Month: February 2009

Once again from the LA Times Travel Blog:

With the debut today of the rehabbed It’s a Small World ride at Disneyland, the public gets its first look at the controversial new “Spirit of America” scene — the focus of much angst and anguish in chat rooms and blog posts.

On one side of the boat ride, the new scene features an American West tableau with cowboys, Indians and “Toy Story” characters Woody, Jessie and Bullseye. On the other side, farmer dolls in overalls and straw hats populate an agricultural heartland montage.

“Spirit of America” replaces a tropical rainforest scene, which got severely truncated and unceremoniously tucked into another room on the ride.

Walt Disney Imagineer Kim Irvine, who oversaw the Small World rehab, explained her approach to the new American scene during a boat ride through the attraction today.

Irvine based the new scene, in part, on original concept art by Small World ride creator Mary Blair. Fellow Imagineer Tony Baxter accidentally discovered the sketch at a recent Comic-Con event.

“It just confirmed our suspicions that she always meant to have a scene for America,” said Irvine, who says the scene may have been cut from the original attraction because of time constraints.

The original sketch includes many elements — buttes, cactuses and the sun — incorporated into the new American West scene.

“It really helped me get the color tones right,” Irvine said of the sketch. “The hardest part for me was really capturing Mary Blair’s style. It really has an innocent, childlike quality.”

A lasso-twirling cowboy, familiar to many Small World fans, was relocated from the finale to the American scene.

The goal of the renovation, Irvine said, was for the changes to be as seamless and unobtrusive as possible.

“We stuck to Mary’s story,” Irvine said.

A beloved Disneyland attraction returns to Fantasyland on Friday, Feb. 6, when “it’s a small world” opens with some new storytelling magic. With the premiere of a new “Spirit of America” scene, new musical enhancements, and a new look for some of the attraction’s familiar child dolls, “it’s a small world” will once again take guests of all ages on “the happiest cruise that ever sailed.”

This classic attraction has been renovated and enhanced while retaining the world-renowned charm that holds such a special place in the hearts of Disneyland guests. The “it’s a small world” journey continues to celebrate children of the world and their message of harmony and friendship. And now, for the first time, guests will be able to find some of the child dolls dressed as their favorite Disney characters, in the countries where their stories take place. For example, dolls dressed in Aladdin and Jasmine costumes play in the Middle East scene, and a doll dressed as Alice from “Alice in Wonderland” appears in the Great Britain scene.

Guests will enjoy riding “it’s a small world” again and again as they search for the 29 Disney and Disney•Pixar characters now represented in the attraction. Some appear as child dolls and some are playful-looking toys, such as the White Rabbit who accompanies Alice. The new doll costumes and toys are fashioned in the same artistic style that has made “it’s a small world” an icon around the globe. That style was created by art director, color stylist and Disney Legend Mary Blair, whose sense of design shaped “it’s a small world” from the very beginning.

“We know that many people have been eagerly awaiting the opportunity to relive their ‘it’s a small world’ memories and to create new ones with children, grandchildren and friends,” said Disney Imagineer art director Kim Irvine. “It’s a pleasure to once again offer this beloved attraction to Disneyland guests, now with some special Disney enhancements.”

• Among the enhancements is a new “Spirit of America” scene based on original concept art by Disney Legend Mary Blair, in keeping with the “it’s a small world” theme that friendship crosses all nations, including the United States.
• Child dolls that are costumed as stylized representations of their favorite Disney characters can be spotted in several scenes.

• The children in many “it’s a small world” scenes will have a variety of new stylized toys to play with, inspired by Disney and Disney•Pixar characters: Woody and Jessie for “Spirit of America,” a Mushu dragon kite for China, “The Three Caballeros” marionettes for Latin America, and others.

• Additional fresh touches will be heard in the augmented “it’s a small world” soundtrack. The renowned “it’s a small world” song, written by Academy Award®-winning composers Richard M. and Robert B. Sherman (“Mary Poppins”), will still play throughout the attraction. Now, however, some subtle film music is woven into the song as counterpoint melodies, fitting the characters and scenes.
• All of the boats in “it’s a small world” are new and designed to evoke the look and feel of boats that children of the world might play with anywhere.

Our friends over at the OC Register’s Around Disney blog have an interesting interactive map up showing the layout of the ride, along with where the new characters are located with an accompanying picture. They also have a photo slideshow up. You can view both of which by clicking the photo links bellow:

Again, stay tuned to Disneyland News Today, as I’m sure we will have even more information and material on It’s a Small World for you tonight.

