Care, Conviction, and Characters

Pinocchio’s Daring Journey by HarshLight

A great close-up of Pinocchio’s Daring Journey’s finale. I like that you can specifically see that Pinocchio is, indeed, still a wooden puppet at the ride’s end. 

There was a rather interesting discussion on this finale a while back on MiceChat’s forums regarding the absence of transformation scene—particularly because this finale incorporates very key elements of the transformation as seen in the movie (i.e., Pinocchio and Geppetto are seen safe and re-united in their home and the Blue Fairy appears by Pinocchio’s bedside)—which launched an interesting conversation on the adaptation of movies into attractions and the importance of varying the ride experience from the source material so that’s its experience is more suitable to the medium of three-dimensional storytelling. 

A ride cannot be a paint-by-numbers version of its respective source material—copying-and-pasting the movie’s highlights does not create a successful attraction. Film is a different medium than theme parks and an understanding of how both work is needed to successfully adapt the source material into an attraction. Rides that fail to grasp this concept—like The Little Mermaid: Ariel’s Undersea Adventure/Under the Sea: Journey of the Little Mermaid, which essentially tried to cram as many songs from its Oscar-nominated soundtrack as possible instead of choosing one specific tone to convey to the guest (while trying to dazzle guests with advanced animatronics instead of actually immersing them into these characters’ world to experience a story)—ultimately result in lackluster attractions. 

The Fantasyland Dark Rides (Snow White’s Scary Adventures, Peter Pan’s Flight, Pinocchio’s Daring Journey, Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, and Alice in Wonderland) have remained widely popular, successful, and all-in-all good attractions not because of their source material, but because of their ability to adapt it with wisdom and artistry. Each of the rides—in addition to successfully immersing and engaging the guest in their various environments—focuses on a very distinct tone to develop through the course of the ride experience. They don’t base the rides off an attempt to incorporate as many significant scenes from a feature as possible to form an attraction—after settling what idea and complementary tone will be the focus of the ride, they subsequently choose portions from the respective film that will establish and enhance this story and its tone.

Coming back to this particular ride’s finale, it was pointed out that the journey is the main focus of Pinocchio’s attraction (as is evident from its subtitle), so the celebration at the end of the attraction emphasizes his return home, not his transformation, to keep the focus on the journey. 

I think this is a solid explanation to the “missing” transformation scene and a great example of how the Fantasyland dark rides work. The ride isn’t about Pinocchio’s journey to becoming a real boy (this particular plot point is never mentioned), it’s about his physical journey through various settings and the adventures he has along the way. At the ride’s end, Geppetto is actually celebrating Pinocchio’s return home, not his change into a real boy ("Pinocchio’s home! This calls for a celebration!"), which presents a resolution to what we have been experiencing as the Guest. 

I can see how the Blue Fairy’s inclusion in the scene may seem a little odd—this does seem to imply some sort of magical change for those who are familiar with the Pinocchio story—but I think her presence is easily explained as being somewhat of a guardian angel for Pinocchio. She oversaw his (and, by extension, our) journey home (even intervening to set us free from Stromboli’s cage) and is bidding us farewell now that we have safely reached our destination, resolving the conflict of the ride—that being the multiple dangers of this "daring journey."

With every addition to a theme park, concept is key to creating a good attraction—not gimmicks, not franchises, not IP, not even technology. If the concept is cluttered, unspecific, and uninspired, it will never live to be named a masterpiece. It can dazzle momentarily, but its spark will fizzle out into the depths of yesterday.

To be avoid this fate, a concept needs to have conviction—it needs to know what it is, it needs to be precise in its tone and story, it needs to understand its presence in the context of its respective land, it needs to know how to complement and enhance that land’s theme, it needs to know how to immerse the guest into its universe and understand what the guest’s role will be in its world, and it to consider the collective effect of these aspects and roles to truly understand what its greater effect on the park once it is realized into three dimensions. The Fantasyland dark rides embody this—they are immersive, they are precise, and they each have a distinct contribution that ultimately enhances and develops the character and identity of Fantasyland—and something as little as a disparity between a film’s finale and its respective attraction’s finale can really highlight this mastery and command of the language of theme parks.

Sometimes I worry that Disney, when creating sub-par attractions like The Little Mermaid or Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage or Winnie the Pooh, fails to display this mastery in their work due to a lack of conviction that stems not necessarily from a lack of understanding, but from a lack of care. Apathy and complacency is dangerous to the creation of art—thinking that familiar characters and franchises can subsidize an absence of conviction or artistic vision shows a deep lack of care and respect for what these attractions are. The insertion of these icons and characters must be a mere complement to something much greater and profound.

For without care, you cannot have conviction. And without conviction, your story and your message will ultimately crumble.

(Here’s the thread for those interested in the original discussion I that referenced.)