#Disney California Adventure 2023

[samsdisneydiary]

Guardians of the Galaxy: Awesome Dance Off! | Disney California Adventure | 2023

The Guardians of the Galaxy are ready to party—with you! Gather around as Peter tries to get Gamora to crack a smile by playing his legendary mixtape. Help him out by showing off your epic dance moves! Guardians of the Galaxy: Awesome Dance Off! | Disney California Adventure | 2023 Guardians of the Galaxy: Awesome Dance Off! | Disney California Adventure | 2023 Guardians of the Galaxy: Awesome…

[treasurechestmemories]

Disneyland Afternoon 2023 Park Hopper Day 3

[icelynodette]

Disneyland Morning 2023 Day 3 Alice Tea Party

[magicaltrash]

Disney California Adventure's reimagined Pacific Wharf area - now named San Fransokyo Square - reflects the hybrid design sensibilities of Disney's Big Hero 6 film, combining San Francisco and Tokyo. The Imagineering story is that "as the tech industry began to emerge and the local fishing trade fell on hard times, entrepreneurs came together to reinvent the seaside canneries into a vibrant, multicultural district of neighborhood restaurants and small businesses where you’ll be able to eat and shop." Or Disney just wanted to shove more IP into DCA. Curiously the logo style, which uses the initials "SFS" to represent the land, somewhat mimics the design of the Smoke Tree Ranch, a private community in Palm Springs of which Walt Disney was a member, often wearing the "STR" initials as a tie tack on his Walt Disney’s World of Color television program. // Disneyland Resort, Disney California Adventure, San Fransokyo Square, 2023 [Source: bluekittygrl. Used by Permission.]

[imagitory]

Not to bag on Wish when it’s become so ridiculously popular to do…but I watched the Wish promotional preshow at California Adventure’s World of Color: Season of Light not too long ago and it really accented why I think the soundtrack just didn’t resonate with general audiences as much as a lot of Disney’s other faire —

Because here’s the thing: I like This Wish as a song. I like several songs from the movie — a lot. I even have them on my ITunes and listen to them on the regular! And this is while finding the finished movie distinctly ehhhh. But it’s important to remember who wrote these songs — not musical theater or even film scoring people, but pop composers Julia Michaels and Benjamin Rice. And no, this is NOT a problem by itself — Elton John and Phil Collins were brought on-board the musician teams for other Disney projects, and there were plenty of Tin Pan Alley and contemporary artists brought on board to help score other films, like Peggy Lee for Lady and the Tramp. But it is important to remember how very different writing songs for the music industry is from writing songs for a film or theatrical production.

In musical theater as well as in most successful musical films, each song is very much custom-tailored for a very specific character or group of characters in a very specific scene in a very specific story in a very specific environment. It is used to communicate a lot that the film/theater medium can’t do easily. In the case of theater specifically, it can help flesh out the setting in the case of sparse set dressing, but in both cases it can help with transitioning scenes and give us a closer look into the psyche of the character(s), since unlike in a book, we can’t read their internal thoughts to know how they feel about something. And without the story giving proper context, generally the song doesn’t make as much sense. Yes, there are a few classic Disney songs like A Dream is A Wish Your Heart Makes that can be divorced more easily from their context than others, but could you do the same for the Mice’s Song or Bippidi Boppidi Boo? Perhaps Can You Feel the Love Tonight? can easily be parsed out of The Lion King by removing the intro/outro with Timon and Pumbaa, but not so much with songs like Hakuna Matata and Be Prepared. With most truly successful Disney soundtracks, like the ones for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Beauty and the Beast, Encanto or even Mary Poppins — the ones people remember in their entirety — you can’t tell those stories well without the songs, and the songs likewise can’t be completely stripped of their original context. And in the case of Tarzan’s soundtrack, where the music is more easily divorced from the movie’s story, it’s not a traditional musical where characters belt their feelings out through song; instead the songs are used more like accompaniment for a scene, like songs placed over certain film scenes to evoke mood or connect disparate scenes together in a montage, rather than the centerpiece. (Not to mention that both Elton John and Phil Collins collaborated with Lebo M/Hans Zimmer and Mark Mancina, respectively, in order to integrate instruments and sounds that would evoke their film’s settings and sew the melodies of their lyrical numbers into the full film score.)

