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By no means is Disneyland a mediocre park or a former champion now in
decline. It's still a great park, rightly the jewel of the company. But it's not
perfect, and hasn't been for some time. It's been exactly twenty
years, to be precise. Last week was the twenty-year anniversary of Disneyland's
last day of perfection.
What happened twenty years ago? On Sunday, April 10, 1988, America Sings
closed. It's not that I think this show was so amazing that its demise must mean
the end of Disneyland perfection. It's that this closure marked the end of the era
of "full capacity" at the park. April 10, 1988 was the last day that Disneyland
operated all of its attractions and left no empty real estate lying around.
What's empty now? Well, the keelboats are gone, and its dock is empty. The
PeopleMover / Rocket Rods track just rots in the sun. No replacement has swept
in. The skyway is gone, with two empty buildings remaining. The Motorboat Lagoon
sits empty and forlorn. The Chip and Dale tree house ball crawl is history. And
let's not forget the shuttered walk-through inside the iconic Sleeping Beauty
Castle! Admittedly, this is pretty close to full capacity. The 50th Anniversary
did wonders to bring Disneyland back from the brink.
At one point or another between 1988 and 2005, some other notable closures
left visible scars on the park. Back then, one could find the sub lagoon empty
and unused. For years before that, the carousel building itself was empty, until
Innoventions moved in. And this was on top of the empty areas listed above, the
ones that are still empty!
Robb's photo shows America
Sings shortly after its closure in 1988.
And then there are the smaller experiences. Just how often do you see Main
Street crowded with Omnibuses, streetcarts, the fire truck, and two or more
horseless carriages, all out in public at the same time? You used to. Each was
theoretically an attraction unto itself.
Arguments break out all the time on the Internet about when Disneyland hit
its peak. My take has always been that attractions do matter (some of the early
ones in Walt years would not fly well today, and some blockbuster modern ones
like Indy are missing in the middle years). But while the nature of the
attractions matter, what matters more is the park operating at its full
capacity, firing on all cylinders.
There has not been a day since April 10, 1988, when Disneyland was operating
all its attractions and had no empty land. True, choosing that date means no
Toontown, no Indy, no Splash Mountain, and no Fantasmic. But it also means no
closed restaurants or rides anywhere, and the presence of atmospheric
elements like a burning cabin on Tom Sawyer Island or a thundering Cascade Peak.
The burning cabin on Tom Sawyer Island in
1957.
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