Grizzly Gulch
Grizzly Gulch is a themed land at Hong Kong Disneyland, styled as a California Gold Rush mining town in the Sierra Nevada in the late 1800s. It opened on July 14, 2012, as the second and largest of the three lands built in the park's expansion programme, between Toy Story Land in 2011 and Mystic Point in 2013. Exclusive to Hong Kong, it serves the role that Frontierland plays at other castle parks, but as a single storied town with one dominant mountain, one runaway coaster that runs through almost everything, and a set of geysers that soak the unwary.[1]
History
Hong Kong Disneyland opened in 2005 without a frontier land. When the Hong Kong government, the park's majority shareholder, approved a major expansion in 2009, three new lands were planned for the ground outside the railroad berm: Toy Story Land, Grizzly Gulch and Mystic Point. Together they increased the park's footprint by roughly a quarter and took its total offer past 100 attractions, shows and facilities.[2]
Grizzly Gulch was billed at opening as a world-exclusive and the largest component of the expansion. Disney Parks chairman Tom Staggs described it at the launch as a Wild West mining town recalling an era of hope, adventure and opportunity, built around interactive water features, street entertainment and a multidirectional coaster crisscrossing the whole area.[3] In the land's fiction the town was founded on August 8, 1888 — the eighth day of the eighth month of a year ending in eight, chosen as the luckiest possible date — after prospectors, following a family of grizzly bears, struck gold in the mountain that now bears their name. The bears are honoured citizens of the town, which is convenient, because they keep interfering with the mining operation anyway.
Attractions
Big Grizzly Mountain Runaway Mine Cars is the land's only ride and its reason for existing. A Vekoma mine train coaster, it leaves the Big Grizzly Mountain Mining Company building, is diverted by an Audio-Animatronic bear, stalls and rolls backwards when its lift cable appears to snap, and is finally launched forwards again by an accidental dynamite explosion, before racing around the town and back to the station. Because the track runs through the mountain, around the township and past the geysers, the coaster doubles as the land's moving centrepiece for spectators as well as riders.
Geyser Gulch is the land's second experience, a water play area built around the idea that the town sits on restless geothermal ground. A leaking water tower, spurting geysers and water jets — including the colourful Lucky Springs Geyser, which erupts without much warning — give younger guests a place to splash and cool off, and give the coaster a wet obstacle to thread past. At opening, Disney promoted Geyser Gulch as one of seven headline experiences in the land, alongside the coaster itself.[4]
Street life fills out the rest. The Grizzly Gulch Welcome Wagon Show brings singing and dancing performers into the town, Disney characters appear in Gold Rush-era costume, and the town's buildings double as photo locations — notably the Old Jail and the Assay Office, where the Lucky Nugget, a giant gold nugget, is said to bring fortune to anyone who rubs it.
Dining and shopping
The Lucky Nugget Saloon is the land's counter-service restaurant, serving hearty frontier fare in a saloon setting. Bear Necessities is the town shop, selling Grizzly Gulch and bear-themed merchandise. Both buildings enclose the town square, so the coaster, thundering past, is rarely out of earshot while guests eat or shop.
Design
The land's design rests on compression and motion. Big Grizzly Mountain, more than 88 feet (27 metres) tall, looms over modest wooden false-front buildings, so the town reads as a settlement built in a mountain's shadow. Water is the second motif: geysers, troughs and the leaking tower keep the dry Sierra setting playful. Unlike sprawling Frontierlands elsewhere, everything here is within a short walk — an intimacy that suits Hong Kong Disneyland's compact site.