Contrast this with the kind of music you’d hear on the radio, and pop music in particular. In this field, you’re generally not writing a song for a specific character or group of characters, but rather to appeal to as many different people as possible. You generally want the person listening to the song to identify with the words themselves — to place themselves in the role of the singer — not use the song to help tell a story about someone else. So usually it’s more favorable to keep a pop song’s lyrics vague and more focused on general emotions about a situation rather than anything specific, so as to make it easier for many different kinds of people to see themselves and their own experiences in what’s being sung. This is what prompts emotions out of your audience, for the pop music industry -- the feeling of "Yes! These words speak to me!", whether because you relate to them or they inspire you as an individual.

Kind of like Disney’s park music.

Compare I'm a Star or At All Costs to the music for the Happily Ever After fireworks show or Start a Wave from World of Color: One. They’re much closer in vibe to those tracks in my opinion than to a lot of Disney’s other movie musical work. Hell, even the Sherman Brothers’ work like There’s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow and It’s a Small World are much more about theme and emotion rather than plot!

This doesn’t make the songs in Wish bad, necessarily — that’s definitely much more up to personal opinion. I would just argue the music style isn’t as effective in telling a story as it is in just inspiring emotions in people. It’s like how Russell Crowe, who sings in a band, still wasn’t the best fit in a lot of people’s minds to sing in the film adaptation of an operatic Broadway musical like Les Miserables. And of course considering that Disney hyped Wish and its music up so much with its marketing beforehand, it makes sense that some Disney fans — and Disney musical fans in particular — had such a dramatic reaction to the finished result. Regardless of the quality of the songs on their own, they weren’t what audiences expected and in some cases really wanted from a Disney musical movie. And since Disney and music have gone so hand-in-hand for so long, with Uncle Walt himself remarking multiple times about how important it was that any music should help tell the story, it is an understandable thing to get hung up on.

[spinus-pinus]

House Sparrow Passer domesticus

2/16/2023 Disney's California Adventure Park, California

[tawnyisacolor]

Port San Fransokyo in the day and at night 😍🌁

Disney’s California Adventure, 2023

[sparrowatheart]

A Disneyland memory I'll cherish for a lifetime. This was my last day in the parks in October 2023, and I wasn't sure if I would be back in 2024. (I will be)

My mom and I were upset that we had not managed to get into Oogie Boogie Bash for the second year in a row. We live up near Seattle, and going to attend the party is how we celebrate my birthday each year. With California Adventure setting up for the party, we went over to Disneyland. We figured we would spend our last few hours there. Little did we know the surprise we were in for.

Not only did we run into all three Tremaines, the Evil Queen and Maleficent soon joined us. I had specifically wanted to see The Queen and Maleficent together for a very long time, and I got to! Maleficent pulled me from the crowd, and walked me side by side to the Wishing Well. Along the way, she asked me if I had made my Birthday wish yet. I told her I was wishing to be part of the magic ✨ (I'm trying to work towards applying for Disney Cruiselines. It's been a slow process.) She assured me because I told her, it would definitely come true.

When she got me all the way to the well, we were met with Eugene and Rapunzel trying to hide behind other guests 😅 Maleficent then lead the process of casting a wish into the well, as you see in the video.

Safe to say, if I get the job (eventually) I'll be referring to her as my Fairy Godmother.

