Beneath the castle is the finale for the Voyage to the Crystal Grotto boat ride, but because the loading platform is some distance away it’s a bit of a stretch to call it one of the castle’s attractions. Off to either side is the Royal Banquet Hall and the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique, checking off the necessary dining and retail element. Wish I had close-up photos of all four, but they were popular selfie opportunities with the locals. 1 From a distance these might look like fairly standard marketing art for a collection of (all recent) Disney princess movies, but on closer inspection the detail and craftsmanship is genuinely impressive. Surrounding us on all four sides in the central atrium are four quite lovely mosaics representing the four seasons by way of The Princess & The Frog (spring), Tangled (summer), Brave (autumn), and of course Frozen (winter). As stunning as this moment is, it’s also fleeting, as once we’re done looking up we’re quickly looking around for signs of where to move next. Instead you get one big “wow moment” by stepping into the central atrium and standing in stunned disbelief at the towering volume above you, a seemingly too-delicate chandelier suspended in the middle of this grand void. That’s because it’s the first castle to fully program out its interior in a way that’s more than just a “discovery moment” for those willing to explore off the main pathway. The biggest, but not necessarily the best it lacks a sense of authentic architectural design and instead is rather easily identifiable as a giant show box affixed with some elaborate facades. As mentioned in the introduction, the castles have always been the nexus of Disney theme parks, but the nearly 200 foot tall Enchanted Storybook Castle has become a gravitational black hole. Let’s start with the Enchanted Storybook Castle. And individual attractions, whether based on beloved originals such as Peter Pan’s Flight or inspired by new concepts, such as Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, show an ambition to further push the land’s biggest attractions closer to that revered E-ticket designation. Enchanted Storybook Castle is a legitimate attempt to finally make this oversized piece of placemaking into the multi-experiential attraction it’s always wanted to be. Moving Dumbo and the Fantasia Carousel out into their own separate zone makes a tremendous amount of design sense now that spinning flat rides have basically been banished from the vocabulary of top-tier immersive themed environments. As such, it’s probably the one land in Shanghai Disneyland that never quite gels the way it’s supposed to. It would almost be charming, if only Shanghai Disneyland wasn’t a park that has utterly abandoned charm in its pursuit of grand spectacle. Even in 2016, it still follows the amusement park ethos of a diverse collection of mid-ticket attractions spread out over a nicely landscaped yet thematically unambitious (and slightly unfocused) environment. It’s always seemed somewhat odd that, despite being the park’s flagship land, it always seems to lack a truly flagship E-ticket attraction comparable to the headliners of adjacent lands.
And because that iconic landscape is mostly defined by the strength of its precedents, that means that Fantasyland is the one land that feels the least like a modern immersive theme park, and more like a traditional early-Disney themed amusement park. While the other lands allow the designers some leeway to get creative, Fantasyland is such an iconic landscape that carries the burden of such firmly entrenched expectations that it can be hard to deviate from the standard blueprint too far in pursuit of more innovative design. That giant freaking castle that seems to be growing exponentially with each new park debut, no longer symbolizing the land behind it but the entire park around it. For some people, Fantasyland is a synecdoche for the entirety of Disneyland… it’s where all the princesses, fairy tales, and lovable animated characters live, after all. The iconic stature of Fantasyland can end up being a curse for designers.
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