stringent restrictions than its Florida counterparts. Although Disney California Adventure has served alcohol since it opened in 2001, Disneyland did not serve alcohol from its opening in 1955 until 2019 when Galaxy’s Edge opened. Disney generally has wanted its castle parks to stay “family friendly”, and they tend to adhere more to tradition in California perhaps because Disneyland is the only park that Walt himself actually visited since he died before the opening of Disney World in Florida.
Clearly, we are getting a shift in the goal of the park. The prime audience for Disneyland and Magic Kingdom used to be children and their families. Sure, I can get a Bud Light at an outdoor vendor somewhere in Animal Kingdom. I do not really begrudge that, but — in Oga’s Cantina in Hollywood Studios and Disneyland — the alcohol is integral to the experience. We are now getting theming and experiences only for adults. Minors can enter the cantina, but only people 21 years or over can sit at the bar and relive the scenes from the Star Wars movies.
Drinkelodeon
Oga’s Cantina at Disney World and Disneyland did not inspire me to write this article. Rather, a viral post on Twitter did. This post was a picture of drink menu at an unidentified bar. Unfortunately, the original poster did not include the location. Regardless, this bar offered cocktails based on popular Nickelodeon shows from the 1990s and 2000s:
These are shows that younger millennials or zoomers would have watched. I am listing them below and the years that each show aired.
Rumrats — Rugrats (1991 - 2004)
Pineapple under the Tea — SpongeBob SquarePants (1999 - present)
Rocco’s2 Modern Rye — Rocko’s Modern Life (1993 - 1996)
Kenan + Mezkel — Kenan & Kel (1996 - 2000)
Hey Arnold Palmer — Hey Arnold ! (1996 - 2004)
Legends of the Shirley Temple — Legends of the Hidden Temple (1993 - 1995)3
Ginny Neutron — The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius (2002 - 2006)
This menu really rubbed me the wrong way. Sure, it is probably benign, but it is in the same vein as Oga’s Cantina. Now, Chappell — the original poster — did not show where she found this menu. This is likely just a local bar. There is nothing rapacious here. They are not trying to nostalgia-spam Nickelodeon fans in a hyper-immersive way as Disney is doing with Star Wars fans. I suppose that I would have more of an objection if Universal Studios Florida opened a Nicktoons bar at City Walk. That is honestly not something too far-fetched for them.
Nonetheless, this is a business owner responding to potential demand. As Chappell says, this is a consequence of millennials entering peak buying power, but I think the universe of this demographic is a bit broader. Who exactly remembers these shows? It is not just millennials. Plenty of zoomers, such as myself, watched these shows in our childhood — and plenty of older millennials will likely have very little interaction with Jimmy Neutron as they were entering their twenties when it was airing.
I am going to say that the oldest person in this cohort would be 10 years at the beginning of the run of Rugrats, the oldest show on this list. That person would be born in 1981, conveniently the first year of the millennial generation. The youngest person would be someone who is 21, the minimum age to legally purchase alcohol in the United States. A 21-year-old in 2024 was born in 2003. People born in 2003 will likely not have much exposure to the older shows on this list, but they definitely consumed SpongeBob SquarePants and perhaps some Jimmy Neutron.
The millennial generation ends at the birth year of 1996, so the span of the cohort extends a bit into the subset of older zoomers, like myself. I was born in 1998, and I write more about my perceived generational place in American pop culture in my September 22 article “Kamala Kool-Aid Supernova: The Appropriation of a Midwest Princess”. For this reason, I will use a term that I used in that article: “zillennials”. This term pretty much applies to younger millennials and older zoomers. Sure, that person born in 1981 may have watched Rugrats but probably did not watch the newer shows on that list, so the term “zillennial” refers to anyone born in the latter half of the millennial generation or the earlier half of Generation Z. That would create a span of birth years approximately from 1989 to 2003. Those are more precisely the ages that I think that this menu is targeting.
The people buying these drinks also must have jobs that pay a decent amount to allow them to go out and buy cocktails that cost $15. As Chappell states, millennials are entering peak buying power, so there is a confluence of higher income and cultural references. One might argue that this does not demonstrate anything specific about zillennials, and I agree. This happens whenever any generation enters peak buying power, but I think that there is a more of tendency nowadays in our economy to prey on nostalgia and to create an unholy marriage of childhood naivety and adulthood experience. In 2024, the zillennials have independent incomes, and they can afford to consummate that consumerist marriage.
The Demise of Rick and Morty
As I have written, the Nickelodeon-themed drinks is perhaps innocuous, but I have seen grosser fusions of adult vice and childhood bliss. Before I return to Disney, I want to touch on a more recent animated television show, Rick and Morty, which has led to great examples of adult vice and childhood bliss in the 2010s and early 2020s. Don’t worry. It all ties back to Disney. My Rick and Morty detour will even reference the 1998 Disney film Mulan. If you are at all peripherally aware of the cringe content that came out of the Rick and Morty craze, then you know where I am going with Mulan.
This user on the subreddit for the Adult Swim show Rick and Morty is celebrating the opening of a smoke shop in New York based on the cartoon. We even have one of the two titular protagonists — Morty Smith — using a bong. Morty is a 14-year-old boy in the show. More so than any of those Nickelodeon shows, Rick and Morty relishes in the mixing of adult vice and childhood naivety. The show became one of the most acclaimed and popular shows of the 2010s after it aired in 2013. It used to be “cool” to watch, but it quickly degraded in cultural relevance and acceptability by 2017 midway through its highly anticipated and delayed Season 3.
Szechuan Sauce
The Rick and Morty craze really jumped the shark in October 2017 when McDonald’s re-released the notorious szechuan sauce, something that they offered alongside McNuggets originally in 1998 during Disney’s promotion of its animated film Mulan, which takes place in China.
In Season 3 Episode 1 of Rick & Morty “The Rickshank Redemption”, which aired in April 2017, Rick Sanchez — the other titular protagonist alongside his grandson Morty Smith — travels within his memories back to the year 1998. During this trip within his psyche, he makes sure to travel to a nearby McDonald’s to buy the szechuan sauce because it was only available in 1998, and McDonald’s had not re-released yet.
