The Commercial Legacy of Magic Kingdom

As we have reached the 50th anniversary of the most successful theme park locale in the history of the world, now is the time to ask the question:

Is Magic Kingdom still a great park?

Is Central Florida’s Disney World even still part of Walt Disney’s vision anymore?

During the current century, one of the biggest rising stars in the entertainment community is a company that already was in the upper tier of financial and branding success. Disney back in 2000 was a mere shadow of the behemoth it has become in 2021. Since the turn of the century when Epcot was running Illuminations during its first year, Disney has purchased Pixar, LucasArts, Marvel, AND 15% of Hollywoodland entirely with 20th Century Fox. Since 2000, we have seen Disney become the owner of 14 of the 20 highest-grossing films of all-time, and have seen their value increase exponentially to become the biggest media giant outside of Google as they’ve made strides in film, television, streaming content, and even video games (to a much lesser extent).

Disney is synonymous with quality, with success, and with a plethora of other brand names like Star Wars and Marvel. Of all the media companies on earth, Disney is likely the one with the most valuable IPs. And this is an embarrassment of riches that will also affect the quality of the parks. But we’ll get to that part later.

But one aspect of Disney that hasn’t quite reached these quality heights is in their theme park division. Yes they own most of the biggest parks globally, but their market share has decreased a little, and because of feedback and slightly dwindling returns they’ve had to revamp California Adventure, Hollywood Studios, Hong Kong Disneyland, and even the studio park in Paris that most people don’t realize actually exists. If there are no additional sources of budget (Tokyo’s Oriental Land Company owns Tokyo Disneyland/DisneySea, Shanghai Disneyland got government financial assistance and the Chinese has majority ownership) the financial commitment to the parks tends to wane, and also tends to be reacting to other developments----like when Islands of Adventure’s Hogwarts became a mammoth success and Disney originally wanted to counter by giving Magic Kingdom a *checks notes* fairy section...

When Walt Disney was alive and had finally opened his long-anticipated dream Disneyland, he had always wanted it to be an organic property that’s always growing, always changing, always improving. Even Disney himself knew back in the 1950s that you can’t be stagnant if you want your park to be the best in the world. Upon his passing, Disneyland was already expanding, his dreams of constant change had been taking place. Arguably the biggest differences between Walt Disney’s Disneyland aspirations and what the Disney Company’s aspirations are can boil down to two main things: exclusivity and theming.

Now, Magic Kingdom is indeed still a delightful space to visit. I’m not here to say that millions upon millions of people are wrong every year.

Even if it lacks the intense thrills of other parks, especially those outside of Disney World, it offers a little something for everyone. Today’s Magic Kingdom has its decent thrills (Space Mountain, Big Thunder, soon TRON), light-light thrills (Pirates of the Caribbean, Snow White Train), chills (Haunted Mansion), and wholesome content (Peter Pan’s Flight, Philharmagic). And unlike other parks (*cough*Universal*cough*), Disney also emphasizes variety in food and emphasizes outstanding customer service to people of ALL ages, genders, nationalities, and orientations. Even if Universal’s inclusivity is outstanding and beyond the norm, Disney has a hold on the LGBTQ+ community that is impossible to duplicate.

It’s impossible to be angry at Magic Kingdom when the dole whip float is around the corner and you can smell the nearby popcorn. Also, especially with Epcot flaming out on this category post-Illuminations, its hard to top the fireworks presentations you see here.

Where modern Disney and classic Disney collides, and sacrifices Magic Kingdom along the way, is the approach to storytelling and selling the “magic”.

The exclusivity aspect is where Magic Kingdom went from having this intense aura of mysterious magical intrigue located behind the transportation and ticket center to pretty much having none today. Back in the day, this park would feature merchandise you cannot find anywhere else on earth. The every-ride-ends-in-a-gift-shop jokes are always a hoot, but in the older days Magic Kingdom was truly an immersive unique experience because of the fact that you’ll find things and see things and meet characters here that’s impossible to authentically find outside those gates (remember Mickey and Minnie’s houses?). For the record, there is still a sense of this in California’s Disneyland. But Magic Kingdom is a global park, and therefore is instead treated as the beacon of IPs, the avenue to present all the properties you possess as a company.

Disney World is built for people who will get to see this place once and maybe twice in their lifetimes. The parks aren’t being maintained for hardcore Disney fans, its built for your casual crowd visiting from all over the world. Orlando has become a beacon of global tourism for all races and nationalities, which is something California, Shanghai, and even to an extent Tokyo cannot claim. So therefore, all the merchandise and even some of the experiences have become streamlined to be seen in all the parks. The IPs Disney owns have bled to all places simultaneously. You can find Haunted Mansion and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad-related merchandise in Disney Springs and sometimes even other parks, which wasn’t always the case. The infamous dole whip has even expanded to several other locales, when it originally was a Disneyland/Magic Kingdom staple. It gives off this “sameness” vibe you didn’t experience before. The line that separates Magic Kingdom from the other Orlando parks is becoming blurrier.

Epcot’s newest show even borrows music selected from Happily Ever After, which was Magic Kingdom’s previous (spectacular) presentation. What used to be a park about technology and global harmony and cultures suddenly saw their famous lake becoming a beacon for a disjointed show that didn’t really vibe with the themes of Epcot. We’ve already seen Norway become a place for Frozen, and saw a Ratatouille ride and a Beauty and the Beast sing-along take over the France pavilion. Now we have a brand new show that doesn’t even represent all the countries in the World Showcase.

