Enhancing Reality

In fifty five years since its inception, the idea of themed entertainment has grown to become the single biggest and most encompassing business in the world. The Walt Disney Company is the second largest in existence, second only to Lockheed Martin.

Certainly, as we are all aware, there have been missteps. There have been poor decisions and bad promotions. There have been people put in charge that have no roots in story. There have been people let go that were true geniuses of their times, their achievements forgotten and sucked into the vacuum of "Global Identity", as executives with MBAs and closed minds continue to strip our most compelling places of their individuality.

You have to like the guest. "Liking the guest is the key to everything we do." It is still true today, and its still true today that they like the guest. It's just that they got a little too specific, and now they like the guests' dollar.



In order to sort through what is a truly poor addition/removal and what was actually conceived to enhance the stories of the parks, we must remember that times change. There are still, and will always be, a company-wide enthusiasm for creating wonderful entertainment that no amount of Mendenhall styled branding can possibly destroy.

Look, for example, at the Sorcerer's Hat. The hat was added for a number of reasons, but the official publicly acknowledged reason was to honor the 100th anniversary of Walt Disney's birth. When one observes the prototype model of the modern theme park that is Disneyland, we begin to understand the hat with a bit more compassion.

Both the Sorcerer's Hat and Grauman's Chinese Theatre, which one provided the beautiful end piece to Hollywood Boulevard, share the same purpose. Hench, and subsequently Imagineering theory, calls this purpose "Enhancing Reality."

As we approach the toll plaza of the Hollywood Studios park, the architecture and color scheme begs some sort of vague familiarity in our collective consciousness. It is the gates of the Pan Pacific Auditorium in Los Angeles, which burned to the ground on May 24, 1989. Just three weeks prior, on May 1, the Disney-MGM Studios in Lake Buena Vista, Florida had opened to the public with the architecture of the famed entrance to the auditorium also providing the entrance to the park.



It is strange and bittersweet that it happened the way it did. The Pan Pacific was designed by Wurdeman & Becket- a southern California architecture firm whose other notable (and Disney-related) achievements include the towering "Theme Building" at LAX. Because our experience at the Studios park is based on a Hollywood that "Never was...and always will be", immediately the architecture of the Pan Pacific entrance sets up our experience: we are no longer in a world that exists, but one that can now only exist in our memories, and one that (for the most part) never existed at all.

Hollywood as we collectively "remember" it, and as it is portrayed at the Studios, never actually existed. It is the result of clever advertising campaigns and fantasy worlds created by Hollywood set designers and filmmakers- and Disney Imagineers.

As we enter the park, we encounter a highly stylized version of Hollywood Boulevard that never actually existed, either. Here, we find a classic portrayal of many famous Los Angeles landmarks, all condensed onto one street.



Now, imagine entering the park in May 1989, and at the far end of Hollywood Boulevard towers a glimmering replica of Grauman's famous Chinese Theatre. As designers, we may ask ourselves many questions to start:

Q: What end-of-this-experience icon would we expect to see at the end of an idealized Hollywood Boulevard?
A: A "movie palace" .

Q: What movie palaces have a famous enough architectural statement to communicate immediately with all of our guests?
A: The Chinese Theatre.

Now, we must address an issue that postdates the Magic Kingdoms in favor of EPCOT- the thesis attraction.

Q: What central experience can we provide that will allow our guests an overview of the ideas found in the rest of the park/story?
A: Movies!

This is where Hench's enhanced reality starts to come into play.

Q: In the normal, everyday world, our guests might expect to see a movie palace at the end of a street. What makes this one different? What enhances the reality and takes the experience from a normal one to a Disney one?
A: Inside this movie palace, we aren't going to watch movies. We are going to journey into them.

