The Disneyland Book of Secrets 2014: One Local's Unauthorized, Rapturous and Indispensable Guide to the Happiest Places on Earth (210 page)

There was something in th
e posters’ fresh, wholesome, multicultural faces that little kids were responding to, something in the light, upbeat tunes and the exuberant dancing of the TV ads.  It was as if a generation that had never seen Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland put on a show in the family barn were thirsting, hungering for that type of energetic, empowering entertainment, and the kids instantly knew that
High School Musical
was going to deliver it.

That happens from time to time.  People are hungering for something and then a film or television show or singer or song–something in popular culture
–often without meaning to do so just happens to trip all the right aesthetic and spiritual sensors and feeds that hunger.  Thus, pop-culture phenomena are born.  You sense their arrival in people’s trembling anticipation, and then the phenomena erupt and shake the cultural landscape like an earthquake.

Sometimes
such phenomena are substantive and universal enough to transcend their initial insane popularity; they endure for the ages, like Shakespeare, Picasso, Elvis or the Beatles.  Sometimes they feed only a temporary, fleeting hunger, and so after the violent fever of initial success, almost instantly fade into obscurity, an ignominy sometimes preceded by ridicule.

When
High School Musical
aired on January 20, 2006 it broke records and the demand was so great that the
Disney Channel
rebroadcast it multiple times and as soon as possible released
High School Musical
CDs and DVDs.  Leads
Zac Efron
,
Vanessa Hudgens
,
Corbin Bleu
, and
Ashley Tisdale
became household names in any household with children under twelve.

Capturing lightning in a bottle and then riding the lightning bolt as far across the sky as it deemed possible,
Disney
quickly produced and aired
High School Musical 2
in summer 2007, and then released
High School Musical 3:  Senior Year
–a big-budget cap to the trilogy–in movie theaters in October of 2008. 
High School Musical 2
was another massive
Disney Channel
hit, and
High School Musical 3
, in theaters for 15 weeks, had an opening weekend gross of just over $42 million and a final worldwide gross of almost $253 million.

From a critical standpoint,
High School Musical 3
was the best of the trilogy, with its much larger budget, more cohesive art direction, better songs, elaborate choreography, and perhaps most importantly, actors who had grown and improved their craft since the first film. 
High School Musical 2
was the weakest entry.  It had problems with everything from song quality to plot, but considering how quickly it was cobbled together to leverage the first film’s popularity, the filmmakers, cast, and crew did what they could with what they had and, incidentally, had a blast!

The simple themes of all three films are
nothing less than revolutionary, completely antithetical to the cynical, sarcastic, socially splintered high school films of the late John Hughes.  Hughes was a genius at capturing the alienation, loneliness, and division of Generation X, and his films will stand for a good long time, if not quite forever.  However, they and their successors don’t speak to the new paradigm of today’s youth.

The kids that doting soccer moms and stay-at-home dads raised see the world very differently than we 40-something former latchkey kids do.
  Generally speaking, children today have an optimism and a comfort level with cooperation and inclusiveness that staggers us. 
High School Musical
spoke to and celebrated those qualities like nothing else in pop culture had, and posited that the kids’ inclusive, collaborative, positive world view is the best one.  That’s why kids and tweens went gaga for
High School Musical
.  It understood them.  And it lionized them.

My niece, now
fourteen, has long since shed her
High School Musical
fandom, and so have many of her peers.  For kids, eight years is a long time.  However, thanks to DVDs and streaming movies, a whole new crop of kids is discovering the
High School Musical
trilogy for the first time, and loving it.

In the wake of
HSM
, millions of U.S. teens and adults were captivated by the high-school glee club-centered TV program “Glee” that first aired on Fox in the summer of 2010.  Self-proclaimed “Gleeks” in the millions, from every age group, tune in to see what PG-13 situations the “Glee” characters will get themselves into, and what wonderfully choreographed pop, rock, rap, country, and show tunes they’ll sing to work through their issues (and, they hope, capture a trophy).

“Glee” is its own marvelous, original creature, more grown-up than and quite distinct from the world of
High School Musical
.  However, it’s difficult to believe that “Glee” would’ve been green-lit, let alone would have become such a critical and popular phenomenon, had audiences and TV execs not already been primed by the
HSM
series to embrace “show-choir” dramedies.  And Fox’s “Glee” returned for the 2013-2014 season with a new cast member:  Former
Disney
wonderkid
Demi Lovato
of
Sonny with a Chance
and
Camp Rock
renown.  She has grown up “Skyscraper”-strong, able to go toe-to-toe with Simon Cowell as a judge on the American version of “The X Factor”.

But back to
HSM
. 
DCA
rapidly responded to the frenzy surrounding the original
High School Musical
movie by crafting a
High School Musical Parade
.  Repeatedly throughout the day a
High School Musical
float and a cast of talented young entertainers traveled between
Sunshine Plaza
and
Paradise Pier
, dancing and singing the most popular songs from the movie.

