Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
PART SIX
DISNEY CALIFORNIA
ADVENTURE
We enjoyed DCA much more than Disneyland. More fun, less strollers and little kids,
more adventurous people. Just a different feeling all the way around.
—Mom from Bend, Oregon
A
MOST ANTICIPATED SEQUEL
DISNEY CALIFORNIA ADVENTURE
held its grand opening on February 8, 2001. Now
known as DCA among Disneyphiles, the park is a bouquet of contradictions conceived
in Fantasyland, starved in utero by corporate Disney, and born into a hostile environ-
ment of Disneyland loyalists who believed they'd been handed a second-rate theme
park. Its parts are stunningly beautiful yet come together awkwardly, failing to com-
pose a handsome whole. And perhaps most lamentable of all, the California theme is
impotent by virtue of being all-encompassing. But despite the long odds, just a decade
after its inauspicious debut, DCA has emerged from a billion-dollar metamorphosis
that has finally made it an honorable companion to its storied older sibling across the
Esplanade.
The history of the park is another of those convoluted tales found only in Robert
Ludlum novels and corporate Disney. Southern California Disney fans began clamor-
ing for a second theme park shortly after Epcot opened at Walt Disney World in 1982.
Although there was some element of support within the Walt Disney Company, the
Disney loyal had to content themselves with rumors and half-promises for two decades
while they watched new Disney parks go up in Tokyo, Paris, and Florida. For years,
Disney teasingly floated the “Westcot” concept, a California version of Epcot that was
always just about tobreak ground.Whether it wasamatter ofprocrastination orsimply
pursuing better opportunities elsewhere, the Walt Disney Company sat on the sidelines
while the sleepy community of Anaheim became a sprawling city and property values
skyrocketed. By the time Disney emerged from its Westcot fantasy and began to get