This was one of the most highly anticipated television episodes of the 2010s. It had been 18 months since the Season 2 finale of Rick and Morty, which had skyrocketed in popularity since then. People were starving for the third season, and this episode aired without any announcement on Adult Swim on April Fool’s Day in 2017. Consequently, Rick’s bit about the szechuan sauce attracted many eyeballs. In reality, Rick Sanchez’s voice actor Justin Roiland, who also voices Morty Smith, was using Rick as a fill-in for himself.
Justin was trying to use his platform as Rick’s voice to petition McDonald’s to perhaps bring back this fast food item from his youth. Roiland was born in 1980, so he would have been 18 years old when McDonald’s was doing its Mulan promotion in 1998. Strangely, Roiland is one year shy of being a millennial. Instead, he is a member of Generation X, yet he really codes as a millennial and exudes much of the zillennial ethos about which I am writing in this article.
Four months after the airing of the Season 3 premiere of Rick and Morty, McDonald’s sent Roiland a jug of a new batch of szechuan sauce. McDonald’s included the following message in a letter to him in the package:
Justin,
We finally did it. It took months, but we've finally brought back some Szechuan Sauce.
We'll spare you the physics, but turns out, Dimension C-1998M is a dimension where it's always 1998. 1998 every day. No smartphones, no social media. It's a weird, scary place. But they've got Szechuan Sauce on the regular menu.
So here we are with some precious cargo- the Szechuan Sauce you remember and some souvenirs from some of the dimensions we tried along the way.
We wish we could've brought more sauce through, but we couldn't risk keeping a portal like that open. Think about it, if you knew in 1998 that McDonald's would have All Day Breakfast in 2017, would you really want to stay in 1998? Of course not. If we left the portal open, we'd have puka shells, bucket hats and boy bands as far as the eye could see. It's too risky, even for sauce as delicious as this.
A few lucky fans will also get to experience the glory, but the first bottle in this dimension is for you.
Stay Schwifty,
Chef Mike
Then, a description on the actual jug read:
For use only in McDonald's® restaurants (C-1998M) during limited promotional window, and then maybe again twenty years later. DO NOT SERVE to mad scientists traveling with their teenage grandson; potential non-scientist versions of mad scientists from an alternate dimension; and/or Jerry.
In these messages to Roiland, McDonald’s includes many references to Rick and Morty to show that they are not just a soulless multi-national corporation. Rather, they are “hip”, and they get it! Chef Mike of McDonald’s signs the letter with “Stay Schwifty”, a reference to a song that Rick and Morty had to write for an intergalactic music competition in the Season 2 episode “Get Schwifty”, which Adult Swim aired on August 23, 2015. The message on the actual jug of sauce warns people to not serve the sauce to Jerry Smith — the routinely mocked, pathetic father of Morty Smith and son-in-law of Rick Sanchez.
McDonald’s said that this jug of szechuan sauce came from alternate universe “C-1998M”, where it is always the year 1998 and McDonald’s locations have the Mulan szechuan sauce permanently on their menus. Clearly, McDonald’s is playing with the underlying premise of Rick and Morty in which Rick can use a portal gun to travel to infinite alternate universes and dimensions with endless possibilities. Based on the logic of the Rick and Morty canonical universe, of course, Rick could have access to a universe in which Earth has not escaped the cultural fetters of 1998. This throwback revival of the sauce just for Roiland demonstrates exactly what I am discussing here in this article. Roiland yearns for a return to the late 1990s, a fetishized era in today’s culture — and, as I have already written, he uses his stature as both eponymous protagonists of Rick and Morty to get what he wants. McDonald’s even throws in some nostalgic references from the late 1990s — such as puka shell necklaces, bucket hats, and boy bands.
Based on the target demographic for Rick and Morty, I would assume that most fans would not have the ability to remember the szechuan sauce. Either they were born after the promotion of Mulan, or they are too young to remember. I fall into the latter camp. I was five months old when Mulan came out in theaters on June 19, 1998 — and I was really the perfect age for the height of Rick and Morty. I was in my later teenage years at the show’s zenith. Of course, because of the popularity of Rick and Morty and heightened attention to this long-awaited Season 3 premiere, the hundreds of thousands of Rick and Morty fans would be clamoring for McDonald’s to revive the sauce — especially, after they proved that they could recreate the sauce personally for Roiland.
McDonald’s obliged, and it returned in limited quantities at limited locations in October 2017, six months after the airing of the Season 3 premiere of Rick and Morty. Because of shortages of the sauce, McDonald’s revived it again for a more widespread, nationwide release in February 2018. When I say shortage, Rick and Morty fans did not respond well to these shortages in the autumn of 2017. The unsatisfied, outsized demand fueled massive “protests” by fans across the country.
Before I delve into these protests, I want to note that this craze perfectly embodies massive corporations spamming fans with nostalgia in order to increase revenues. Fans will blindly obey and give their dollars to the multinational corporation of McDonald’s. Justin Roiland and the other creator of the show Dan Harmon used to proudly “rebel” against cultural norms with Rick Sanchez’s nihilistic, sardonic commentary in the show through Roiland’s distinctive, gravely vocal delivery — but they “sold out” to these corporations that they may have mocked half a decade before the craze. This irony will eventually lead to Roiland and Harmon eventually chastising their fans and the show becoming excessively meta-referential and self-loathing.
Posts online emerged of many fans who waited for hours in line at local McDonald’s locations to learn that the location had already run out of the packets of the sauce. In the tweet above, you can people were pitching tents outside this particular McDonald’s location in San Francisco.
In this video posted on Twitter, you can see a McDonald’s location where protestors outside were chanting “We want the sauce!”. Police eventually had to come to quell the solicitors. Unfortunately, these entitled fans were harassing hourly workers, who had no control of how many packets of sauce their particular locations received. I do not know the actual location of this McDonald’s, but dozens and dozens of pieces of footage such as this proliferated over social media from locations across the country.
