{"id":18723,"date":"2020-12-24T10:59:19","date_gmt":"2020-12-24T15:59:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=18723"},"modified":"2020-12-24T10:59:19","modified_gmt":"2020-12-24T15:59:19","slug":"holiday-disney","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2020\/12\/24\/holiday-disney\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Holiday Magic At The Disney Parks’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cHoliday Magic at the Disney Parks: Celebrations Around the World from Fall to Winter\u201d by Graham Allan, Rebecca Cline and Charlie Prince\u00a0(Disney Editions)<\/a> is a big, lavishly illustrated, 384-page photo book perhaps best enjoyed as a sourcebook of ways to decorate for Christmas and Halloween the Disney way. Here are lots of contemporary photos plus intriguing vintage images of the Disney resorts and cruise ships asplendor with artificial Halloween jack-o\u2019-lanterns and towering Christmas trees, with plantings, shop window displays, bunting, projections, fireworks, parades, dancing, singing, meals and deserts.<\/p>\n

The very notion of \u201choliday\u201d as an escape from normal time or a synonym for going on vacation matches the mission of the Disney resorts\u2014and their deeper cultural significance as places of pilgrimage and ritual, places we go to be part of, to reenact our treasured American tales and traditions.<\/p>\n

So it feels right that for months at a time, every day at Disney is Halloween or Christmas. Because visiting the parks is a holiday from ordinary time to step into fairy tale moments.<\/p>\n

Christmas has been celebrated at Disney parks since Disneyland opened in California in 1955, and it tends to fit perfectly into Disney reports\u2014matching our notions of the coziness of Disney\u2019s idyllic reimagining of European folk tales and white, small town Victoriana. Disney\u2019s iconic castles dazzle when draped in thousands of icicle lights. Christmas also offers the Hollywood ingenuity of a 17-foot-tall actual gingerbread house at the Grand Floridian Resort in Florida that serves as a candy shop that you can walk into.<\/p>\n

\"Parade<\/a>
Parade of Pumpkins at Disneyland, 1959. From “Holiday Magic at the Disney Parks: Celebrations Around the World from Fall to Winter” by Graham Allan, Rebecca Cline, and Charlie Price, 2020. (Disney Editions)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Halloween only arrived at the Anaheim park with a 1959 “Parade of Pumpkins,\u201d then not again until a Disneyland parade in 1968 and at Florida\u2019s Magic Kingdom in the 1970s. The haunted holiday seems to sometimes confound the resorts. Perhaps because they still wrestle with (1) a general feeling that Disney experiences must never be too scary and (2) Walt\u2019s edict that everything in his parks had to be relentlessly neat and clean including the exterior his \u201cHaunted Mansion.\u201d The book\u2019s photos suggest Disney\u2019s Halloween seems to work best as a warm autumn harvest palette and lots of artificial jack-o\u2019-lanterns \u201ccarved\u201d with Disney characters and brands.<\/p>\n

In addition to Christmas and Halloween, the authors tally jazz nights (with Louis Armstrong among others), Zorro days (inspired by Disney\u2019s TV series), Thanksgiving date nights, and various other parades and parties.<\/p>\n

Beginning in the 1984 with a Christmas version of the \u201cCountry Bear Jamboree,\u201d Disney \u201cImagineer\u201d park designers began experimenting with adding holiday \u201coverlays\u201d to rides. This led to a \u201cGhost Galaxy\u201d version of \u201cSpace Mountain\u201d roller coaster and \u201cNightmare Before Christmas\u201d version of \u201cThe Haunted Mansion.\u201d Sometimes the results\u00a0can feel, well, weird\u2014like the Christmas packages bobbing in the \u201cJungle Cruise\u201d river or putting a Santa hat on the dog who holds the key the pirates need to escape a burning jail in \u201cPirates of the Caribbean.” But \u201cIt\u2019s a Small World\u201d redecorated as Christmas celebrations around the globe feels elegantly in tune with the ride\u2019s original wish for peace on earth.<\/p>\n

\u201cHoliday Magic at the Disney Parks: Celebrations Around the World from Fall to Winter\u201d by Graham Allan, Rebecca Cline and Charlie Prince<\/a>\u00a0(Disney Editions).<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

If this is the kind of coverage of arts, cultures and activisms you appreciate, please support Wonderland by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And sign up for our free, (hopefully) weekly newsletter<\/a> so that you don’t miss any of our reporting. (All content \u00a9Greg Cook 2020 or the respective creators.)<\/em><\/p>\n

\n
\""Holiday<\/a>
“Holiday Magic at the Disney Parks: Celebrations Around the World from Fall to Winter” by Graham Allan, Rebecca Cline, and Charlie Price, 2020. (Disney Editions)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Christmas<\/a>
Christmas finale of Mickey Mouse Club Circus at Disneyland, 1955. From “Holiday Magic at the Disney Parks: Celebrations Around the World from Fall to Winter” by Graham Allan, Rebecca Cline, and Charlie Price, 2020. (Disney Editions)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Christmas<\/a>
Christmas Bowl at Disneyland, 1955. From “Holiday Magic at the Disney Parks: Celebrations Around the World from Fall to Winter” by Graham Allan, Rebecca Cline, and Charlie Price, 2020. (Disney Editions)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Disneyland<\/a>
Disneyland 1963. From “Holiday Magic at the Disney Parks: Celebrations Around the World from Fall to Winter” by Graham Allan, Rebecca Cline, and Charlie Price, 2020. (Disney Editions)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Christmas<\/a>
Christmas Parade at Disneyland, 1986. From “Holiday Magic at the Disney Parks: Celebrations Around the World from Fall to Winter” by Graham Allan, Rebecca Cline, and Charlie Price, 2020. (Disney Editions)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\""Earfell<\/a>
“Earfell Tower” at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, 1989. From “Holiday Magic at the Disney Parks: Celebrations Around the World from Fall to Winter” by Graham Allan, Rebecca Cline, and Charlie Price, 2020. (Disney Editions)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Christmas<\/a>
Christmas at the Magic Kingdom, Walt Disney World, 1992 to 2018. From “Holiday Magic at the Disney Parks: Celebrations Around the World from Fall to Winter” by Graham Allan, Rebecca Cline, and Charlie Price, 2020. (Disney Editions)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Halloween<\/a>
Halloween decorations along Disneyland’s Main Street, USA, 2018. From “Holiday Magic at the Disney Parks: Celebrations Around the World from Fall to Winter” by Graham Allan, Rebecca Cline, and Charlie Price, 2020. (Disney Editions)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cHoliday Magic at the Disney Parks: Celebrations Around the World from Fall to Winter\u201d by Graham Allan, Rebecca Cline and Charlie Prince\u00a0(Disney Editions) is a big, lavishly illustrated, 384-page photo book perhaps best enjoyed as a sourcebook of ways to decorate for Christmas and Halloween the Disney way. Here are lots of contemporary photos plus […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18753,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100,107,111,119,105,582],"tags":[827,132,825,554,826],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18723"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18723"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18723\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18776,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18723\/revisions\/18776"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}