This past weekend, while tens of thousands of guests were crowding into DCA (now there’s a phrase I’ve never used before: “crowding into DCA”) to catch the premiere of World of Color, I was busy paying my respects to the resort’s original water show, the Disneyland Hotel’s Dancing Waters.
Beginning in August, the show’s 40-year-old amphitheater, along with most of the hotel’s other ancient attractions, will be demolished. Yes, I know. The show itself was discontinued several years ago. The light panels and twinkling character have long since been torn from its 12-foot-high-by-70-foot-wide back wall. Yet that wall, viewing area, and water tank with fountain mechanisms are still intact, a silent reminder of a time when stirring music, “a spectacular display of bright lights, and pulsating water fountains” lit up a secluded corner of the Kingdom, twice nightly, for free.
The fountain is said to date back to the New York World’s Fair, where an operator mechanically controlled its 16 fountains. After the fair ended in 1965, Disney salvaged the equipment for Jack Wrather’s Disneyland Hotel, to use as a companion piece to a full-scale marina and high-rise he planned to replace his golf course.
I grudgingly admit: the Disneyland Hotel’s coming attractions—bulldozing the final remnants of the marina project of 1969, the Polynesian expansion of 1979, and the Peter Pan makeover of 2001 in favor of tie-ins to the early days of Disneyland—make sense financially, thematically, and historically. The hotel has been sliding by with minimal connections to the park for over a decade. It’s no longer a stop on the monorail route. Other hotels are far closer to Disneyland than it is.
So to maintain high occupancy at premium rates, the hotel needs something special—namely, adopting the themes of Disneyland as its own. And the move has precedent. In its early years, the hotel used to have numerous Disneyland-themed adventures—the Monorail Cafe, the Monorail Bar, even a miniature golf course with each hole themed to a different park icon, including the castle, Skull Rock, Autopia, and the Painted Desert.
The additions that came later, particularly the marina and its waterfront, were aimed as much at local residents and park visitors as at hotel guests. Wrather wanted to create his own kingdom, for folks to stroll, shop, eat, drink and play. Today, the Walt Disney Company has Downtown Disney to do all that. The Disneyland Hotel’s primary purpose is reverting back to attracting and serving hotel guests.
My recent walk through the hotel’s about-to-expire amenities rekindled fond memories, but also reminded me that their time had passed. Dearest to my heart is the Aqua Gardens featuring Horseshoe Falls—at night still one of the most exotic, romantic spots on all of Disney property. Yet as I uneasily scaled its slippery steps and sloshed through its caverns, I could see the falls-soaked area remains a liability nightmare. I’m shocked that Disney’s lawyers allowed it to last this long. Worse, one of the falls was turned off a few weeks ago (I assume in connection with the draining of the adjacent koi pond), giving rise to the stench of standing water. And that unpleasant aroma carries over to the empty koi pond.
Over the years, I’ve enjoyed Hook’s Pointe, the Lost Bar, and Croc’s Bits and Bites, but the one I’ll miss most is the subterranean Wine Cellar—the one I never took the time to enjoy.
All that remains of the old artisan village, the Seaport of the Pacific, are the crystal shop and a tired arcade, complete with squeaky floorboards and outdated amusements. There may be pay phones at the Grand Californian that generate more revenue than these retail relics.
Outside, the miniature remote-controlled Jungle Boats are still accepting tokens, even if the lagoon’s swaying bridge, flaming boat, and other special effects no longer work. An even more miniature lagoon was built as a replacement, to the side of Downtown Disney’s Rainforest Cafe.
And the hotel’s wedding gazebo, once the centerpiece of extensive lawns and a rose garden, now sits in a cramped, lonely corner.
I’m confident that, like the World of Color, the hotel’s changes will be technologically superior and far more entertaining than these aging holdovers from my childhood. That doesn’t mean I won’t miss them. But I’m also hoping that the hotel’s redirection won’t stop at new signage, monorail waterslides, and a re-created Tahitian Terrace.
Who knows? Maybe the grounds of the hotel can become a place to relive Disneyland past. Is there room out there for a few Country Bears, a Mighty Microscope, or elements of rides to be closed in the future? Maybe the Disneyland Hotel will never be completed. It will continue to grow as long as there are park attractions left to be scavenged.