The LA Times have up a couple of interesting articles on the changes to It’s a Small World that I wanted to share here with everyone:

As Walt Disney Co. set out to renovate It’s a Small World at Disneyland, the company’s Imagineers had one thing in mind: Don’t mess it up.

Despite being one of the oldest attractions in the park, the ride is among the most popular — drawing about 6.7 million riders a year.

The challenge was to give the beloved attraction new vibrancy without altering the stylized look created by the Disney artist whose childlike illustrations influenced such classic animated films as “Cinderella,” “Alice in Wonderland” and “Peter Pan.”

The Imagineers consulted illustrator Mary Blair’s original drawings for inspiration as they undertook one of the most ambitious updates of the ride since it opened at the Anaheim park in 1966.

After a yearlong renovation, it reopens Friday with a new scene that depicts the “Spirit of America,” a relocated rain forest and 29 added Disney and Pixar characters inserted in the countries where their stories take place.

Whether the public will embrace the changes remains to be seen. Some Disney purists have howled at the notion of Disney characters intruding on It’s a Small World — saying that their presence would destroy a historic work of art. Even the Blair family wrote a letter that labeled the move a “gross desecration.”

But Marty Sklar, executive vice president of Walt Disney Parks & Resorts and Imagineering ambassador, said the changes were subtle.

“None of this jumps out at you. That was one of the principles we set out to accomplish: that this is not going to become a Disney character ride,” he said. “The characters seamlessly appear in the scenes. They don’t say, ‘Look at me, look at me, look at me.’ ”

Change was unavoidable. The ride was built by Walt Disney for the 1964-65 World’s Fair in New York and transplanted to Southern California. After nearly 45 years, it was showing its age.

The water flume, which in its day represented a milestone in ride design (it could effortlessly handle 3,000 passengers an hour), had been patched so many times that the boats would get hung up. Disney needed to close the attraction to replace the leaky water channel and the boats. The company wouldn’t say how much the renovation cost.

These mechanical changes opened the door to a broader refurbishment — and triggered an internal debate over how aggressively to renovate a ride with a strong nostalgic appeal. Initially, the Imagineers envisioned a modest tinkering with the beginning and end of the ride, the so-called hello and goodbye scenes. But some advocated bolder changes deep within the small world itself.

Tony Baxter, senior vice president of creative development for Walt Disney Imagineering, recalled the discussion: “Do we dare touch inside the ride? And how much do we touch it? How close to Mary Blair can we get it — because if it stands out, then people are looking at it for the wrong reason.

“There’s been a lot of tug of war between should it stand out or should it blend in.”

“Unobtrusive” became the watchword as the Imagineers sought to add elements that had been popular at other Small World attractions at Disney’s overseas parks.

Park aficionados like Oleg Chaikovsky, who has made trips to Disneyland every year since he was 5 and is now a father, knows that some Disneyphiles will consider any change inexcusable.

“I’m withholding judgment until I see it in person, because I’m not against change,” said Chaikovsky, who plans to attend a preview today for annual pass holders. “But I also wonder why are we changing it if it is popular.”

Disney has incorporated characters from recent films in updates of other park attractions. For example, Capt. Jack Sparrow (looking very much like Johnny Depp) now appears throughout the refurbished Pirates of the Caribbean; the “Finding Nemo” crew populates the submarine voyage.

In Small World, the characters — which look like children playing dress-up — show up in the settings of their original stories: Peter Pan and Tinker Bell fly over one tower of the London Bridge, the Pinocchio marionette appears in a puppet show in Italy; Aladdin and Jasmine ride a flying carpet in the Middle East scene.

“We wanted to add the Disney characters, because we wanted to give it a new life . . . to make it continue to be relevant to our audiences today, because we think this message is so important,” Sklar said.

Threads of music from Disney and Pixar films accompany many of the characters, woven in between the familiar “Small World” melody composed by brothers Richard and Robert Sherman, who won an Academy Award for their “Mary Poppins” score.

The strains of “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo” provide an almost imperceptible audio clue that the little blond doll accompanied by mice Jacques and Gus is, indeed, Cinderella.

A recording of rare Chinese instruments provides the acoustic backdrop for Mulan in China. But even that decision sparked vigorous discussion among the Imagineers, who were still adjusting the volume this week.

