disney-world-dystopia

[disney-world-dystopia]

[disney-world-dystopia]

A critical perspective on mass tourism: Dystopias from theme parks in North America (Disney World and Dismaland)

Walt Disney World opened its doors as an entertainment complex near Orlando, Florida in 1971. This 25,000 acre theme park and resort is owned and operated by The Walt Disney Company. With an average of fifty two million annual visitors, this establishment employs 74,000 people to work there. At Disney World, employees are called “cast members.” While guest service is their number one priority, name tags are also a must for employees to wear at all times. These show business-like theme parks ask their employees to stay in character whenever they are in front of guests, they even use the terms “onstage” and “backstage.” The backstage areas include, cafeterias, changing rooms and salons that are hidden from visitors. To avoid cast members that are in character to change the Disney story by walking around the park, these employees can use an underground tunnel to remain unseen in a different themed part of the park from the Disney character they are dressed as. For the international tourists that visit Disney World, there are guidebooks in their native language that can be purchased and multilingual Guest Relations staff to accommodate them during their visit. There are tours offered in Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Portuguese, and Italian.

Walt Disney World is truly multi-cultural. Guests from across the globe love to visit and many Cast Members are part of Walt Disney World’s International Program. Under the terms of the International Program, Cast Members are hired from around the world to live and work at Walt Disney World for a period of time. Therefore, you will likely encounter Cast Members from your country as well as many others (Orlando Vacation).

Not all of the visitors are international tourists, the various theme parks attract domestic tourists and local fans as well! The six theme parks include, Hollywood Studios, Animal Kingdom, Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Typhoon Lagoon, and Blizzard Beach. With each theme parked being highly staged and according to its respective theme, the tourist gaze is on high alert for almost everyone that visits “The Happiest Place on Earth.”

Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow (EPCOT), established in 1982 is a utopian city of the future within Disney World featuring the U.S., Japan, Morocco, France, U.K., Canada, Mexico, Norway, China, Germany and Italy. The cuisine, culture, history, and architecture of eleven countries are permanently displayed in individual pavilions spaced along a 1.2-mile promenade. Pavilions replicate familiar landmarks and present representative street scenes from the host countries. In this part of the park, there is a highly staged setting created to represent these countries.

The "onstage" and in practice performances by the cast members of Disneyworld act out the fictional fantasies of Disney. The themes of this park are linked to all of the Disney branded forms of entertainment, like Disney Channel.

[disney-world-dystopia]

Disney World’s Epcot

Epcot’s World Showcase may seem to promote world cultures, but the attraction creates a dystopia with its manufactured culture made to promote Disney’s assets. Disney World feeds on these real places that exist by taking their cultures and selling them back to the people through attractions. When discussing staging, Edensor writes that stage-managers “attempt to ‘create and control a cultural as well as a physical environment’” (Edensor, 67). Doing so directs the tourist gaze towards specific commodities, and this can be found in all parts of Epcot. For instance, the China Pavilion has a reproduction of the Temple of Heaven, the most important imperial Beijing temple where emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties prayed for good harvest. While selling back a real cultural landmark to visitors, the pavilion promotes business with a meet and greet with Mulan at the Temple of Heaven, Chinese dining options, and The House of Good Fortune (a gift shop to buy traditional clothing, Chinese lanterns, and lucky cats). Edensor also writes of tourist workers “trained to enact roles” to contribute to staging, which can be found at Epcot through characters such as Mulan and Princess Jasmine (Edensor, 67). Epcot’s World Showcase provides very narrow portrayals of cultures, representing them in a way that promotes Disney’s assets. By stealing these real cultures and selling them back to the people, Disney creates a dystopia behind this showcase that aims to give visitors the opportunity to “travel around the globe, under the sea, into outer space, and beyond” (“Epcot”).

[disney-world-dystopia]

A few examples of Disney World Epcot’s displays and attractions.

[disney-world-dystopia]

Dismaland

When Disney embodies another identity, it can transform into a more critical lens of the large media conglomerate. One of the examples would be Banksy’s art exhibition of Dismaland, which was created on a swimming resort in the United Kingdom.  The artists that are featured in addition to Banksy are: Damien Hirst, Jenny Holzer, Jimmy Cauty, etc., according to Colossal.  The concept of it is to be an exact opposite version of an amusement park, where 3D artwork, drawings, and other forms of Disney depictions are placed into a large space for people to explore.  When Disney becomes presented in a different manner from a way that is different from what is presented to visitors of Disney theme parks, people still find a way to recreate this into its own form of attraction.  In various sources, Banksy’s Dismaland had accumulated at least 150,000 visitors, with at least 500 daily walk-ins and a week’s worth of tickets that were sold within an hour.

One of the pictures that we can see that does not conform to Disneyland would be this picture of Ariel in front of the torn down Disney castle.  When destruction, fear, or even violence becomes embodied- we as audience are placed on the pedestal to think critically about Disney and the contents that they present to the public. The once ever-glowing castle is now presented in destroyed pillars and torn down architecture- which is symbolic to destruction of one’s imagination of a utopia childhood through Disney’s presented masterpieces.

Dismaland’s theme also represents dark tourism, which is shown and displayed in areas that are relevance to reality and death (or darkness in Dismaland’s case). The embodiment of this theme presents Disney in ways that are not presented in their original theme parks: poverty, destruction, or even a mockery of security installed at the entrances of parks to prevent accidents that would destroy the “perfection” displayed at the parks.

[disney-world-dystopia]

Here are some images of Dismaland’s castle and the security at Dismaland.

[disney-world-dystopia]

Conclusion

“Places to play are places to meet, places where global networks congregate and socialize” (Urry & Sheller 9). When a tourist visits Disney, they are not alone, nor accompanied by just a few other tourists. They are met by a mass of people, who range from local Orlando residents to international travelers who all dream of playing in this mythical utopian land that is Walt Disney World. The legend of this utopian paradise is advertised as the happiest place on earth. The mass of visitors are not expecting to not just experience a typical amusement park, but an experience that encompasses the overall amusement park theme, with worldly culture and childlike dreams that will keep you young while you are visiting the park. They have everything a person could want from the luxurious hotels and resort, to a sports complex to exercise and watch well played games, numerous concert areas, well themed and exciting rides and attractions, and restaurants that are themed from around the world. Typically they are not experiencing this utopia through their own doing. They are guided by maps and cast members, so that the can properly experience the structured utopia. These factors and other structures in place, have tourists experience an inauthentic reality of  not only Disney but the city of Orlando. They are trapped in a structured bubble that guides them through their mythical experience that was advertised to them, resulting in them spending great amounts of money and taking countless photographs to document their fun time to show off to their friends and family, making them want to share the same experience. Disney World is constructed as “playscapes with aesthetic coatings” that is constantly recoating (Urry & Sheller 8). The attractions and all that come with this experience are constantly updated and altered always keeping Disney World in play and making it the ultimate place to play for people of all ages, races, and genders.

Sources

https://magicguides.com/disney-world-statistics/

https://www.orlandovacation.com/disney-world/for-foreign-tourists/

Edensor, Tim 2001 “Performing tourism, staging tourism: (Re)producing tourist space and practice”, Tourist Studies 1:59-81

“Epcot.” Walt Disney World, disneyworld.disney.go.com/destinations/epcot/

https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2015/08/dismaland/