Theme Park Fandom: Spatial Transmedia, Materiality and Participatory Cultures 9462982570, 9789462982574

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Theme Park Fandom

Transmedia: Participatory Culture and Media Convergence The book series Transmedia: Participatory Culture and Media Convergence provides a platform for cutting-edge research in the field of media studies, with a strong focus on the impact of digitization, globalization, and fan culture. The series is dedicated to publishing the highest-quality monographs (and exceptional edited collections) on the developing social, cultural, and economic practices surrounding media convergence and audience participation. The term ‘media convergence’ relates to the complex ways in which the production, distribution, and consumption of contemporary media are affected by digitization, while ‘participatory culture’ refers to the changing relationship between media producers and their audiences. Interdisciplinary by its very definition, the series will provide a publishing platform for international scholars doing new and critical research in relevant fields. While the main focus will be on contemporary media culture, the series is also open to research that focuses on the historical forebears of digital convergence culture, including histories of fandom, cross- and transmedia franchises, reception studies and audience ethnographies, and critical approaches to the culture industry and commodity culture. Series editors Dan Hassler-Forest, Utrecht University, the Netherlands Matt Hills, University of Huddersfield, United Kingdom Editorial Board – Mark Bould, University of West of England, United Kingdom – Timothy Corrigan, University of Pennsylvania, United States – Henry Jenkins, University of Southern California, United States – Julia Knight, University of Sunderland, United Kingdom – Simone Murray, Monash University, Australia – Roberta Pearson, University of Nottingham, United Kingdom – John Storey, University of Sunderland, United Kingdom – William Uricchio, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, United States – Sherryl Vint, University of California, Riverside, United States – Eckart Voigts, Braunschweig Institute of Technology, Germany

Theme Park Fandom Spatial Transmedia, Materiality And Participatory Cultures

Rebecca Williams

Amsterdam University Press

Cover illustration: Twirl Vector Maker Cover design: Coördesign, Leiden Lay-out: Crius Group, Hulshout isbn 978 94 6298 257 4 e-isbn 978 90 4853 261 2 doi 10.5117/9789462982574 nur 670 © R. Williams / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2020 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. Every effort has been made to obtain permission to use all copyrighted illustrations reproduced in this book. Nonetheless, whosoever believes to have rights to this material is advised to contact the publisher.



Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

7

1. Introduction

9

2. Understanding the Contemporary Theme Park: Theming, Immersion and Fandom

41

3. Fandom, Brandom and Plandom: Haptic Fandom, Anticipatory Labour and Digital Knowledge

67

4. Extending the Haunted Mansion: Spatial Poaching, Participatory Narratives and Retrospective Transmedia

101

5. Of Mice and Minions: ‘Ani-embodiment’ and ‘Metonymic Celebrity’ in the Theme Park Character Encounter

133

6. Turkey Legs, Dole Whip and Duff: Consumables, Diegetic Paratexts and ‘Cult-Culinary’ Objects

153

7. Embodied Transmedia and Paratextual-Spatio Play: Consuming, Collecting and Costuming Theme Park Merchandise 181 8. Replacing and Remembering Rides: Ontological Security, Authenticity and Online Memorialization

211

9. Conclusion: Ways Forward for Theme Park and Fan Studies

243

Index

257

Acknowledgements Writing this book has truly been a labour of love. My long-standing love of the theme park experience began when I was 16 and has continued ever since as I’ve returned time and again to those formative spaces in Orlando, Florida and sought to visit as many of Disney and Universal’s global parks as possible. As a researcher within media and cultural studies, however, I have often been met with disdain, abject ignorance and outright hostility by fellow academics who cannot understand that this is how anyone would choose to spend their free time. This project has often been similarly misunderstood or assumed by many to be a defence of the indefensible – the global corporate machine that is the Walt Disney Company. There are many reasons to be critical of Disney (and many of these are discussed within the book) but my starting point has been from a position of affective attachment and a determination to take seriously the experiences of those who, like me, love these themed spaces. Therefore, I am enormously grateful to a range of people for believing in and supporting this project. Firstly, to Amsterdam University Press and the commissioning editors I have worked with there, as well as Matt Hills and Dan Hassler-Forest who gave the book a home within their Transmedia book series. I am also hugely appreciative of the feedback from Suzanne Scott, who read the book in its first draft, and another anonymous peer reviewer – your comments and encouragement helped to reaffirm the value of this project when finishing it was becoming difficult. My colleagues at the University of South Wales have been endlessly supportive during an often-difficult period as I worked on this and I am hugely grateful to Ruth McElroy, Philip Mitchell, Peter Jachimiak, and Rob Campbell. One of the real highlights of being involved in academia is being part of the Fan Studies community and getting to see the fantastic work that is being produced by a range of scholars. The Fan Studies Network continues to offer support and I want to thank my fellow board members and friends, Lucy Bennett, Bertha Chin, Bethan Jones, Richard McCulloch, and Tom Phillips. I have also found support and encouragement within the Society for Cinema and Media Studies’ Fan and Audience Studies Group, and through my conversations with a range of scholars on social media. The support of, amongst others, Paul Booth, Maria Ivanova, Myles McNutt, Lori Morimoto, E.J. Nielsen, Louisa Stein, Abby Waysdorf, Simone Driessen, Nicolle Lamerichs, Suzanne Scott, Mark Stewart, Lincoln Geraghty, Matt

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Hills, James Rendell, and many more is very much appreciated. And to anyone I have forgotten: I’m sorry. I owe you a Dole Whip. Elements of an earlier version of Chapter Eight appear in the edited collection Everybody Hurts, published by Iowa University Press, and I am grateful to the peer reviewers on that chapter for their insightful feedback, as well as to Richard McCulloch and William Proctor for comments on my chapter in their book Disney’s Star Wars; the experience of writing that chapter shaped many of the ideas present in the current volume. I have presented elements of this project at various conferences and am also grateful for the interest and feedback from those who heard me speak. Their questions have been invaluable in shaping and pushing the ideas contained here forward and their enthusiasm for the ongoing project has been a source of encouragement and reassurance that this project is worthwhile and has something to contribute. I am especially indebted to Paul Booth for his invitation to speak at the DePaul Popular Culture Conference on Disney in 2019. Thanks, as always to my friends outside academia, and my family for their love and support, and for starting my love of theme parks and all things Disney. Finally, heartfelt thanks to my husband Ross who has shared my love of theme parks from the start, is always ready to plan another trip, and who has supported me endlessly through writing this book – ‘Believing is just the beginning’.

1. Introduction Abstract This chapter argues for a move away from the notion of theme-park visitors as naïve, controlled and duped into excessive consumption, and for approaches that take seriously the range of ways that theme park fans form active, reflective and pleasurable attachments to theme parks and their rides, attractions, and experiences. It argues that a Fan Studiescentric approach allows better understanding of how and why people become fans of theme parks and their attractions, and develop emotional and affective connections to these, whilst being acutely aware of the consumerist nature of the themed environment. Offering an overview of the chapters that follow, the chapter also provides a summary of the book’s central arguments. Keywords: theme park fandom, participatory cultures, transmedia, spatial transmedia, haptic fandom

Introduction [T]heme parks represent extraordinary spatial and social forms, they offer some of the most basic needs, reflect deep and powerful emotions and cognitive modes, and present some of the most telling and controversial representations of the world. (Lukas 2008, pp. 7–8)

In February 2017 the American pop singer, Katy Perry released the first single from her album, ‘Prism’. Entitled ‘Chained to the Rhythm’, the track’s video featured Perry visiting a highly stylized and futuristic fictional theme park featuring rollercoasters, swing rides and other attractions. The park, called Oblivia, represents the distractions of modern life including the taking of selfies, the instability of the contemporary housing market and, as represented by the park’s star attraction, the endless treadmill or ‘hamster wheel’ of modern work. Whilst Perry’s intent to make a broader political

Williams, R., Theme Park Fandom. Spatial Transmedia, Materiality And Participatory Cultures. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020 doi 10.5117/9789462982574_ch01

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comment has been well documented (see Savage 2017), the fact that the setting and the aesthetics of the video highlight the location of the theme park is telling. According to Perry’s vision, the theme park is a place of mindless distraction and conformity; somewhere that promises everything yet delivers nothing tangible or ‘real’, a site as ephemeral and insubstantial as the candyfloss consumed by those in the video. A month later, in March 2017, a video entitled ‘Adult Disney fans are weird’ began circulating via the online comedy site College Humor. With the caption ‘Just because you were indoctrinated as a child, ignore all the bad parts about it and yield fully to its influence does NOT make it a cult’, the short film features an adult couple on a date, discussing a potential vacation. The male Disney fan rejects the woman’s proposal of visiting Europe, instead advocating for a trip to Walt Disney World (WDW) in Florida. He counters her proposal of ‘seeing the world, experiencing new cultures’ with the suggestion of EPCOT (Disney World’s park that includes a World Showcase of eleven global pavilions) and reveals a tattoo of one of the Seven Dwarves from Disney’s animated film Snow White. He declares that the tattoo is ‘the mark of my people. The mark of Mouse House’ and that ‘My brethren and I would make an annual pilgrimage to the mouse. Now even though I am grown, my heart still yearns for the red rocks of Frontierland and the enchanted falls of Splash Mountain’. His date comes to realize that, ‘you’re one of those families that goes to Disney for every vacation, instead of venturing out of their comfort zone’. This insinuation that those who visit Disney are insular and seeking the safe rather than being challenged is reinforced when she asks ‘Is this why you don’t have a passport?’, whilst other common critiques of the company as uncaring about its staff (see Van Maanen 1991; The Project on Disney 1995; Wasko 2001) and those who visit as infantilized (Park et al 2009) are also drawn on in the female date’s complaints that ‘Disney is just another corporation that doesn’t care about you and they don’t care about their employees’ and her question of ‘What do you even want to do? Do you want to walk around wearing Mickey ears?’ His reply, ‘Please. I’m a grown man. A tasteful Jack Skellington hoodie and a lightsabre is all I need’, does little to dissuade her. Ultimately, however, the woman realizes that ‘Disney World isn’t just a theme park to you. It represents the magic of childhood’ and proposes a trip to Disneyland in California. However, the deleterious image of the adult Disney fan again rears its head in his complaint that this is not the same as (read: as good as) Disney World since it ‘doesn’t even have a Spaceship Earth’ (an attraction that can only be found in Florida’s EPCOT park).

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Whilst one of these media texts is designed to provoke humour and another to sell a music track, they encompass a range of contemporary views of the theme park and those who enjoy them, also demonstrated in the quote from Scott Lukas that opens this chapter. The theme park visitor is portrayed as a mindless automaton, seduced by promised delights and lacking the capacity to break free whilst the adult theme park fan, and the Disney fan in particular, is childish, narrow-minded and insular, pedantic, and unable to criticize the corporation for its commercialism and allegedly poor treatment of employees. Such critiques are reflected in much of the academic work on theme parks, sites which have often been devalued ‘because of the assumption that [they] produce stereotypical, inauthentic, and simulated reflections of people, things, cultures, places and moments in history’ (Lukas 2007b, p. 183). The main aim of this book, then, is to enhance our understandings of why people become fans of theme parks and their attractions, and develop emotional and affective connections to these, whilst being acutely aware of the consumerist nature of the themed environment. It also explores how theme park fans create and maintain complex cultural hierarchies that privilege certain experiences, preferences, and opportunities for visiting over others. Thus, moving away from the widely held scholarly and mainstream notion of theme-park visitors as naïve, controlled and duped into excessive consumption (as discussed in more depth below), the book takes seriously the range of ways in which theme park fans form active, reflective and pleasurable attachments to theme parks and their rides, attractions, and experiences.

Spatial Transmedia and Haptic Fandom As outlined, the basic premise of this book is that theme parks and their fans are worthy of attention and understanding and that those who visit theme parks are not the consumption-driven cultural dupes that is often assumed in academic work and mainstream culture. Moving away from critiques focused on concepts such as the ‘Disneyfication’ of society (Schickel 1986, p. 225), or the argument that the theme park is the ultimate ‘fake’ (Eco 1986, p. 8), the book instead concurs with J.P. Telotte’s argument that theme parks offer the opportunity for ‘play or playfulness’ and that they ‘wink at us and get us to acknowledge our own complicity with the technologically mediated world’ (2011, p. 181). It addresses the relative lack of sustained scholarly consideration of theme park fans by offering the first-book length study of this fandom. It proposes that analysis of theme parks and their visitors

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and fans has much to tell us about contemporary transmediality, participatory cultures, themed spaces, and audience relationships with objects and places of meaning. However, it also seeks to challenge the dominant view of transmediality as something that flows across and between different media spaces, since ‘this assumption does not match up with embodied and spatialized realities of transmedia branding/storytelling. Media tourism, for example, can involve the extension of film and television narratives through located performances’ (Hills 2017, p. 213). The book thus proposes the concept of ‘spatial transmedia’ to account for these moments of narrative extension and world-building that take place within specified rooted locations. Whilst fans who do not visit these places may learn about them via publicity, reviews or the accounts of other fans, it is only by physically being there that one can experience the extended narrative or world. As discussed in more depth in relation to Disney’s Haunted Mansion attraction in Chapter Four and character meetings in Chapter Five, this opens up possibilities for understanding how spatial forms of transmediality operate through narrative expansion via themed attractions, shops, and interactive opportunities only available to certain guests. However, in addition to this place-based form of world-building, the concept of spatial transmedia also offers the opportunity to challenge the more dominant ‘mothership’ (Scott 2013) concept of transmediality which assumes a central text or object ‘whose transmedia narratives generally cohere as part of designed, corporately-owned world-building across media platforms’ (Hills 2012, p. 37). Instead, as Chapter Four also argues, theme parks and the transmedia opportunities that they present are often ‘not conceived all at once’ but ‘are pieced together over time’ (Schweizer and Pearce 2016, p. 96). As argued here, transmediality in the theme park is not only often resolutely rooted in specific places and, therefore, physical experiences of an extended storyworld, it is also frequently a more organic and fan-led process than more typical dominant models allow for, offering a potential mode of slow or ‘retrospective transmedia’. Linked to this, the book’s second key theoretical proposition is the development of the concept of ‘haptic fandom’. Part of the attraction of being physically present within theme park spaces is that it allows the fan to experience the bodily sensations associated with immersion in the theme park environment. In ‘theme-park attractions […] The senses now come into play with a greater immediacy that actually takes its toll on the participant’s body’ (Ndalianis 2012, p. 72) and fans experience motion, smell, taste and touch when engaging in practices within the themed spaces. The book is thus also concerned with the physical and sensory experiences of

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the theme park space and how fans themselves accord value and meaning to the immersion of ‘being there’. Proposing the concept of ‘haptic fandom’, the research considers the importance of the physical and the material to theme park fandom and the act of visiting these as ‘embodied, multi-sensuous and technologized performances through which people are actively involved in the world, imaginatively and physically’ (Haldrup and Larsen 2006, p. 276). It addresses the relative neglect of the importance of haptics to the fan experience (Lancaster 2001, Godwin 2017, Hills 2017), arguing for the centrality of the physical and experiential in understanding fan engagement with(in) the contemporary transmedia spaces of the theme park.

Theorizing Theme Parks As noted above, there is a wealth of academic study of the theme park. Most commonly discussed are Disneyland in California and Walt Disney World in Florida (see Sandlin and Garlen 2016 for an overview) where the themed spaces have been perceived to be presenting the ‘hyper-real’ (Eco 1986) and inauthentic copies of actual places or historical periods (Bryman 1995, p. 142). As Janet Wasko summarizes, Disney’s ‘theme parks represent a profitable and lucrative business for the Disney company, as well as supporting conservative, corporate, and consumerist ideologies’ (2001, p. 157), and ‘a deluge of studies have attempted to interpret not only the aesthetics of the Disney theme parks, but their meanings and significance as sites of contemporary American culture’ (2001, p. 153). Accordingly, sites such as Disneyland and the Walt Disney World Resort (WDW) have been widely discussed in terms of their ideological representations of national identities and nationhood (Fjellman 1992; Marling 1997; Lukas 2007). Much work has also focused on the tension between the apparent cultural imperialism inherent in the spread of Disney theme parks across the world and the need to adapt for a ‘glocal’ market (Matusitz 2010) in the Company’s international parks in France (Trigg and Trigg 1995; Warren 1999; Lainsbury 2000; Matusitz 2010; Renaut 2011) and Asia in Tokyo (Brannen 1992; Van Maanen 1992; Yoshimoto 1994; Raz 1999, 2004; Hendry 2000), Hong Kong (Fung and Lee 2009; Groves 2011; Choi 2012; McCarthy and Cheung 2018), and Shanghai. Those who visit theme parks have been largely characterized as cultural dupes who must ‘agree to behave like robots’ in a ‘place of total passivity’ (Eco 1986, p. 48) which is carefully controlled and regimented to restrict visitor autonomy (Bryman 1995, pp. 99–17; Bryman 2004, pp. 132–40). The parks have been viewed as existing solely to make money and to encourage

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consumption; as Davis notes, ‘Events, architecture and landscaping help to move people through and past concessions at speeds and intervals that have been carefully determined to enhance sales per capita’ (1996, p. 403). The typical imagined theme park visitor is the consumer par excellence, someone who does not even recognize their own consumption within a space where ‘the ultimate purpose of narrativizing experience is to naturalize consumption activities, so that visitors consume without being aware of it’ (Yoshimoto 1994, p. 187). Equally, theme park attendees (especially those who attend Disney parks) are often assumed to be families and Disney’s target audience is widely perceived to be children (Wasko 2001, p. 185). This is largely linked to the fact that Disney as a company is ‘associated almost umbilically with childhood’ (Giroux 1994, p. 87). Even when adult visitors are acknowledged, they are often perceived to be engaging in the superficial, trivial and inconsequential. However, there is little doubt that such places are enormously popular. For instance, the world’s most visited park, Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom, attracted 20,450,000 visitors in 2017 (TEA/AECOM 2018, p. 6) with attendance up 4.7% among the top 25 parks in the World compared to the previous year (TEA/AECOM 2018, p. 6). This global dominance continued with 157,311,000 global visitors to the Disney Group’s Parks (TEA 2019, p. 9) and its sites occupying eight of the top ten spots in a list of the most visited theme parks in the world in 2018 (TEA 2019, p. 11), whilst its main competitor, Universal Studios, attracted over 50 million visitors across its sites in the same period (TEA 2019, p.9). This popularity has led many academic studies, often from a marketing or tourism branding perspective, to attempt to map the types of people who visit theme parks, the reasons for their visits, and the implications that this has for theme park promotion and advertising (see Milman 1988; McClung 1991; Fodness and Milner 1992; Roest et al 1997; Braun and Soskin 1999; Wong and Cheung 1999; Kemperman et al 2000; Johns and Gyimothy 2002; Wanhill 2002; Bigne et al 2004; Milman 2009; Park et al 2009; Geissler and Rucks 2011; Ma et al 2013; Cheng et al 2016; Ali et al 2018; Rodríguez-Díaz and Pulido-Fernández 2018). These visitors come from a range of locations and demographics but there is a tendency towards assuming that the parks are primarily aimed at, and attract, children and families. Indeed, research does show that many parents feel a cultural obligation to visit Disney parks with their young families (Johns and Gyimothy 2002) and that children experience the parks in specific ways (Pettigrew 2011). Academic work has often framed such familial trips via the metaphor of pilgrimage, as is also common in studies of fan tourism (King 1993; Aden 1999; Porter 1999; Alderman 2002; Brooker 2005; Brooker 2007; Erzen 2011;

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Norris 2013; Larsen 2015; Erdely and Breede 2017; Linden and Linden 2017; Toy 2017). For example, King describes visits to Disney Parks as quasi-religious, arguing that ‘Disney Land and World are directed and unified by the guiding spirit of Disney and his corporation; holy cities for the entire U.S., visited by pilgrims, in a constant festival state in which all participate’ (1981, p. 121). She notes that it is ‘obligatory – for Americans, adults as well as children, at least one pilgrimage to Disney Land or World as a popular culture ‘mecca’ of nearly religious importance’ (1981, p. 117; see also Moore 1980; Mazur and Koda 2001). Such arguments are reflected in Ritzer’s characterization of the trip as the ‘middle-class hajj’ (1996, p. 4). But as King (1981, p. 117) goes on to point out, even though this ‘journey is a focal event in childhood and adolescence […] since many more adults than children make the pilgrimage (by a ratio of 4 to 1), one is led to question the popular assumption that the parks are designed primarily for children’ (see also Bryman 1995, pp. 88–91). In the analysis that follows, theme parks’ appeal to child visitors will be discussed when appropriate. However, this book focuses on adult fans of theme parks who are likely to be active on social media sites, contributing to the participatory cultures that help constitute theme park fandom and, in some cases, functioning as important ‘influencers’ or ‘lifestylers, who are known for their social media presence and large sub-cultural following’ (Kiriakou 2018).