Art director Kim Irvine sought to emulate Blair’s artistic style in creating the new America scene, which the original designer had sketched for Small World but which never made it into the attraction. The new room depicts the agricultural heartland, with a red barn towering over farmer dolls in overalls and straw hats, and the American West, with “Toy Story” characters Jessie and Woody against the backdrop of the Butte Mountains.

Evidence of just how closely Irvine’s style approximated that of Blair, with whom Irvine had worked on the Small World attraction at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla., became apparent when Baxter found one of Blair’s original sketches of the American West on sale at the Comic-Con comic book convention in San Diego.

“I said, ‘Kim, you’re not going to believe this,’ ” Baxter recalled. “So I took a picture of it, and I brought it back and I showed it to everybody. We were well along with our design, but it was so close to what our design was.”

To make room for America, Disney moved the rain forest and all its whimsical creatures to the South Pacific — a transplantation the Imagineers justified by noting that Australia boasts rain forests in its northern region.

This isn’t the first time Small World has undergone change. Over the years, Imagineers have incorporated parts of the world that ride designers glossed over in 1964, including China and the Philippines.

The designers have also responded to feedback from visitors who have noted when the traditional costumes aren’t authentic — pointing out, for example, when a sash isn’t quite right or a bow is tied too small. This time, Irvine invested long hours researching the Cherokee and Apache headdresses to ensure Native Americans are accurately portrayed.

“The point of that ride was, no matter how different we appear, there are certain things that we all share. We’re all the same underneath,” said Jamie O’Boyle, senior analyst for the Center for Cultural Studies and Analysis, a think tank in Philadelphia. “Apparently, the message took. The people in the boats today look like the ride.”

Brady MacDonald over at the LA Times Travel Blog has an interview with costume designer Celina Lung:

Celina Lung has hundreds of children around the world. Outwardly, all are identical to the others: same age, height and facial expression. And each one is impeccably dressed. But a few of them naughty, even the occasional problem child. Not that Lung holds it against them.

“I love them all. It’s true, I do,” said Lung, a Walt Disney Imagineering costume designer. “Each one of them is unique.”

And today, Lung will add to her growing brood with the addition of several dozen new characters to the It’s a Small World ride at Disneyland.

After a yearlong rehab, all of the 300-plus existing audio-animatronic figures in the beloved boat ride at the Anaheim theme park will don new costumes thanks to Lung and her team. Among the controversial new additions: about two-dozen Disney characters and an American scene complete with cowboys and Indians.

Sensitive to criticism that the changes amount to a desecration of the classic Small World ride, Disney Imagineers labored to blend the new additions into the existing attraction.

The new characters — including Lilo, Mulan and Cinderella — will be traditional Small World dolls that “dress up” as their favorite Disney characters.

“It has to be a part of Small World. We don’t want it to jump out,” said Lung. “There is a fine line that we have to make sure we don’t cross so it still works seamlessly with the rest of the show.”

Having designed costumes for Small World attractions in Tokyo and Hong Kong, Lung consulted reference books by Small World creator Mary Blair before tackling the changes to the Anaheim ride.

And she turned to original Small World costume designer Alice Davis for creative inspiration and direction.

“Talking to her gave me a sense of how it was done originally,” Lung said of Davis.

Before designing any of the costumes, Lung and her crew studied the function of all the animatronic dolls, which can move more than 1 million times per month.

Armed with costume dimensions, designers drew up sketches for each doll, developing a color palette to match the surrounding scene and taking into account the national heritage of each figure.

“Part of the research is to make sure that we are culturally sensitive,” Lung said. “We want to make sure we don’t offend any particular group.”

Fabrics in bright, eye-catching (but not clownish) colors were imported from Africa, Europe, Central and South America.

In a costume workshop filled with bolts of fabric and a bulletin board brimming with accessories, Lung’s team sewed a muslin pattern for every doll and fit the outfits on a mannequin before testing the designs in the attraction. After a year of preparation, the dolls only received their final costumes in the last week.

It’s important to Lung that each doll wears a complete costume, right down to the socks, petticoat (or undershirt) and bloomers (or underwear).

“A lot of the stuff we add nobody will ever know,” Lung said. “Whether the guest sees it or not, we know it’s there.”

Most dolls start life with two or three complete costumes. The naughty dolls — the ones Lung calls her “problem children” — go through costumes every month or two. Crews check each doll’s costume daily for wear and tear before the park opens.

A complicated character like Mulan wears a 13-piece costume. It can take a team of three employees up to an hour to dress her.

A troublemaker like Aladdin, who lies on a magic carpet with his arms and legs crossed, presents an especially difficult challenge.