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Now, flash forward to 2001, as we begin to gear up to celebrate what would have been Walt Disney's 100th birthday. If there was ever an endearing symbol for The Walt Disney Company as a whole, the sorcerer's hat would have to take the top honor. Fantasia was a film that was very close to Walt's own heart, and though it failed considerably at the box office and wasn't well recieved by the audience or the critics either, the film did provide a very early form of Imagineering in that Walt developed new technologies and set new precedents with what could be done in many different types of entertainment.



More than it was a film, Fantasia was an experience: the first time Disney had ever truly attempted to bring the picture off the screen. He created a system called FantaSound, which was in essence the very first version of surround sound. Walt even wanted a form of "Smell-O-Vision" to be installed in all the theaters that were to play Fantasia, but couldn't secure the financing to create something that elaborate at the time.

The Sorcerer has always been the symbol of Walt Disney Imagineering, post WED Enterprises. The idea of Mickey as the apprentice to the must older and wiser Yensid pertains to everything WDI does. It makes Imagineers constant apprentices: to the art form, to themselves and to one another. Instead of being the experts, they are a team, always learning and trying new things and moving in the only direction their heirs have ever known how to move in: forward.

It was also fitting that at the beginning of the 21st century, the entire concept behind the Studios park was evolving: it was no longer just a place about Hollywood and filmmaking, it was now a place about the entire world of entertainment: "Where Showbiz Is".

It was under these conditions that Imagineers decided to place the Sorcerer Hat in front of the Chinese Theatre.

What this did to the vantage from the far, Pan-Pacific end of the Studios entrance plaza (more on this space in a later post) was created a juxtaposed image. Previously, we enhanced our reality and used the thesis attraction to set the stage for the show to follow by taking the idea of a movie palace one step farther and allowing guests a level of interaction that they simply cannot attain while watching a film.

Now, "The Hat" moves the story closer in line with what Disneyland's model projects with Sleeping Beauty Castle. We do not expect to find a fairy-tale castle at the end of a turn of the century Main Street, USA- but there it is. Our reality, by simply viewing an image placed carefully before us and detailed to a high level of realism, has therefore become enhanced.

The Sorcerer Hat does the same. It provides a large central icon that can be seen from all areas of the park, and it provides a juxtaposed image. We do not expect to see a gigantic Sorcerer's Hat at the far end of an idealized 1940s Hollywood Boulevard- but there it is.

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Now, the problem. The Payoff. The entire idea of an "Icon", as defined in our first Icon-O-Class, comes from that old carnival term, "wienie". The guests are instinctively drawn to a Disney icon the way a dog is drawn to a hot dog. When they get there, there needs to be a payoff. In Henchian terms, the long shot needs to match with the close-up.


When it does not, we experience the conundrum of contradiction. Contradictions destroy a story environment and bring us back into the real world. On the two dimensional motion picture screen, we are given various cues and patterns to help us "suspension of disbelief". As designers, our goal is to get the guest to accept instead an "Enhanced Reality." We cannot do this if the previous reality has not been suspended. This is the purpose of the separation of the Magic Kingdom by the Seven Seas Lagoon, of the straight and simple lines EPCOT's entrance plaza, and of the Pan Pacific facade at the Studios.

Here, our reality has been suspended, but since we have yet to reach any thesis attraction to show us what this show is going to be all about in specific detail, there is still the chance that our suspension of disbelief will be broken.

Unfortunately, a beautiful and aesthetically pleasing icon such as the Sorcerer's Hat cannot fulfill its obligations to the rest of the image of Hollywood Boulevard because the long shot does not match with the close up. When guests reach the hat, the payoff, the suspension of disbelief, is a cart and cashier selling generic Disney pins and High School Musical merchandise.



The beautiful replica courtyard of the Chinese Theatre lies some distance behind, and certainly guests still find their way there and experience the aging Great Movie Ride, but as a guest you expect there to be something incredible either just beneath or inside that central icon- and unfortunately in an effort to make a fast dollar, the money men provide us not with any sort of enhanced reality but instead with another opportunity to purchase more Mickey-related Schlock.