Frontierland
Frontierland is the themed land devoted to the American frontier of the nineteenth century — pioneers, riverboats, gold rushes and mining towns — in Disney's "castle parks". Guests enter through a log stockade into a western town strung along the Rivers of America. Frontierland was one of the original lands of Disneyland in 1955, and versions opened with the Magic Kingdom in 1971 and Disneyland Paris in 1992. Tokyo Disneyland calls its version Westernland, and Hong Kong Disneyland has no Frontierland at all. The two American versions have their own articles at Frontierland (Disneyland) and Frontierland (Magic Kingdom).
Concept and design
In Disneyland's dedication, Walt Disney framed the land as a tribute to the pioneers who blazed the trails across America, and its storytelling is unusually transport-driven: the frontier is experienced from a riverboat deck, a mine train and a runaway mine car as much as on foot. The Rivers of America are the land's organising feature in Anaheim, Orlando, Paris and Tokyo alike, with a large paddlewheel steamboat — in most parks the Mark Twain Riverboat — circling an island guests can explore. The land's modern anchor in every park that has one is Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, a runaway mine train through a flooded mining town.[1]
The land also preserves a strand of Americana the other lands do not attempt: Davy Crockett, whose television popularity in 1954–55 helped pay for Disneyland itself, was Frontierland's first folk hero, and the canoes, keel boats and coonskin caps of that craze all belonged here. Later layers softened the history into tall tales — singing bears, a runaway mine train and a haunted gold town — without quite losing the river that holds it together.
Disneyland
At Disneyland, Frontierland opened on July 17, 1955, Walt and Lillian Disney having celebrated their thirtieth wedding anniversary at its Golden Horseshoe Saloon four days earlier. Early Frontierland was part working West: stagecoaches, Conestoga wagons and pack mules crossed a painted desert, and the Mark Twain steamed around a still-bare island. The mine train is the thread through its history. The Rainbow Caverns Mine Train opened in 1956, a gentle ride past desert tableaux and glowing caverns, and was rebuilt and expanded in 1960 as the Mine Train Through Nature's Wonderland, with animated wildlife and a larger wilderness to cross. It closed in 1977, and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad — a faster descendant on much of the same ground — opened in 1979.[1] The Sailing Ship Columbia had joined the Mark Twain on the river in 1958, and Tom Sawyer Island, opened in 1956, remains the land's exploratory heart, now overlaid as Pirate's Lair.
Magic Kingdom
Florida's Frontierland opened on October 1, 1971, initially as a dead end, with the Country Bear Jamboree among its original attractions; it only connected through to Adventureland when Caribbean Plaza was built in 1973. Florida never had the mine train or the Western River Expedition, the vast boat ride Marc Davis designed for the site — that project was set aside, and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, opened in 1980, took its place at the land's far end, with Tom Sawyer Island and the Liberty Belle riverboat on Florida's own Rivers of America. Splash Mountain, now rethemed as Tiana's Bayou Adventure, later filled the gap between Big Thunder and the town, and the land is now being extended again towards a new area themed to Pixar's Cars.
Other parks
Paris built the most story-driven Frontierland of all. Opened April 12, 1992, it is a single town, Thunder Mesa, founded by mining magnate Henry Ravenswood after gold was found in Big Thunder Mountain; the mountain, the riverboat landing, the town buildings and Phantom Manor all share that one backstory. Phantom Manor, Paris's darker retelling of the Haunted Mansion, stands in Frontierland rather than a New Orleans or Liberty Square, because its haunted Ravenswood family is Thunder Mesa's founding family — the manor, the mine and the town rise and fall together.[2] Tokyo's equivalent, opened in 1983, is called Westernland, reportedly because "frontier" does not translate with the same resonance in Japanese; its layout otherwise follows the American model closely, Mark Twain included. Hong Kong has no Frontierland: the role is served in miniature by Grizzly Gulch, opened July 14, 2012, a small gold-rush town built around the Big Grizzly Mountain Runaway Mine Cars coaster.[1] Shanghai Disneyland likewise opened without a frontier land.
See also
- Frontierland (Disneyland)
- Frontierland (Magic Kingdom)
- Big Thunder Mountain Railroad
- Mark Twain Riverboat
- Phantom Manor
- Tom Sawyer Island
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontierland "Frontierland" — Wikipedia
- ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_Manor "Phantom Manor" — Wikipedia