“YOU have a great gig,” I said to the mermaid as I sat down beside her in the giant clamshell. “You don’t have to schlep around.”
Inside Disney’s New Fantasyland
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A new light show paints Cinderella’s Castle at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla. Nearby, New Fantasyland doubles the Fantasyland area. More Photos »
By STEPHANIE ROSENBLOOM
Published: December 21, 2012
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We pressed our heads together and smiled for a photograph as she replied, “But I wish I had legs.”
So goes small talk in Fantasyland. Correction: New Fantasyland, where old-guard princesses like Snow White and Cinderella are suddenly neighbors with the next generation of Disney box office royalty: Ariel of “The Little Mermaid” and Belle of “Beauty and the Beast.” The kingdom, you see, has undergone some changes.
It was Dec. 5, the night before the grand opening of New Fantasyland — the largest expansion in the 41-year history of the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Fla. — and the birth date of its founder. I was there to suss out the new additions, including Ariel’s Grotto (where, like me, visitors can have their picture taken with the Little Mermaid); Bonjour! Village Gifts where aspiring princesses can snap up $64.95 Belle costumes; and the Be Our Guest Restaurant where, in defiance of Florida weather, soft, romantic snow perpetually falls outside the windows.
Having been to this park more than two dozen times, beginning with family vacations when I was 3, I figured I was qualified to review an expansion. I remember gingerly wrapping my arms around Pluto. I remember walking into the Haunted Mansion, fear rising in me like the ghosts that would soon materialize. I remember being surprised, as I peeked over the edge of my boat in It’s a Small World, to spy hundreds of pennies shimmering in the water. I wondered how many of those wishes would come true.
So of course, I longed to see how Fantasyland had changed. At the same time, I was apprehensive. Might the old magic be eclipsed by slick, new attractions? Would Disney be able to strike a delicate balance between nostalgia and innovation?
I came to find out.
Fantasyland is the most popular land in the most popular Disney park in the world (the company has 11 theme parks in the United States, Europe and Asia). Still, Disney had a problem. It had successfully minted a new generation of princesses in movie theaters— but it had nowhere to put them in the park. Millions of little girls and boys grew up in the 1990s with “The Little Mermaid” and “Beauty and the Beast.” Yet Ariel and Belle had neither ride nor realm in the Magic Kingdom.
If Disney were the White Rabbit, it might have been muttering to itself, “I’m late! I’m late! I’m late!” It was time to catch up. And so about five years ago the company’s Imagineers — who have expertise in 140 different disciplines like electrical engineering, landscape architecture and graphic design — began dreaming up ways to literally put visitors into their favorite new fairy tales, from eating croque monsieur in the Beast’s castle upon a hill, to riding through the Little Mermaid’s grotto under the sea. They devised methods to make meeting the characters from those tales more intimate (perhaps a bit too intimate in the case of the Little Mermaid, who poses with fans in a bandeau top) and more orderly than the street encounters that I grew up with, which could be chaotic. And while they were at it, they looked for ways to make waiting in line entertaining.
To make all this fantasy a reality, Disney more than doubled the size of Fantasyland, to 21 acres from 10 acres. Along the way, there were casualties, like Snow White’s Scary Adventures, a ride that had been in the park since it opened in 1971. Purists grumble when a classic ride like that is shuttered. Yet evolution is as much a part of Disney’s DNA as mouse ears. The parks are always changing. Disney’s Animal Kingdom Theme Park didn’t exist when I was little. Another year, I arrived to find beaches in a spot where I didn’t recall so much as a grain of sand. A few weeks ago, I zoomed along on the newly re-engineered Test Track Presented by Chevrolet at Epcot. As new Magic Kingdom attractions pop up, old favorites disappear, be it Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride or 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.