The Pros and Cons of Disney California Adventure

[kelh77]

Unlike most people on MC, I love DCA! Whenever i'm at the parks I always find myself spending more time there than at DL. Its always less crowded, plus it has Screamin' and TOT, which are my 2 favorite rides Oh, and WOC is amazing too!

[jesterjack]

Pro: It was cheap.

Con: It was cheap.

Pros: Tower of Terror, California Screamin', The irony that a California themed park is in California

Cons: Pixar

[The Forbidden Eye]

My Pros and Cons:

Pros: WoC, Golden State area (the only land done right when it first opened), Paradise Pier 2.0 (slow but getting there), LM attraction and Carsland

Cons: Hollywood Pictures Backlot (Aladdina and ToT exempted), Main entrance, lack of more big entertainment, and ironicly, lack of better, different eating places.

[Barbaraann]

D.A.R.T. - Disney Area Rapid Transit

[hobbitfeet]

Unlike most people on MC, I love DCA! Whenever i'm at the parks I always find myself spending more time there than at DL.

Same with my family. We absolutely adore DCA and have since we finally stepped foot in it (after scoffing at it for two one-day trips previously).

Pros: The irony that a California themed park is in California

Not sure that it's actually ironic...

And...what occurred to us after finally going to DCA after skipping it for two years...where ELSE would be a good place for a state-themed themepark? Should it have been in Russia? Texas? Iceland? Tuvalu? There's no GOOD place for a state-themed place, but to put it in CA isn't a horrible thing. It's really grown on me.


pros: fave ride ever, Grizzly. First time on that ride was in December, at night, during a rainstorm, in a raft with 4 or 5 11 year old boys, that I did not know, who had just won some sort of tournament (chess? not sure what). And it was awesome! I rode twice in a row, with those silly kids (they asked if I'd go again since they were), and it's been my fave ever since. Now that my son can ride it it's even better. He and hubby went 10 times over 2 days...I did 9 after giving up the poncho to my kidlet who finally wanted one.

Screamin's supposed lack of theme actually makes me quite happy. Maybe it'll be nice once they change it, but I like the funky stuff around it, and like that the line itself is rather plain. I usually single rider it anyway, so I don't really notice it.

DS loves Mulholland Madness; won't go on Gadget's coaster but wants to ride MM over and over.

The music makes me happy. The wide walkways make me happy.

Monsters Inc is great, and the only thing that would make it greater would be to change it to a coaster based on the ride through the door area that's towards the end of the movie...but it would HAVE TO BE gentle enough to let CHILDREN be tall enough for it; otherwise it would just be a waste to change it, and my coaster can just stay in my head.

Love love love the Animation Academy. The pictures we've drawn there...even the "monsters and aliens" pictures that my son has drawn when the artist is going too fast...decorate our home and make us so so happy.



cons...they are remaking it to please the masses, which will displease us.

[hobbitfeet]

And I totally forgot about our massive love for bug's land. And our hatred of the idea that there is (or was and will be again?) a second entrance/exit. While we've been there (with only one entrance/exit) it has been the ONE safe space at DLR. Where DS can run around and *not get lost*. One parent can go off and ride Screamin' or TOT while the other parent watches DS, and we don't have to worry about the multiple places he could go and get out, like in Fantasyland etc. There was one way in, one way out. Lovely. Breathing is, well, WAS before the change, possible for the parents of young children in there.

It's also a great place to be the Bad Example that drives other parents nutty, b/c we bring a change of clothes for DS and let him get soaked all the way through in the water play area(s) in bug's land. Love that!

[von Drake]

Some very nice posts, Hobbitfeet! Sounds like you adjusted some attitudes to get the most out of what is, after all, an actual, existing park. As opposed to the ideal one that lives in our heads.

[MrHatboxGhost]

And our hatred of the idea that there is (or was and will be again?) a second entrance/exit.

I don't recall a second entrance...

[CaliforniaAdventurer]

And...what occurred to us after finally going to DCA after skipping it for two years...where ELSE would be a good place for a state-themed themepark? Should it have been in Russia? Texas? Iceland? Tuvalu? There's no GOOD place for a state-themed place, but to put it in CA isn't a horrible thing. It's really grown on me.

Let me tell you a story. My Dad was inviting Japanese visitors over to the house, he asked my mom to make her stir fry wok recipe. She said "Sure" and hung up the phone, proceeded to make potato salad, bbq chicken and ribs, corn on the cob and a completely Old West bbq menu.

My Dad was a little surprised. What happened? Mom realized you don't try to sell ice to eskimos.

She prepared an all-American menu, something they probably couldn't get back home. She knew her wok recipe wasn't going to impress a Japanese visitor, but that a down home bbq would.

So yeah, Americana and The California Dream would have sold well in Japan, Russia, Iceland or Tuvalu. I think Japanese guests would have liked a California themed park in Japan.

That's why New York New York Hotel, and the Venetian, Paris and other themed hotels do well in Las Vegas, they take you away to some place else.

[von Drake]

That's why New York New York Hotel, and the Venetian, Paris and other themed hotels do well in Las Vegas, they take you away to some place else.

Hear, hear! I love New Orleans Square, and I love New Orleans. But if you plunked NOS smack down in the real thing, I don't think I'd spend more than five minutes in there. Evoking a place is one thing; directly pitting that against reality is something else entirely.

