Word: disneyized
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This arrogance, if such it is, flows from the challenge Disney believes it can uniquely meet: to entertain everyone, of every age, from every land. Walt Disney proved that this was possible with his first cartoon features and his first theme park. To aim for every taste is to sacrifice tang -- the movies and parks can lack edge; the thrills may be as flat as the main courses in some of the specialty restaurants. But it is a noble goal, beyond commerce or compromise -- especially today, in an age when every form of pop culture has at least as many...
...second-floor window in the park's grand thoroughfare, there is a legend: "Main Street Marching Band, leading the parade since 1884. Conductors: Michael Eisner, Frank Wells. We work, while you whistle." In fact, Eisner, Disney's CEO, and Wells, the company's president, have headed the procession only since 1984, when they turned Mickey's mausoleum -- a slumbering empire of tranquil theme parks and tepid movies -- into Walt II. Or, rather, Walt 2, for Disney has expanded exponentially, its ambition and energy personified by the two bosses. At 4 a.m. one day last week, each man could be seen...
Most of the park's attractions will be familiar to veterans of the California and Florida venues, though some have been retooled and upgraded. La Cabane des Robinson (Swiss Family Robinson Tree House) includes cunning new cave trails of "rock" artfully sculpted by the Disney team. Pirates of the Caribbean is a spookier and more elaborate cruise among brigand lowlifes. Big Thunder Mountain has been refined into one of the great coaster rides, with new ascents and dips and two hurtling trips in the dark...
...Walt Disney World in Orlando is a theme park with hotels attached. Euro Disney is the reverse: a spectacular sprawl that confirms the company as a premier force in modern architecture. A decade ago, as architects began to shrug off their Modernist doldrums, they saw in Disney's park designs an attractive blend of wit, glamour and function. Suddenly there was nothing wrong with places that were fun to look at and to live in. Eisner took advantage of the new spirit and hired such Postmodernist master builders as Michael Graves (for the whimsical but still somehow leaden Swan...
...when Eisner calls, architects listen. They know they will be encouraged to create show-bizzy, show-stopping showplaces that millions of people each year will see and enjoy. At Euro Disney, the Pritzker-prizewinning Frank Gehry designed the nightclub center called Festival Disney, whose plaza is guarded by giant towers of oxidized silver and bronze-colored stainless steel under a star-studded canopy of lights. It's as if the monoliths from 2001: A Space Odyssey had dressed up and gone out to strut...