The mania very quickly reached a point of no return when a viral video showed a man screaming at McDonald’s employees once he found out that particular location had already run out of their limited stock of szechuan sauce. The man, wearing a Rick and Morty t-shirt, jumped onto the front counter and screamed several of Rick’s famous quotes from the show, including “Wubba lubba dub dub” and “I’m Pickle Rick”. The man then proceeds to jump back down onto the floor and starts convulsing as if he having a seizure. Finally, he bolts out of the restaurant in a Naruto-inspired run.
The “Pickle Rick” exclamation comes from the probably the most infamous and well-known episode of Rick and Morty, Season 3’s “Pickle Rick”, which aired on August 6, 2017. The premise of the episode follows Rick, who transforms himself into a pickle to avoid group family therapy with his daughter Beth, his granddaughter Summer, and his grandson Morty. Although this episode attracted great controversy and became a poster child for the irksome absurdity of Rick and Morty, the episode itself is not any more absurd than any other random episode of the show. The episode is probably one of the stronger episodes of the series. Rather, the ire emerged because of how the fans responded and the memes that spread across social media. “Pickle Rick” and the subsequent szechuan sauce craze exemplify the moment in which Rick and Morty flew too close to the sun.
The ratings for Rick and Morty peaked in Season 3. Below, I am displaying a chart from Wikipedia that shows the average viewership for each season of Rick and Morty.
As you can see, Rick and Morty maintained strong viewership in its first four seasons but peaked at an average of 2.33 million viewers per episode in Season 3. The viewership then precipitously falls after Season 4. It dipped below an average of 1 million viewers in Season 5, and it dipped below 500 thousand viewers in Season 7. These seasons are not necessarily one year after another due to the notoriously inconsistent production and release schedule of Rick and Morty, so I am listing the timeframe for each season in the list below:
Season 1: December 2013 to April 2014
Season 2: July 2015 to October 2015
Season 3: April 2017 to October 2017
Season 4: November 2019 to May 2020
Season 5: June 2021 to September 2021
Season 6: September 2022 to December 2022
Season 7: October 2023 to December 2023
The production schedule became more regular in the later seasons, but Season 8 is scheduled to air sometime in 2025, two years after the airing of Season 7.
What exactly led to this decline? Shows typically gradually decrease in viewership over time. Newer programs eventually grab the attention of the fickle American audience, but something more sinister was happening with Rick and Morty. As I have already noted, I think that the szechuan sauce “riots” repelled many normal media consumers who may have otherwise enjoyed the show, or they repelled older fans who no longer wanted any association with a cringe-inducing fanbase. Despite this decline, the show maintained its high quality for a while after the peak of its popularity, but the creators Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon began resenting their fans, who did embarrass them with Pickle Rick memes, szechuan sauce riots, and pseudo-intellectual snark inspired by Rick Sanchez’s occasional monologues in the show.
I give you the quote below to exemplify the worst of Rick’s self-indulgent attitude as the canonical smartest man in the universe. Rick Sanchez and his daughter Beth Smith are having an exchange about the downsides of being “smart”. This dialogue comes from Season 3 episode “The ABC’s of Beth”, which aired on September 24, 2017.
Beth: Am I evil?
Rick: Worse, you're smart. When you know nothing matters the universe is yours, and I've never met a universe that was into it. The universe is an animal, it grazes on the ordinary. It creates infinite idiots just to eat them …You know, smart people get a chance to climb on top and take reality for a ride but it'll never stop trying to throw you. And eventually it will, there's no other way off.
This sort of philosophy undergirds the entire show and gives a permission structure to fans to fully embrace nihilism and justify the behavior by asserting that “they are smarter than everyone else”. School is stupid! Society doesn’t understand me! God isn’t real! These sentiments need to go back to 2007-era r/atheism on Reddit, but they kept hobbling through the next decade to die in a Rick and Morty script. You really get the sense that Justin and Dan are speaking through Rick here. This is no longer a wacky goofy bit about szechuan sauce by Rick. No, Rick was now telling you how the world really works, but none of this is the worst of Rick and Morty.
The show really reached the doldrums in Season 4’s episode “Never Ricking Morty”, which aired on May 3, 2020. In this episode, the show got extremely meta-referential and used it to mock fans who wanted certain characters to return (e.g., Evil Morty). I do not need to explain to you all the references because the episode would deeply confuse anyone who had not watched every episode of Rick and Morty leading up to this one.
Rick and Morty did not even reach its true depths until Season 5’s “Rickdependence Spray”, airing on July 11, 2021. I do not even want to write out the full plot of this episode because of how disgusting it is. It really should have been a deep-cut episode of the vile Netflix series Big Mouth. The episode sees the sperm cells from Morty, a fourteen-year-old minor, become evil monsters attacking the world. At the end of the episode, one of them fertilizes an egg cell of his sister Summer, thereby creating an incestuous fetus in space. It’s absolutely repulsive, and this potty humor will lead to the actual death of Rick and Morty with the firing of co-creator and star voice actor Justin Roiland. You can see where his mind is with this episode from 2021.
The Firing of Justin Roiland
In August 2020, Roiland received felony charges of false imprisonment of a woman whom he was dating in Orange County, California — but the arrest and the charges did not become public until NBC News published a report on the issue on January 12, 2023. Around two weeks later, Adult Swim cut ties with Roiland as they were in the middle of recording voices for Season 7. The show continued and premiered Season 7 on October 15, 2023.
How did the show continue without Roiland’s iconic voice? The entire universe of Rick and Morty relied on Roiland’s “wacky characters”. Taking away his voice would be similar to taking Seth MacFarlane out of Family Guy or Hank Azaria out of The Simpsons. Well, Adult Swim replaced Justin Roiland’s voices as Rick and Morty with two new, separate voice actors. In Season 7, Ian Cardoni began voicing Rick Sanchez, and Harry Belden began voicing Morty Smith.