The classic Disney management was acutely aware of this--in fact, they hesitated at putting PoTC in WDW, because they thought Florida might be too close to the real Caribbean for it to have the necessary once-upon-a-time resonance (yes, I'm glad they finally went ahead with it, but the alternative they developed, the Great River Adventure, would have been nice too).

Eisner, on the other hand, genuinely thought that he could clean up, simplify and package the "California experience". As Marty Sklar said, in defense of DCA, "You come to California and you can't find it." Well, no...only if you mean the vanished (and never-was) hyped-up versions of California peddled through the media. Which made DCA, as originally conceptualized, a fake version of a fake.

I'll take Pixar attractions over that kind of pabulum any day.

[sleepyjeff]

Let me tell you a story. My Dad was inviting Japanese visitors over to the house, he asked my mom to make her stir fry wok recipe. She said "Sure" and hung up the phone, proceeded to make potato salad, bbq chicken and ribs, corn on the cob and a completely Old West bbq menu.

My Dad was a little surprised. What happened? Mom realized you don't try to sell ice to eskimos.

She prepared an all-American menu, something they probably couldn't get back home. She knew her wok recipe wasn't going to impress a Japanese visitor, but that a down home bbq would.

So yeah, Americana and The California Dream would have sold well in Japan, Russia, Iceland or Tuvalu. I think Japanese guests would have liked a California themed park in Japan.

That's why New York New York Hotel, and the Venetian, Paris and other themed hotels do well in Las Vegas, they take you away to some place else.

Excellent!!!

[CaliforniaAdventurer]

If only the Imagineers had told Eisner "Sure" on DCA and then just proceeded to build Westcot. Hahaha. I never thought of my mom as a candidate for Chief of Imagineering but she would have been great!

[SoCalFan]

I actually enjoy the whole theme of California however I do wish they would go more towards the history none of us can live and also the was never there romaticized, dream of California. Parts of the expansion like BVS, Red Cars, and the IDEA behind PP are ways they should be traveling. I don't mind the whole adventures through Disney of a never was CA they're doing now but I would LOVE to see something like more NOS, Main Street, Adventureland, and Frontierlad.

DCA should be more like these lands as they are a places that borrow the historical/local looks and gets inspiration from the places atmosphere but provide new and different adventures not possible in the real world. They have unique, comical, unrealistic, dramatic, nostalgic, and dream-like adventure in them. I could go and visit an old town like Main Street but I can't ride horse drawn cars and antique vehicles/trains there. I could visit the jungles of India and Africa but I can't go on a jeep through an ancient temple, see talking birds, or go on a satirical jungle river boat there. I could go to New Orleans but I can't see the pirates that sacked the gulf or visit a swinging wake in an old plantation there. I can go to the Southwest and the "frontier" but I can't steer a canoe, ride an old paddlewheel, venture on an old schooner, or go on a haunted mine train there. DCA needs to take a lesson from that. BVS is a huge step in the right direction...I can visit LA but I can't ride an old red car through the 1920 streets of it. PP is going right way with some of the architecture and parks going in and to an extent the dark rides but it's just not going to be there. GRR/Condor Flats have the potential and if they continue the theming trend of that long forgotten 50's roadtrip that area can shine even more than it does now. DCA needs things that we can't do here anymore or have never been able to do

[Meville]

Let me tell you a story. My Dad was inviting Japanese visitors over to the house, he asked my mom to make her stir fry wok recipe. She said "Sure" and hung up the phone, proceeded to make potato salad, bbq chicken and ribs, corn on the cob and a completely Old West bbq menu.

My Dad was a little surprised. What happened? Mom realized you don't try to sell ice to eskimos.

She prepared an all-American menu, something they probably couldn't get back home. She knew her wok recipe wasn't going to impress a Japanese visitor, but that a down home bbq would.

So yeah, Americana and The California Dream would have sold well in Japan, Russia, Iceland or Tuvalu. I think Japanese guests would have liked a California themed park in Japan.

That's why New York New York Hotel, and the Venetian, Paris and other themed hotels do well in Las Vegas, they take you away to some place else.

Very good point.

Does anyone know how many daily park visitors are from Cailifornia and how many are from out of state or country.

I would suspect that the locals (who could be the bulk of the guests) may not like the park as much, due to being the perverbial eskimo.

I can't agree more with Hobbitfeet. When I take my family, from Canada, down to the parks, we all love DCA's california themeing, but maybe cause we don't live there.

It is kinda like our yearly Calgary Stampede Event. People come from around the world to get a flavor of the 'canadian west' but it has been years since myself, a resedent, has even been.

So maybe the exec's at the time miss-understood the demographics of the time.

[jesterjack]

Not sure that it's actually ironic...

And...what occurred to us after finally going to DCA after skipping it for two years...where ELSE would be a good place for a state-themed themepark? Should it have been in Russia? Texas? Iceland? Tuvalu? There's no GOOD place for a state-themed place, but to put it in CA isn't a horrible thing. It's really grown on me.

I find it ironic, not to mention weird.

to me it's like putting a NYC theme park on Governor's Island, when Governor's Island is in the middle of New York Bay