As with all
DCA
parades, the
High School Musical
extravaganza would pause at particular points in the route, like
Sunshine Plaza
, or in front of the
faux
Palace of Fine Arts rotunda
in
Golden State
, to present the full roster of songs and routines.  It was an interactive show; Guests were invited to join the singing and dancing.

The
High School Musical Parade
was a hit, so it was refreshed each time a new
High School Musical
movie launched.  New songs and dance routines reflective of the new films were incorporated into the parade to keep it current and meaningful for Guests.

For
two years after
High School Musical 3
hit theaters, the parade continued at
DCA
, its medley of
HSM 3
songs presented in a high-octane, exuberant manner that captivated Guests of all ages.  Even Guests who’d never seen the films enjoyed the dancing, the positive message, and the energetic tunes. In autumn of 2010,
East High
’s
DCA
students matriculated for good.  High school doesn’t last forever … and neither could the parades inspired by it! 
Did You Know?
  Love it or hate it (and some critics truly do loathe the happy, wholesome franchise), the
HSM
trilogy has galvanized numerous careers. 
Zac Efron
garnered decent reviews for his part in “Me and Orson Welles,”
Vanessa Hudgens
was almost unrecognizably accomplished in the quirky little 2009 gem “Band Slam,” and then took on the role of troubled, tragic Mimi in LA’s 2010 production of “Rent”.  Director-choreographer
Kenny Ortega
crafted “This Is It,” a 2009 hit about superstar Michael Jackson’s last, never-performed concert, which
Ortega
was choreographing.

Pixar Play Parade
(Hiatus January 2011 – Returned by 2012)

[
FastView:
 
Boisterous family fun.
]

DCA
was intended to be a grown-up contrast to kid-and-family-friendly
Disneyland
and therefore opened without any
Disney
characters.  But from
DCA
’s
Opening Day
onward, it was clear that Guests wanted
Disney
characters in the mix.  The absence of
Disney
characters was among the loudest and most forceful of the Guest complaints. 
DCA
could be
somewha
t more mature than
Disneyland
; it could serve alcohol; it could embrace California as a theme; but it had, without, question, to introduce
Disney
characters and mythology into the mix or it would fail.

It wasn’t enough to place
Mickey
and other members of the
Disney Fab Five
at strategic locations within the park, and it wouldn’t make sense thematically to start slapping
Mickey
and
Princess
pictures on everything.  The challenge?  How to introduce a
Disney
character presence that would be distinct from
Disneyland
, at home in
DCA
, and able to grow with the park.

It was
Disney
’s–and our–great good fortune that
Disney
was working with a brilliant
CGI
company,
Pixar
Animation
.  By the time
DCA
launched in February of 2001,
Pixar
had already released the incredibly successful
Toy Story
(1995),
A Bug’s Life
(1998), and
Toy Story 2
(1999), and
Monsters, Inc.
, which promised to be a smash hit, was slated for release in November of 2001.

Pixar
had begun life as part of
Lucasfilm
in the late 1970’s, and was purchased by Apple founder Steve Jobs in 1986.  The innovative computer animators at
Pixar
had been honing their cutting-edge craft via increasingly impressive short films.  In 1937
Disney
’s
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
proved that full-length animated features could be artistic triumphs, heartwarming story vehicles and commercial successes.  In 1995,
Pixar
’s
Toy Story
proved that a CGI feature could be more than a gimmick, could be visually and musically dazzling, emotionally powerful and a box office hit.

Disney
didn’t buy
Pixar
until 2006, but
Walt Disney Pictures
distributed all of the
Pixar
films and
Disney
had a strong relationship with
Pixar
and its key personnel, like director and creative genius
John Lasseter
.  This relationship allowed
Disney
to begin introducing likeable, recognizable
Pixar
characters to the
DCA
landscape early in the troubled park’s existence.

Guests wanted
Disney
-related characters?  They’d get them, by gosh, and not simple imports from
Disneyland
across the plaza. 
DCA
Guests would see new
Disney
characters, the fresh-as-paint
Pixar
characters
, characters from a new medium, for a new millennium.

First came
“a bug’s land,”
which launched in the fall of 2002, less than a year after
DCA
opened.  The charming, imaginative little land was a whimsical presentation of how the engaging insects of
Pixar
’s
A Bug’s Life
might create their own fun park, modeled on
Disneyland
or
DCA
.  This new land addressed two major Guest complaints by adding
Disney
-related characters and providing an entire district devoted to attractions for toddlers and small children.

Next came
Monsters, Inc., Mike & Sulley to the Rescue
, one of the best dark rides at the resort and one of the few dark rides at
DCA
.  It opened officially in January 2006, less than five years after
DCA
launched.  The technologically innovative
Toy Story Midway Mania!
opened in 2008, placing Guests inside a 4D gaming environment, extremely high-tech in its execution but beautifully nostalgic and old-school in its design elements.  The
DCA
Toy Story
experience pits Guests against each other and their own expectations as they compete for the highest score.