Both Cardoni and Belden were largely unknown before Adult Swim hired them. Adult Swim re-recorded any Season 7 dialogue initially performed by Roiland before his firing, and Cardoni and Belden fit in pretty well to the roles. A casual fan likely would not spot a difference. Roiland’s other show Solar Opposites, which streams on Hulu, took a different approach. He also voiced the protagonist of that show, Korvo, an alien who crashes on Earth. Of course, Hulu fired Roiland just as Adult Swim did, and they needed to find a new voice actor for the character. They hired Dan Stevens, an English actor who first gained prominence as a character in Downtown Abbey. Stevens gave Korvo a completely different voice with an English accent, making light of the change of actor.
NBC News reported more stories of Roiland grooming underaged, teenage girls. He had allegations of abusing women during dates. Now, Roiland has never been convicted of anything. In March 2023, the false imprisonment charges were dismissed because of lack of evidence, but Roiland has had a documented history of making very creepy comments on interviews and online, which I do not necessarily want to write out here. When you consider the broader context of Rick and Morty, it all fits. It leads a fan to re-examine all the lewd content of the show knowing that Roiland co-created it and voiced the eponymous protagonists. Roiland’s predilection for much younger girls demonstrates this sort of arrested development that falls under the broader themes of this article. In many ways, Roiland is a man-child, or he at least has conducted himself that way in the public eye. Roiland would fit perfectly in the next subject of this piece: Pleasure Island in the 1940 Disney film Pinocchio.
Pinocchio’s Pleasure Island
The Temptations on Pleasure Island
Before I return to the Pleasure Island of today, I want to dissect the original Pleasure Island in Disney’s 1940 film Pinocchio. In Pinocchio, the titular puppet seeks to become a real boy. Much of the story revolves around him encountering temptations, such as those seen on Pleasure Island. Here is the full scene on YouTube.
Pinocchio eventually meets Honest John, an anthropomorphic fox who convinces Pinocchio to skip school to come with him. John tempts Pinocchio into coming with him to Pleasure Island. He deceptively sells Pleasure Island as a place where boys can do whatever they want without restrictions. As the name suggests, the boys can ignore all rules and solely seek “pleasure”, so the island literally encourages hedonism. Pinocchio wants to become a real boy, but he cannot grow up if he indulges in the immature antics of boyhood on this island.
Once Pinocchio and the other boys arrive at Pleasure Island by boat, they see a panoply of hedonistic activities, which resemble a carnival. The barker at the island makes some very interesting announcements:
Barker: Right here, boys! Right here. Get your cake, pie, dill pickles, and ice cream! Eat all you can! Be a glutton! Stuff yourselves! It’s all free, boys! Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!
…
Barker: Tobacco Road! Get your cigars, cigarettes, and chewing tobacco! Smoke your heads off! There’s nobody here to stop you!
…
Barker: Hurry! Hurry! Hurry! See the model home! It’s open for destruction, and it’s all yours, boys!
The carnival barker here is acting very similarly to Satan in the Garden of Eden. He is tempting the boys with sinful activities. In his first announcement above, he explicitly references the sin of gluttony, one of the seven deadly sins, as he invites the boys to eat decadent desserts — such as cake, pie, and ice cream. Even though tobacco is obviously not food, the sin of gluttony includes abuse of drugs and alcohol as well. Tempting underage boys into smoking tobacco would definitely fall under the umbrella of gluttony. Finally, the carnival barker invites the boys to destroy and vandalize a model home. We could put these misdeeds in the category of the deadly sin of wrath, which complements gluttony.
The model home open for destruction
Classical architecture: The barker advertises the building shown above as a model home that the boys can destroy, but it resembles more of an Italian Baroque church and not a house. We see Classical architectural elements:
the caryatids on the first level
the entablature above the caryatids
the Ionic columns
The house also has a prominent stained glass window. No, Classical Greek architecture did not have stained glass windows. Rather, Gothic and Baroque churches of Western Europe would have these elements approximately a millennium later. We see throngs of boys vandalizing the house. They are burning fires and tearing down sculptures. This architecture exemplifies the heights of Western art. Disney is clearly constructing a metaphor here. The immature boys on the hedonistic Pleasure Island are figuratively destroying centuries of Western society, which forged the stability and order in 20th-century society. I am not going to delve into the merits of that metaphor. That topic deserves an article unto itself. I am merely trying to establish the thoughts of the Disney writers and animators who created Pinocchio.
Defacement of Mona Lisa: While Pinocchio is traveling to Pleasure Island, he befriends a boy named Lampwick, shown in the image above. Once they see the open house for destruction, Pinocchio and Lampwick immediately enter. To further build upon the metaphor of Western civilization, Disney includes other representatives of the Western canon of art.
More specifically, Pinocchio and Lampwick encounter a replica of Leonardo da Vinci’s 16th-century Italian Renaissance painting Mona Lisa, one of the most recognizable paintings in all of human history. It embodies the apex of Western art during the Italian Renaissance. Leonardo serves as a paragon of artistic intellect. In spite of the perceived greatness of Mona Lisa, Lampwick utterly defaces it as he strikes a match on the painting to light his cigar. We also see a crude chalk stick figure drawn onto the painting. This drawing represents the most banal form of artistic expression.
Reference to Paleolithic cave paintings: A caveman in Paleolithic Europe, fifteen thousand years ago could draw that chalk stick figure. In fact, they did as you can see in the image above. This picture shows one of the hundreds of paintings within the Great Hall of the Bulls in Lascaux, France. It depicts a man perhaps getting killed by a bison. We assume that he is a man because he has what looks like might be a penis although it also looks as if he has a beak. Is he some sort of human-bird hybrid? Unfortunately, we can never know because humans at this time had no writing, so we have no record of what they were thinking at the time of the creation of these cave paintings in France. After all, this is the definition of prehistory — before the advent of human writing.
These cave paintings were created circa 15,000-13,000 B.C. but were not discovered until 1940 A.D., coincidentally the same year of the release of Pinocchio. For this reason, I do no think that the studio was directly referencing it as they would have been writing and animating Pinocchio before the discovery of the caves, but — by that point — people had already discovered other iconic Paleolithic cave paintings, particularly, the Cave of Altamira in Santillana del Mar, Spain.