Theme Parks Meet Fan Studies In order to explore these participatory cultures, the book argues that we need to examine and deconstruct the dominant negative views, held by society and even many media and cultural studies scholars, of theme parks and their visitors. Disney as a Company has attracted a particular level of often vitriolic academic critique from political economy perspectives (Bohas 2016) or approaches drawing on forms of psychoanalysis (Harrington 2015, Zornado 2017), with many other studies focusing on the effects of the Company’s animated films on viewer’s perceptions of romance (Garlen and Sandlin 2017), body image, and gender roles (Do Rozario 2004, Coyne et al 2016). This is not to say that we should not be concerned about how Disney as a company treats its employees, or that we should not worry about the implications of their 2018 purchase of the Fox media company for media ownership and corporate dominance, for instance. Rather I would argue that, despite many of the ideological or economically influenced critiques we may make of theme parks and corporations such as Disney, or America’s

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second-largest theme park company Universal Studios, it is necessary to move beyond simply dismissing these spaces and those who visit them. The research presented here argues for a shift in our perceptions, demonstrating that adult theme park fans form a dedicated and complex participatory culture around the places that they love and often develop deep emotional and affective ties to them. Adult loyalty to the Disney brand has been well documented (see, for example, Sun and Scharrer (2004) on college students’ resistance to critique of The Little Mermaid), whilst both ‘Disney Parks and Universal Theme Parks rank first and second in the hospitality and theme parks industry, according to the MBLM Brand Intimacy 2017 Report, a study of brands based on emotions’ (Gazdik 2017), with millennials and women favouring Disney. Clearly, ‘even in the face of their apparent artificiality theme parks are meaningful to people’ (Lukas 2008, p. 234). This book argues that the meanings that fans make of Disney, and other theme park spaces, are more complex than many existing critiques allow, concurring that those who enjoy such spaces possess a clear ‘ability to reflect on both the pleasures and the displeasures of their experiences, to articulate the gains and the losses, and to make self-conscious choices within the options which are available’ (Buckingham 1997, p. 290). In her extensive work on the Disney Company, Janet Wasko identifies a range of its audience archetypes from the antagonist, the resistive and the cynic (each of whom are negatively disposed towards the company) through to more admiring audiences and fans (2001, pp. 95–215). These are described, somewhat problematically, as ‘fanatical and zealous Disney fans, who strongly, sometimes obsessively, adore anything Disney and arrange their lives accordingly’ (2001, p. 196, emphasis added). However, a more resolutely, and sympathetic, Fan Studies approach to understanding theme parks can illuminate a range of practices and attachments; Countering misperceptions of visitors as supposedly passive viewers of visible spectacles and consumers of merchandise created and controlled by corporations, using Fan Studies as a theoretical framework illustrates how theme parks offer interactive, participatory, immersive experiences. (Godwin 2017, para 5.5)

Indeed, Godwin encourages the use of Fan Studies as a perspective from which to study the theme park experience, noting ‘From its earliest examples, Fan Studies scholarship consistently emphasizes the active role of fans specifically and audiences in general. It thus offers a useful theoretical framework to examine theme parks’ (2017, para. 2.5).

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When I first began researching this project, the first English-language book-length study of theme park fandom, there was relatively little work on theme park fans and that which did exist, such as Lutters and Ackerman’s (2003) discussion of online Disney fan site ‘The Castle’ and Bartkowiak’s (2012) research into fans’ desire to learn more about the parks by taking part in tours, was not rooted within a specifically Fan Studies perspective. Work on Disney fans more broadly, including Maria Patrice Amon’s (2014) study of the subversive potential of Disney cosplay and Kodi Maier’s (2017) exploration of the queer potential of the creation of Disney femslash (sexual fanfiction written about female characters), has offered useful insights to help understand theme park fandom, even though their work is not explicitly about these physical sites. Meyrav Koren-Kuik’s (2014) discussion of how the Disney parks offer ‘platforms that allow fans a selective physical engagement with those sections of the Disney spatial mosaic that most take their fancy’ (2014, p. 147) offers the first explicitly Fan Studies-focused analysis of theme park fans whilst, more recently, work has emerged on myriad fan practices in studies such as Carissa Ann Baker’s (2016) examination of the impact of the role-playing game Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom on Disney’s theme park space, Olympia Kiriakou’s (2017) work on the ‘darker’ side of Disney parks fandom as displayed in a fan podcast, Richard D. Waters’ (2016) study of fans of the Disney Cruise Line, and Abby Waysdorf and Stijn Reijnders’s (2018), Carissa Ann Baker’s (2018), and Victoria Godwin’s (2017) studies of fannish activity at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter within Universal Studios. These prior studies, which will be discussed in more depth across this book, begin to highlight the similarities between the types of fan practice and behaviour that theme park fans engage in and those who participate in other types of fandom. Like others, theme park fans forge online spaces where they can connect with fellow devotees, create fanfiction about favourite characters and relationships, engage in dressing as certain figures, take part in events to learn more about these favourite places, and consider the parks to have a strong relationship to their own sense of identity. My own previous work on theme park fandom, focusing on individual examples such as the presence of Star Wars in the Disney parks (2019) and fan reactions to the replacement of rides (2018), which is expanded on in Chapter Eight, also highlights the importance of fannish connection and affect, as well as the links between the parks’ attractions, branding and transmedia concepts such as world-building. Thus, as this book demonstrates, theme park fans have much in common with fans of other media forms whilst also offering distinct modes of engagement and participation.

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Researching Theme Park Fandom In order to map the complexity of contemporary theme park fandom, the book focuses on fans of theme parks and their engagement with these spaces physically and when they are outside of the parks themselves. It is rooted in participant observation carried out by the author over the course of five trips to theme parks in Orlando, Florida, taking place between 2011 and 2018. These consisted of two two-week trips staying in accommodation off-site (i.e. not in either Disney or Universal owned hotels) in 2011 and 2014, two two-week trips staying onsite at Disney hotels (in 2013 and 2018), and one 10-day trip staying onsite at a Universal Orlando Resort hotel in 2016. During this period, three visits were also made to Disneyland Paris Resort (comprising its two parks Disneyland Park and Walt Disney Studios Park) in 2014, 2015, and 2019, whilst Tokyo Disneyland Resort’s parks of Tokyo Disneyland and DisneySea were visited in 2018, along with Osaka’s Universal Park. Whilst these global parks are not the focus of the present study, familiarity with their attractions and immersive techniques, and physically encountering the guest experience in these parks has allowed for a broader knowledge and comprehension of the wider international and transcultural contemporary theme park. Actually visiting and engaging with the Parks as part of one’s research is essential in order to move away from a dead-end approach that ‘hovers above’ the theme park and presents a clinical analysis of its effects and meanings. Getting ‘on the ground’ – and on the rides – provides a different set of insights, immersed in the experiences of managing, working in, visiting and thinking about the theme park. (Bell 2007, p. ix)

Such approaches have been strongly encouraged within broader studies of space and place; ‘bringing a[n] […] autoethnographic sensibility to the sociocultural study of space is to take it as read that our understanding and experience of space is itself action and praxis based’ (Roberts 2018, p. 7). Scholars of themed and immersive spaces have also advocated for greater ‘first-person, on-the-ground research that addresses either (or both) of the domains of the consumption practices of guests and workers’ (Lukas 2016, p. 160) since much prior analysis of the theme park is ‘characterized not so much by […] phenomenological research but by research essays or editorials that make vast and sweeping generalizations about people in the spaces’ (Lukas 2016, p. 160). However, the practice of actively being part of a community or group that is being studied is also a central tenet of Fan Studies.

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Such debates are best exemplified by concepts such as ‘aca-fandom’ (Jenkins 2006b) or ‘scholar-fans’ (Hills 2002, pp. 11–15; see also Burr 2005; Hills 2007; Booth 2013). As a dedicated long-term fan of the theme parks I am discussing here, my own position as an insider equips me with knowledge and experience of these places that informs the research. Thus, whilst heeding warning on the fashionability ‘for academic writers to declare their own cultural ‘positionality’ in relation to the texts they are addressing’ (Brooker 2000, p. 4), I wish here to briefly outline the implications of my involvement, and suggest that these inform the research questions at the very heart of my work. In her discussion of the presence of Star Wars within Disney theme parks, Heather Urbanski argues that ‘My position “in the know” of both the Disney and Star Wars fan communities, influenced by my identity as […] an aca-fan, is a deeply personal, affective one, as many of my experiences involved attending events with family’ (2017, p. 254). My own relationship with the Orlando parks is similarly one of an insider who has a strong emotional connection to those spaces, and a long history of visiting them. From my first trips as a teenager with family in 1997 and 1998 to a trip in 2011 where I became engaged, a return for a honeymoon in 2013, and subsequent visits in 2014, 2016 and 2018, my own history and sense of self-identity is indelibly interwoven with these spaces. Alongside these happier memories, Orlando also hold a more complex personal significance since my first trip in 1997 was cut short due to the illness, and subsequent death of, my grandfather which caused us to return home early to the UK. Therefore, the sites at both Disney and Universal in Florida hold great meaning for a range of reasons, echoing Urbanski’s comment about the often ‘deeply personal, affective’ fan-identities that those discussing the parks may negotiate. The parks work to ‘create a powerful nostalgic space in which fans engage with their object of fandom and their own life-course as fans, as well a space in which new memories are made’ (Jones 2017). As my own memories of these spaces are activated, echoed, and re-worked with each subsequent visit, my experiences form a ‘palimpsest’ (Freud 1995) which is written over and reconfigured when a space once associated, for example, with grief and upset becomes one of comfort and celebration; as Starks and Phan note, ‘palimpsests help to represent spatial representations as constructed spaces that are “lived”’ (2019, p. 17) via this layering of new experiences over the existing traces of a location. In this process, a complex overlay of ‘lost identities, idealized identities, fantasy identities and repressed identities […] are enabled, enacted and allowed through the blended identities that being a fan/tourist/pilgrim simultaneously allow’ (Erdely and Breede 2017, p. 45). It is my own history, my own experiences in the parks, that spurred me to undertake this research,

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to try to uncover why these sites are meaningful and to counter much of the negativity that surrounds them. The conclusions drawn in this study are also impacted by my own identity; as Les Roberts notes, the fact that ‘the researcher may ‘put something of herself’ into whatever it is she is researching […] draw[s] attention to the subjective influence brought to bear on the object of study’ (2018, p. 2). As a white, cisgender, heterosexual woman from the Global North my interpretations are limited by my own positionality; for example, I have been unable to research the practices and discussions of non-English speaking theme park fans, despite the fact that the parks being analysed are enormously popular with international guests and Floridian locals from Hispanic and Latin American backgrounds. My observations within the Parks themselves were also framed by the relative ease with which I was able to move through those spaces unimpeded; as an able-bodied guest, as someone not viewed as threatening or suspicious by dint of the colour of my skin, as someone able to hold hands with their partner without fear (see Sedgman 2019). The experiences of those with different backgrounds are likely to be quite different and it would be remiss to not acknowledge the privilege that is embodied as I undertook this research. Both Fan Studies scholars and theme park researchers have argued for the need to get close to the spaces being studied. As Stephen Brown summarizes, there is a certain something missing in many learned accounts of the [theme park] phenomenon. For me at least, they do not reflect the down and dirty reality. They do not ring true or resonate as they should. They fail to capture key aspects of the theme park encounter, its iconicity, if you will […] the learned literature is true in a literal sense – immaculately recorded, authoritatively reported, rigorously reviewed, and so on – but not true in an emotional, experiential sense. (2018, pp 179–80)

To truly experience the emotional and experiential aspects of theme parks, Pinggong Zhang proposes that ‘To understand the behaviour of tourists and “cast members” of the themed spaces, the researcher needs to become a “member” of them in order to elicit the meanings they attribute to their immediate environment and behaviour’ (2007, p. 16). My own research is inspired by Zhang’s work on Chinese theme parks and utilizes many of his ethnographic strategies including immersing in [the theme park] […] for extended periods of time; observing the consumption of the park by tourists inside the park; listening to and

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engaging in conversations; […] collecting written and oral materials pertinent to the item of study; developing a critical understanding of the issues and people. (2007, p. 10)

However, following Wright (2006) I did not engage in any active empirical audience research during my visits to the theme parks. As he notes, This self-imposed restriction also resolved the potential ethical problem of conducting research at a location which is both a public space in that the public are admitted but also the private property of Disney Corporation. Therefore I did talk to other visitors and to park employees but my interactions were those of any tourist to the site with the exception that I was listening and observing attentively. (Wright 2006, p. 305)

Whilst the permission of those around me was not explicitly obtained, there are limited ethical issues here since the observations do not refer to any individual who could be clearly identified. Furthermore, following prior studies of theme parks, such as Lugosi and Bray’s (2008, p. 471) work on theme park walking tours which argues that ‘the public nature of the walking tours, and the practice of tour guiding meant that the study was less vulnerable to criticisms of invasion of privacy’ (see also Torres and Orlowski 2017), theme parks and other tourist places/spaces can be considered as public, albeit places that are privately-owned. Since 2011 I have also been involved in social and online media focused on the theme parks in Orlando and worldwide, engaging in a form of ‘virtual ethnography’ (Hine 2000) or ‘netnography’ (Kozinets 2009). Kozinets defines netnography as ‘a specialized form of ethnography adapted to the unique computer-mediated contingencies of today’s social worlds’ (2009, p. 1) which enables study of how people interact in and across a range of online social spaces. As in my visits to the theme parks themselves, such online participant observation offers ‘a method in which the researcher takes part in the daily activities, rituals, interactions, and events of a group of people as a means of learning the explicit and tacit aspects of their life routines and their culture’ (Dewalt and Dewalt 2002, p. 1). Since 2011, I have followed the discussions of other theme park fans and bloggers on an-almost daily basis via social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook and, since 2017, Instagram. The research takes in the importance of social media as well as more traditional message boards and discussions in the comments on blog posts which ‘continue to be useful sites for fan research, given the space they offer for lengthy conversations as well as their ability to archive and maintain older discussions for the

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future’ (Williams 2015, p. 9). This form of analysis draws on previous work within Tourism Studies, which utilizes the concept of media convergence to ‘explore and contextualise changes in media consumption and their consequences for tourism consumption’ (Månsson 2011, p. 1635). Despite the longevity of my reading of these sites, and my own fannish interest in theme park fandom, I did not participate actively on social media in conversations with other fans. Although I operated a Twitter account dedicated to this project, this consisted almost entirely of retweeting news about theme parks or posting about my own trips and fan activities. So doing enabled me to ‘concentrate on methods that seem in tune with the world in which we exist rather than seeking to satisfy a set of abstract and possibly theoretically inapplicable ethical codes. Non participation observation […] fits the local environment better than interviewing or any other method’ (Leaning 1998). Such a multi-site approach allows an overview of the intersecting and often messy, yet intriguing, online communications and practices of contemporary theme park fandom and participatory spaces. Indeed, the participatory culture that swirls around theme park fandom is complex and often spread across a range of social media platforms; a blog, for example, may produce regular posts whilst also sharing these and interacting with others on sites such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram. Theme park fans are often diverse, however, and different fans may engage in or prioritize different forms of engagement and practice. A fan, for example, who engages in acts of costuming and DisneyBounding (dressing in clothing inspired by Disney characters or attractions, as discussed in Chapter Seven) may be quite distinct from those who post memories and content online about old or abandoned theme park rides (see Chapter Eight). Therefore, ‘Describing the average Disney fan is impossible, as the body of Disney fandom does not consist of a specific demographic but encompasses a multi-generational global community’ (Koren-Kuik 2014, p. 147). This applies equally to the theme park fandom that surrounds both Disney and Universal resorts, since many fans have very different interests and points on entry and identification. To best represent this diversity, the research presented here offers a holistic analysis that draws on multiple online sites such as theme park blogs and comments on popular theme park planning sites including Orlando Informer, Orlando United, Theme Park Tourist, Walt Dated World, the Disney Food Blog, and Parkscope, social media postings from a range of theme park fans, as well as the comments posted on these by visitors to, and fans of, the Orlando theme parks, alongside the observations made during my physical trips to the parks. However, mindful of ethical concerns, where possible I have sought to minimize the potential

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for identification of comments and material posted online, either removing recognizable user names from comments and Tweets analysed here or presenting ‘aggregate findings’ (Ayers et al 2018) which do not reveal the identities of those posting the material that has informed my analysis here. As discussed in more depth in Chapter Three, and across the book as a whole, these online sites and the interactions between users across them, exemplifies forms of ‘participatory knowledge cultures in which people work together to collectively classify, organize and build information’ (Delwiche and Jacobs Henderson 2013, p. 3). The attainment, circulation and revision of knowledge amongst theme parks fans offers an example of contemporary participatory culture, a culture in which ‘members believe their contributions matter, and feel some degree of social connections with one another’ (Jenkins 2006, p. 7). Even as issues of cultural value, hierarchy and distinction are negotiated, and as fans maintain and rework their own affective attachments to theme parks and their attractions, this sense of participation endures through the complex web of blogs, social media sites and comments that constitute theme park fandom.

Organization of the Book The organization of the book itself follows the trajectory of the fan tourist/ visitor and proceeds through a logical structure which broadly mimics the journey from planning and preparing through to ‘being there’ during the visit itself, and then to the processes of reflection and continuing attachments after the trip has finished. Where appropriate, chapters consider how fans plan before their trips, how they respond to various elements of the theme park experience whilst there, and how they reflect on and mediate their memories when they return. Chapter Two offers an introduction to the key literature that has examined the theme park space, often from a marketing or industry-focused perspective. It outlines the reasons for the development of Orlando, Florida as the so-called ‘theme park capital of the world’ and establishes the rationale for the focus on the Walt Disney World and Universal Orlando Resort sites in this research. The chapter also argues that there is surprisingly little academic work that focuses on fans of specific locations, despite the wealth of studies of fan pilgrimage and media/fan tourism. Proposing that theme park fandom offers one avenue for exploring the complexities of fan connections to certain sites, the chapter also outlines how these places operate as sites of transmediality. Arguing for a theory of spatial transmedia, the

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chapter argues that greater attentions needs to be paid to the located-ness of transmedia experience, and how different physical locations contribute to transmedia encounters. Chapter Three explores how planning one’s trip and negotiating the level of detail that a visit to WDW necessitates means that ‘As prosumers – productive consumers – we willingly participate in the Disney experience and become productive in ways that feel participatory but are in fact also providing free labor for the brand’ (Huddleston et al 2016, p. 221). Equally, whilst running blogs or twitter accounts may be ‘unofficial, all of these activities are essentially labor since they are all forms of productivity that ‘build the brand’ of the media text’ (Milner 2009, p. 492). However, for visitors planning a trip this is less about labour that may result in employment or direct economic capital, or even in symbolic capital amongst other fans, and more about the work of exchanging effort and planning for the imagined pay-off of a successful trip. This work, which I consider a form of ‘anticipatory labor’ allows us to move beyond arguments that may foreground the imagined passivity or exploited nature of these fans and towards more serious consideration of their affective and emotional involvement and modes of work. Furthermore, it enables us to move beyond approaches that dismiss and critique theme park spaces from afar and to make space for work that gets on-the-ground and into the parks, as well as for voices from disciplines such as Fan Studies which allow for fans-scholars own attachments and knowledge to have value. In the case of contemporary theme park studies, we must acknowledge that critique can only emerge from ‘immersion in the Disney [and Universal] experience, including [their] very real and valuable pleasures’ (Budd 2005, p. 12). Chapter Four focuses more closely on how theme parks provide a crucial site for the exploration of transmediality and the development of paratexts, offering an ongoing site for analysis of the intersections between fandom, media texts, and merchandise, as well as fans’ own affective and physical responses to visiting the parks. Through an extended case study of Disney’s Magic Kingdom’s Haunted Mansion, I argue that such examples allow us to better understand how participatory culture and communal building of narratives intersect, and sometimes clash, with the enforcement of official interpretations by a global company like Disney. Moving away from the strictly ‘textual’ modes of poaching introduced by Jenkins (1992) and undertaken by generations of fan scholars since, the chapter introduces the concept of ‘spatial poaching’ where fans need to be physically situated and present in order to make meaning and ‘scribble in the margins’ of a narrative (Jenkins 1992, p. 155). Concurring with the argument that ‘we need to

