Editor's Note: Kevin submitted this piece well in advance of the California Adventure (DCA) overhaul announcement last week which includes plans for a new 1920's-era entry street and a Walt Disney museum/attraction. I'm sure he will follow up his thoughts here in a future article when he gets a chance. - Al

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One early concept for the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland was a 'Museum of the Weird', portions of which still exist scattered among the ghosts in the attraction even today. But the museum concept as a wider phenomenon is better known to the Disney fan community via a debate: just how much should Disney parks themselves be a museum?

Nostalgia was important to Walt Disney - witness the theming and tone of Frontierland and Main Street - but the kind of nostalgia invoked today has more to do with theme park goers and what rides they remember from their youth. By now, we're on the second or third generation, in some cases, of people visiting Disneyland. The issue will grow in importance in Florida too, as the parks age here too.

The oldest WDW park, the Magic Kingdom, is particularly vulnerable to the 'museumification' concept, partly because it's the oldest, but mostly because park managers have until recently been content to let the park simply continue to offer the same show, without upgrades. The park felt stale because attractions have not been refreshed much. The Pirates of the Caribbean and Haunted Mansion, until very recently, both had 1970s-era audio and special effects in an unchanged show.

The Country Bears even were wickedly parodied in The Goofy Movie.

Ditto the Country Bear Jamboree, which doesn't show the newer Vacation Hoedown, and in 2006 and now 2007, doesn't show the Christmas version of the show either. It just plays the same old material, with no upgrades. How long has it been since the Carousel of Progress has been updated? Fort Langhorn on Tom Sawyer Island?

In many ways, the Magic Kingdom is exactly what some Disneyland fans hunger for in online discussion forums: a museum of Disneyland rides. It already exists, and in fact it's the number one visited park in the country!

A museum can be, almost by definition, stale and unchanging. These are good arguments in that long debate about whether Disneyland should (or should not) be a museum. By and large, the pendulum of opinion agrees that change should be encouraged.

Even Florida's MK has seen change. It's not a complete museum! But it's a bit disheartening to tally up what changes have occurred:

An attraction badly in need of old management: the newer Orlando show
plays to empty houses while the original Anaheim production has
seen increased attendance after a much delayed overhaul.

Actually, pause right there. It's about time they just renamed this land 'Futuristic Cartoon Land' (FCL), because that's all it is. The TTA isn't about a future of moving people around, it's about aliens and hovercrafts parked in no-hover zones. Even Space Mountain isn't about futurism; just look at the icon these days, which implies comedy and whimsical alien contact. The Fed-Ex post-show helps with that perception too.

Most recently, though, there have been encouraging signs. The upgrades to Pirates and the Mansion were well-executed and have been well-received. This is one museum that is beginning to revive out of its staleness.

And yet, there's a part of me that understands the desire for a real Disneyland museum. I can see the role of nostalgia in looking at a theme park. It made the Remember fireworks at Disneyland, at least for me, an immensely, intensely emotional experience, one I'm not sure they'll ever be able to top. Nostalgia speaks to us on some primal level.

We can all envision an honest to goodness museum of Disneyland somewhere, right? Old ride vehicles, displays and signs, props and parade floats. Wouldn't that be something to visit? People might well flock to a place like that. But on the whole, I agree a museum for Disneyland shouldn't actually *be* Disneyland, and probably shouldn't actually be physically located at Disneyland either. Some place off site might be plausible, in a big warehouse somewhere. That would do the trick nicely. They could charge a nominal admission and it would be instantly profitable.

Now is the time for a great big beautiful tomorrow?

It shouldn't be at Disneyland because the theme park experience should be profoundly different from the museum experience. Nostalgia has a place in our hearts, but only in the right context. Change, then, is mostly to be seen as a positive thing. Especially when it's done well. Even the Magic Kingdom in WDW, held up here as sometimes functioning like a museum, has had good change over the years. Since its inception, they've added Space Mountain, Big Thunder, and Splash Mountain. More recently, Philharmagic has charmed countless millions. So change has occurred, and perhaps it's most fair to say the track record has been mixed.

It's not just the parks that have changed. The clientele has too. Think back to the 1950s, or even the 1970s. If your memory doesn't go back that far, have a look at photographs of Main Street from that era. (Yesterland even ran a recent feature on this, available at this link.)

The well-dressed Lennon Sisters posing in front of City Hall.
Courtesy of Werner Weiss at Yesterland.com.

Notice anything? I see two prominent differences: first, people are dressed up to visit the park and it's a fair bet the corollary is that they were more respectful as a result; and second, people are walking on the sidewalk only, avoiding the street, even when there are no horse-drawn trolleys or horseless carriages around. It's no major stretch to say there's been a culture shift from that era to today.

What we may be seeing today is somewhat more akin to entitlement. People have an attitude that they are allowed to dress and behave however they might like, and everyone else's opinion be damned. This is a fundamentally different way to view society and the fellow human beings around you, yet it's increasingly what we see today. I've previously argued that the Disneyland annual passport program, which lures locals so successfully, has as one by-product cultivated a sub-culture of uber-entitled visitors (please note: this is a minority of the AP population I'm referring to, not the majority).

Have you seen Disney visitors wearing inappropriate clothing, or perhaps with shocking language on their t-shirts? With the attitude of entitlement and 'me-first' comes a corresponding lack of respect for private property, increased graffiti, and heightened incivility between people, especially in lines or crowded situations (the incessant creep of people inching closer to you while holding a spot at Disneyland's Fantasmic leaps to mind).

"Cha-cha-cha-changes" David Bowie once sang.

Here's my question, and it's one I don't have an answer to: how much of this, if any, is Disney's problem? How should Disney react? Should they 'shift' with the culture too? It's no major announcement to claim that when it comes to Cast Member standards, they HAVE shifted already. Appearance guidelines in the 1980s looked Pollyanna-like for the simple reason that these were essentially the same guidelines in place in the 1950s. Men's hair had to be above the ear at all times, and an inch above the collar in the back. Sunglasses that prevented a clear view of the eyeball were prohibited. Only one ring per hand. Women could only wear stud earrings, and they had to be dime-sized or smaller. No streaks or hair colorations were allowed. I don't know about your experiences, but I no longer see every CM conforming to the standards listed above.

I've seen Disney 'shift' with the times in other ways. They used to prevent people from entering the main gate if inappropriate clothing was worn, but these days it's quite hit or miss. And speaking of Main Gate, they used to be quite strict about 'no outside food or drinks', but that too has gone by the wayside more or less. Here at WDW, I see people with entire coolers sometimes.

There are times I wonder if Disney might want to 'hold the line' and not shift with the times for thematic reasons. If you think about it, Disneyland offers a vision of exotic environments as seen through the lens of the 1950s. It's the 1950s version of turn of the century America, the 1950s vision of the future, the 1950s vision of Africa, and the 1950s vision of Twain's Mississippi. To modern visitors, the holdovers from that 1950s vision make for a kind of nostalgia. This is a different kind of nostalgia than was invoked at the start of this article. Rather than nostalgia for old Disneyland rides, this is instead a nostalgia for a bygone era entirely.

Hmmm. Maybe Disneyland *is* a museum after all. Just not the way we thought originally.