From Rugrats to The Simpsons, at some point in our lives we’ve devoted time to watching cartoons. Whether you have been depriving your inner child of animation for who-knows-how long or are an active Disney/Nickelodeon/comic strip-phile like I am, this is an inside look into something you may not know about animation. Enjoy this free issue of the Toon Times.
Anyone who knows me in the slightest is aware that I am a Disney nut. Growing up in Orange County, I was entrenched in Disney culture. While most of us remember watching the animated films as children, maybe dressing up as Ariel or Cinderella for Halloween, growing up near Anaheim paints an entirely different picture — one in which owning a Disney pass is as common among children as having a driver's license is for adults. Disney isn't just a cultural icon, it's a way of life.
Disneyland is a 15-minute drive from my childhood home. At age three, I would spend full days at the parks with my grandma at least once a week. We packed lunches to eat in line and I sat in a stroller for the night-time walk back to the parking spot that my grandma unfailingly forgot at the culmination of every trip.
Since those days of scrambling down Main Street, U.S.A., through Fantasyland and the various other lands, I have thought a lot about the value of animation on the screen versus the real-life equivalent. For most kids, Disney is something they see when they turn on the television, but once the screen has been turned off, the Disney fascination slowly falls into the background of day-to-day events.
But Disney, among places like Universal Studios, Knott’s Berry Farm, Six Flags and other theme parks featuring well-known characters, is an institution in some of our lives, perhaps enlivening our interest and even creating obsessive fans out of a select few.
A Universal model
Universal Studios in Orlando and Hollywood have both paved a place for themselves in the childhood landscape, creating themed sections of their parks. Though nothing outcompetes the Disney Parks in the way of character-driven attractions, Universal Studios Hollywood and Florida have sections of their park referencing The Simpsons, Curious George and Shrek. In Orlando, there used to be entire sections devoted to the Nickelodeon cartoons, from Spongebob Squarepants to Jimmy Neutron. Though the on-site Nickelodeon Studios (home to productions of All That, Kenan & Kel, etc.) virtually disbanded in 2005, the park still pays homage to its cartoon-themed roots.
Islands of Adventure in Orlando hosts characters from Jay Ward's Dudley Do-Right to Dr. Seuss's The Cat in the Hat, with entire islands of the park devoted to cartoons (Toon Lagoon) and the Seuss children's book chronicles (Seuss Landing).
These more obscure references featuring cartoons of old and a series of hand-drawn books may not inspire the same enthusiasm that seeing Mickey Mouse strolling down Main Street might, but they show an inherent need within the animation world to branch out and create a physical world for their characters to reside. It has worked to inspire a new following, giving kids an insight into cartoons they may not have known before.
Peanuts and comics and tunes, oh my
One of the greatest parts of being born and bred in southern California, other than having the Beach Boys sing about us, is living within reasonable driving distance from a ridiculous number of theme parks. Besides the well-known Disneyland Resort and Universal Studios Hollywood, SoCal is home to two other major theme parks: Six Flags and Knott’s Berry Farm. And both of these places, like their competitors, have capitalized on the cartoonification of theme parks.
At Six Flags Magic Mountain, Looney Tunes and DC Comics have their own firm places in the fabric of the park. Rides like Green Lantern: First Flight and Superman: Escape from Krypton are among some of the more popular attractions for teens, while Daffy’s Adventure Tours, Tweety’s Escape and Road Runner Express are some of the more kid-friendly cartoon-themed rides.
Knott’s Berry Farm, in the Cedar Fair Entertainment Company, alternatively has one cartoon theme and one only. The Peanuts characters, known from their holiday specials airing on ABC every year, lend a character or two to Camp Snoopy, a kid-friendly section of the park with places like Lucy’s Lunchbox restaurant or Woodstock’s Airmail.
Some of my fondest memories of childhood took place at Knott’s Berry Farm, where they host grand Thanksgiving and Easter brunches with a little thrill-riding on the side. But without the Peanuts characters, the park would not have retained half its charm. And the relationship between theme park and cartoon is ultimately cyclical. The characters were brought in as part of the marketing of the parks early on, and often our choices to visit them relies on our interest in those characters in the first place. If we are vehemently opposed to comic books, we might write off some of the bigger thrill rides at the Magic Mountain. But the relationship does not end with inspiration to visit the park. Without costumed Peanuts characters so close to my southern California home, perhaps I would never have been as fascinated by the comic strip and holiday specials as I am today.