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consider transmedia not just as storytelling but also as a kind of experience; not just as a “flow” across platforms and screens, but as potentially and spatially located’ (Hills 2017, p. 224), the chapter argues that the concept of spatial transmedia allows for such explorations. As the example of the Haunted Mansion, alongside the themed character meet-and-greets explored in Chapter Five and the restaurants considered in Chapter Six demonstrate, transmedia storytelling takes place in rooted locations, allowing for more immersive forms of ‘world-building, brand-building, and world-selling’ (Bartolome Herrera and Dominik Keidl 2017, p. 157). The piecing together of a storyworld and narrative over time (in the case of the Mansion, over fifty years) also challenges our understandings of transmediality as planned and rational, as a coherent mode of world-building and diegetic expansion. Instead, in cases where both fans and creators are involved in the, sometimes fractious, process of extending the world of an existing text or attraction, we can view this as alternate modes of co-creation, as fannish readings and meanings are co-opted and integrated into the ‘official’ story as a form of ‘retrospective transmediality’. Chapter Five analyses the affordances of the opportunity to meet characters within theme park spaces and how this works to challenge many of the existing binaries in place when conceptualizing contemporary stardom and celebrity. Whilst digital stars or virtual stars are ‘akin to embodied stars (perceptual realism) but also resembling media icons (circulating outside the text) and animated characters (lacking an indexical referent)’ (Hills 2003, p. 84), theme park character interactions allow fans to meet characters who may exist only in animation. These characters, which we can call ani-embodied characters, enable that which has no real-life referent come to life, as fans suspend their disbelief during the character encounter. As in the related experience of meeting forms of metonymic celebrity (where a theme park cast member is ‘playing’ a character played by an actor in a film such as those from the Marvel or Star Wars franchises), theme park fans are acutely aware that they are not meeting the ‘real’ Mickey Mouse or the ‘real’ Kylo Ren. Instead, they engage in complex acts of pleasurable pretence and a ‘willingness to participate in [the Park’s] illusions’ (Carson 2004, p. 231). In these moments, and particularly in themed meet-and-greet spaces, fans not only get to meet favourite animated characters or those played by actors they would never normally get a chance to encounter, but also to be immersed again in locations relevant to the imagined storyworlds. In these instances, established binaries between ordinary/celebrity, star/ character, and live-action/animation (Barker 2003) become blurred, as the theme park worker behind the mask or in the costume becomes erased

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whilst the character they are playing is the object of fannish adoration and celebrity reverence. Alongside challenging our existing understandings of contemporary celebrity, taking seriously themed spaces also offers us new opportunities to explore the role of merchandise and material objects in contemporary fan cultures, which is the focus of Chapter Six. Beginning to map out the relationships between theme park fans and the merchandise that can be consumed both inside and outside of the parks, the chapter introduces new modes of understanding the role of food and drink within fan cultures, whilst the subsequent chapter focuses on the importance of the body via engagement with such consumable objects and with clothing and other wearable merchandise. The role of food within fandoms remains relatively under-explored, despite the overlaps between the activities and practices of the figure of the ‘foodie’ and the contemporary media fan and the opportunities for negotiating the boundaries between text, self and place that engaging in fandom-related cooking or consumption offer. In themed spaces, however, the role of food and drink is key in terms of establishing a sense of place, of furthering fans’ immersion in a world, and in establishing and maintaining hierarchies regarding access, authenticity, and the auratic. Whilst the participatory culture surrounding the theme parks in Florida occupies a quasi-pedagogic role in recommending the best places to eat or making clear where should be avoided, when within the parks themselves fans are able to inhabit imaginary worlds via themed restaurants and bars which immerse them further within these spaces. Whether based on existing intellectual properties such as Harry Potter or The Simpsons, on rides originating in the parks such as Jungle Cruise, or on original concepts such as Universal’s Toothsome Chocolate Emporium, such places allow opportunities for transmedia expansion or playful immersion in a new story. The chapter argues that by experiencing ‘hyperdiegetic paratexts’ such as Butterbeer or a Krusty Burger, fans are invited to imagine the experiences of characters within a storyworld and offered the possibility of extending their own imaginative engagement through the possibility of sensory immersion through food and drink. Equally, it argues that fans can accord levels of cult-culinary capital to foodstuffs that they encounter, whether these are generated by a text itself (e.g. Harry Potter’s Butterbeer), a park (e.g. Freeze Ray) or fans (e.g. Dole Whip). Accessing edible objects that can only be consumed within official park spaces offers fans limited and rooted opportunities for this kind of practice since these can only be consumed whilst physically within certain places. Finally, the chapter considers how fans of pre-existing artists or texts may find their desire to undertake forms

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of fannish pilgrimage curtailed when important places co-exist with the demands and expectations of other branded locations. As in the (admittedly relatively rare) example of Jimmy Buffett fans at Margaritaville in Orlando, fannish ‘vernacular practices’ (Alderman 2002) such as writing messages to commemorate one’s trip may be at odds with the priorities of the corporate parent, challenging the notion that guests to the theme park resorts are ‘drawn into reproducing the routinised behaviour required by the leisure providing organisation’ (Wright 2006, p. 304) without resistance. In these instances, themed spaces linked to pre-existing fandoms of music artists, sports teams, or celebrities offer intriguing chances for wider research into the tension between fans ‘commemorative practices and the insistence of companies like Disney and Universal that ‘the norms of civility prevail’ (Wright 2006, p. 304) and that sites not become too overtly ‘fannish’. Whilst the eating of foodstuffs within theme park spaces is a key source of enjoyment for fans, the body is also crucial in the forms of consumption that they engage in. As Chapter Seven explores, a wide range of merchandise across different price brackets, franchises, or attractions is available for collection and curation, such as Disney’s Pin Trading scheme, allowing fans to use ‘branded merchandise to denote membership in a brand community or to convey an affinity between one’s world view and the media property’ (Affuso and Santo 2018). However, it is through clothing and make-up that we most clearly see the links between ‘identity, embodiment, and emotional affect’ (Cherry 2016, p. 29) for many theme parks fans. Whilst this may involve the wearing of Disney or Universal branded clothing or Disney makeup in one’s ordinary life, reflecting ‘a desire to integrate fan practices into everyday life and speaks to a marking of the body in intimate – and often less visible – terms’ (Affuso 2018, p. 184), it can be witnessed more overtly in the practice of DisneyBounding where fans resist outright cosplay and instead ‘are endeavouring to embody their perception of the character’s soul, but as though that character lived in the ‘real’ twenty-first–century world’ (Brock 2017, p. 304) by wearing outfits from their character’s colour palette or highlighting specific accessories. As with the centrality of location and place – physically being in the Parks – to the consumption of food and drink, however, DisneyBounding within those spaces offers significant pleasures and the opportunity for moments of paratextual-spatio play where transmedia expansion of existing Disney narratives become possible via the fans’ material presence. As those engaging in DisneyBounding ‘step outside the boundaries of conventional corporeality’ (Anderson 2015, p.114), this form of embodied transmedia allows for broader understanding of the importance of merchandise and paratexts to the transmedia theme park, and

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beyond, enabling exploration of how transmedia universes are constructed and ‘reflected in the rituals of fan paratexual production’ (Geraghty 2015, p. 2) whether these paratexts are food and drink, or clothing, jewellery and makeup. Chapter Eight argues that greater understanding of theme park fandom also offers avenues to expand and enhance understanding of how fans respond to moments of loss and rupture since the ever-changing economically-driven business model necessities that ‘Within the theme park industry, it appears to be common belief that investments in new attractions have to be made […] one has to regularly invest in new, largescale attractions because attendance will otherwise decrease’ (Cornelis 2010, p. 265). How fans react to the replacement of favourite attractions, restaurants or bars allows us to consider the concept of ‘post-object fandom’ (Williams 2015) from a location-based perspective, allowing us to explore emotional ties to specific locations that are meaningful and important. The threat of replacement and progress inherent in theme park space moves us from text-oriented approaches to moments of ending and loss and towards exploration of the spatial; A television series or f ilm text does not change over time, providing a slightly more stable text for viewers to engage with. Although one’s relationship with a visual text may evolve, the actual content does not; a viewer can re-watch a series or f ilm and be guaranteed the exact same narrative each screening. This is not the case for theme park fans. (Kiriakou 2017, p. 105)

Focusing on fan responses to the closure of WDW’s Maelstrom ride and its replacement by an attraction based on the animated movie Frozen, and their use of online spaces to memorialize and discuss abandoned and lost spaces such as Disney’s River Country waterpark, the chapter argues that even highly commodified and controlled spaces can be meaningful to people. Thus, in contrast to sites such as Elvis Presley’s former home Graceland (Alderman 2002), Viretta Park (Garner 2014) or the location where singer Mark Bolan died (Bickerdike and Downing 2017) which became (more) significant after the loss of fan icon or text, the loss of theme park attractions and fan reactions to this highlights what happens when it is spaces themselves that disappear. The chapter thus proposes that fans’ interest in archiving information about abandoned or closed rides echoes the practices of urban explorers who attempt to ‘connect in a meaningful way to a world rendered increasingly mundane by commercial interest’ (Garrett 2013, p. 240) and

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‘demonstrate[s] the power of the amusement park idea to command attachments to iconic place and remembered or imagined pleasure, an assertion of topophilia in defiance of the brute realities of profit, subsidy and loss’ (Walton 2017, p. 173). Accordingly, the chapter argues that paying attention to fan reactions to loss and replacement both in theme park spaces and other themed locations allows for consideration of how fannish sites can be commemorated and memorialized within contemporary digital cultures, with fan memories, photos, and discussions presented alongside more archival histories of abandoned parks. It also opens up space for discussion of more personal forms of commemoration and remembrance linked to individual or familial memories; since theme parks often ‘represent the pleasures and dreamlands of childhood, photographs of abandoned parks powerfully represent a nostalgia for the wonders of a naïve and hopeful worldview. The abandoned site can represent the abandoned dreams of childhood’ (Levitt 2017). Moreover, the chapter posits that a focus on the links between important places, memory and notions of self-identity and narrative opens up further space for exploration of how people become fans of specific sites or places as a result of visiting them, or of related media or cultural objects. We can ask, what places can do to visitors who may not bring particular media or fan-specific imaginative expectations with them and yet may respond strongly to a particular place. What aspects of that spatial experience are these individuals responding to? What confluence of affective, emotional and experiential elements may cause them to become fans of that site and its associated texts or cult icons? (Williams 2018, p. 104)

Tracing further how one’s own connections with themed spaces such as theme parks begin and end and considering the ebbs and flows of connection across one’s life course offers opportunities for beginning to answer such questions in more depth. Chapters Seven and Eight also explore the post-visit experiences of theme park fans, considering how they maintain their connections with fellow fans and continue to engage in their fandom of the parks. Since visiting parks is expensive, many fans cannot attend often and instead draw on a range of strategies to continue their fandom. For some this involves sharing content via social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and displaying the ‘evidence’ of their trip, as discussed in relation to merchandise and clothing in Chapter Seven. For other fans, the post or between-visit period involves reminiscing about old or closed rides, sharing memories and

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photos online or voicing dissent when favourite attractions are replaced, as discussed in Chapter Eight. This approach to structure allows the various stages of fan engagement with theme parks to be considered, as well as enabling exploration of a broader range of participatory practices. Before beginning this journey through theme park fandom, however, the next chapter introduces existing theoretical approaches to the themed space and the associated concept of immersion, how the theme park has been approached as a transmedia space that offers potential for acts of worldbuilding, and how fans of these spaces have been previously approached and understood. It outlines the key themes that this study deals with, considering the importance of understanding fans’ spatial relationships when it is a space itself that is the object of fandom, and the existence of cultural hierarchies and distinctions even within a subculture that is often associated with the banal and the ephemeral. It also considers fans’ ‘emotional investments, seeking to understand how affect permeates discourses of culture, subjectivity, embodiment, and identity’ (Sandlin and Garlen 2016, p. 17), highlighting the crucial links between the elements of the theme park that fans identify with and their affective and emotional attachments.

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Ludic Space, edited by Matt Omasta and Drew Chappell (London: Routledge, 2015), pp. 105–116. Ayers, John W., Theodore L. Caputi, Camille Nebeker, and Mark Dredze, ‘Don’t Quote Me: Reverse Identif ication of Research Participants in Social Media Studies’, npj Digital Medicine, 30 (2018), 1–2. Baker, Carissa Ann, ‘Creative Choices and Fan Practices in the Transformation of Theme Park Space’, Transformative Works and Cultures, 22 (2016), accessed 9 September 2018. http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/ article/view/974/693 ———, ‘Universal’s Wizarding World of Harry Potter: A Primer in Contemporary Media Concepts’, in Harry Potter and Convergence Culture: Essays on Fandom and the Expanding Potterverse, edited by Amanda Firestone and Leisa A. Clark (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2018), pp. 55–66. Barker, Martin, ‘Introduction’, in Contemporary Hollywood Stardom, edited by Thomas Austin and Martin Barker (London: Arnold, 2003), pp. 1- 24. Bartkowiak, Mathew J., ‘Behind the Behind the Scenes of Disney World: Meeting the Need for Insider Knowledge’, The Journal of Popular Culture, 45, 5 (2012), 943–959. Bartolomé Herrera, Beatriz and Philipp Dominik Keidl, ‘How Star Wars Became Museological: Transmedia Storytelling and Imaginary World-building in the Exhibition Space’, in Star Wars and the History of Transmedia Storytelling, edited by Sean Guynes and Dan Hassler-Forest (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017), pp. 155–168. Bell, David, ‘Preface: Thinking About Theme Parks’, in Culture and Ideology at an Invented Place, written by Pinggong Zhang (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars, 2007), pp. ix-xii. Bickerdike, Jennifer Otter and Niamh Downing, ‘Marc Bolan Rock Shrine: Pilgrimage, Identity and Ownership in a Fan Community’, Journal of Fandom Studies, 5, 2 (2017), 193–207. Bigné, J. Enrique, Luisa Andreu and Juergen Gnoth, ‘The Theme Park Experience: An Analysis of Pleasure, Arousal and Satisfaction’, Tourism Management, 26, 6 (2005), 833–844. Bohas, Alexandre, The Political Economy of Disney: The Cultural Capitalism of Hollywood (London: Palgrave, 2016). Booth Paul, ‘Augmenting Fan/Academic Dialogue: New Directions in Fan Research’, Journal of Fandom Studies, 1, 2 (2013), 119–137. Brannen, Mary Yoko, ‘‘Bwana Mickey’: Constructing Cultural Consumption at Tokyo Disneyland’, in Re-made in Japan: Everyday Life and Consumer Taste in a Changing Society, edited by Joseph Tobin (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992), pp. 216–234.

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Johns, Nick, and Szilvia Gyimothy, ‘Mythologies of a Theme Park: An Icon of Modern Family Life’, Journal of Vacation Marketing, 8, 4 (2002), 320–331. Jones, Bethan, ‘“Stories are Where Memories Go When They’re Forgotten”: Fandom, Nostalgia and the Doctor Who Experience’, Deletion, 13, accessed 7  November 2018. http://w w w.deletionscif i.org/episodes/episode-13/ stories-memories-go-theyre-forgotten-fandom-nostalgia-doctor-experience/ Kemperman, Astrid D.A.M., Aloys Borgers, Harmen Oppewal, and Harry J. P. Timmermans, ‘Consumer Choice of Theme Parks: A Conjoint Choice Model of Seasonality Effects and Variety Seeking Behavior’, Leisure Sciences: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 22, 1 (2000), 1–18. King, Christine, ‘His Truth Goes Marching On: Elvis Presley and the Pilgrimage to Graceland’, in Pilgrimage in Popular Culture, edited by Ian Reader and Tony Walter (London: Macmillan, 1993), pp. 92–104. King, Margaret J., ‘Disneyland and Walt Disney World: Traditional Values in Futuristic Form’, Journal of Popular Culture, 15, 1 (1981), 116–140. Kiriakou, Olympia, ‘“Ricky, This is Amazing!”: Disney Nostalgia, New Media Users, and the Extreme Fans of the WDW Kingdomcast’, Journal of Fandom Studies, 5, 1 (2017), 99–112. ———, ‘Meet Me At the Purple Wall: The Disney “Lifestyler” Inf luence on Disney Parks Merchandise’, In Media Res, 4 April 2018, accessed 14 April 2019. http://mediacommons.f utureof t hebook.org/imr/2018/03/26/ meet-me-purple-wall-disney-lifestyler-influence-disney-parks-merchandise Koren-Kuik, Meyrav, ‘Desiring the Tangible: Disneyland, Fandom and Spatial Immersion’, in Fan Culture: Essays on Participatory Fandom in the 21st Century, edited by Kristin M. Barton and Jonathan Malcolm Lampley (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2014), pp. 146–158. Kozinets, Robert V., Netnography: Doing Ethnographic Research Online (London: SAGE, 2009). Lainsbury, Andrew, Once Upon an American Dream: The Story of Euro Disneyland (Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2000). Lancaster, Kurt, Interacting with “Babylon 5”: Fan Performances in a Media Universe (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001). Larsen, Katherine, ‘(Re)claiming Harry Potter Fan Pilgrimage Sites’, in Playing Harry Potter: Essays and Interviews on Fandom and Performance, edited by Lisa S. Brenner (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2015), pp. 38–54. Leaning, Marcus, Cyborg Selves: Examining Identity and Meaning in a Chat Room, MSc in Social Analysis (London: South Bank University, 1998), accessed 12 November 2018. http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Atrium/2136/Title.html Levitt, Linda, ‘Abandoned Amusement Parks and the Haunting of the Cultural Past’, In Media Res, 3 October 2017, accessed 7 October 2018. http://mediacommons.

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futureofthebook.org/imr/2017/10/03/abandoned-amusement-parks-andhaunting-cultural-past-0 Linden, Henrik and Sara Linden, Fans and Fan Cultures: Tourism, Consumerism and Social Media (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). Lugosi, Peter and Jeff Bray, ‘Tour Guiding, Organizational Culture and Learning: Lessons From an Entrepreneurial Company’, International Journal of Tourism Research, 10, 5 (2008), 467–479. Lukas, Scott A., ‘The Themed Space: Locating Culture, Nation and Self’, in The Themed Space: Locating Culture, Nation and Self, edited by Scott A. Lukas (New York: Lexington Books, 2007), pp. 1–22. ———, ‘How the Theme Park Gets its Power: Lived Theming, Social Control, and the Themed Worker Self’, in The Themed Space: Locating Culture, Nation and Self, edited by Scott A. Lukas (New York: Lexington Books, 2007b), pp. 183–206. ———, Theme Park (Objekt) (London: Reaktion Books, 2008). ———, ‘Research in Themed and Immersive Spaces: At the Threshold of Identity’, in A Reader in Themed and Immersive Spaces, edited by Scott A. Lukas (Pittsburgh, PA: Carnegie Mellon: ETC Press, 2016), pp. 159–169. Lutters, Wayne G. and Mark S. Ackerman, ‘Joining the Backstage: Locality and Centrality in an Online Community’, Information Technology and People, 16, 2 (2003), 157–182. Ma, Jianyu, Jun Gao, Noel Scott and Peiyi Ding, ‘Customer Delight From Theme Park Experiences: The Antecedents of Delight Based on Cognitive Appraisal Theory’, Annals of Tourism Research, 42 (2013), 359–381. Maier, Kodi, ‘Camping Outside the Magic Kingdom’s Gates: The Power of Femslash in the Disney Fandom’, Networking Knowledge: Journal of the MeCCSA Postgraduate Network, 10, 3 (2017), 27–43, accessed 1 November 2018. https://ojs.meccsa.org. uk/index.php/netknow/article/view/514 Månsson, Maria, ‘Mediatized Tourism’, Annals of Tourism Research, 38, 4 (2011),1634–1652. Marling, Karal Ann (Ed.), Designing Disney’s Theme Parks: The Architecture of Reassurance (New York: Flammarion, 1997). Matusitz, Jonathan, ‘Disneyland Paris: A Case Analysis Demonstrating How Glocalization Works’, Journal of Strategic Marketing, 18, 3 (2010), 223–237. ———, ‘Disney’s Successful Adaptation in Hong Kong: A Glocalization Perspective’, Asia Pacific Journal of Management, 28 (2011), 667–681. Mazur, Eric Michael and Tara K. Koda, ‘The Happiest Place on Earth: Disney’s America and the Commodification of Religion’, in God In The Details: American Religion in Popular Culture, edited by Eric Michael Mazur and Kate McCarthy (New York and London: Routledge, 2001), pp. 299–315.