“It’s very hard for me to put the costume on,” Lung said. “The doll doesn’t move. When you change them, they don’t stretch their arms. They’re like a baby. Actually, dressing a doll is harder than dressing a baby.”

But Lung, who has no birth children of her own, holds no grudges against any of the dolls in her ever-growing family.

“It’s beyond words how much I love the dolls and how much I love to dress the dolls,” Lung said. “They are like my children. I’m not kidding. It’s true.”

More than 40 years after the “It’s A Small World” ride opened at Disneyland to promote world peace and showcase the cultures of the world, Disney is populating one of its most beloved attractions with its own trademark vision of the planet: Aladdin, Nemo, Ariel and more than two dozen cartoon characters plucked from its movies.

And those aren’t the only changes visitors will find when the ride reopens today.

Disney has woven a few bars from some of its hit soundtracks into the classic “Small World” melody and added a new America section that includes a nod to the Hollywood Bowl, a quaint farm scene and “Toy Story” characters.

Senior Production Designer Leslee Turnbull paints the Cinderella portion of “It’s A Small World” at Disneyland.

Disney says it supplemented the human dolls with make-believe figures to keep the aging ride appealing to younger generations and give it a new twist.

Some angry fans see an unabashed marketing ploy that trashes the pacifist message at the heart of the ride and ruins one of the few rides that remained unchanged since the days of Walt Disney.

“What message are they actually saying about the world?” said Jerry Beck, an animation historian who runs the blog Cartoon Brew. “That you can go anywhere and there will be a Disney theme park?”

The added figures from a dozen movies include the blue alien Stitch, the mermaid Ariel, and characters from the 1992 movie “Aladdin.”

“Disney wants to brand the diversity of the entire world and somehow say that it’s Disney derived,” said Leo Braudy, a cultural historian at USC. “It seems a bit crass to put this brand on something that was meant to be a sort of United Nations for children.”

The “Small World” ride debuted at the 1964 World’s Fair in New York as a benefit to the United Nations Children’s Fund and moved to Disneyland two years later.

When Walt Disney dedicated the ride in 1966, he invited children from around the world to pour water from their homelands into its flume in a gesture of unity.

Replicas have opened at Disney theme parks in Florida, Tokyo, Paris and Hong Kong, and company research shows that a quarter of all Disneyland guests consider the ride a family tradition.

Disney says it hopes adding what it calls “new magic” to the 43-year-old attraction will attract even more riders and create new traditions for young families who don’t identify with “Small World” as strongly as previous generations.

The makeover appeals to many fans, some of whom grew up riding it each year with their parents.

Adding characters, such as Alice and the White Rabbit, have some longtime fans shouting, “Off with their heads.”

Dawn Barbour visited Disneyland from Texas with her children and was disappointed to find the ride closed for renovations but thrilled to hear about the changes.

“Oh, anything Disney does is always exciting,” Barbour said. “It’s always something fun, and they never do anything halfway.”

Disney designers say routine repairs gave them an opportunity to add another dimension to the message of cross-cultural understanding by working in references to Disney movies that are based on foreign fairy tales or set in faraway lands.

Whenever Disney changes a popular ride, they say, the company receives criticism from die-hard fans who are resistant to anything that will alter the Disneyland of their childhood memories.

So-called “Dis-nerds” also got upset when Disney refurbished the classic Pirates of the Caribbean attraction but were mollified once they saw the updated ride.

Designers insist the changes to “Small World” are even more subtle and conform to Walt Disney’s original philosophy and style while keeping the attraction from becoming “like a museum,” said Kim Irvine, director of concept design for Walt Disney Imagineering.

The son of the ride’s original designer, children’s illustrator Mary Blair, wrote an open letter to Disney executives blasting the changes.

“The Disney characters themselves are positive company icons, but they do NOT fit in with the original theme of the ride,” wrote Kevin Blair. “They will do nothing except marginalize the rightful stars of the ride, ‘the children of the world.’ ”

Marty Sklar, executive vice president of Walt Disney Imagineering, responded with his own letter, which was quickly posted on dozens of blogs and appeased some fans.

“We are not trying to turn this classic attraction into a marketing pitch for Disney plush toys,” Sklar wrote.

But some longtime Disney watchers disagree.

“Parents … could take the kids on this ride and it wasn’t so much about sales; it was about the images, the graphics, the dolls,” said Al Lutz, a veteran Disney watcher who runs miceage.com. “It was a respite from the overwhelming commercial message that Disney can be sometimes.”