What inspired us to watch these films as kids may well have been our trips to the parks themselves, leaving the origins of decisions lost and the ultimate truth that cartoons and theme parks exist in a continuum of childhood fascination.
The Disney Effect
The big kahuna of the theme park world belongs to the company that owns the most renowned animation wing of any media conglomerate. The Disney Parks, with sites in France, Japan, China, Florida and the original in California, have had more than an effect on the lines that animation and theme parks travel and eventually meet through.
Walt Disney’s vision of a theme park coincided with one of the most profound aspects of children’s entertainment and animation in particular: the capitalization on ancillary markets. Early days of Disney were not without heavy merchandising of characters. Mickey Mouse himself was first featured on wrist watches in the 1930s.
It was only natural that - in 1955 when Disney opened his first theme park in Anaheim, Calif. - the mascot would be Mickey, his magnum opus.
These days, you would be hard-pressed to find a child from Orange County, or perhaps in most of the world, who has not owned at least one item with the Disney brand. The parks have instigated a powerful captivation among children with the Disney franchise, allowing even the newest characters to become staples of the park hierarchy.
And in the other Disneyland Resort park across the way, California Adventure, Disney’s affiliate Pixar, Inc., is able to broaden the scope of their characters with A Bug’s Land (from A Bug’s Life) to Toy Story Mania! to the soon-to-be-opened Cars Land.
What Disney does better than any other theme park in respect to the animation-to-reality transition is the costumed character. As soon as new films come out, cast members are immediately commissioned to portray those roles as face characters (human versions of cartoons like Tinkerbell, the Princesses, etc., who are not in head-to-toe costumes) in the theme parks. At Disneyland and the Magic Kingdom in Disney World, special locations are dedicated to characters from one of the most recently released animated film by Disney, Tangled.
One of the greatest integrations of animated characters into the reality of the Disney Parks is in the form of Pixie Hollow at Disneyland where characters from the recent Tinkerbell series of straight-to-DVD films are available for meet-and-greets daily. The crowning achievement of Disney is this ability to use characters not just as mascots or symbols in rides, but as attractions themselves. The characters of animation in Disney become institutions themselves, drawing fans and maintaining lines sometimes longer than the most-loved rides at the park. Tangled wait times can be around an hour, with children lining up just for a photo with the characters. Because the films are so prevalent in the children's media-consumed lives, they become just as worth the wait as an actual ride. And in turn, those same children might go home in the evening and ask to watch the films that feature the characters they met in the parks.
From Fantasy to Reality
Part of the success of these theme parks, particularly Disney, is the use of animated characters as a means of promotion and inspiring interest in their target audiences and vacationers. But the relationship is symbiotic.
As many dollars as the average American family spends on Disney films, they often spend equal amounts on the prospect of visiting one of the many Disney resorts. The franchise that began as a cartoon and inspired a theme park has come full circle, inspiring people who love the films to put themselves into the real world of Disney.
While other theme parks may not have been built on the same foundation as Disney with a background of characters pre-determined as the faces of the park, they have taken a step in the same direction. In the same way that I was inspired 15 years ago to spend an evening watching A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving and then wake up the next day to eat lunch at Mrs. Knott’s Chicken Dinner Restaurant (Disclaimer: As a vegetarian, I would only be able to eat rolls at this place now), children now can sit down and watch the Halloween or Christmas Peanuts specials and follow-up with a trip to Knott’s Scary Farm (during the day of course) or to the Knott’s Berry Farm Christmas Crafts Village. The cartoons which become part of the inspiration for these parks in turn inspire the children to embrace those characters, keeping them relevant in cultural society. Without the syndication of the Peanuts gang to theme parks, who knows if the cartoon strips and holiday specials would have lived on past their creator's passing?
The reason that the animation franchises themselves have never died can perhaps partially be accounted for by their long-lived place in the theme park world. While cartoon fads may fall off the radar after a few years, certain characters live on. Whether it be Superman, The Grinch, Bugs Bunny, Snoopy or Mickey Mouse, these are the characters that shape our interest in fictions, and because of theme parks, they can permeate our reality too.