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McCarthy, William and Ming Cheung, ‘The First and Last Signs of Main Street: Semiosis and Modality in California and Hong Kong Disneylands’, Social Semiotics, 28, 4 (2018), 443–471. McClung, Gordon W., ‘Theme Park Selection: Factors Influencing Attendance’, Tourism Management, 12, 2 (1991), 132–140. Milman Ady, ‘Market Identification of a New Theme Park: An Example from Central Florida’, Journal of Travel Research, 26, 4 (1988), 7–11. ———, ‘Evaluating the Guest Experience at Theme Parks: An Empirical Investigation of Key Attributes’, International Journal of Tourism Research, 11, 4 (2009), 373–387. Milner Ryan M., ‘Working for the Text: Fan Labor and the New Organization’, International Journal of Cultural Studies, 12, 5 (2009), 491–508. Moore, Alexander, ‘Walt Disney World: Bounded Ritual Space and the Playful Pilgrimage Center’, Anthropological Quarterly, 53, 4, (1980), 207–218. Ndalianis, Angela, The Horror Sensorium (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2012). Norris, Craig, ‘A Japanese Media Pilgrimage to a Tasmanian Bakery’, Transformative Works and Cultures, 14 (2013), accessed 12 February 2019. http://journal. transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/470/403 Park, Kwang-Soo, Yvette Reisinger, and Cheol-Soo Park, ‘Visitors’ Motivation for Attending Theme Parks in Orlando, Florida’, Event Management, 13, 2 (2009), 83–101. Pettigrew, Simone, ‘Hearts and Minds: Children’s Experiences of Disney World’, Consumption, Markets and Culture, 14, 2 (2011), 145–161. Porter, Jennifer E., ‘To Boldly Go: Star Trek Convention Attendance as Pilgrimage’, in Star Trek and Sacred Ground: Explorations of Star Trek, Religion, and American Culture, edited by Jennifer E. Porter and Darcee L. McLaren (Albany: SUNY Press, 1999), pp. 245–270. Raz, Aviad E., Riding the Black Ship: Japan and Tokyo Disneyland (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999). ———, ‘Domesticating Disney: Onstage Strategies of Adaptation in Tokyo Disneyland’, Journal of Popular Culture, 33, 4 (2004), 77–99. Renaut, Christian, ‘Disneyland Paris: A Clash of Cultures’, in Disneyland and Culture: Essays on the Parks and Their Influence, edited by Kathy Merlock Jackson and Mark I. West (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2010), pp. 125–137. Ritzer, George, The McDonaldization of Society, Revised Edition (Thousand Oaks, California: Pine Forge Press, 1996). Roberts, Les, ‘Spatial Bricolage: The Art of Poetically Making-Do’, Humanities, 7, 2 (2018), 43, accessed 1 December 2018. http://www.mdpi.com/2076–0787/7/2/43

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Rodríguez-Díaz, Beatriz and Juan Ignacio Pulido-Fernández, ‘Selecting the Best Route in a Theme Park Through Multi-Objective Programming’, Tourism Geographies, 20, 5 (2018), 791–809. Roest, Henk, Rik Pieters, and K. Koelemeijer, ‘Satisfaction With Amusement Parks’, Annals of Tourism Research, 24 (1997), 1001–1005. Sandling, Jennifer A. and Julie C. Garlen, ‘Introduction: Feeling Disney, Buying Disney, Being Disney’, in Disney, Culture, and Curriculum, edited by Jennifer A. Sandling and Julie C. Garlen and Julie C. Garlen (London: Routledge, 2016), pp. 1–26. Savage, Mark, ‘We Break Down Katy Perry’s Video for Chained to the Rhythm’, BBC, 21 February 2017, accessed 1 March 2018. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/ entertainment-arts-39042467 Sedgman, Kirsty, The Reasonable Audience (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2019). Schickel, Richard, The Disney Version: The Life, Times, Art, and Commerce of Walt Disney (London: Pavilion, 1986). Schweizer, Bobby and Celia Pearce, ‘Remediation on the High Seas: A Pirates of the Caribbean Odyssey’, in A Reader in Themed and Immersive Spaces, edited by Scott A. Lukas (Pittsburgh, PA: Carnegie Mellon: ETC Press, 2016), pp. 95–106. Scott, Suzanne, ‘Who’s Steering the Mothership? The Role of the Fanboy Auteur in Transmedia Storytelling’, in The Participatory Cultures Handbook, edited by Aaron Delwiche and Jennifer Jacobs Henderson (New York: Routledge, 2013), pp. 43–52. Starks, Donna and Nhan Phan, ‘An Exploration of Stasis and Change: A Park in the Old Quarter Hanoi as a Palimpsest’, Social Semiotics, Online First (2019), 1–20. Sun, Chyng and Erica Scharrer, ‘Staying True to Disney: College Students’ Resistance to Criticism of The Little Mermaid’, The Communication Review, 7, 1 (2004), 35–55. TEA/AECOM, ‘Theme Index/Museum Index 2017: Global Attractions Attendance Report’, TEA Connect, 2018, accessed 12 July 2018. http://www.teaconnect.org/ images/files/TEA_268_653730_180517.pdf ———, ‘Theme Index/Museum Index 2018: Global Attractions Attendance Report’, TEA Connect 2018, accessed 12 June 2019. https://www.aecom.com/content/ wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Theme-Index-2018–5-1.pdf Telotte, J. P., ‘Theme Parks and Films--Play and Players’, in Disneyland and Culture: Essays on the Parks and Their Influence, edited by Kathy Merlock Jackson and Mark I. West (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2011), pp. 171–182. The Project on Disney, Inside The Mouse: Work and Play at Disney World (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1995). Torres, Edwin N. and Marissa Orlowski, ‘Let’s ‘Meetup’ at the Theme Park’, Journal of Vacation Marketing, 23, 2 (2017), 159–171. Toy, J. Caroline, ‘Constructing the Fannish Place: Ritual and Sacred Space in a Sherlock fan Pilgrimage’, Journal of Fandom Studies, 5, 3 (2017), 251–266.

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Trigg, Marie C. and David Trigg, ‘Disney’s European Theme Park Adventure: A Clash of Cultures’, Cross Cultural Management: An International Journal, 2, 2 (1995), 13 – 22. Urbanski, Heather, ‘The Kiss Goodnight from a Galaxy Far, Far Away: Experiencing Star Wars as a Fan-Scholar on Disney Property’, in Star Wars and the History of Transmedia Storytelling, edited by Sean Guynes and Dan Hassler-Forest (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017), 253–264. Van Maanen, John, ‘The Smile Factory: Work at Disneyland’, in Reframing Organizational Culture, edited by Peter J. Frost, Larry F. Moore, Meryl Reis Louis, Craig C. Lundberg and Joanne Martin (Newbury Park, CA: SAGE, 1991), pp. 58–76. ———, ‘Displacing Disney: Some Notes on the Flow of Culture’, Qualitative Sociology, 15, 1 (1992), 5–35. Walton, John K., ‘The Parque de Attractiones de Vizcaya, Artxanda, Bilbao: Provincial Identity, Paternalistic Optimism and Economic Collapse, 1972–1990’, in The Amusement Park: History, Culture and the Heritage of Pleasure, edited by Jason Wood (London: Routledge, 2017), pp. 160–176. Wanhill, Stephen, ‘Creating Themed Entertainment Attractions: A Nordic Perspective’, Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism, 2, 2 (2002), 123–144. Warren, Stacy, ‘Cultural Contestation at Disneyland Paris’, in Leisure/Tourism Geographies: Practices and Geographical Knowledge, edited by David Crouch (London: Routledge, 1999), pp. 109–125. Wasko, Janet, Understanding Disney: The Manufacturer of Fantasy (Cambridge: Polity, 2002). Waters, Richard D., ‘Facilitating the ‘Charged Public’ Through Social Media: A Conversation With Disney Cruise Line’s Castaway Club Members’, in Public Relations and Participatory Culture: Fandom, Social Media and Community Engagement, edited by Amber L. Hutchins and Natalie T.J. Tindall (London and New York: Routledge, 2016), pp. 181–192. Waysdorf, Abby and Stijn Reijnders, ‘Immersion, Authenticity and the Theme Park as Social Space: Experiencing the Wizarding World of Harry Potter’, International Journal of Cultural Studies, 21, 2 (2018), 173–188. Williams, Rebecca, Post-Object Fandom: Television, Identity and Self-narrative (London: Bloomsbury, 2015). ———, ‘Fan Pilgrimage and Tourism’, in The Routledge Companion to Media Fandom, edited by Melissa Click and Suzanne Scott (London: Routledge, 2018), pp. 98 – 106. Wong, Kevin K.F. and Phoebe W.Y. Cheung, ‘Strategic Theming in Theme Park Marketing’, Journal of Vacation Marketing, 5 (1999), 319–332. Wright, Chris, ‘Natural and Social Order at Walt Disney World: The Functions and Contradictions of Civilising Nature,’ Sociological Review, 54, 2 (2006), 303–317.

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Yoshimoto, Mitsuhiro, ‘Images of Empire: Disneyland and Japanese Cultural Imperialism’, in Disney Discourse: Producing the Magic Kingdom, edited by Eric Smoodin (London: Routledge, 1994), pp. 181–199. Zhang, Pinggong, Culture and Ideology at an Invented Place, (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2013). Zornado, Joseph, Disney and the Dialectic of Desire: Fantasy as Social Practice (London: Palgrave, 2017).

2.

Understanding the Contemporary Theme Park: Theming, Immersion and Fandom Abstract This chapter provides a history of the development and definition of the contemporary theme park, focusing on how Orlando, Florida developed into the world’s theme park capital. It also sets out the key areas of literature that the book contributes to, including work on themed space and place, transmediality and convergence, fan spaces and pilgrimage, distinction and cultural value, and self-identity and narrative. The chapter notes that work on fans of specific destinations or places remains scarce, arguing for greater focus on this mode of place-based fandom, as well as proposing a turn towards academic study of the spatial elements of transmediality, and the concept of spatial transmedia. Keywords: spatial transmedia, place-based fandom, transmedia, fan pilgrimage, fan tourism, theme park history

Introduction The theme park has a long history that originates in amusement parks such as Coney Island in the United States and Denmark’s Tivoli Gardens in Europe (Weinstein 1992; Davis 1996: Milman 2010; Wood 2017). Theme parks have been seen to differ from the amusement park via their use of ‘areas (i.e., ‘lands’) that focus on telling a story. Their environments include architecture, landscaping, stores, rides and even food to support specific themes’ (Geissler and Rucks 2011, pp. 127–8). It is also generally agreed that theme parks should appeal to the family, have a single admission price, and offer high levels of service, maintenance and cleanliness, and investment (Clave 2007; Geissler and Rucks 2011). They also require ‘some form of ambient

Williams, R., Theme Park Fandom. Spatial Transmedia, Materiality And Participatory Cultures. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020 doi 10.5117/9789462982574_ch02

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entertainment (e.g., costumed characters, strolling musicians) […] [and] enough activities and entertainment to yield an average visitor length of stay of 5 to 7 hours’ (Geissler and Rucks 2011, pp. 127–8). The theme park should also have ‘a thematic identity, feature one or more themed areas, be designed as an enclosed space with guest-controlled access’ and ‘offer some form of entertainment, food services, and merchandise’ (Clave 2007 in Milman 2010, p. 221). Whilst some parks have a single theme (e.g. the LEGOLAND Park in Windsor, England or Parc Asterix in France) others, such as the Disney and Universal parks, offer a range of spaces or ‘lands’ representing a variety of different themes (e.g. the past, the future, fairy tales). However, the theme park in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries has been most indebted to the Disney Company’s development of Disneyland, California and their subsequent domestic and global expansion; ‘Disney’s vision of the theme park industry has been an inspiration for the past several decades to investors, developers, operators, employees, and consumers’ (Milman 2010, p. 220). This book focuses on the ‘duopoly’ (Schatz 2015) of Disney and Universal in Orlando, Florida and considers Walt Disney World (comprising the Magic Kingdom, EPCOT, Disney Hollywood Studios and Animal Kingdom theme parks, the Typhoon Lagoon and Blizzard Beach waterparks, the Disney Springs entertainment district, 27 themed hotels and a range of recreation opportunities) and Universal Orlando Resort (which includes the Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure theme parks, the Volcano Bay waterpark, the CityWalk entertainment district, and seven resort hotels). This focus results from the fact that, pragmatically, these are the parks most visited by the researcher in the course of undertaking this study, but also because of the importance and centrality of the Orlando area in understanding theme park fandom. Six of the ten most visited parks in the world in 2017 were Disney’s four Orlando parks and Universal’s main Florida park Universal Studios Orlando, given them a combined total of 178,570,000 visitors (TEA/AECOM 2017). Indeed, whilst California’s Disneyland was the first example of the contemporary theme park, it is arguably the concentration of Disney and Universal Parks in Central Florida (along with others including Sea World and its waterparks Aquatica and Discovery Cove, the now-defunct Wet n’ Wild, and Busch Gardens in Tampa) that has cemented the theme park as a global resort destination. However, the book also considers both Disney and Universal park fandom in Florida to begin to address the relative academic neglect of the latter company. In comparison to the hundreds of studies of Disney and its spaces, there is little sustained work on Universal’s theme parks beyond some discussion of individual rides such as The Mummy rollercoaster or The

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Amazing Adventures of Spiderman attraction (Ndalianis 2000, 2010, 2012), study of the immersive potential for visitors to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter (Gilbert 2015; Waysdorf and Reijnders 2018; Godwin 2017; Baker 2018), analysis of the ‘glocalization’ of Universal Studios Park in Singapore (Chang and Pang 2016), and Gemma Blackwood’s (2018) historical study of the Universal Pictures movie tour in Los Angeles during the 1960s. The comparative ignoring of Universal is striking since the company has arguably been as influential as Disney has in shaping our experience of themed spaces, especially those focused on the media or film industries. As Blackwood notes, Universal’s original tours in L.A. actually pre-date Disneyland and, ‘While Disneyland was the first studio to create a film-based theme park experience that started from 1955, Universal–Universal City as it was then known – was unique in its attempt to represent a ‘behind-the-scenes’ look at filmmaking and television production’ (2018, p. 518). Heeding David Bell’s call that ‘It is important […] to move away from the shadow of Disney, while at the same time acknowledging the shadow that the Mouse’s ears still cast over theme park design, philosophy, management and experience’ (2007, p. x), this research allows for more sustained analysis of Universal’s theme parks and the relationships between these places, their brands and their fans.

Orlando: Theme Park Capital of the World Before discussing the relationship between the theme park and the key concepts of fandom, participatory culture and transmediality, however, it is necessary to sketch out the reasons for the Orlando area’s prominence within the theme park world. As Braun et al (1992, p. 132) summarize, ‘Disney selected the Florida site because of a suitable climate for year-round operation, sufficient land for expansion, autonomy from government constraints, and improved access to the lucrative markets of the eastern United States, Europe, and Latin America’. Annoyed at the fact that lower quality attractions had set up near to the Disneyland site in California (Fogleson 2003, p. 274), Walt Disney worked to acquire a huge swathe of land in central Florida, totalling 48 square miles (Mannheim 2002, pp. 68–70). Alongside this, changes in transport such as lower-cost airfares for both domestic and international travellers and, within the US, ‘an unprecedented increase in middle-class affluence and leisure time […] combined with a booming automobile industry and a nationwide freeway system’ (King 1981, p. 117) increased the opportunities to travel. Since it was set in over 27,000 acres of Disney-owned land separated from competing properties, WDW helped

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to inaugurate the idea that the theme park is ‘an ‘away’ place, separated from the everyday life of the city by distance as much as imagistic control’ (Davis 1996, p. 404). Given such room for unfettered expansion, Walt Disney World grew from the Magic Kingdom (and its River Country waterpark and animal exhibit Discovery Island) to open EPCOT in 1982, Disney’s Hollywood Studios (formerly Disney MGM Studios) in 1989, Animal Kingdom in 1998, and the waterparks Typhoon Lagoon in 1989 and Blizzard Beach in 1995. At present, WDW also includes four golf courses, two miniature golf courses, the ESPN Wide World of Sports, the Disney Springs shopping and restaurant district, and 27 Disney-owned resort hotels. WDW has thus became a destination that one can spend a longer period of time at and the average duration of a holiday for a visitor from the United Kingdom, for example, is two weeks. However, Disney is not the only major theme park player in Orlando and the situation has ‘changed from monopolistic competition to oligopoly’ (Braun and Soskin 1999, p. 439). Disney’s main competitor, both in Florida and globally, is Universal and their stable of Universal Studios parks in Osaka in Japan, Singapore and Hollywood as well as their flagship Universal Orlando Resort (UOR). This currently comprises Universal Studios (1989), Islands of Adventure (1999), and the waterpark Volcano Bay (2017). Following in Walt Disney World’s ambitions to constitute a multi-day vacation destination, UOR also includes Universal CityWalk (an area for shopping, dining, drinking and entertainment) and six resort hotels. To encourage visitors – who, in theme park vernacular are referred to as guests, and not as customers (King 1981, p. 122) – to stay at, and remain on Universal property without ‘losing’ them to Disney, it is possible to buy an Orlando Flexticket for multiple days which includes the Universal-owned parks, Tampa’s Busch Gardens, and SeaWorld and its waterpark Aquatica. As a result, Universal has offered the only real competition to Disney World in Orlando since it entered in the market in 1990: Universal introduced a replicated set of market-proven attractions from its thriving southern California parent site. Universal also drew upon scale economies to diversify their product mix into high-tech rides. When technical delays threatened its reputation for quality, Universal redoubled investment and demonstrated its commitment to the central Florida market. In addition, Universal exploited economies of scope derived from complementarities in movie and TV production. The entry of Universal Studios had an immediate effect on local labor markets and theme park prices [in Florida]. (Braun and Soskin 1999, p. 439)

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The relationship between Disney and Universal in Orlando has suffered peaks and troughs with one company often in ascension whilst the other has struggled, and this has sometimes led to open animosity between them (Sim 2014; Lillestol et al 2015). For example, ‘In 1989, Disney successfully anticipated the entry of Universal Studios Florida with a studio tours theme park of its own’ to ‘offer a credible threat to potential entrants […], preventing erosion of Disney’s market share’ (Braun et al 1992, p. 133). However, more recently Universal’s development of themed immersive lands based on the hugely popular Harry Potter franchise have seen their attendance numbers and earnings increase substantially. Whilst, for example, Disney saw minor dips in theme park attendance in 2016, Universal Studios Florida saw an increase of 4.3% and an increase in its Islands of Adventure park increase of 6.5% (Niles 2017). These tensions and rivalries do not go unnoticed by theme park fans; there is a range of hierarchies and forms of value assigned to each park, which are often related to the types of attraction that they offer, and the imagined target audience that they seek to attract.

Place, Immersion and Fandom There are many overlaps between the themed space and the often-slippery concept of immersion that has been often debated in media studies approaches and within tourism studies (see for example Murray 1997; Ryan 2001; Saler 2012; Wolf 2012; Lukas 2012, 2016). Whilst some writers such as Murray (1997) and Ryan (2001) have focused on narrative and technology in contributing to a sense of immersion, Michael Saler (2012) emphasizes the importance of a shared world; as Waysforf and Reijnders summarize, To Saler, a story-world becomes virtual when it is adopted and discussed by many individuals, who group together in order to explore and fill in its details and make it more ‘real’. The story-world becomes immersive because it feels inhabitable – as detailed as the ‘real world’ and shared with others as a sort of imaginary habitus. (2018, p. 177)

In Saler’s view, immersion is dependent upon a knowledge that the place one is inhabiting is ‘not real’ but the visitor/fan can still proceed as though it is, what Saler refers to as the ‘ironic imagination’, allowing theme park fans to engage in a suspension of disbelief. Such a dual subjectivity can begin to account for why adult fans are able to meet Mickey Mouse and

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experience pleasure from the encounter whilst understanding that they are actually meeting a park employee in a costume (see Chapter Five), or experience a themed environment such as a restaurant and feel immersed in its constructed world (see Chapter Six). As Victoria Godwin notes, drawing on Mark J.P. Wolf’s distinction between ‘the physical immersion of [the] user, as in a theme park ride or walk in video installation; [where] the user is physically surrounded by the constructed experience’ and ‘conceptual immersion, which relies on the user’s imagination; for example, […] books’ (Wolf 2012, p. 48), theme parks offer the opportunity for both forms of immersion. As she argues, ‘theme parks enable not only the most basic physical immersion of rides or attractions but also conceptual immersion in story worlds that inspire those forms of entertainment’ (Godwin, 2017 para. 1:6). However, as this book suggests, immersion is experienced differently by theme park fans in different contexts and environments. Indeed, whilst themed and immersive spaces may include hotels (such as those found on the Las Vegas strip), restaurants (e.g. Rainforest Cafes) and bars, shops (such as the flagship LEGO store in London), and museums (see Lukas 2012), my focus here on theme parks means that my definitions of these concepts are primarily and necessarily informed by work on those sites. Firat and Ulusoy define themed environments as spaces that are patterned to symbolize experiences and/or senses from a special or a specific past, present, or future place or event as currently imagined. Thematization, then, is the patterning of space, activity, or event to symbolize experiences and/or senses from a special or a specific past, present, or future place, activity, or event as currently imagined. (2011, p. 195, italics in original)

Whilst some theme parks have a single theme, more common is the collection of themed lands or areas within an over-arching branded space (such as Disneyland, Universal Studios, or the UK’s Alton Towers). Across a variety of different parks there are a range of commonly found themes; Nature, Fantasy, Adventure, Futurism, History and culture, International, and Movie (Wong and Cheung 1999, p. 325), whilst many modern theme parks and other themed hospitality facilities have adopted pre-existing intellectual property as a foundation for the theme concept development. These include folklore, mythology, legends, movies, landmarks, or popular television shows. (Milman 2010, p. 231)

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Scott Lukas argues that theming and immersion work together for the guest or visitor; ‘Themed spaces have, in their foundation, an overarching narrative, symbolic complex, or story that drives the overall context of their environs’ (2016, p. 3) and provide a sense of coherence to the experience, whether a themed land is based on the future (e.g. Walt Disney World’s Tomorrowland), a specific country (e.g. WDW’s Animal Kingdom’s Africa) or a fictional location from a media text (e.g. Universal Studios’ Simpsons-based Springfield). From this comes immersion, ‘the idea that a space and its multiple architectural, material, performative, and technological approaches may wrap up or envelop a guest within it’ (Lukas 2016, p. 3). Immersive theme park spaces work to allow guests to ‘connect (often deeply) to a place’ (Lukas 2012, p. 136) and to ‘affectively experience the theme’ (Carla and Freitag 2015, p. 151). This tendency towards immersion has benefitted from the notion of the theme park as an ‘away place’ (Davis 1996, p. 404), as noted above, allowing the development of transmedia modes of storytelling and world-building in which ‘the parks […] create self-contained worlds which are geographically, visually, and ritually separated from the rest of the world – the acts of buying a ticket and going through the turnstiles […] signal the entering of a different space’ (Freitag 2017, pp. 705–6). In his discussion of theme parks from a design and development perspective, David Younger notes that In its themed design definition, immersion describes whether the designer intends for the guest to suspend their disbelief and pretend to actually be amongst the fictional world. For example, The Wizarding World of Harry Potter – Hogsmeade (Universal’s Island of Adventure, 2010) is immersive, while The Making of Harry Potter (Warner Bros. Studio Tour London, 2012) is not. (2016, p. 86)

