Aulani, turning 10 this year, is as notable for its dedication to local culture as it is to its high-priced hotel rooms. All in varying ways respond to the world outside their gates in more overt ways than the traditional “castle parks,” a recognition that pure American fantasy and idealization, while not necessarily unimportant, can clash with our increasingly global and chaotic world.Īnimal Kingdom and Aulani, in particular, pivot from romanticized pastiches - say, New Orleans Square - to more honestly reflect the art, history and heritage of the places they represent or are situated in. But that to me is progressive change, and you move along.”ĭisney’s more modern approach might be traced to the creation of parks and resorts outside Anaheim - namely the opening in 1998 of Animal Kingdom at Walt Disney World in Florida, the 2011 launch of Aulani and the arrival in 2016 of Shanghai Disneyland. Women weren’t even allowed to work on the Jungle Cruise. “To be honest, that I couldn’t be a Jungle Cruise skipper wasn’t something I realized when I was little. “Women weren’t allowed to be Jungle Cruise skippers,” she says. Lomboy recalls that when she started with Disney as a young ride operator in 1995, it was the first year Disney allowed women to front a Jungle Cruise boat. The pre-social media era of Disneyland’s 1997 decision to alter the chase scenes in Pirates of the Caribbean by giving women platters of food generated a national hullabaloo over what Chicago newspaper columnist Mike Royko described as an exhibit that showcased pirates with, “let us not mince words, sexual assault on their minds.” In 1987, the park hosted an AIDS Project Los Angeles fundraiser as a mea culpa for once banning same-sex dancing. Disneyland has long been a bastion of American comfort and even American conservatism, a place that by the company’s own admittance has been slow to change. How can we be part of the healing journey of America? How can we be at our best? From neighborhoods to communities to cities, states, governments and the corporate world, there was an international response. “The murder of George Floyd - the world responded to that in unique ways. “We are very mindful of the events that are happening around the world that impact people,” says Carmen Smith, the executive who heads inclusion strategies for Imagineering. But the timing, at least concerning Disney’s decision to go public with its plans, wasn’t a coincidence. Amid the protests and cultural reckoning of 2020 that followed the murder of George Floyd, Disney announced it would strike “Song of the South” references from its Splash Mountain ride and instead feature “The Princess and the Frog,” starring the company’s first Black princess, Tiana.ĭisney stresses that inclusive updates to the Jungle Cruise and Splash Mountain were in the works before the events of 2020. In 2017, Disneyland at last gave women agency in its Pirates of the Caribbean attraction by removing a bridal auction scene and reimagining a female “wench” as a pirate. Simply adding superheroes and lightsabers isn’t enough. Ahead of the July 30 release of a “Jungle Cruise” movie starring Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt, the ride reopened Friday - a day shy of the park’s 66th anniversary - with updates that remove, in Disney’s words, “negative depictions of native people.” In their place are slapstick-inspired scenes largely involving chimpanzees and monkeys getting the best of a prior Jungle Cruise expedition.Īs the park edges toward 70, it must take measures to reflect the diversity and the values of its younger audience to maintain pop-culture relevancy. It’s a distinction Disney could no longer afford. Today we cringe at this scene for a ride that went on to develop a reputation for racist depictions of Indigenous people as tourist attractions, attackers or cannibals - tribal caricatures crafted through a colonialist lens. “The Pre-Opening Report From Disneyland,” a fascinating historical record that today lives on the company’s Disney+ streaming service, included a look at the mechanical hippos and crocodiles of the park’s Jungle Cruise ride, as well as the plaster molding of a Black male model, whose “imposing physique” was used “to people our Jungle Cruise with lifelike natives” as white men in formal attire looked on. Days before Disneyland’s July 17, 1955, opening celebration, TV viewers glimpsed the park and its attractions via a special episode of the weekly “Disneyland” show on ABC.
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