I also interpret the stick figure on the Mona Lisa replica in Pinocchio as a drawing that a toddler could likely make. These boys on Pleasure Island want to enter manhood, yet they are expressing themselves in a childlike manner. Either way, the animators chose to juxtapose a Renaissance masterpiece with a crude drawing, defacing the Mona Lisa. The boys are regressing. They are either reverting to little children, or we are seeing an artistic and cultural regression to prehistoric times before the Western masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance.
The stained glass window: After Lampwick lights the match on the Mona Lisa, he wantonly throws a brick through a stained glass window and shatters it. As I already listed, the shot of the exterior of the house shows many elements of Classical architecture: the columns, the entablature, the caryatids, etc. These elements go back 2500 years to Athens and represent the values of Western civilization that the Greeks largely fomented: democracy, rationality, civil virtues, etc. For this reason, many civilizations for centuries referenced these architectural traditions. We can look at the architecture of the Italian Renaissance or the Neo-classical architecture of the United States after our independence from Britain.
However, the stained glass window has a further significance in the Western canon beyond just Athenian democracy. The window adds a religious dimension as — from the 11th century A.D. onward — stained glass became a staple of Catholic churches and cathedrals. The inclusion of a stained glass window, immediately after the defacement of the Mona Lisa, is no coincidence in this Disney film. Regardless of how you may view the Catholic church, Catholicism and Christianity overall built the foundation of Western civilization. When Lampwick throws the brick through the stained glass window, he is choosing immature hedonism over the history and civilization that precede him for centuries.
Recently rewatching this scene immediately reminded me of the de-Christianization of France during the French Revolution. After overthrowing the monarchy, the revolutionaries started vandalizing and destroying Catholic churches across France and converted them into the atheistic Temples of Reason. The most notable example came with the destruction of the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris. They destroyed any religious imagery. They destroyed the altar. They destroyed religious statues. Artistic feats that took decades to complete could become rubble in just a few hours. This sort of childlike chaos destroyed France for a brief period of time just as the boys on Pleasure Island were doing.
The Transformation to Asses
The climax of the trip to Pleasure Island provides perhaps the most frightening animation in any Disney property. Pinocchio and Lampwick are playing pool and smoking cigars. Soon, they begin transforming into donkeys (or jackasses). We can clearly see the play on words here, but — before Lampwick begins transforming into an ass — he dares Pinocchio to take a “big drag” on his cigar because Pinocchio was cowardly puffing on it.
Once Pinocchio takes a drag, we see the scenes above. His face quickly turns colors from red to purple to green. He begins tearing up. This drag on the cigar further demonstrates Pinocchio’s committing of the sin of gluttony since he is consuming tobacco and nicotine to excess, which defines the sin.
Lampwick and Pinocchio pay for these hedonistic sins on Pleasure Island once Lampwick begins transforming into an ass. Pinocchio starts to transform too, but Jiminy Cricket saves him before he fully transforms as Lampwick did. Before Lampwick transforms, he is playing pool and mocking Jiminy Cricket, Pinocchio’s conscience. Lampwick says, “What’s he think I look like? A jackass?”
We do not see the final steps of Lampwick’s transformation as the animators chose to show a silhouette, as shown above. In that moment, he is screaming “Momma!” as he devolves into just making the noises “hee-haw” of a donkey braying. Lampwick has dived to the lowest depths of vulnerability in which he has no other choice but to scream for his mother, who obviously cannot hear him from Pleasure Island.
While Lampwick and Pinocchio are indulging in their most crude and animalistic instincts, we discover that someone else named the Coachman (shown above) had been controlling the fox Honest John as he was taking the boys to Pleasure Island. To return to the metaphor of strings and puppets in the film, the Coachman was figuratively pulling the strings of Honest John whereas someone manually pulls the strings on Pinocchio until he escapes the strings earlier in the film during the number “I’ve Got No Strings”.
We eventually find out that the Coachman, with the assistance of Honest John, brought boys to Pleasure Island so that they could transform into donkeys. Later, we see that most of the boys have become asses. Once they do so, the writers and animators imply that the Coachman is forcing the boys, now asses, into slavery.
In the image above of the Coachman, he is explaining to Honest John that he will trap the boys on Pleasure Island. Here is the clip on YouTube. At the exact moment that the Coachman makes that face, he says “There’s no risk. They never come back as boys.” Perhaps there are other implications here, but I do not want to delve into that topic. Regardless, the Coachman’s face becomes red, and his gray hair spikes and turns upward, thereby making him look like Satan. Clearly, something diabolical is happening on Pleasure Island with these poor boys.
Whenever I see the Satanic image of the Coachman or the scene of Lampwick transforming, I try to contextualize these scenes and imagine myself watching this movie in theaters in the year 1940. Even in 2024, these scenes frighten me, and I think that they would frighten any young children watching Disney films with their parents today.
I think back to my early childhood when I saw the 2001 Japanese animated film Spirited Away, directed by the acclaimed Hayao Miyazaki. I probably saw it age 5 in 2003 when Disney distributed the film on DVD in North America. The film follows the 10-year-old girl Chihiro Ogino as the protagonist. In the scene above in the beginning of the film, she finds that her parents have transformed into pigs after gluttonously gorging on food during their trip to an abandoned amusement park.
This scene scared me for the same reasons that the scenes on Pleasure Island in Pinocchio continue to scare me, but — by 2003 — Pinocchio was already 63 years old. Color animation was nothing new, but Pinocchio’s 1940 release only came three years after the first full-length color animated cinematic release — Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs — another iconic Disney film. Therefore, the American public probably had not gotten used to seeing color animations on the silver screen yet. Imagine sitting immersed in a dark theater in 1940 and witnessing a young boy screaming for help and turning into a donkey. Then, you see a Satanic-looking man salivating at the fact that he can trap young boys on an island called “Pleasure Island”. These are quite unnerving visuals for such a new technology.