In the examples of Harry Potter, then, the chance to see how the films were made and to view original sets, costumes and props at the Studio Tour is not immersive since it draws attention to the fact that it is not seeking to take you ‘into’ the world of Potter but rather show you how it was constructed. In contrast, The Wizarding World seeks to convince guests that they are ‘really there’ through its fully constructed physical representation of a fictional world. The desire to visit or inhabit f ictional worlds is common across fan cultures, and this book focuses on to the importance of place, space and theming to the fan experience of spatial immersion. Fans’ close attachments to places associated with their fandom have often been analysed since

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‘fan-text affective relationships cannot be separated from spatial concerns and categories’ (Hills 2002, p. 145). Indeed, tourism remains a key element of fan practice, allowing fans to forge and maintain connections with imagined worlds, engage in face-to-face interaction and experience a sense of communitas with other fans, and construct self-narratives that link their fandom with their own identities and important places and spaces. (Williams 2018, p. 105)

Fans often seek to visit filming locations used in television series such as Doctor Who (Hills 2006), Torchwood (Mills 2008; Williams and McElroy 2016), Sherlock (Toy 2017), and The X-Files (Hills 2002), films such as Blade Runner (Brooker 2005) or Twilight (Willis-Chun 2010; Erzen 2011; Hoskinson 2011), and literary texts including Anne of Green Gables (Bergstrom 2014) and crime-detective novels (van Es and Reijnders 2018). Such practices, which are part of the broader phenomenon of what has been termed ‘filminduced tourism’ (Beeton 2005) or ‘film-motivated tourism’ (Karpovich 2011), have been harnessed by a range of stakeholders in the tourism and media industries. As a result, strategies for place-branding locations, cities, or whole countries in association with specific media texts can be seen in examples including The Lord of the Rings trilogy in New Zealand (Tzanelli 2004, Jones and Smith 2005, Lawn and Beatty 2006), Dubrovnik in Croatia and Northern Ireland in the case of HBO television series Game of Thrones (Waysdorf and Reijnders 2017), or Nordic Noir series such as Wallander and The Bridge in Scandinavia (Reijnders 2013, Askanius 2017). In such cases, fans may find that their own needs are at odds with the tactics and objectives of those in positions of power, such as local government authorities (see Norris 2012). Fans also visit official touristic places such as the Warner Brothers Studio Tour dedicated to Harry Potter (Larsen 2015) or the Doctor Who Experience in Cardiff (Booth 2015; Garner 2016) or attend temporary exhibits in museums or convention spaces dedicated to franchises such as Jurassic Park (Balanzategui and Ndalianis 2018), The Hunger Games (Foster 2016), or Star Wars (Hills 2018; Bartolomé Herrera and Dominik Keidl 2018). They may also journey to sites associated with specific stars such as Elvis Presley’s residence Graceland (Rodman 1996; Doss 1999) or Viretta Park near Nirvana singer Kurt Cobain’s former home in Seattle (Garner 2014). Accordingly, previous academic work has tended to focus on ‘cult geographies […] diegetic and pro-filmic spaces (and ‘real’ spaces associated with cult icons) which cult fans take as the basis for material, touristic practices’ (Hills 2002, p. 144), positioning the original fan text/object (e.g. Elvis, Lord of the Rings,

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Doctor Who) as the driving factor in visiting a site. Some fans may become attached to specific events that reoccur in the same place over time such as hotels which host annual conventions (Hills 2002, p. 120). Writing about the informative culture that surrounds San Diego Comic Con, for example, Melanie Kohnen argues that ‘con-blogging exists in relation to media spaces and fan tourism, but also differs from both phenomena as con-blogging is not anchored in the connections between space and fictional texts […] The ever-shifting experience of SDCC is the text of which con-bloggers are fans’ (2019, p. 3). In contrast, Linden and Linden ask, ‘is it possible to be a fan of a destination?’ (2017, p. 110), a question considered in Cornel Sandvoss’ work on Ibiza (2014), Clothilde Sabre’s (2016) work on French tourists ‘falling in love’ with Japan, and Matt Hill’s study of fans of the National Theatre in the UK (2018). Similarly, Lincoln Geraghty (2015) explores how visiting a specific place may make someone a fan of a text/location, whilst Abby Waysdorf observes that ‘there are anecdotal accounts of people becoming a fan of something through first encountering it spatially’ (2017, p. 10), suggesting that places and spaces can be the sources of engagement with fannish texts. Thus, ‘some people may not be fans of an object until they visited a specific site, and some visitors may “pass as” a fan by performing or adopting the characteristics of the fandom associated with a space’ (Williams 2018, p. 104). My own fandom of Harry Potter, for example, emerged only after my first visit to the Hogsmeade section of Universal Orlando’s Wizarding World in 2011; my interest in those places and my experiences of them were physically rooted, embodied and spatial before they were textual. I own a dress that is adorned with a large printed picture of Hogwarts Castle. To me, this is not the Hogwarts of my imagination, or even from the films; it is the Hogwarts Castle that looms over the Hogsmeade of Islands of Adventure, an icon from the themed space rather than the original texts. This book thus argues resolutely that it is possible to be a fan of a destination, location or place and considers the resultant fan practices and discourses when it is particular places or spaces themselves that are the focal point for fandom. In so doing, it advocates for a shift in how we understand fans’ attachments to important spaces and places, advocating for wider research into why people become fans of specific venues, sites, destinations or places, and the various practices they engage in before, during and after their visits. Clearly, since they are transmedia brands spanning movies, television, comics, games, and more, many fans of the Disney or Universal parks may also be fans of the wider brands or their texts. Nevertheless, for others it is the places of the theme parks that are the focus of their fandom and,

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in some cases, particular theme park attractions (e.g. rides, restaurants or bars). The physical sense of ‘being there’ is key to theme park fandom since it allows the acquisition and display of types of capital, in particular forms of ‘geographical capital’ (Hills 2006) for those who live near to the parks (Milman 1991, 2009) or who are Annual Pass Holders (those who pay an annual fee to visit the parks as often as they like) (Torres and Orlowski 2017; McCarthy 2019).

Convergence, Transmediality and the Theme Park Whilst we may conceive of the concepts of transmediality and convergence culture as relatively recent inventions, the opportunities for theme parks to offer this are not new. The original Disneyland was ‘intended by Disney to be the highlight and culminating product of his interlocking and mutuallypublicizing empire of films, merchandising, printing and television series on ABC-TV’ (King 1981, p. 119, see also Merlock Jackson 2011b and Scolari et al 2014). In turn, the television series of the same name was clearly oriented to promoting the park, offering ‘different segments each week patterned after the themes of the park’s sections – Adventureland, Frontierland, Fantasyland and Tomorrowland. Periodic live updates on the construction of the park were also shown’ (Weinstein 1992, p. 149). The opportunities for synergy and convergence were well understood by Walt Disney in the 1950s and 1960s via this form of ‘hyper-commercial interpenetration’ (Davis 1996, p. 408) and, as Matthew Freeman (2017) argues, characters such as Mickey and Minnie Mouse were deployed to create story worlds across a range of media, highlighting early transmedia practices in the 1920s and 1930s. Contemporary theme parks continue this tradition, offering a range of rides, shows and other attractions that are often linked to recognizable media franchises such as Harry Potter, Marvel, Despicable Me, Shrek, Jurassic Park, The Fast and the Furious and Men in Black in the case of Universal Studios, and Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Avatar and Disney’s own numerous intellectual properties in its parks. Theme park attractions operate as one element of transmediality, which refers to ‘the increasingly popular industrial practice of using multiple media technologies to present information concerning a single fictional world through a range of textual forms’ (Evans 2011, p. 1). As Elizabeth Evans notes, transmediality ‘may relate to practices such as franchising, merchandising, adaptations, spin-offs, sequels and marketing’ (2011, p. 2) but it also works to expand the hyperdiegesis of a narrative universe. For example, the narratives of the attractions are often continued

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in other media forms (King 2000; Balides 2003; Lukas 2008; Nelson 2008; Schatz 2015; Terry 2015; Freitag 2016, 2017). The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, the less-successful Haunted Mansion film, and the Jungle Cruise movie starring action hero Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson offered by Disney demonstrate how rides are now mined as opportunities for transmediality and convergence. Equally, attractions such as the Haunted Mansion continue their existence across comic books, novelizations, and games. As discussed in Chapter Four, the development of rides into films offers opportunities for ‘further branding of a branded commodity and creating even greater intertextuality between theme parks and the cinema’ (Lukas 2008, p. 184). Theme park rides operate as a locus for transmediality in a range of ways since ‘although the theme park is nowadays recognized as a medium on its own, it nevertheless constitutes […] a […] hybrid medium that relies on various other media’ (Carla and Freitag 2015, p. 151). However, as noted in the Introduction, ‘the issue of transmedia’s locatedness in space and place has generally been under-explored’ (Hills 2017, p. 213). In Matt Hills’ analysis of the Star Wars Celebration convention in London, he counters the dominant focus on the ‘mode of transmedia storytelling [that] does indeed “flow” across spaces’ (2017, p. 214) by suggesting that a rival class of franchised transmedia experience remains, by definition, rooted in specific physical locations. In fact, located transmedia can confer value on these very places, positioning them as symbolically hallowed or ‘auratic’ sites to which fans travel by way of ‘pilgrimage.’ (Hills 2017, p. 214)

Theme parks offer one location where ‘located transmedia’ can be experienced. The rides themselves offer the opportunity to momentarily inhabit the imagined immersive world of a favourite Disney or Universal film and the character meet-and-greets present chances to interact with fictional ‘stars’ such as Mickey Mouse and others (see Chapter Five), presenting a form of spatial transmedia experience that is resolutely rooted in a specific place. Transmediality as a concept is closely entwined with the notions of convergence and participatory culture. As Henry Jenkins agues, convergence refers to ‘the flow of content across multiple media platforms, the cooperation between multiple media industries, and the migratory behaviour of media audiences who will go almost anywhere in search of the kinds of entertainment experiences they want’ (2006, p. 2). This includes elements of transmediality where ‘Transmedia storytelling is the art of world making’ (Jenkins 2006, p. 21) and convergence culture and participatory culture come together to demand the ‘active participation of knowledge communities’

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(Jenkins 2006, p. 21). For Jenkins, the audience is crucial since ‘convergence does not occur through media appliances, however sophisticated they may become. Convergence occurs within the brains of individual consumers and through their social interactions with others’ (2006, p. 3). Furthermore, convergence encourages and fosters participatory culture because ‘consumers are encouraged to seek out new information and make connections among dispersed media content’ (Jenkins 2006, p. 3). Such ideas have currency in studies of tourism. As Maria Månsson argues, drawing on the concept of convergence allows researchers to ‘contextualise the intertwining of media and tourism consumption, as well as move away from the perception of passive tourists in the circle of representation’ (2011, p 1647) since ‘Consumer generated products […] have an impact on destination marketing – regardless of whether the specific item is genuinely consumer run or is initiated by a producer’ (2011, p. 1647). Her research strongly supports the notion that tourists can participate in the generation of their own knowledge within participatory cultures, although it does not focus in on fans per se, instead analysing the contemporary tourist experience more broadly. Following Jenkins (2006), and Månsson’s (2011) work on convergence culture in tourism, in this research the concepts of transmediality and convergence are often used as the springboard into discussions of the participatory cultures and fandoms that surround theme parks. The primary focus is on what fans do and why and how this relates to hierarchies of cultural value, a sense of self, and their affective and physical negotiations of themed spaces and places. When transmediality is discussed in detail, as in Chapter Four, it is often tied to the argument that, as Stein and Busse (2012, p. 14) point out, ‘audience engagement across platforms intended and unintended could also constitute transmedia’, and that fans, too, can work to engage in acts of narrative construction and re-working of imaginative worlds (Norris 2016; Samutina 2016; Stein 2017; Derhy Kurtz and Bourdaa 2017). Also crucial to understanding contemporary transmediality is the concept of world-building (Jenkins 2006, p. 21). Put simply, ‘World-building is an invention of new imaginary worlds’ (Samutina 2016, p. 433) and can often be distinct from story-telling and narrative (see Wolf 2012, p. 29), creating an environment and evoking a sense of a vast and expansive universe. The concept of world-building will be alluded to and drawn on here when relevant to my discussions about immersion and transmediality within the theme park, in particular in exploration of the links between such acts and fan cultures (see Chapter Four). Accordingly, in much theme park fandom, we can see participatory culture at work. Such cultures have ‘relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support

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for creating and sharing one’s creations, and some type of information mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices’ (Jenkins 2006, p. 7). In the online knowledge networks formed amongst theme park fans this sense of creating and sharing content, information and advice is clear but as the next section discusses, fans also create and police hierarchies dependent on knowledge, access and proximity to the parks themselves.

Capital, Distinction and Fan Identities The concepts of capital, distinction and cultural hierarchies are integral to this research since the ability to ‘be there’ (Auslander 1999, p. 158) within the parks contributes to cultural, social and symbolic forms of capital. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of distinction and capital (1984), and subsequent work on forms of ‘subcultural capital’ (Thornton 1995) that are recognized and circulated only within specific groups or subcultures, the book is concerned with how varying fan practices and experiences are accorded different levels of value by different fans. Bourdieu’s work has been widely utilized within Fan Studies (see Fiske 1992; Thornton 1995; Brown 1997; Jancovich 2000; Hills 2002; Thomas 2002; Williamson 2005; Williams 2004, 2010) with the typical starting point being Distinction (1984) in which Bourdieu argues that we are born into a particular ‘habitus’ and our tastes are shaped by this unconscious way of living which is learned from the earliest stages of class socialization (1984, p. 6). The concept of the habitus is Bourdieu’s attempt to bridge the gap between structure and agency and between subjectivism, which assumes ‘a ‘contingent ongoing accomplishment’ of social agents who construct their social world via ‘the organised artful practices of everyday life’ (Wacquant 1992, p. 9), and objectivism, which imagines individuals as determined by the ‘social structures and values, ideas, desires and narratives produced by, and characteristic of, cultural institutions such as the family, religious groups, education systems and government bodies’ (Webb et al 2002, p. 32). Resulting from these ideas are the concepts of social capital (‘who you know’) and cultural capital (Bourdieu 1986) which is defined as institutionalized, i.e., widely shared, high status cultural signals (attitudes, preferences, formal knowledge, behaviors, goods and credentials) used for social and cultural exclusion, the former referring to exclusion from

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jobs and resources, and the latter, to exclusion from high status groups. (Lamont and Lareau 1988, p. 156, their emphasis)

Related to this is symbolic capital, the ‘prestige, reputation, fame etc.’ (Bourdieu 1991, p. 230) or the ‘honour […] that is accorded to specific cultural producers in their relevant fields’ (Hills 2005, p. 166). Levels of symbolic power usually result from high amounts of cultural and social capital, illustrating that the forms of capital must be considered in relation to one another. Thus, although Bourdieu himself is largely contemptuous towards practices associated with fandom (1984, p. 386), the notion of capital has been widely employed within Fan Studies, particularly through Sarah Thornton’s extrapolation of ‘subcultural capital’ which ‘confers status on its owner in the eyes of the relevant beholder’ (1995, p. 11) and has currency only within specific groups. Thornton argues that fans make their own distinctions to demarcate against outsiders and to dismiss fans who have opposing interests and interpretations. Fan distinctions may be made regarding who, or what, is part of the fandom and these can be identified in fandoms as varied as horror (Kermode 1997; Jancovich 2000; Hills 2010), dance music (Thornton 1995), celebrities (Hills and Williams 2005) and comic books (Brown 1997). Indeed, fans make ‘constant attempt[s] to project internal purity by identifying inauthentic outsiders who must be rejected and shunned’ (Jancovich and Hunt 2004, p. 28). Such ideas are crucial to examining fan hierarchies and the ‘struggles and dynamics, the position-takings and the hierarchies, that structure modern cultural engagement’ (Williamson 2005, pp. 183–84). For example, within the fannish subculture of theme park fandom, fans construct their own systems of value that work to privilege certain parks, attractions or experiences over others. As noted above, fans that reside in Central Florida can attend the parks more frequently and possess ‘geographical capital’ (Hills 2006) which allows them access to new rides, merchandise and information before those who live elsewhere. At a very basic level, some fans state preferences for either Disney or Universal’s parks, their attractions (e.g. Universal has ‘better’, more scary rides) and the type of imagined visitor that each one attracts (e.g. Disney appeals mostly to children), often drawing on these perceived fans to denigrate one park at the expense of others. This opposition between the two parks has been reflected in press coverage and reporting; Of all the strategies used by theme parks, providing for a niche seemed to favor one company over the other. The statement almost always referred to Universal Studios capturing the young adult market or

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conversely failing to capture the family market. In 1999, Newsweek notes: ‘the park is Universal’s $2.7 billion gamble that it can attract older thrill-seeking kids’. That same year, The Charlotte Observer notes: ‘Universal Florida has scored high marks from teens and young adults over the past 10 years’. (Lillestol et al 2015, p. 234; see also Braun and Soskin 2010; Ingwer 2013; Thorp 2015) Similarly, access to ‘insider knowledge’ accrued from working at the parks or knowing people who do can bestow forms of subcultural and symbolic capital. Lutters and Ackerman researched the online bulletin board The Castle (not its real name), a ‘specialized social network of people interested in Disney and Disneyland’ (2003, p. 158). As an early example of an online space, users tended to be located in the same geographical area of California since they were able to access the site for free via dial-up internet. This ‘centrality’ means that there is a shared geographical knowledge about Disneyland and also encouraged group meet-ups in off-line spaces. As a result, the site offered a place to meet and befriend inside people and, equally important, to gain backstage knowledge. Considerable status and legitimization within fandom come from whom you know or with whom you have been seen; being able to say you know one of the designers for the new Main Street parade or being seen entering the park free through the employee entrance are significant experiences for fans. (Lutters and Ackerman 2003, p. 177)

Having insider knowledge or experiencing something out-of-the-ordinary is key to the cultural hierarchies at work within theme park fandom. As Pike (2005) and Bartkowiak (2012) argue, having the economic capital to undertake expensive behind-the-scenes tours can imbue certain fans with higher levels of subcultural, social and symbolic capital: Amongst fans of Disney, repeat attendees and so forth, the tours provide an insider’s perspective on a celebrated popular culture product. To take part in something individual and even unknown to many fans can mean a new potency or level of fandom. Besides the official webpage highlighting these tours, little is done to advertise them. (Bartkowiak 2012, p. 955)

Accruing information, gaining access, and undertaking less common experiences are, as in many other fan cultures, crucial to creating and maintaining hierarchies and distinctions within theme park fandom. This

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book foregrounds the ongoing relationship between visitor/fans and the theme parks themselves, considering what such study can tell us about theme parks and how fans experience space and place in relation to hierarchy and self-identity. Also, key to understanding the relationships between fans and the theme park is a focus on the importance of emotion, especially where this intersects with fans’ own personal histories and sense of self. There is a clear affective element to the theme park experience for the Disney fan since within the confines of the Disney theme park, this very process of convergence allows fans to position themselves and establish personal narratives that reaffirm who they are in relation to the momentary experience of immersion, as well as establish and enhance their individuality outside the framework of the Disney utopia. (Koren-Kuik 2014, p. 152)

Drawing on theories of self-narratives by writers such as Anthony Giddens (1991) and my own previous work on fandom and self-narratives (Williams, 2015), the book considers how, for some fans, choices about favourite rides and experiences offer a key way in which their ‘fandom becomes a tool in the exploration of subjectivity and the construction of identity’ (Koren-Kuik 2014, p. 152). For many fans memories of previous visits, their emotional connections to those and to other related experiences, and their broader associations with a park are highly significant and manifest themselves in fan’s choice of favourite attractions or characters, their merchandise consumption and their reactions to the removal of certain rides or spaces within the parks. The next chapter therefore begins where many theme park fans begin; at the point of planning and organizing one’s trip. Focusing on the importance of these acts of ‘plandom’, the chapter considers how theme park fans can organise and look forward to their visits to the Orlando parks using a range of participatory objects such as social media sites, blogs and, in the case of Disney, the My Magic+ app that is also heavily utilized during park visits. Highlighting current issues regarding the impact of digital media, mobile technologies, and wearable technologies the chapter also bears in mind arguments around fan labour to consider how the participatory work that fans do must be examined alongside debates over consumption, work and branding.

