It’s all about a California (and high-growth) state of mind.
A park photographer, Kristin Wagner, photographs visitors as they enter Disney’s California Adventure, just below a recreation of the Golden Gate Bridge.
(Don Kelsen/Los Angeles Times)
In a period of grand expansion, Disneyland would start to become a proper resort — a metamorphosis that, while it didn’t work immediately, would be course-corrected and set up Disneyland for a new generation of growth. This era added Disney California Adventure, turning the destination into one that the Walt Disney Co. hoped would command multiday stays.
What was new
A former parking lot across from Disneyland was remade into Disney California Adventure, which would open in February 2001. The long in-development project was designed to honor California culture, but was pitched initially as a West Coast answer to Walt Disney World’s Epcot. The Times was kind in its opening coverage, praising the park’s change of pace from Disneyland and admiring how its architecture blurred fiction and reality.
The hang-gliding simulation Soarin’ Over California was an instant hit, and “Eureka! A California Parade” was Disney theatricality at its weirdest, with floats that depicted Old Town San Diego, Watts and more. But California Adventure’s prevalence of amusement park-like rides failed to command the crowds of its next door neighbor. Disney’s own documentary “The Imagineering Story” took a tough-love approach to the park’s early days, comparing some of its initial designs to those of a local mall. In time, however — with multiple makeovers and additions — California Adventure would become a beloved, world-class theme park, though it would stray from its initial California-centric conceit.
During this era, Disneyland also added the Grand Californian Hotel and its Downtown Disney District. A luxurious take on California’s Arts and Crafts movement, the Grand Californian remains the resort’s signature hotel and home to its finest dining establishment, Napa Rose, under renovations at the time of writing. Disney would also add a second haunted attraction with the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror in 2004. Over at Disneyland, Tomorrowland in 1998 would receive a transformation, one it has yet to fully recover from. The beloved People Mover would be no more, a Jules Verne-inspired art style would come and gradually go, and Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters would arrive in 2005.
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh would in 2003 evict the Country Bears from their music hall.
Did you know?
This era is home to two of Disneyland’s shortest-lived major attractions. Superstar Limo at California Adventure was conceived as a ride in which paparazzi would chase celebs, a concept deemed in poor taste in the wake of the death of Princess Diana. It was refashioned as a sort of tour of Hollywood with heavily caricatured figurines of the likes of Whoopi Goldberg, Regis Philbin, Drew Carey, Cher and more, but would close within a year. At Disneyland, People Mover‘s replacement Rocket Rods could never consistently operate, and the ride would last just about two years. The tracks remain.