The Eisner Era
Non-IP Rides at Disney parks
Now, I am going to return to the theme parks since I have given context on the 1940 film Pinocchio. Clearly, this IP has the potential to frighten children, but — for the past half century — Disney has tried to do everything to maximize IP exposure in their theme parks. The attractions in the Disney parks essentially serve as further advertising, and families and their children have a higher likelihood of going on a ride with characters whom the children recognize. There is a reason why Disney World has not opened a ride not based on IP since Animal Kingdom’s Expedition Everest in 2006, almost two decades ago.
Expedition Everest’s conception marks an important time in Disney history. Disney began constructing it in 2003, in the final years of the tenure of CEO Michael Eisner, who had a much great penchant for creating high-risk but creative attractions at the parks. Perhaps the horror-themed ride ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter in Magic Kingdom epitomizes this philosophy of Eisner’s. This ride operated from 1995 to 2003 and loosely based its content on Ridley Scott’s Alien franchise. On the attraction, riders sit in a theater-in-the-round and experience a vicious alien that has escaped in the room and starts killing cast members.
This ride is probably the scariest ride at any major theme park ever, and it was at Magic Kingdom of all places, not the most straightforward place to put such an attraction. Sure, Magic Kingdom has Haunted Mansion, but that ride only scares the youngest of children. ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter had the ability to scare many adults. Clearly, this ride could not appeal to families, so it closed in 2003 in favor of the reskinned Stitch’s Great Escape!, based on the hit 2002 animated Disney film Lilo & Stitch. Stitch’s Great Escape opened in 2004 and demonstrates Disney’s everlasting desire to switch out rides for more relevant IP whenever they can. Even a blockbuster film, such as Lilo & Stitch, has a shelf life. Magic Kingdom ultimately closed the ride in 2018. Nothing has replaced Stitch’s Great Escape in that location in Tomorrowland since.
Where is Pinocchio in the parks?
Strangely, for such an iconic Disney film, Pinocchio has very little exposure in the Disney parks. In 1983, Disneyland in California opened Pinocchio’s Daring Journey, a small dark ride based on Pinocchio. Iterations of this ride also opened in Tokyo Disneyland in 1983 and, then, Disneyland Paris4 in 1992 — but Disney’s most-visited park, Magic Kingdom in Florida, has no rides based on Pinocchio while other Disney classics — such as Snow White and Peter Pan — do. Sure, Fantasyland has a Pinocchio-themed quick-service restaurant called Pinocchio’s Village Haus, but a simple quick-service restaurant does not come close at all to an actual Fantasyland attraction, such as Peter Pan’s Flight and the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train.
In Florida, perhaps Pinocchio has never had much presence in Magic Kingdom or any of the other three parks, but Pinocchio has had a much more prominent and unique presence elsewhere on Disney World property in Downtown Disney.
Michael Eisner’s Changes
Before we get to the evolution of this shopping district in Disney World, we need to set the stage for the rise of Michael Eisner as CEO. In 1984, the Walt Disney Company — with the influence of Walt’s nephew Roy E. Disney — hired Michael Eisner as CEO. Despite the opening of Disney World in 1971, the 1970s had brought many challenges to the Walt Disney Company. To begin, it had leadership instability. Walt Disney — the founder of the company — died in 1966. His brother Roy O. Disney succeeded Walt, but Roy died in 1971. After then, the chaos ensued. The movies were flopping to the point that Disney was considering halting its entire animation division, which had brought Disney to iconic status. By the early 1980s, Disney was coming very close to a hostile takeover from outside investors.
Roy O. Disney — Roy’s son and Walt’s nephew — owned many shares inherited from his father and brought in Michael Eisner, who had no prior connection to Disney. Before going to Disney, Eisner served as chairman of Paramount. People at Disney thought that Eisner’s outsider status would bring a fresh perspective to the stagnating company, and they were right.
Eisner took many risks during his tenure. He opened the controversial Euro Disney resort in France in 1992. For many years, the park had financial struggles. He vastly expanded the other parks. By the time of Eisner’s arrival, Disney only had four parks around the world in three resorts:
Disneyland (California, USA) — 1955
Magic Kingdom (Florida, USA) — 1971
EPCOT (Florida, USA) — 1982
Tokyo Disneyland (Japan) — 1983
During Eisner’s tenure, Disney expanded with the following parks:
Hollywood Studios5 (Florida, USA) — 1989
Disneyland Paris (France) — 1992
Animal Kingdom (Florida, USA) — 1998
Disney California Adventure (California, USA) — 2001
DisneySea (Japan) — 2001
Walt Disney Studios Park (France) — 2002
Hong Kong Disneyland (Hong Kong) — 20056
Under Eisner, Disney’s theme park footprint had massively expanded, but perhaps the list of cancelled Disney projects says more about the lofty, unattainable vision associated with Eisner’s tenure.
DisneySea (California — 1990-1991): A theme park designed for Long Beach (later inspired the existent DisneySea in Japan)
WestCOT (California — 1991-1995): A version of Florida’s EPCOT as a second park at Disneyland Resort.
Disney’s America (Virginia — 1993-1994): A patriotic park designed for northern Virginia.
Nowadays, Disney will rarely announce an entire theme park and not follow through although we can assume that, behind the scenes, they plan for development that they never announce to the public — but Eisner would essentially say anything that came to his mind. He also sought to make the Disney parks appealing to teenagers and young adults. He added thrill rides that could appeal to these demographics who were not frequently attending the parks unless they had younger siblings or other family members. Here are some of the most notable attractions designed and opened under Eisner’s tenure. Many of these are iconic attractions today. I am only including ones in the American parks.