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Kermode, Mark, ‘I Was a Teenage Horror Fan’, in Ill Effects: The Media/Violence Debate, edited by Martin Barker and Julian Petley (London: Routledge, 1997), pp. 126–134. King, Margaret J., ‘Disneyland and Walt Disney World: Traditional Values in Futuristic Form’, Journal of Popular Culture, 15, 1 (1981), 116–140. ———, ‘The Disney Effect: Fifty Years After Theme Park Design’, in Disneyland and Culture: Essays on the Parks and Their Influence, edited by Kathy Merlock Jackson and Mark I. West (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2011), pp. 223–226. Kohnen, Melanie E. S., ‘Time, Space, Strategy: Fan Blogging and the Economy of Knowledge at San Diego Comic-Con’, Popular Communication, Online First (2019), 1–17. Koren-Kuik, Meyrav, ‘Desiring the Tangible: Disneyland, Fandom and Spatial Immersion’, in Fan Culture: Essays on Participatory Fandom in the 21st Century, edited by Kristin M. Barton and Jonathan Malcolm Lampley (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2014), pp. 146–158. Lamont, Michele, and Annette Lareau, ‘Cultural Capital: Allusions, Gaps and Glissandos in Recent Theoretical Developments’, Sociological Theory, 6, 2 (1988), 153–168. Lancaster, Kurt, Interacting with “Babylon 5”: Fan Performances in a Media Universe (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001). Larsen, Katherine, ‘(Re)claiming Harry Potter Fan Pilgrimage Sites’, in Playing Harry Potter: Essays and Interviews on Fandom and Performance, edited by Lisa S. Brenner (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2015), pp. 38–54. Lawn, Jennifer and Bronwyn Beatty, ‘On the Brink of a New Threshold of Opportunity: The Lord of the Rings and New Zealand Cultural Policy’, in Ernst Mathijs (ed.) The Lord of the Rings: Popular Culture in Global Context (London: Wallflower, 2006), pp. 43–50. Lillestol, Tayllor, Timothy, J. Dallen, and Rebekkan Goodman, ‘Competitive Strategies in the US Theme Park Industry: A Popular Media Perspective’, International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research, 9, 3 (2015), 225–240. Linden, Henrik and Sara Linden, Fans and Fan Cultures: Tourism, Consumerism and Social Media (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). Lukas, Scott A., Theme Park (Objekt) (London: Reaktion Books, 2008). ———, The Immersive Worlds Handbook: Designing Theme Parks and Consumer Space (New York and London: CRC Press, 2012). ———, ‘Introduction: The Meanings of Themed and Immersive Spaces’, in A Reader in Themed and Immersive Spaces, edited by Scott A. Lukas (Pittsburgh, PA: Carnegie Mellon: ETC Press, 2016), pp. 3–18.

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Lutters, Wayne G. and Mark S. Ackerman, ‘Joining the Backstage: Locality and Centrality in an Online Community’, Information Technology and People, 16, 2 (2003), 157–182. Mannheim, Steve, Walt Disney and the Quest for Community (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002). Månsson, Maria, ‘Mediatized Tourism’, Annals of Tourism Research, 38, 4 (2011),1634–1652. McCarthy, William, ‘Meet Me on Main Street’: Disneyland as Place Attachment for Southern Californians’, Tourism Geographies, 21, (2019), 586–612. Merlock Jackson, Kathy, ‘Synergistic Disney: New Directions for Mickey and Media in 1954–1955’, in Disneyland and Culture: Essays on the Parks and Their Influence, edited by Kathy Merlock Jackson and Mark I. West (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2011b), pp. 19–28. Mills, Brett, ‘“My House was on Torchwood!”: Media, Place, and Identity’, International Journal of Cultural Studies, 11, 4, (2008), 379–399. Milman, Ady, ‘The Role of Theme Parks as A Leisure Activity for Local Communities’, Journal of Travel Research, 29, 3 (1991), 11–16. ———, ‘Evaluating the Guest Experience at Theme Parks: An Empirical Investigation of Key Attributes’, International Journal of Tourism Research, 11, 4 (2009), 373–387. ———, ‘The Global Theme Park Industry’, Worldwide Hospitality and Tourism Themes, 2, 3 (2010), 220–237. Murray, Janet H. Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997). Ndalianis, Angela, ‘Special Effects, Morphing Magic, and the 1990s Cinema’, in Meta-Morphing: Visual Transformation and the Culture of Quick-Change, edited by Vivian Sobchack (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), pp. 251–272. ———, ‘Dark Rides, Hybrid Machines and the Horror Experience’, in Horror Zone: The Cultural Experience of Contemporary Horror Cinema, edited by Ian Conrich (London: I. B. Tauris, 2010), pp. 11–26. ———, The Horror Sensorium (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2012). Nelson, Andrew, ‘Cinema From Attractions: Story and Synergy in Disney’s Theme Park Movies’, Cinephile: The University of British Columbia’s Film Journal, 4 (2008), accessed 12 December 2018. http://cinephile.ca/archives/volume-4-post-genre/ cinema-from-attractions-story-and-synergy-in-disney%E2%80%99s-themepark-movies/ Niles, Robert, ‘Disney Parks Slip, but Remain Atop Global Theme Park Attendance Report’, Theme Park Insider, 1 June 2017, accessed 4 June 2018. http://www. themeparkinsider.com/flume/201706/5594/ Norris, Craig, ‘Creating Godzilla’s Media Tourism: Comparing Fan and Local Government Practices’, Refractory (2012), November 6, 2012, accessed 12 March 2019. http://refractory.unimelb.edu.au/2012/11/06/norris/

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———, ‘Japanese Media Tourism as World-building: Akihabara’s Electric Town and Ikebukuro’s Maiden Road’, Participations, 13, 1 (2016), accessed 6 March 2019. http://www.participations.org/Volume%2013/Issue%201/S3/10.pdf Pike, David L, ‘The Walt Disney World Underground’, Space and Culture, 8, 1 (2005), 47–65. Reijnders Stijn, Places of the Imagination: Media, Tourism, Culture (London: Palgrave, 2013). Rodman, Gilbert, Elvis After Elvis: The Posthumous Career of a Living Legend (New York: Routledge, 1996). Ryan, Marie Laure, Narrative as Virtual Reality: Immersion and Interactivity in Literature and Electronic Media (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001). Sabre, Clothilde, ‘Holidaying in Japan, Falling in Love With Japan: From Pop Culture to Tourism Imaginary’, in Tourism Imaginaries at the Disciplinary Crossroads: Place, Practice, Media, edited by Maria Gravari-Barbas and Nelson Graburn (London, Routledge, 2016), pp. 163–179. Saler, Michael, As-if: Modern Enchantment and the Literary Prehistory of Virtual Reality (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). Samutina, Natalia, ‘Fan Fiction as World-Building: Transformative Reception in Crossover Writing’, Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies, 30, 4 (2016), 433–450. Sandvoss, Cornel, ‘I Love IBIZA: Music, Place and Belonging’, in Popular Music Fandom: Identities, Roles and Practices, edited by Mark Duffett (London: Routledge, 2014), pp. 115–145. Schatz, Thomas, ‘Movie Franchises and Theme Parks: The New Cinema of Attractions’, Paper presented at SCMS Conference, Montreal: Canada, March 2015. Scolari, Carlos, Paulo Bertetti and Matthew Freeman, Transmedia Archaeology: Storytelling in the Borderlines of Science Fiction, Comics and Pulp Magazines (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2014). Sim, Nick, Universal Orlando: The Unofficial Story (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2014). Stein, Louisa Ellen, ‘Fandom and the Transtext’, in The Rise of Transtexts: Challenges and Opportunities, edited by Benjamin W.L. Derhy Kurtz and Melanie Bourdaa (London: Routledge, 2017), pp. 71–89. Stein, Louisa Ellen and Kristina Busse, ‘Introduction: The Literary, Televisual and Digital Adventures of the Beloved Detective’, in Sherlock and Transmedia Fandom: Essays on the BBC Series, edited by Louisa Ellen Stein and Kristina Busse (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2012), pp. 9–24. TEA/AECOM, ‘Theme Index/Museum Index 2017: Global Attractions Attendance Report’, TEA Connect, 2017, accessed 12 July 2018. http://www.teaconnect.org/ images/files/TEA_268_653730_180517.pdf

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3.

Fandom, Brandom and Plandom: Haptic Fandom, Anticipatory Labour and Digital Knowledge Abstract This chapter considers the development of Disney’s MyMagic+ app and the critique that it is an intrusive form of technology that removes spontaneity from visitors’ trips. The chapter also considers how theme park fans can organise and look forward to their visits to the Orlando parks using a range of participatory sites such as social media sites, blogs and, in the case of Disney, the My Magic+ app itself. These acts of planning also serve an affective purpose in allowing fan/visitors the chance to invest in anticipating the physical and emotional experience of the visit itself, and the haptic experience this offers. However, the chapter also bears in mind arguments around fan labour to consider how the participatory work that fans do must be examined alongside debates over consumption, work and branding. Keywords: Haptic fandom, anticipatory labor, fan labor, branding

Introduction The contemporary theme park is very different to the early days of Disneyland and Universal Studios in the 1960s. Such places have changed dramatically in the era of digital media, which allows and encourages participation and engagement with the parks even when visitors are not physically present in them. The development of Disney’s MyMagic+ technology, comprising the My Disney Experience (MDE) website and mobile app and the accompanying MagicBands (coloured wristbands which function as a hotel key, a form of payment, an entry ticket to theme parks, a way to use the onsite Disney dining plan, and more), encourages guests to plan their

Williams, R., Theme Park Fandom. Spatial Transmedia, Materiality And Participatory Cultures. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020 doi 10.5117/9789462982574_ch03

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visits in minute detail (Foreman 2014; Carr 2015; Kuang 2015; Huddleston et al 2016). Whilst many fan/visitors have embraced the opportunities afforded by the MyMagic+ system, it has been critiqued for being intrusive and for removing spontaneity from visitors’ Disney trips, and viewed by some critics as a ‘tangible, visible symbols of [guest’s] own complicity’ in systems of unpaid labor (Huddleston et al 2016, p. 230). As debates over wearable technologies intensify, this chapter outlines the development of MyMagic+ and how its implementation is utilized by Disney fans. Furthermore, the use of social media such as the official WDW and Universal Orlando Resort (UOR) Twitter accounts, Facebook pages and blogs also work to maintain the connection that guests feel to the parks before and after their visits; such social media sites promote the parks and special events, as well as announcing key developments to followers. In addition, a wealth of unofficial websites, blogs and social media accounts are dedicated to discussing the Orlando parks, allowing dedicated guests who identify as fans of WDW and UOR to maintain their affective attachments to the parks, and reflecting how ‘tourists’ reviews, comments and perceptions of destinations can now be spread instantly and globally to friends and far beyond one’s own network by social media posts’ (Månsson 2011, p. 1639) within contemporary convergence culture. This chapter considers how theme park fans can organize and look forward to their visits to the Orlando parks using a range of participatory media such as social media sites, blogs and, in the case of Disney, the MDE app itself. It has been acknowledged within Tourist Studies that ‘the pretrip and en-route phrases of a vacation trip are often seen by tourists as a way of enhancing the perceived quality of the on-site experience’ and that ‘these phases might have their own merits for contributing to the enjoyment of the trip process (Prebensen et al 2012, pp. 617–18). However, as this chapter, and research overall, argues, theme park fan-visitors are often engaged in a more on-going cyclical form of preparation and reflection, predicated on their repeated visits to the parks. Furthermore, there is surprisingly little mention in work on theme parks of the labour that can go into planning a visit or the pleasures that this can involve. Salamone and Salamone note that ‘Getting to Main Street U.S.A. for most visitors is an adventure in itself. In addition to the months or years of planning and dreaming to visit the secular Mecca that Disney World has become, there is the trip from the parking lot or ticket and transportation center to enter the park itself’ (1999, p. 85, emphasis added). However, this is no more than a passing mention within their broader discussion of the cultural and national importance of the ‘land’ of Main Street USA within the Disney parks. Huddleston et al (2016) offer

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the only sustained analysis of the MyMagic+ technologies, highlighting the importance of planning for trips to WDW. However, as discussed below, their focus on issues of surveillance, control and labour works to underplay the pleasures that such forms of planning and preparation can offer. This form of ‘plandom fandom’ (De Rosa 2014) can actually offer an integral part of the theme park experience beyond simply organizing one’s trip. For many fans, there is a clear sense of pleasure to be gained from the act of planning. The practices of planning and preparing allow visitors/fans to draw on a wide range of resources – both official and fan-created – to maximize their visits and to display their pre-visit fandom via discussion on social media sites and blogs. In contrast, however, to some other forms of fan acquisition of knowledge and capital, in the case of theme park fandom such information is drawn on to inform the forthcoming physical act of visiting the parks, allowing fans to display forms of cultural capital by ‘being […] there’ (Auslander 1999, p. 158). However, some fans actively reject the focus on planning and preparation that has been instituted by the My Magic+ system and instead prefer to ‘wing it’ on their trips. The merits, or otherwise, of this emphasis on planning are often debated by fans with differing levels of prestige and capital afforded to those who plan well and those who are more flexible in different fan groups. In contrast, Universal Resort Orlando is often praised for its more flexible attitude to park attendance – whilst guests can pay for Express Passes to queue jump (or obtain these for free if staying on an on-site UOR hotel), most do not. The opposition between Disney and Universal – and the associated value judgements – is highlighted in discussions of planning and preparing for one’s trip to the parks. The act of planning also serves an affective purpose in allowing fan/visitors the chance to invest in anticipating the physical and emotional experience of the visit itself. However, the chapter also engages with arguments around fan labour to consider how the participatory work that fans do must be examined alongside debates over consumption, work and branding, and proposes the concept of ‘anticipatory labour’ to better understand these intersections.

Theme Park ‘Brandom’ and the Labour of Participatory Culture At the core of the theme park experience is knowledge of, and engagement with, international media corporations and recognizable brands. Along with McDonalds and Coca-Cola, Disney is widely acknowledged one of the most well-known global brands (Wills 2017, p. 24) whilst the intellectual

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properties that Universal Studios uses in its parks, such as Harry Potter, Marvel, and The Simpsons are also hugely iconic. As noted in the Introduction, the consumerist nature of theme parks has been much discussed in academic work. Such views are epitomized in Henry Giroux’s critique of both the control over guests that the Disney parks enact and the consumption that these spaces encourage: In Disney’s theme parks, intimacy, imagination and spontaneity are replaced by the expertise of the well-placed park attendants, the picture perfect photo sites, and the endless spectacles in which fun becomes consumption and memory is reduced to the purchase of souvenirs. (1994, p. 88)

As this research argues, however, many theme park fans are acutely aware of the pull towards consumption that their activities are predicated on and it is not my intention here to re-hash the previous arguments regarding theme park visitors as passive and mindless consumers of specific brands. Instead, I want to consider how theme park fans’ relationship with, and loyalty to, brands such as Disney and those present in the Universal parks contributes to our understanding of contemporary brand loyalty, fannish attachments, and the notion of ‘brandom’ (Guschwan 2012). In a 2016 study of theme park visitors, Cheng et al highlight the importance of loyalty to specific locations. Considering this in the context of theme parks in Asia they note that threats to theme park brand loyalty can result from factors including ‘pricing, inconvenience, core service failures, service encounter failures, employee responses to service failures, attraction by competitors, ethical problems and involuntary switching’ (2014, p. 3). If faced with such problems, visitors would opt to visit a different park for their next trip. Whilst, as their study notes, this has clear implications for theme park management and advertising, brand loyalty also has an impact on theme park visitors and fans. Indeed, alongside the notion of brand loyalty, the concept of ‘Brand Intimacy is defined as a new paradigm that quantifies the emotional bonds people have for brands they use’ and, as noted in the Introduction, ‘Disney Parks and Universal Theme Parks rank first and second in the hospitality and theme parks industry, according to the MBLM Brand Intimacy 2017 Report’ (Gazdik 2017). The report notes how ‘Theme parks are interesting examples of manifesting brand intimacy’ since ‘“They master the customer journey, creating distinct and varied experiences and provide indulgence and entertainment, two things that strongly align with consumer needs now,” […] “Theme parks have created

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well-curated, one-of-a-kind brand experiences that resonate with people”’ (cited in Gazdik 2017). As Guschwan argues, ‘Traditionally, the discourse of branding understood marketers as the instigators of brand-building and consumers as targets/ subjects who must be impelled to engage with and loyally buy the brand’ (2012, p. 24). More recently, brands that have achieved cultural currency such as Nike and Apple have been viewed as ‘iconic brands’ (Holt 2004) which ‘help [consumers] express who they want to be’ (Holt 2004, p. 4). The close links between iconic brands and the identity expressions of those who consume them work to engender even higher levels of brand loyalty; if devotion to Disney is tied to how we express ourselves, we are more likely to seek to continue that relationship. Disney also offers a broad range of different media forms and sub-brands for fans to engage with. Whilst some will form close attachments to the Disney Princesses, for example, others prefer to consume merchandise and media associated with the Disney Villains. Within the complex mosaic of the Disney brand, then, there are opportunities to display identification with certain characters, films and franchises via clothing or ‘DisneyBounding’ when visiting the parks themselves (see Chapter Seven) or when engaging with the theme parks via digital media. Users of Disney’s My Magic+ and MDE app discussed below are encouraged to select an avatar such as Mickey Mouse to represent their identity and, as Lutters and Ackerman note in their discussion of online fan site The Castle, A well chosen alias is not only a desirable personal identity marker, but also a symbol of enthusiast or insider status. Some of the most celebrated handles are either the result of obscure trivia (an animator’s nickname for an unnamed character which appears for a matter of seconds in Fantasia) or employee status (‘Bus Driver’, ‘Sweeper’, ‘Imagineer’). (2003, p. 165)

Similarly, when considering fannish expressions within the Universal Orlando Resort there are a range of choices available to those who attend. For instance, those who visit the Wizarding World of Harry Potter (and those who identify as fans in general) are able to align themselves with their specific choice of Hogwarts house (Ravenclaw, Slytherin, Hufflepuff or Gryffindor) and purchase an extensive range of merchandise (see Godwin 2017, para: 3.4; Godwin 2018). It is extremely common to see visitors to the Hogsmeade and Diagon Alley sections of the Universal Parks in attire that identifies them as belonging to a specific house. Alternatively, fans who wish to identify with the more villainous characters can display their allegiances via clothing and accessories that display the dark mark of Voldemort and

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the Death Eaters. Here, as in the Disney parks, such behaviour demonstrates how ‘Rather than simply connecting to one’s individual fandom, visiting became a way of performing it publicly and connecting to others who felt the same way’ (Waysdorf and Reijnders 2018, p. 184). In his discussion of sports fandom, Guschwan proposes the ‘term brandom to describe the pseudo-fan culture engineered by brand managers eager to cultivate consumer labor and loyalty while preempting the possibility of resistance that participatory fan culture promises’ (2012, p. 26). The intersections between fandom and branding are not new; writing in 2001 Muniz and O’Guinn describe ‘brand communities’ (2001) as ‘spaces where brand loyalists can celebrate, critique and share their passion for particular consumer goods’ (Guschwan 2012, p. 20). As Hutchins and Tindall note in their work on the intersections between public relations, fandom, and participatory culture, such sites and spaces offer opportunities for interaction with ‘brandfans’, who, they argue, exhibit the same devotion to brands and non-media/entertainment organisations like corporate, government, and healthcare. Fans of brands and organizations also construct identity, values, and beliefs around the products and services (‘the text’) they love. They experience an emotional connection to each other as well as the org/producer, and they expect authentic, human connection and feel a sense of ownership in the brand, organization, or product. (2016, p. 6)

The participatory culture that circulates around the Disney and Universal theme parks clearly constitute examples of such brand communities where fans can exchange information and knowledge or offer often vitriolic criticism of the parks when disappointed (as discussed in Chapter Eight). There are, however, clear questions to be asked about the levels of ‘work’ that those involved in theme park fandom are engaged in. Brand communities often function as ‘sites of actual and potential unpaid branding labor’ (Guschwan 2012, p. 20) and the complexities of the relationship between audiences and fans and media industries within the digital age have been highlighted within Fan Studies (see Stanfill and Condis 2014 for an overview) and media studies more widely (Terranova 2000; Banks and Deuze 2009; Baym and Burnett 2009; Milner 2009; Ritzer and Jurgenson 2010; Morris 2014; Scott 2015). There are clear inequalities in the relationship between powerful multi-conglomerates such as Disney and Universal and the usually un-paid ‘brand fans’ (Hutchins and Tindall 2016, p. 6) who are labouring on their behalf.

