During quarantine, I had a lot of time on my hands. I had more time than usual to be alone with my thoughts, contemplate life, and, oh yeah, think about what I would add to Disney World if I had the power. This leads me to a new series of articles I will be writing, all about what I would add to Disney World if I suddenly found myself CEO of the Walt Disney company. A girl can dream, right?
This first article is all about what I would add to the Magic Kingdom. While it’s pretty great already, as Walt said, Disney[World] will never be finished.
I will begin with Main Street USA. Main Street is modeled after ideal small-town America. All the storefronts on Main Street are designed to appear as if you are walking down the street of a small midwestern town around the turn of the 20th century, though when you walk inside, you’re usually met with some sort of shop that doesn’t match the advertising of the exterior. While some interiors do match the exterior, such as the barbershop, the train station, and the Confectionery, when you walk through the door presented as a cinema, you are met with an art gallery. This theme is common throughout Main Street, and though I understand the obvious reason behind it (why have a cinema at a theme park?), I would love to experience the indoor appearance of small-town America as well as the outdoor. That is why I would add an old school, early 1900s-themed soda shop. This would be a first-come-first-serve sit down quick service location, serving popular items like root beer floats, cold Coca-Colas in the old bottles, and ice cream sundaes. The Soda Shoppe would be complete with turn of the century style decor, including booths and a bar area to sit in, and old fashioned uniforms for the servers.
Next, we will move to Fantasyland. There is so much we could do here, but what I would love to add the most is an Alice in Wonderland-themed high tea. Think about it: “eat me” cookies and drinks in “drink me” bottles; tea cups “cut” in half like in the original cartoon (of course the cut side would be glass, because unlike in Wonderland, physics still apply in Disney World); and visits from Alice, the Mad Hatter, and the White Rabbit themselves. This location would be a signature dining location, requiring reservations well in advance. To enter, you would go down a steep staircase, decorated like you are falling down the rabbit hole into Wonderland. The room would be decorated with trees and larger-than-life flowers, with the Cheshire Cat fading in and out from tree to tree every so often. This idea is getting me so excited, I might just write a letter to Bob Chapek!
Working our way around the park, we stop in Adventureland. Here, we make an exciting Moana-themed ride. The queue is similar to that of Frozen Ever After, but instead of taking us through Arendelle, it takes us through Moana’s Hawaiian village. Once through the queue, we board a boat similar to Moana’s in the movie, and become way finders on our way in a new adventure with Maui to find new islands. On the way, we encounter a boat full of Kakamora, Moana’s grandmother reincarnated as a stingray, and rough seas. Our journey finally concludes when we come across a new, beautiful island that we can call home. I don’t know about you, but I think this ride sounds like the definition of adventure.
Last but not least, we arrive at Tomorrowland. With Tomorrowland, there are many different directions you can go in: you can do retro future, sleek future, space travel, and so much more! The theming possibilities are endless. While there are multiple space-centered attractions, a couple of transportation-centered attractions, and a few future-oriented-centered attractions, I noticed that there are no robot-centered attractions. I believe that robots, more commonly known now as artificial intelligence, or “AI”, are a huge portion of sci-fi and should be represented in Tomorrowland. In this attraction, you would be transported to a far off future where AI has advanced so much, it now runs the world.
From there, there are many different directions I could go in in terms of continuing the attraction, and I honestly can’t decide which one I like better. You could be part of a resistance trying to take the power back and restore it to the small amount of humans left on Earth; it could be more of an audience-based attraction, and heavily interaction based, where robots come on stage and ask you what human life is like; or, it could simply be a type of meet and greet, where you meet and interact with the robots in their own environment. I think the possibilities for this one are endless.
So what do you think? Do you like my ideas, or hate them? Have any ideas of your own to take the Magic Kingdom to the next level? Let me know in the comments!