[necroticboop]

✦ Lunar New Year festival 2023 at Disney California Adventure [x]

[disneyparksattractionstournament]

Disney Parks Animatronic Tournament: Bracket A/Tier 1 Round 1

Stunt Spiderman: The amazing Spiderman show(2021-current) - Disney California Adventure

Clawhauser: Zootopia: Hot Pursuit (2023-current) - Shanghai Disneyland

[disneytva]

Su-Purr Charged Second Season of ‘Superkitties’ to Premiere Friday, April 5, on Disney Channel and Disney Junior

Season two of “SuperKitties,” 2023’s No. 1 new preschool series, will debut FRIDAY, APRIL 5, on Disney Junior (9:30 a.m. EDT/PDT) and Disney Channel (2:00 p.m. EDT/PDT). An initial batch of episodes will roll out on Disney+ later this summer.

The new season will feature a su-purr charged storyline where Bitsy, Ginny, Buddy and Sparks receive brand-new superpowers and gadgets to aid in their mission of making the town of Kittydale a more caring and “pawesome” place.

New guest stars for season two include Anika Noni Rose (Walt Disney Animation Studios “Princess and the Frog” franchise) as Cousin Sassy, Pamela Adlon (“Hamster & Gretel”) as Aunt Lola and Emmy Award winner Eric Bauza (Warner Bros Animation “Looney Tunes" franchise) as robot pig Wiggles.

To enhance the experience for the preschool audience and allow kids to play along with the SuperKitties off-air, Disney Consumer Products will be launching a brand-new toy line inspired by the series. Figurines, plush, role play and apparel will be available for purchase this spring, with playsets, costumes and more available later this year. Walt Disney Records will also be releasing “Disney Junior Music: SuperKitties Su-purr Charged Soundtrack,” featuring songs from the new season, on April 5.

Additionally, a new limited-time stage show inspired by the hit series, “Confection Purrfection with the SuperKitties,” will debut during the Disney California Adventure Food & Wine Festival, taking place March 1-April 22 at Disneyland Resort.

[samsdisneydiary]

Unveiling the Spooky Delights of Halloween 2023 at Walt Disney World and Disneyland

[treasurechestmemories]

Disneyland 2023 Park Hopper Day 3

[icelynodette]

Disneyland 2023 Park Hopper Day 3

[magicaltrash]

The retheming of DCA's Pacific Wharf area into San Fransokyo Square has produced new trash can designs. The updated to this land is based is combination of San Francisco and Tokyo, as seen in Disney's 2014 film Big Hero 6. A new icon representing the key letters of the city name ("San Fransokyo Square") now sits on beige front and back can panels. The icon is a sky blue color, which is also present on the inlet flaps and can trim. And if you as you saying, "wow, these look a lot like the old Pacific Wharf can designs," you'd be right. // Disneyland Resort, Disney California Adventure, San Fransokyo Square, 2023 [Source: Jason Sasaki. Used by Permission.]

[magnificent-nerd]

The first reviews for Rogers: The Musical are in...

Read the review from The Nerds of Color:

Rogers: The Musical appears at the Hyperion Theater in Disney California Adventure Park for a limited time, June 30 through August 31, 2023

My take:

While this musical seems fun, and a visually new and exciting way to see Steve's journey, I can't help but notice Disney/MCU taking an opportunity to retroactively make Peggy's role in Steve's origin story much greater than the movies ever showed, while at the same time minimising the roles of other characters important to Steve's life, namely:

Bucky Barnes, Sam Wilson, and Sharon Carter.

(Would've been nice to see Sarah Rogers but she never appeared in the MCU at all, so I don't hold out hope she's in this musical.)

To anyone who sees this musical:

please report back if Sharon Carter or Sam Wilson appear at all, or are they erased entirely? I want to know!

I spotted WWII era Bucky (I'm presuming?) and Black Widow in the various production photos shared, but where are Sam and Sharon? Are they present in the musical?

It would not surprise me in the slightest if MCU/Disney wanted to erase Sharon entirely because the movies pivoted back to Peggy...

But Sam? Where is he?

That speculation leads me to the conclusion that this musical is superficial at best, and erasing important people from Steve's character at worst. (Again.)