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For instance, the work of creating websites and blogs dedicated to theme parks can be viewed as a form of prosumption which involves both production and consumption rather than focusing on either one (production) or the other (consumption). While prosumption has always been preeminent, a series of recent social changes, especially those associated with the internet and Web 2.0 (briefly, the user-generated web, e.g. Facebook, YouTube, Twitter), have given it even greater centrality. (Ritzer and Jurgenson 2010, p. 14)

As Ritzer and Jurgenson (2010, p. 14) note, ‘in prosumer capitalism control and exploitation take on a different character than in the other forms of capitalism, there is a trend toward unpaid rather than paid labor and toward offering products at no cost’. This has been viewed as a potential threat to the job security and ‘the expertise, employment, and identities of established media and knowledge professions’ (Banks and Deuze 2009, p. 422) but also as a form of free labour where ‘knowledgeable consumption of culture is translated into productive activities that are pleasurably embraced and at the same time shamelessly exploited’ (Terranova 2000, p. 37). This tension between exploitation and pleasure can be seen in the discussion of theme park fandom below, as fans continue to take part in information exchange and discussion despite knowledge of their engagement with large corporations and the mechanics of online platforms. The connection between labour and theme park fandom is perhaps unsurprising given the emphasis on ‘work’ within the Disney Parks in particular within much prior research (Johnson 1981; The Project on Disney 1995; Lukas 2007c). However, as this chapter demonstrates, there is value to be gained for fans who participate in such knowledge communities outside of more traditional modes of payment since free labour is often undertaken and reward often ‘willingly conceded in exchange for the pleasures of communication and exchange’ (Terranova 2000, p. 48). As the next section argues, much of this free labour is performed via the introduction of integrated digital and technological systems that demand high levels of planning and engagement from the theme park guest.

MyMagic+: Technology, Control and Interactivity Disney began developing its MyMagic+ systems in 2008 (Carr 2015), a form of technology that would come to function as an all-purpose form of haptic media. As noted above, this system consists of the integrated mobile phone

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app My Disney Experience (MDE) (which can also be logged into and accessed via the WDW website) and the MagicBand. These coloured rubber wristbands contain a sophisticated RFID [radio frequency identification technology] tag. These bands, which are individually coded to each visitor, allow Disney to track individuals wherever they go in the parks and resorts with longrange RFID readers. You check into FASTPASS rides with your band, you purchase food by swiping your band and you use it as a key to your hotel room. (Foreman 2014)

MyMagic+ bands are given for free to on-site resort guests although those staying in non-Disney properties can purchase MagicBands for a cost of approximately $13 and link them to their theme park tickets and the MDE app. All guests can also buy limited edition MagicBands which are often released to commemorate specific occasions (e.g. Christmas, Halloween, Valentine’s Day), film releases (e.g. Star Wars: The Last Jedi), or certain attractions (e.g. the Haunted Mansion or Space Mountain). Decorative accessories for the Bands are also available such as Band-Its, small earring-like studs featuring Disney characters or icons that can be clipped through the holes in the MagicBand. Again, Disney offers the opportunity for the guest to choose their favourite elements to focus on, highlighting how such choices and displays of preferences within the Disney brand can act as a tool for negotiating identity construction. One of the key advantages of the physical object of the MagicBand is that it allows the tracking of users’ movement around the parks. From the viewpoint of theme park designers, managers, and marketers, how people move throughout the spaces is largely linked to practical issues of traffic flow, maximizing the potential for sales of merchandise or food and drink, and safety (Birenboim et al 2013). The spaces of theme parks are highly controlled with a clear demarcation between the backstage and frontstage areas (Johnson 1981; King 1981; Foglesong 2001; Pike 2005; Bartkowiak 2012) via a form of ‘Soft control [that] is consistent with the images of freedom, choice and an absence of the ordinary for the consumers that theme parks promote’ (Wright 2006, p. 307). For example, as Nigro notes, when driving around the WDW property, The pretty landscaped roads with good signage welcomes guests, but a wrong turn onto service roads and there’s a subtle shift – plain vegetation, no signs, turnaround areas. You get the idea you’re not supposed to be

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here, but in keeping with the friendly atmosphere there are no signs that shout ‘Keep Out’. (1997, p. 95)

For both Disney and Universal, keeping crowds moving is crucial. Both companies have also worked on various options to address one of the key drawbacks to visiting theme parks – the time that guests spend queuing to ride attractions. Disney worked hard in its first years to alleviate potential frustrations, pioneering the concept of ‘Switchback queues […] metal chains looped to and fro to form orderly, maze-like rows’ which ‘excelled at efficiency, space conservation, and psychologically disguising line length’ (Nelson 2016, p. 49). Both Disney and Universal employ these forms of queue along with the technique of making guests wait in several shorter queues rather than one obviously larger one (King 1981, p. 123). This form of queuing also offers opportunities for immersion into the ride world and narrative for the waiting guest. For example, the Men in Black: Alien Attack ride at Universal Studios initially makes guests line up outside the attraction itself in a space that can accommodate shorter or longer lines as necessary. Guests then move into the ride building itself where the conceit of the attraction – that they are visiting the 1964 World’s Fair as seen in the original 1996 Men in Black movie – is explained. This component usually involves a short video which is interrupted by a Men in Black employee; depending on the time of day and number of riders in the attraction, this section sometimes includes prolonged comedic interaction with your Expo ‘tour guide’ who then ushers guests into an elevator which takes you to the secret MIB headquarters. Upon exiting the elevator (which actually remains on the same level as the ride entrance) guests then queue through an elaborate mock-up of the MIB spaces featuring aliens from the films and screens that inform riders about how to participate in the ride. Guests finally queue down a flight of stairs before being loaded onto the ride vehicles, which are interrupted during MIB training to allow them to shoot at alien invaders in New York with blasters. At the end of the ride, actor Will Smith appears in character as J, lets each rider know their score, and then ‘wipes their memories’ in order to keep the existence of alien life secret. This move through the familiar spaces of the Men in Black movie world works as ‘scene transitions’ which function to ‘temporarily hold waiting patrons and to manipulate traffic flow into an attraction’ (Nelson 2016, p. 47). Different elements of the queue function to ‘entertain’ those waiting; they are introduced to the premise of the attraction, able to view recognizable iconography and characters, and informed about how to play the game that the ride is built around successfully. Such a series of scenes

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and holding areas in queues is common across attractions, functioning not only to manage the lines themselves but in many cases, also beginning to immerse the rider in the imaginative world of the attraction (see Chapters Four and Five). Despite the potential for pleasurable immersion that queuing can offer some guests, efforts continue to limit the time spent in lines or to eradicate them entirely. For example, Ledbetter et al (2013, pp. 23–24) propose key ways to reduce impatience in theme park queues. The queue should offer some form of engagement (e.g. playing of games), maintain guest’s interest in the attraction, support positive affect (e.g. lighting and sound design), be comfortable (e.g. air-conditioned if indoors), seem equitable and fair, allow interpersonal interaction, inform guests of the wait times, and engender a sense of forward motion towards the attraction. Seeking to move toward eradication of the lines, Disney introduced paper ‘Fast Passes’ in California’s Disneyland in 1999, a tool that was subsequently rolled out in WDW Parks and the resorts in Paris, Tokyo and Hong Kong. A precursor to one of the primary functions of MyMagic+, this virtual queuing system reserved a limited number of tickets for hour long time slots, as they had in Queue-less. The tickets dispersed at FP kiosks near the attraction. At the designated time and upon receipt of the ticket, cast members would direct guests to a separate FastPass line, shorter than the stand-by. (Nelson 2016, p. 56)

The system was a huge success and ‘In the first five years of operation, FastPass reduced wait times for attractions by 40%’ (Nelson 2016, p. 56). The concept of the virtual queueing system has also been employed by Universal in its waterpark Volcano Bay, as discussed below. However, whilst Disney’s FastPass system is free, Universal also offers the opportunity for guests to pay a premium in order to queue jump via its Universal Express Pass. Free to guests staying at selected onsite hotels and available for a cost between $55 and $85 depending on the park (guests can buy a singlepark or two-park pass), time of year and the demand, the Pass effectively allows visitors to bypass normal lines and cut straight to the loading area of most attractions. Thus, whilst those with a Disney FastPass may still find themselves waiting in line for 10–15 minutes before riding, the Express Pass enables guests to walk directly onto a ride. Such innovations are not without their issues, however since they appear to violate one of the key rules of the queue – that it should appear equitable. The use of FastPass

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and Express Pass threatens to undermine the parity represented by the first-come, first-served style of waiting since guests may view these faster, secondary lines as inequitable. This experience becomes problematic because those in the regular queue are not moving as quickly as those in the faster, secondary queue. Inequitable queues thus create social injustice, which builds impatience and, more important, draws attention to the wait itself. (Ledbetter et al 2013, p. 25)

As discussed, both Disney and Universal have worked to try to combat the issue of long queues. In addition to this problem, in the mid-2000s Disney faced concerns regarding its theme parks: According to multiple sources, certain key metrics, including guests’ ‘intent to return,’ were dropping; around half of f irst-time attendees signaled they likely would not come back because of long lines, high ticket costs, and other park pain points. Simultaneously, the stunningly fast adoption of social media and smartphones threatened the relevance of the parks. (Carr 2015)

These combined factors led directly to the development of the MyMagic+ system. The benefits to the theme parks are clear; guests can be tracked around the parks to offer in-built market research about the most popular attractions, staff can be deployed to attractions that are about to experience an increase in guest traffic, correlations between demographics and choices made within the parks can be monitored: ‘The whole system gave Disney a way of understanding the business,’ says [Nick] Franklin [Former executive vice president of next-generation experience]. ‘Knowing we need more food here, how people are flowing through the park, how people are consuming the experiential product’. (Kuang 2015)

More broadly, however, this type of tacitly guest-endorsed surveillance offers Disney free market research and insight into the value of its creative capital. The enthusiasm of patrons for certain physical attractions can signal which movie franchises are rising or falling in popularity. That could inform whether the Avengers

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can sustain more sequels, help promote the upcoming Disney+ streaming service or are in need of a refresh. (Carr 2019).

The take-up of the MagicBands has been viewed as a success, and they are used by approximately 50% of guests to WDW (Huddleston et al 2016, p. 230) and, according to Disney, ‘enabled it to slash turnstile transaction times by 30% while increasing park capacity’ (Carr 2019). Nevertheless, from an audience and Fan Studies perspective, what does the MyMagic+ app and the MagicBand offer to the theme park fan? What opportunities are presented by this emphasis on the monitoring and tracking of the self? Moreover, what can this begin to tell us about the possibilities of ‘haptic fandom’, where ‘somatic sensations and tactile experiences’ (Paterson 2007, p. 14) become foregrounded?

Smart Bands and MyMagic+ As this section discusses, contemporary theme parks have much in common with developments in haptic media and technologies that emphasize the measurement and ‘quantifying of the self’ (Lupton 2016). Thus whilst forms of participatory media such as blogs and advice shared via social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook can inform one’s planning of a trip to a theme park, once one is inside the gates of Disney World it is primarily Disney’s own technologies that come to the fore. Whilst fans can still communicate with one another during their visit, I want here to consider the impact of Disney’s MyMagic+ on the experience of being at the theme park, before discussing how its rival Universal is also beginning to utilize similar systems via the introduction of its Tapu Tapu virtual line technology at its waterpark Volcano Bay. Disney’s decision to develop a resort-specific app was not entirely without precedent. The possibilities of digital technologies such as GPS for tracking and analysing ‘the spatial and temporal behaviour of tourists’ (Shoval and Isaacson 2007, p. 155) have been long discussed within the tourist industries and it is widely acknowledged that ‘smartphones and their apps have the potential to assist travelers by providing easy access to information anytime and (almost) anywhere’ (Wang et al 2012, p. 371). In some cases QR scanners have been introduced to ‘allow the operator of the attraction to post information about specific items, exhibits or locations directly to those locations which the tourist can then access via the smartphone by scanning the QR code’ (Dickinson et al 2014, p. 91) and to link to a webpage

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‘which allows graphic-rich media, including videos, to be played directly on the smartphone. This enables the tourist to engage with a specific place or object in its own space, allowing it to effectively tell its ‘story’ via the smartphone and QR code link’ (Dickinson et al 2014, p. 91). Other specific tourist sites such as properties owned by the National Trust in the UK have also been developing apps for some time. As Dickinson et al note, the small British attraction Flamingo Land had an app which ‘reveals the proximity of its attractions and facilities to users, providing essential details such as animal-feeding times’ (2014, p. 92) whilst trials have been held within some theme parks to test how sending incentives to guests via mobile phone apps can work to ‘push’ them towards less-crowded attractions or restaurants (Brown et al 2013, p. 6). Disney’s MyMagic+ app offers a much broader spectrum of possibilities including interactive park maps, the length of queue times for rides, and information on park hours and parade times. It also allows the guest to access their hotel reservations and dining bookings, to pre-order food to be served on arrival at selected restaurants and cafes, and to book FastPass+ times for selected rides and attractions. It is the latter opportunity that has the greatest impact upon how people need to plan their visits to WDW; each guest is permitted to make three FastPass+ bookings per day and, once all three have been used, to book further rides via their smartphone app or kiosks within the parks. These extra rides can only be reserved one-at-a-time but, if the visitor is lucky or possesses the right knowledge to successfully work the system, guests can spend very little time waiting in so-called ‘standby’ lines for attractions. However, guests do not have unlimited choice and are not entirely free to choose whatever time to visit an attraction; the app offers possible available times that they must then choose from (Huddleston et al 2016, p. 226). Equally, some of the WDW parks operate a tier system that only allows guests to choose limited FastPasses from each tier. For example, in Animal Kingdom’s newest land based on James Cameron’s film Avatar, which opened in 2017, guests are only permitted to select one of its two new attractions for a FastPass+. Their other two original choices must come from the remainder of the rides and shows in the park. Guests staying on-site in WDW hotels are able to begin selecting their FastPass+ choices 90 days before they arrive in the resort and it is not uncommon for popular rides to ‘sell out’ of their availability very quickly. For example, the two Avatar attractions in Animal Kingdom frequently have no FastPass+ timeslots, whilst the popular attraction based on Frozen in EPCOT is notoriously difficult to attain passes for at peak times of the holiday

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season. This of course leads to hierarchies regarding which attractions are seen as the ‘best’, hierarchies often built on the fact that they are new or based around a popular text like Frozen. Once guests arrive in a park, they can wait in stand-by lines for any attraction they wish but when their timeslot for a FastPass arrives, can go to the chosen attraction and bypass these larger lines. Access is granted by touching one’s MagicBand against a sensor with a Mickey Mouse head icon. This electronically checks that you have a booking and, if the system is working as designed, allows entry to the ride or show. The linkage between the My Disney Experience mobile app and the physical MagicBand is crucial to ensuring that the system functions correctly. However, the fact that the system has a physical wearable component is also important, especially when we consider the experience of the visitor or fan. This is also the case in Universal Orlando Resort which, unlike WDW, has no such widespread virtual and physical system. It has, however, pioneered its own wearable technology and a system of virtual queuing in its waterpark Volcano Bay. These wearable devices, called Tapu Tapu (a portmanteau for the Lapu concept of something special or holy within Polynesian culture and the physical act of tapping the device) allow guests to reserve a space in a queue line, charge food and drink to a credit card associated with the device, and activate interactive special effects around the park. Unlike Disney’s MagicBand, the Tapu Tapu queue system involves tapping to enter a virtual line, being able to use other facilities in the park, then returning to the selected ride when the band beeps to alert you. Since the system is currently limited only to UOR’s Volcano Bay park, guests are given the Tapu Tapu band when they enter and must return these when they leave the park at the end of the day. Such developments suggest that UOR is interested in pioneering a system similar to MyMagic+, although this has yet to be rolled out across their parks beyond Volcano Bay.

Haptic Fandom The efforts by both Disney and Universal theme parks to introduce this type of technology speaks to the increasingly everyday nature of forms of wearable tech and tracking apps which offer haptic experiences. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, fandom is often inextricably linked to physical and bodily sensations of touch and sensory experience yet the possibilities of considering what I am terming ‘haptic fandom’ have not yet been taken up

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in any depth. Matt Hills (2017, p. 217), drawing on Kurt Lancaster’s (2001) work, argues that events such as conventions offer fans a smorgasbord of storyworld options and fetishized diegetic objects – a transmedia experience that could be touched and photographed as well as purchased, thus furnishing fans with a sense of ‘haptic-panoptic control over images (and perhaps feelings) that formerly sped past them during […] viewing.’ [Lancaster 2001, p. 102]. (Hills 2017, p. 217)

Also drawing on Lancaster’s (2001) concept of the ‘interface’, Victoria Godwin argues that ‘Theme parks function as storytelling devices – material interfaces simultaneously engaging multiple senses to immerse visitors in a variety of story worlds’ (2017, para: 1.10) and that ‘Material interfaces allow haptic dominance and the discovery of minutiae that could pass unnoticed or unrecorded onscreen’ (2017, para: 3.6, emphasis added). Both writers consider the importance of the interaction between the body and the storyworld, allowing fans to touch and hold items and exert a sense of control over how they engage with this transmedia world. However, I would argue that the development of technology such as Disney’s MyMagic+ pushes these opportunities even further, offering an even more sustained experience for fans which is both organizational (since the band allows the collection and use of data for planning) and experiential (since it allows guests to interact with specific attractions). The concept of what I am terming ‘haptic fandom’ (see also Williams 2019) offers a way to begin to better understand the links between fandom, touch and associated senses, and experience within important fannish spaces and places. As Mark Paterson explains, Haptic, from the Greek word haptesthai, means ‘Of, pertaining to, or relating to the sense of touch or tactile sensations’ (OED 1989, 2nd ed.) […] a more contemporary psychology would treat those somatic senses of proprioception, kinaesthasthesia and the vestibular sense as working synergistically, as the inwardly-oriented sensations necessary for feelings of embodiment. ‘Haptic’ could therefore effectively encompass these somatic senses of touch. (2007, p. 4)

However, defining the concept clearly is difficult owing to the complexity of its origins across different disciplines (Paterson 2017) and the fact that ‘the category of the ‘haptic’ is sometimes invoked as a default or fall-back position in order to contest the usual emphasis on visual technologies’ (Paterson

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2017, pp. 1542–3). Despite this, however, studies have used the concept of the haptic to consider new forms of technology such as touch-screens, fitness tracking devices such as Fitbits (Gilmore 2016), and smartwatches which offer a form of ‘haptic instant […] when the smartwatch notifies the human body through some kind of touch’ (Gilmore 2017, p. 3). Disney’s MagicBand and, to a lesser extent, UOR’s Tapu Tapu arguably offer similar functions; whilst not explicitly allowing the wearer to, for example, track the number of miles they have walked around a theme park, they operate as a clear example of wearable tech. Inspired largely by the Nike SportBand, that ‘synced with a heart rate monitor and a pedometer in your shoe and fed data to a wrist-mounted display’ (Kuang 2015), the MagicBand does work in the same way as other forms of wearable technology in terms of how it collects data. As Gilmore notes, Although smartwatches may be valuable ways to push information to wearers throughout the day, it may ultimately be the devices’ ability to gather information through its sensors […] that make it a technology capable of tethering wearers to corporate ideologies desiring greater information on the habits of consumers and workers alike […] The smartwatch, for all its capacities to help the wearer navigate potential information overload, is also a device that draws the wearer into larger structures of corporate tracking. (2017, p. 10)

Disney’s deployment of the MagicBands and associated technology, then, must be viewed in relation to broader debates over our control of our own data and what uses corporations make of the information they collect from us and about us (see Dickinson et al 2014, p. 98; Andrejevic and Burdon 2015). It is unsurprising that critics have argued that ‘MyMagic+ operates as both a regulatory device and a mechanism of surveillance to construct theme park experiences in a particular way that both appeals to the desires of consumers and serves Disney’s corporate interests’ (Huddleston et al 2016, p. 221). As Ian Bogost (2014) points out, the ‘MagicBand lays bare the process by which we produce data – not all on our lonesome, but as the result of implicit and explicit pacts with organizations, most often corporations’. On a visit to Walt Disney World in 2018, I was astonished to find that one attraction, the Magic Kingdom’s It’s A Small World, was flashing personalized goodbye messages to guests on a screen before they disembarked the ride; the name of each guest was clearly available remotely via the RFID chips in their MagicBands and used to create this ‘magic moment’ through via the systems of monitoring and data-collection that the MyMagic+ system allows. This was a clear

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example of how the long-range readers in the MagicBands are ‘used “to deliver personalized experiences […] as well as provide information that helps [Disney] improve the overall experience in [the] parks”’ (Bogost 2014). However, the use of the MyMagic+ system, like the creation and maintenance of unoff icial sites that swirl around theme park fandom, also requires forms of ‘immaterial labor’ (Arvidsson 2005). Given the enormous amount of time and planning required to take full advantage of the system, MyMagic+ functions as an example of Ritzer and Jurgenson’s (2010) concept of ‘prosumption’ but one in which ‘the primary forms of currency are not only money, but personal information and productive labor […] [which are] normalized through the promise of pleasurable predictability’ (Huddleston et al 2016, p. 228). Despite such concerns, however, many Disney fans have embraced the opportunities that the MagicBand offers (Foreman 2014) in terms of organization and planning of their trips (see below). More broadly, the physicality of the MagicBand and Tapu Tapu highlight how visiting theme park spaces necessarily intersects with sensations of touch and bodily experience. Unlike many other sites of fandom, experiencing theme park attractions often involves a mix of ‘kinetic, visual, aural, tactile and electronic experience’ (Davis 1996, p. 406) which include a combination of touch, sight, sound, and smell. For example, Disney World’s EPCOT Park features an attraction called Soarin’ which straps guests into seats for an immersive experience of ‘flying’ over the state of California. In addition to the visuals offered on a huge screen, the guest ‘feels’ the sensation of the wind in their face as they soar as well as the smells of pine trees and orange groves throughout the journey. In Universal Studios’ The Mummy ride, too, physical and olfactory sensations are created including feeling the heat and smell of fire and the cold spray of water. Theme park attractions therefore reflect the broader ‘polysensual nature of tourism’ (Dann and Jacobsen 2003, p. 4). Occupying the physical spaces of other fan objects can also clearly involve such bodily sensations, as fans undertake forms of pilgrimage and visitation to important sites. However, the theme park’s focus on ‘kinetic experience’ (Harley 2000), and fans’ positive and often emotional responses to this, offer a different mode of fannish space, one which by its very design seeks to appeal to the senses and to solicit an impact on the bodies of those who visit. The contemporary theme park engages the visitor in a range of tactile and haptic experiences; for example, many rides draw on the conventions of games, both physical and virtual, asking riders to shoot at infrared targets as they move throughout a track (e.g. WDWs Magic Kingdom’s Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger Spin, Universal Studios’ Men In Black: Alien Attack) or at