Star Tours (1987):
Disneyland (1987-present)
Magic Kingdom (1989-present)
Splash Mountain (1989)7
Disneyland (1989-2023)
Magic Kingdom (1992-2023)
Twilight Zone Tower of Terror (1994)
Hollywood Studios (1994-present)
Disney’s California Adventure (2004-2017)8
ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter (1995-2003): Magic Kingdom
Indiana Jones Adventure (1995-present): Disneyland
Dinosaur9 (1998-present): Animal Kingdom
Kali River Rapids (1999-present): Animal Kingdom
Test Track (1999-present): EPCOT
Rock ‘n’ Rollercoaster (1999-present): Hollywood Studios
California Screamin’10 (2001-present): Disney’s California Adventure
Grizzly River Run (2001-present): Disney’s California Adventure
Mission: SPACE (2003-present): EPCOT
Expedition Everest (2006-present): Animal Kingdom
Perhaps Eisner was venturing into Pleasure Island territory with these rides. He is making a kids’ theme park a place for teenagers and young adults to play as well although I still do not see any of these rides as sinister in the same way that Oga’s Cantina might be in Galaxy’s Edge. After all, a 10-year-old child still can ride any of these thrill rides even if a 5-year-old child cannot.
Eisner did not just want to appeal to teenagers and young adults via rides. He even added a nightclub in Fantasyland in Disneyland. It had the name Videopolis and operated from 1985 to 1989. Eisner marketed the dance club to teenagers visiting the parks. Videopolis inspired the Eisner project most relevant to this article: Pleasure Island.
Disney World’s Shopping District and Pleasure Island
Creation of Pleasure Island:
During his tenure, Eisner expanded the parks overall, especially, Disney World. In contrast with Disneyland, Disney World aimed to create an entire resort with multiple hotels on property. Disney World was secluded from the rest of Orlando while Disneyland was in the middle of the sprawl of Anaheim. As the name suggests, Disney World became its own “world”. In 1971, Disney World opened, and — in 1975 — the resort opened a shopping district on property. Disney wanted visitors to the park to have a place to shop and dine whenever they were not attending the Magic Kingdom. This was one of the ways in which Disney World was becoming a resort beyond the vision for Disneyland.
We know this district as Disney Springs today, but it has gone through multiple rebrands in the past five decades:
Lake Buena Vista Shopping Village (1975-1977)
Walt Disney World Village (1977-1989)
Disney Village Marketplace (1989-1997)
Downtown Disney (1997-2015)
Disney Springs (2015-present)
If this shopping district at Disney World opened a decade before Eisner started his time as CEO, how did he make his mark on Walt Disney World Village (the name at the time of his arrival to the company)? Eisner saw Walt Disney World Village as another place that he could develop something that appealed to young adults. Eisner developed a series of bars and nightclubs in Walt Disney World Village called Pleasure Island.
In the late 1980s, Eisner encountered an issue with Disney World. People would go to the parks during the day. They would sleep at the hotels, but they would leave for dining and nightlife.
Specifically, for nightlife, young adults would go to Church Street Station — a complex of night clubs in Orlando outside of Disney World. Eisner did not like this. In many ways, he wanted Disney World to provide horizontal integration for entertainment and leisure during a vacation.
In response, Eisner opened Pleasure Island in 1989 at Disney Village Marketplace, which would switch names to Downtown Disney in 1997. Pleasure Island was a smaller, separate part of the larger Disney Village Marketplace. Minors could visit Pleasure Island to visit shops or restaurants, but only people at least 21 years old could enter the menagerie of nightclubs and bars. Obviously, the name of this section of Disney Village Marketplace comes from the film Pinocchio. I have delved into Pleasure Island in the film, so I see Eisner’s choice of naming it Pleasure Island as quite peculiar.
Of course, visitors to Disney World could engage in adult activities at Pleasure Island in a way that they could not do at the parks. In Magic Kingdom, people could not even order alcohol yet. Just as Pinnochio and Lampwick could smoke on Pleasure Island in the film, visitors to Disney World could smoke at the real-life Pleasure Island right outside the parks, but Pleasure Island had such a sinister implication in Pinocchio. In a way, Eisner was being too on the nose. Again, we are encountering the strange mix of adult vice with childhood innocence. Eisner was blurring the lines.
An hour before entering Pleasure Island, you could have been riding Peter Pan’s Flight or It’s a Small World. Now, you were getting drunk in Neon Armadillo. It doesn’t sit right as an integral part of Disney World, a place meant for children and their families. Yes, EPCOT offered alcohol at every country’s pavilion, but dining played an integral experience at EPCOT, which did not have much Disney IP at all — at least when it opened in 1981. Furthermore, EPCOT did not have a strange name, such as Pleasure Island, evoking the sinful behavior of the boys in Pinocchio. I suppose that the only stranger name would have been “Never Land” in reference to the 1953 film Peter Pan, named after the boy who never grows up.
Jessica Rabbit
Now, Pleasure Island never actually references Pinocchio besides the name. Pleasure Island at Downtown Disney created its own lore. A fictional character named Merriweather Pleasure founded the location in the 1940s, but Disney did use some IP as a mascot: Jessica Rabbit from the 1988 Robert Zemeckis film Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
When you entered Pleasure Island, you would see a large neon Jessica Rabbit greeting you. Her robotic left leg would move up and down as if she were letting you look up her dress. Serving alcohol in a bar did not seem like a big step for Disney, again, considering EPCOT — but the prominent display of Jessica Rabbit perhaps was strange.
Sure, Who Framed Roger Rabbit had a PG rating, but the character of Jessica Rabbit — the human wife of the titular Roger Rabbit — had clear sexual innuendoes associated with her in the film. Obviously, the animators sexualized this character as she is scantily clad with an emphasis on her buxom breasts and exposed legs. She would frequently tempt men in the film with her body and looks. For these reasons, it doesn’t seem right that a character like Jessica Rabbit should serve as the mascot of a section of Disney World, albeit, one outside of the actual parks.
The choice to prominently display Jessica Rabbit shows that Michael Eisner was trying to provocatively market Pleasure Island in a deliberate fashion. From 1989 to 1993, the neon sign of Jessica Rabbit actually sat atop a store dedicated to her called Jessica’s, originally branded as a lingerie shop, a strange establishment to have in a shopping district at Disney World.