The theme parks are transforming into IP-laden havens, and its making minimal room for experiences that could deviate from the norm. Experiences like Jungle Cruise and Haunted Mansion, which used to be devoid of IPs, are becoming rarer and rarer. Even Animal Kingdom, a literal park about real mother nature, ended up with the Avatar IP (good attractions, but let’s be honest very jaded in a park chock full of -real- animals). This is probably what I miss the most about classic Disney, not everything has to be tied to a movie or a show or a merchandise Disney is trying to profit from. Even more degrading, attractions with relevant IPs have been getting cut-and-pasted around the world, Epcot’s unchanged Ratatouille ride comes from Europe, and Magic Kingdom’s Little Mermaid and Tron is coming from Shanghai and California respectively (and it appears we’re not going to see any changes or improvements made within these imitated experiences).

But let’s stick to Magic Kingdom.

Their last major expansion would have been a giant dud if not for the spectacular visuals of Be Our Guest. Magic Kingdom has become a park too big to fail, and therefore doesn’t get the finite details you see in Disneyland, and doesn’t see the seasonal enhancements you’ll also find in the West Coast---most notably the Nightmare Before Christmas layover. Big Thunder deserves an upgrade, as does Tomorrowland and even Adventureland (where’s my Indiana Jones ride, damn it). What I most miss about Magic Kingdom are the secrets.

Disney has decided to streamline the process of planning every aspect of your day months in advance. This means less room for exploration, discovery, and secrets, and more required space to ensure that everyone can enter the park and get their fixes and move on to the next thing. The variety isn’t quite there, the sense of wonder is replaced by a need to be at certain places at certain times. I understand that this happens because Disney has to justify the sky-high prices of the parks, but honestly if it were me running the company, I’d lower capacity to a point in which everyone can move at their own proper pace and feel like they accomplished nearly everything.

Tom Sawyer Island is the last major physical presence of what Magic Kingdom used to be in my eyes. This place is chock full of little fun details, a few secrets (Back then, if you found Tom’s paintbrush in Tom Sawyer Island, you won a prize of paper fastpasses), plenty of space to simply relax, and even great places to take good photos of other areas of the park. It invites you to roam around, it doesn’t force you into a line until its time to leave. Magic Kingdom used to be this way, you roamed and explored until you found an attraction you wanted to experience while slowly immersing yourself in the theming surrounding you. One time I was walking around main street and ended up seeing and learning how glass is made from the glass blowers that work throughout the afternoon.

Technology (alongside the rise of YouTubers and Instagrammers dependent on Tourist Country for content) and this need to justify the price tag forces Disney to remove the time-consuming aspect of park adventuring. So part of this is a change in culture, part of this is me being an old soul, and the rest is me witnessing a park that was never meant to be as capitalist and corporate as it has become. As the new show debuts and doesn’t even mention Walt or Roy Disney despite it being a celebration of the park’s legacy is just added proof that the focus on the Disney World side is on the IPs and the connections to the merchandise being sold as opposed to the vision and history of Walt Disney, the man who started it all. Another brutal hit is that the new fireworks doesn’t have Mickey Mouse at all. Huh?

So is Magic Kingdom a great park still?

Of course, the overall package is still delightful, its still a great escape from the real world. But its becoming much more a giant advertisement of all the IPs Disney offers in a variety of ways and less an extension of what Disneyland continues to be----a modern realized version of Walt Disney’s dream project----with unnecessary IPs attached (Galaxy’s Edge should have remained a Hollywood Studios exclusive, I don’t care).

We’re seeing fewer attractions based off of productions made during Walt Disney’s life and more movies and IPs based on whatever is making money today. Disneyland still has Alice in Wonderland, Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, Snow White, and Pinocchio-based attractions even though these films are decades old. On the east coast, we never got Alice and Pinocchio, and lost the other two. Like I said, this doesn’t make the park unbearable, but it does prevent Magic Kingdom from returning closer to Walt’s vision, and removes some of the charm when the IPs can also be found in the other parks as well as merchandise stores across the property. This doesn’t break the park, but it does create less magic overall, and creates situational oversights like Mickey Mouse and Walt Disney not even getting an audio cameo on the brand-new fireworks show.

Magic Kingdom changed the city of Orlando, the state of Florida, and the aspect of theme parks forever. Its impact and influence cannot and will not be denied. We see things here that have been copied (for better or for worse) a million times in a million different places. The success of Magic Kingdom has allowed for Disney to become a theme park behemoth before becoming the media behemoth we see today. That being said, the Magic Kingdom of today is still a little bit away from unleashing what it can truly be capable of----and unless we have new management at the top or unless they see the errors of their ways, we’ll always see Magic Kingdom for what it is: the more-successful but less-magical sequel to the original that started the franchise.

Yet, I can’t stay mad at you Magic Kingdom, because to this day nothing can top your experience of eating a Dole Whip pineapple float before making my way to the next attraction.

Happy 50th, Magic Kingdom and Walt Disney World.

P.S. Happy Birthday Epcot, you also deserve way WAY better, but that conversation is for another day.