That's why parks spend gobs of money to obtain the rights to external IP. Or they put up buildings designed to look like fanciful or exotic places that many people want to visit. It's also why theme parks so often play to nostalgia. It's all about creating an emotional connection — stirring up the feelings that make you want to spend your money to fully experience the park, time and time again.
But each attempt at forging those connections brings risk. IPs fall out of style. (Who reads newspaper comics anymore, Universal Orlando?) An interconnected world can show visitors just how cheap your cheap approximations really look. And nostalgia? Well, play that wrong and you can end up making people feel worse about their history with you instead of better.
That's the risk I address in my Orange County Register column this week: Is Disneyland overdoing its nostalgia?. In it, I look at Disneyland's decision to end the Paint the Night parade and bring back the old Main Street Electrical Parade in its place. But the column is about more that that. It addresses the way we create and process nostalgia, and what happens when we actually go "back to the past" and confront again the thing we'd become so nostalgic about. Sometimes, that doesn't turn out to be the stuff of warm and pleasant dreams.
Read Robert's Column:
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They should install one parade at each resort. It makes little sense to have the MSEP do a nostalgia tour at DL, and have PTN show up on "selected nights", while the MK has bupkus. Who came up with that plan??
Also, I have to call you out Robert, but A Wrinkle in Time is far and away a superior children's story to HP. =)
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