The store did not exclusively sell lingerie as if it were a Victoria’s Secret. Rather, it sold a large array of merchandise based on Jessica Rabbit: shirts, towels, magnets, and other souvenirs. The merchandise obviously had a very limited audience, especially, as the film Who Framed Roger Rabbit became older and older. By 1993, Disney had moved the neon sign to the entrance of Pleasure Island while they closed the store.
Nightclubs:
For me, the strangest part of Pleasure Island might not actually be the fact that Disney World decided to put a nightclub in its shopping district. Rather, the fact that it had so many shocked me, and Disney was not just slapping together a lazy bar. They used Disney theming in each of their nightclubs. Again, they were mixing the childlike wonder of Disney immersion with vices of adulthood. Remember … no kids could enter these establishments! Here are the nightclubs that Pleasure Island had at its opening in 1989 (although many of them saw rebrands after then):
The Adventurers’ Club was the most iconic of the clubs. It was themed as a 1930s explorer club. Throughout the bar, Disney cast members would entertain guests with comedy shows.
8TRAX was a nightclub themed after the 1970s and played music from that decade including disco, funk, and new wave. It heavily used bright colors and neon, evocative of a discotheque.
The Comedy Warehouse was a comedy club that included improv comedy and stand-up.
Mannequins’ Dance Palace was a futuristic dance club.
Neon Armadillo featured country music.
Rock ‘n’ Roll Beach Club was themed after a beach and featured rock music.
Furthermore, the central gimmick of Pleasure Island was that, at midnight every night, they would have a New Year’s Eve celebration. In other words, Pleasure Island conceptually trapped patrons in a Groundhog’s Day loop in which time never progresses, and perhaps it didn’t. I am not criticizing nightclubs and bars. I am just criticizing the idea that one should enjoy them within the confines of Disney World, and nobody should be naming it after the diabolical Pleasure Island from Pinocchio.
The closure of Pleasure Island
Ultimately, Pleasure Island could not last. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, it had massively declining attendance figures. If somebody wanted nightlife in Orlando, why go to Disney World unless you’re a stunted Disney adult? In 2006, Disney tried “cleaning up” the location and removed the provocative neon sign of Jessica Rabbit, but — two years later — it closed. The timing made sense. No longer did Michael Eisner hold the title of CEO. Bob Iger had taken over in 2006, and he jettisoned many of these lofty Eisner ideas.
Since 2006, Iger has made it a mission to consolidate Disney properties and make the experience at the parks uniform. Pleasure Island completely went against that goal of Iger’s. It was a strange anomaly that ruined the cohesion of Downtown Disney. Eventually, Iger would rebrand Downtown Disney into a more modern iteration geared toward families — Disney Springs — the branding that the shopping district still has today, but Iger cares about money more than anything else. If Pleasure Island was bringing massive crowds every night, he would have kept it. The problem was that nightclubs in a family-oriented park could not sell to many people. It was a narrow demographic, or — at least — it was narrow in the 1990s and 2000s.
The Future of Pleasure Island
Strangely, Iger has taken the ideas of Pleasure Island and put it in other forms of the park, but he has masked it with deeper immersion. Under Iger’s tenure, he fully lifted the ban on alcohol in some Disney parks. As of 2019, Disneyland — the final holdout on alcohol — started serving it once Galaxy’s Edge opened, and Galaxy’s Edge brings me back to my original anecdote.
Galaxy’s Edge was the brainchild of Iger. He likely sees the acquisition of Lucasfilm as one of the crowning achievements of his nearly 20 years as CEO. His purchase of Lucasfilm coincides with his purchases of other media companies, such as 20th Century Fox and Marvel — but, as I write in my article “Bob Iger and Disney Hate America”, Iger sees his greatest feat as teaming up with the Chinese Communist Party to make Shanghai Disneyland.
Nonetheless, what did Iger do in Galaxy’s Edge, the most immersive theme park land in history? As I have written, besides the rides, Oga’s Cantina serves as one of the most popular destinations in the land. You can get drunk in the park! I see this theming as more sinister since he is trapping you in thematic immersion. Pleasure Island may have used Disney-styled theming, but it did not try to trick you into thinking that you were stepping into Toontown with Jessica Rabbit whereas Galaxy’s Edge and Oga’s Cantina blur the lines of reality.
Strangely, I think that Disney could try again with Pleasure Island. Eisner just didn’t do it at the correct time. Zillennials more and more want to mix their childhood nostalgia with the vices of adulthood, or — at least — entertainment companies want that to be the case. Unless something changes, my fellow zillennials will become Pinocchio on Pleasure Island and may never grow up.
Universal actually has replications of the Harry Potter land in three of their parks outside of Florida. Those are the Universal Studios parks in Japan, Hollywood, and Beijing, so it is not unique to Islands of Adventure in Orlando.
This menu misspells “Rocko”.
I am not counting the CW revival of Legends of the Hidden Temple from October 2021 to January 2022.
At this time, Disneyland Paris was still called Euro Disney. It would switch branding in 1994.
When this park opened, it had the name Disney-MGM Studios. The name changed to Hollywood Studios in 2008.
Hong Kong Disneyland opened a few months after Michael Eisner’s departure, but it was fully developed during his tenure. Therefore, I am including it in the list.
At Disneyland and Magic Kingdom, Splash Mountain still exists just under different branding. It now is Tiana’s Bayou Adventure. It opened under the new name in Florida on June 18, 2024. It will open in California on November 15, 2024. The ride remains Splash Mountain in Japan with no plans for changing it.
The ride still exists at Disney’s California Adventure in Anaheim, but it has been rebranded to Mission Breakout, a ride based on the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise.
Dinosaur will likely close in the next year to make way for the new Tropical Americans land in Animal Kingdom. This land is set to open in 2027, and the Dinosaur ride will be re-themed to Indiana Jones, similar to its counterpart in Disneyland in California.
In 2018, Disney’s California Adventure re-themed this rollercoaster to The Incredibles. It now has the name “Incredicoaster”.