Paradise Pier California Screamin’
05_559702_part5.qxd 7/23/04 11:40 AM Page 182 Part Five Disney’s California Adventure A Brave New Park The Walt Disney Company’s newest theme park, Disney’s California Adventure, held its grand opening on February 8, 2001. Already known as “DCA” among Disneyphiles, the park is a bouquet of contradictions conceived in Fantasyland, starved in utero by corporate Disney, and born into a hostile environment of Disneyland loyalists who believe they’ve been handed a second-rate theme park. The park is new but full of old technology. Its parts are stunningly beautiful, yet come together awk- wardly, failing to comprise a handsome whole. And perhaps most lamen- table of all, the California theme is impotent by virtue of being all-encompassing. The history of the park is another of those convoluted tales found only in Robert Ludlum novels and corporate Disney. Southern California Dis- ney fans began clamoring for a second theme park shortly after Epcot opened at Walt Disney World in 1982. Although there was some element of support within the Walt Disney Company, the Disney loyal had to content themselves with rumors and half-promises for two decades while they watched new Disney parks go up in Tokyo, Paris, and Florida. For years, Disney teasingly floated the “Westcot” concept, a California version of Epcot that was always just about to break ground. Whether a matter of procrastination or simply pursuing better opportunities elsewhere, the Walt DisneyCOPYRIGHTED Company sat on the sidelines while MATERIAL the sleepy community of Anaheim became a sprawling city and property values skyrocketed.
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