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on-screen targets (as in WDW’s Hollywood Studios’ Toy Story Midway Mania). The tactility of attractions can also be seen in touch-screen games provided in queue lines in the Magic Kingdom; the Seven Dwarves Mine Train ride offers a series of electronic screens where waiting guests can play match coloured jewels to the appropriate coloured slot, or in the line for the Haunted Mansion which provides an assortment of interactive ‘tombstones’ such as a haunted organ which plays notes when touched. The theme park guest is encouraged to touch, to feel, when guided to, highlighting the specific modes of sensory immersion that theme park fandom can involve. There are, of course, limits to these haptic invitations however and physical interaction is carefully policed. One of the most common refrains that the theme park guest will hear is the warning on most attractions to ‘keep your arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times’. Whilst, then, the Disney MagicBand does not offer the ‘haptic instant’ (Gilmore 2017) of the smartwatch and is not (yet) able to physically alert the wearer that it is time to head for their lunch reservation or to their next Fast Pass+ location (although the My Disney Experience app will send push notifications to a guests’ phone for other reasons), they are, by dint of their ‘Sensors and chips […] “smart,” allowing them to gather data and perform computational tasks’ (Gilmore 2017, p. 3). Disney’s efforts to integrate detailed planning of guests’ trips via the MyMagic+ app with the worn physical object of the MagicBand reflects the ‘the emergence of haptic technologies’ (Richardson and Hjorth 2018, p. 4) and the potential for more immersive and personalized experiences. Indeed, despite no current plans to roll the scheme out across its other global parks, Disney’s commitment to the project is clear. As advances move on, there are even more ways in which theme parks seek to tailor visits to guests; ‘wristbands, like Disney’s MagicBands, and smart applications will make the parks interactive, tailoring experiences to each consumer by storing and sharing relevant data, according to the [MBLM Brand Intimacy 2017] report’ (Gazdik 2017). For example, visitors to Disney’s new Star Wars themed lands in WDW and Disneyland, Galaxy’s Edge, will be able to experience a uniquely tailored immersive experience based on data collected about their performance on certain rides and their interactions with specific characters (see Williams 2019).

Fandom, Plandom and ‘Anticipatory Labour’ As has been made clear from this discussion, the MyMagic+ system encourages Disney guests to be organized, to plan ahead, and to ‘perform the

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labor it takes to plan their ‘perfect’ vacation’ (Huddleston et al 2016, p. 228). However, whilst the unpaid work that Disney guests and fans undertake is worthy of scrutiny, there are also clear pleasures in planning one’s visits to Orlando, a phenomenon that pre-dates Disney’s MyMagic+ system. Having discussed the Parks’ own efforts to influence and structure this planning above, I now consider the impact of the unofficial and semi-sanctioned sources that circulate within the participatory culture that surrounds the Orlando parks. There are an almost countless number of blogs and websites available to help the visitor to the Orlando theme parks plan their trip. The majority of these blogs also have a presence on social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, straddling various platforms in order to disseminate information and interact with guests and other theme park fans. Whilst many of those using such resources are in the pre-visit stage of planning and anticipating their visits, others who share their photos, videos and hints and tips have already been to the parks, highlighting how ‘shared images help tourists at the post visit stage in the recollection process and the remembrance of past experiences’ (Tussyadiah and Fesenmaier 2009, p. 26). Whilst many of these resources are in the English language, there are also international examples; [in Brazilian blogs] subjects express the impetus to help others […] (‘to arrive there’, […]) in a way that appears not only pedagogical, in the traditional sense of the word, but also declarative of an operating cultural curriculum materialized by the ways subjects talk about Disney. Tips on financial planning, the dissection of the ins and outs of Disney parks, as well as opinions about the nature of the Disney experience as a dream of consumption suggest not only the Disney trip as a form of social practice within the Brazilian context, but also as a type of acquired language. (Barros 2016, p. 107)

As Barros makes clear, there is a pedagogical element to many of these blogs, as they work to ‘teach’ other visitors, especially first-time visitors, how to ‘properly’ plan for and prepare for the trip. Within many fandoms ignorance is to be avoided with fans across media objects keen to avoid the stigma of being a ‘know-nothing dilettante’ (Kermode 1997, p. 58) who lacks subcultural, and therefore symbolic, capital. The Brazilian blogs discussed by Barros, and the plethora of English-language resources available online, often assume the pedagogic mantle of a ‘sage advisor’ (Hoxter 2000, p. 175) with those who contribute to them cast in the role of an educator.

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There are widely considered to be three main phases of travel and tourism: (1) the anticipatory phase; (2) the experiential phase; and (3) the reflective phase (see Craig-Smith and French 1994) and ‘tourism experience has been approached from the chronological perspective and is seen as a multiphase phenomenon: pretrip planning, en-route phase (travel to the destination and return travel) and destination on-site phase’ (Prebensen et al 2012, p. 618). At first glance, the detailed way in which visitors and fans meticulously plot out their schedule clearly fits into the ‘anticipatory phase’ or the mode of ‘pretrip planning’. However, many people are repeat theme park visitors or fans whose use of the online participatory culture forms just one part of the ongoing experience of their trips. The Parks themselves are keen to encourage repeat business since, like any durable goods industry, must obtain an increasing share of business from repeat customers […] Attracting this business requires potential guests to be convinced that previous visits are inferior substitutes for vacation experiences at the new and improved parks. For this strategy to be effective, new and more exciting rides, attractions, and entire parks must be designed and constructed. (Braun and Soskin 1999, p. 440; see also Van Maanen 1992; Braun and Milman 1994)

The link between new rides, attractions and parks and repeat visits is discussed at greater length in Chapter Eight but it is worth noting here that the undertaking of repeated visits to theme parks is common amongst local residents in Florida, the USA more broadly, and internationally. For example, as Ady Milman notes, ‘Local residents’ annual theme park visits […] ranged between 1 and 50 times with an average of 5.4 visits’ (1991, p. 13) and ‘Almost one-quarter of the residents sampled (24.1%) had season passes for the local theme park’ (1991, p. 13). Local guests also had very different requirements of the parks than tourists, attaching ‘higher importance to the ‘price of admission’ and ‘line management for rides and attractions’ than tourists did’ whilst tourists attached a higher level of importance than local residents to theme park attributes associated with creativity and escapism (‘level of theming of the park’s attractions and rides’ and ‘opportunity to escape from everyday life’), entertainment (‘availability of parades’, ‘availability of street performers’ and ‘availability of fireworks’), family market appeal (‘rides or activities that appeal to families’ and ‘rides or activities that appeal mainly to children’), shopping (‘number of shopping facilities’,

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‘variety of shopping options’ and ‘variety of merchandise’), and ‘cleanliness of the park or the attraction’. (Milman 2009, p. 380)

Many of these local repeat visitors are annual pass holders (APH) who also have very different modes of engagement to tourists: Annual pass holders are less likely to park-hop (visit more than one park in the same day), less likely to carry bulky items such as backpacks into the parks, or stand in longer lines for specif ic attractions. They are, in contrast to tourists in the parks, more likely to visit parks to specif ically eat at certain restaurants, visit special events at the parks, and are considerably more likely to drink alcohol as part of their visit (see Torres and Orlowski 2017, p. 166). APH are likely to be fans of the Disney and/or Universal resorts in Florida, often frequenting them on a weekly basis. This group also forms the basis of many of the unoff icial blogs and social media accounts that both casual tourists and more dedicated fans draw on when planning their trips. Whilst they are less likely to use resources to plan long holidays (in the way that, for example, guests from the UK may plan out a fortnight’s trip), they rely on social media to form connections with one another (which often result in off-line meet-ups and social events), to post news or gossip about WDW and UOR, and to provide updates on often micro-details about the Parks (e.g. new painting of buildings, new food and drink, or refurbishments of public bathrooms). There is social and symbolic capital to be gained from being the first blogger to report changes to the parks, or updates and news; whilst this is usually good-natured there can be competition between different bloggers and social media influencers online as they engage in forms of ‘info-war’ across digital platforms (Hills 2015) and occasionally come into conflict with one another and with the efforts of the Parks to keep certain developments and information secret. Fans that make repeat visits to the theme parks complicate the notion that tourism and travel are composed of linear phases and that visitors move from one stage to the other in a straightforward way. In their study of fans who repeatedly travel to watch music gigs, Erdely and Breede discuss the ‘reciprocal and repetitive process that occurs as travellers take home and begin to perform transformed identities, then return again to the site of musical tourism (always shifting) to perform, re-form and re-perform multiple identities’ (2017, p. 46). This cycle of travel and return can also be seen in theme park fandom, both in fans’ own identities and self-narratives but also in the impact on their planning for future trips. For repeat theme parks guests and fans, the repeated and often quasi-continual process of

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planning, being there, and reflecting on a trip forms a cyclical experience of feeding backwards and forwards into one’s own preparation for the next trip and also by sharing knowledge with others. To help fans participate in this process, there are blogs more focused on reporting news and gossip about the parks and, as discussed later in the book, more specific sites dedicated to niche interests such as food or fashion. This discussion highlights just three planning resources; Undercover Tourist, TouringPlans.com, and Theme Park Insider. There are numerous other online sites, some of which will be discussed in other chapters, which also offer the chance to learn hints and tips about how to get the best from your trip to the theme parks, and to chat with other guests via message boards and forums. However, these sites are the most popular according to a Google search for ‘theme park planning’ and all three have a presence online across other platforms including Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Each of these three resources charges different levels of payment and requires levels of involvement from the theme park visitor. Operating since 2000, Undercover Tourist is primarily a site that sells tickets for the main theme parks in Florida (and Los Angeles and San Diego) at discounted rates as well as selling car rentals via its trusted partners which include Disney and Universal. In addition, its main website offers a plethora of planning tools for the theme park visitor including a detailed map of crowd levels across the parks which is designed to help guests avoid the busiest days, downloadable plans to help maximize the time spent in the parks, a downloadable packing list, a timeline informing guests when they should begin to plan certain aspects of their trip (e.g. when to begin making dining reservations and planning what to do each day) and a free Orlando planning app for smartphones. The site also has a presence on platforms including a blog, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram where interaction with guests often takes place. The extensive planning materials available on the site are free to access but the emphasis here is on information being centrally collated and presented by the website. As the site itself acknowledges, this can seem overwhelming. In contrast, Touring Plans operates a paid model of subscription and charges $14.95 for a year of access to information and plans. Like Undercover Tourist it also offers calendars for crowd levels, information on the rides and attractions, and deals for ticket prices. However, its key selling point is its custom-made touring plans which detail exactly what visitors should do across the day. Claiming to save ‘up to four hours per day’ (Touring Plans, online), the plans are personalizable and accessed via guests’ mobile phones in the parks:

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To get you started, we’ve created more than 150 touring plan templates covering Disney theme parks and water parks, for every kind of family. Every plan can be customized with: – Breakfast, lunch, and dinner reservations – Mid-day breaks for naps and rest – Fastpass+ ride reservations – Character autographs and photos – and more Not sure how to use Disney’s new FastPass+ ride reservation system? Our software will scan your custom touring plan and tell you exactly where to use FastPass+ to save the most time in line. When you’re in the parks, you can follow your touring plan on your mobile phone. We’ll even update your plan during the day if crowd conditions change. It’s like having a GPS for Walt Disney World! (Touring Plans 2018)

The site also provides meticulously taken photographs from every hotel room window on the WDW Resort to enable guests to not only choose their desired hotel, but to request the specific room they want to stay in. Here, however, these planning tools are only available behind the paywall of subscription. This site also has a presence across platforms Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and its blog where it reports on developments at the theme parks and offers opportunities for questions and comments as well as leaving reviews of the paid service for the touring plans themselves. Both Touring Plans and Undercover Tourist offer opportunities to book tickets or hotels and car hire but Theme Park Insider (TPI) operates as a more unofficial blog and site for planning. Offering more basic information on the importance of choosing your hotel carefully and advising on the best places to try to buy discounted park tickets, TPI also offers information on the parks themselves and a range of hotel reviews. In contrast to the two other resources, however, TPI hosts a blog where guests can post their own thoughts and reviews or ask questions about their upcoming visits. Again, this interaction is also spread across other platforms with a presence on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram. Whilst across all three sites, people can ask questions or offer their own information via social media or forums, the onus here is on the labour and work that the theme park visitor must engage in to plan their own trip. Discussing Disney’s official planning tools, Huddleston et al comment on how In using these services before, during, and after their trip, visitors are encouraged to construct scripted excursions in which all moments are

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carefully planned to insure a ‘magical’ experience. Thus, all the ‘fun’ of a trip to Walt Disney World is not guaranteed with park admission but must be carefully planned for and achieved by visitors within the limits imposed by the use of customized customer services. In other words, Walt Disney World offers its guests controlled leisure as a means to guarantee, though the guest’s own diligence, research, and organization, the experience of a lifetime. (2016, p. 220)

This ‘free labor for the brand’ (Huddleston et al 2016, p. 221) can also be extended to include the planning that can be undertaken on non-official sites and also in planning a trip to Universal Orlando Resort, touring plans and information for which are available on each of the three sites outlined here. However, theme park visitors/fans in Orlando are not the only people who may plan their holidays in such depth and many types of tourist may ‘start planning their vacation months before the journey starts and make larger efforts in order to organize the vacation before traveling’ (Prebensen et al 2012, p. 620). For example, writing about visitor experiences at the British theme park Alton Towers, Durrant et al note that some studies have ‘fore grounded ‘the work of tourism’, including the coordinational activities involved in planning a visit – referred to as ‘pre-visiting’ – and how visitors collaborate around electronic guidebooks and maps and negotiate their visiting activities’ (2012, p. 46). They argue that ‘theme park visitors’ work with the park in the course of their social visiting and activities (2012, p. 46). Place-based knowledge exchange also occurs outside of theme park fandom; as Melanie Kohnen notes in her study of fans attending San Diego Comic Con, ‘a circuit of knowledge production has evolved around the convention: one where fans pass on information about mastering SDCC based on their memories of previous conventions’ 2019, p. 2) and share hints and tips on how to best negotiate the event. But not all theme park fans consider their planning or their participatory activities as work, nor do they necessarily consider themselves exploited by large companies such as Universal or Disney. As Morris notes, terms such as ‘work’ or ‘labor’ are often ‘misleading […] They reduce the complex meanings behind why people contribute, participate, and expend time and effort in projects that are not entirely rewarding in the classical economic sense (i.e. profit, compensation, etc.)’ (2014, p. 281). Some forms of unpaid work have been discussed as ‘hope labor’, defined as ‘un- or under-compensated work carried out in the present, often for experience or exposure, in the hope that future employment opportunities may follow’ (Kuehn and Corrigan 2013, p. 9) or ‘aspirational labor’ which

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highlights the potential for digitally enabled activities to provide female participants with future social and economic capital […] aspirational laborers seek to mark themselves as creative producers who will one day be compensated for their craft – either directly or through employment in the culture industries. (Duffy 2015, pp. 49–50)

Similarly, and focusing explicitly on the labour carried out on social media sites such as Instagram, Crystal Abidin discusses ‘visibility labour’ as ‘the work enacted to flexibly demonstrate gradients of self-conspicuousness in digital or physical spaces depending on intention or circumstance for favourable ends’ (2016, p. 5). Whether defined as ‘visibility labour’ (Abidin 2016, 2016b), ‘passionate labor’ (Postigo 2009), ‘aspirational labor’ (Duffy 2015) or ‘hope labor’ (Kuehn and Corrigan 2013), such endeavours can lead unsanctioned fannish activity to have subsequent economic rewards. For example, the Disney fashion blogger Lesley Kay moved from unofficially posting about ideas for DisneyBounding in the parks (dressing in the style or colours of Disney characters or icons rather than explicitly cosplaying as them) to running the officially licensed Disney brand Cakeworthy (see Chapter Seven). Other theme park bloggers and fans have been formally acknowledged via ‘press accreditation or invitations to press events’ (Kiriakou 2017, p. 104) and accorded semi-official status by the parks via such inclusion. Here, then, the time investment made in running blogs or other resources has the possibility of leading to other forms of reward such as modes of social and cultural capital (Bourdieu 1984). Thus, forms of capital accrued via knowledge or social networks within the theme park fandom and culture may be limited only to those networks, functioning as more localized and specific forms of ‘subcultural capital’ (Thornton 1995) but, as Michael Scott notes, ‘Bourdieu’s alternative forms of capital – social, cultural, and symbolic – are [also] readily available resources to be mobilised and converted in the struggle to build a career’ (2012, p. 238). However, this is the exception rather than the rule and, from the perspective of the guest planning their trip, the main reward is the enjoyment in anticipation of what is to come and in the act of researching the available options. This is a form of what I term ‘anticipatory labour’ since it is work that fans are willing to put in to plan their trips with the expectation that the rewards will be accrued once they actually undertake their visit. Rather than seeking to ‘one day be compensated’ (Duffy 2015, p. 50) financially or via career advancement, the majority of theme park guests and fans instead invest time and effort as part of the enjoyment of planning for and awaiting their trips. Such pleasurable expectation has echoes in other fandoms as

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fans look forward to new instalments of a favourite television series or a new movie and engage with pre-texts such as trailers (see Gray 2010). Rather than dismissing such activities as evidence of exploitation that is only made visible when the skilled academic can ‘lift […] the veil from the eyes of otherwise hapless participants’ (Banks and Deuze 2009, p. 425), we can instead view this as a form of emotional and affective ‘anticipatory labour’ with which the theme park fan enthusiastically and willingly engages. In the case of theme park guests, however, such a practice is enmeshed in the structure, organization and liveable rhythms of the places themselves both via official channels such as Disney’s use of MyMagic+ and the associated micro-planning, or the proclamations from other planning sites that preparation is the key to avoiding being overwhelmed.

Conclusion The participatory culture of knowledge and planning that circulates around theme park fandom is part of a broader shift within contemporary tourism that understands the ‘importance of assessing applications, implications, and impacts of online communication media to tourism’ and the future of ‘technology-assisted experience mediation in tourism’ (Tussyadiah and Fesenmaier 2009, p. 37). As devices such as smartphones and wearable technologies such as Disney’s MagicBand or Universal’s Tapu Tapu system continue to develop, we must continue to unpack the complex relationship between fannish pleasure, production, and labour that theme park fans negotiate. In relation to the level of intense planning that Disney’s MyMagic+ necessitates, we can also see the spectre of long-standing critiques over the control that Disney’s theme parks seek to assert over their guests (see Bryman 1995; Borrie 1999; Budd 2005; Pike 2005; Ritzer and Liska 1997). However, as this chapter has demonstrated, there are complex relationships between theme park fans and the participatory culture that they maintain, with inherent tensions between the pleasures that information sharing and planning can involve and the very real concerns raised over the unpaid and ‘immaterial labor’ (Arvidsson 2005) that such individuals undertake. In particular the ‘brand of controlled leisure offered by MyMagic+ reflects the increasing responsibility of the consumer to participate in consumption through (unpaid) productive labor’ (Huddleston et al 2016, p. 229). Such debates are not limited to theme park fandom and the complexity of fan labour across different media forms and fan cultures has been considered. However, it is important not to overemphasize these points of critique at the expense of

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understanding why theme park fans may actively enjoy and gain pleasure from the extended period of planning that a trip to Orlando involves and the forms of ‘passionate labor’ (Postigo 2009) that this can entail. As Ritzer and Jurgenson caution, ‘The idea that the prosumer is exploited is contradicted by, among other things, the fact that prosumers seem to enjoy, even love, what they are doing and are willing to devote long hours to it for no pay’ (2010, pp. 21–22). Furthermore, not everyone who visits the Orlando parks are caught up in this intricate web of planning and information sharing and gathering. Guests who visit Universal Orlando Resort, for example, are less likely to plan their trips in such minute detail due to the more relaxed approach to queuing at those parks; guests who stay on-site can queue-jump for free and off-site guests can pay a premium to do so if they wish. Furthermore, since UOR has no comparable system to the MyMagic+ technology, guests are not beholden to the same level of precision as at the Disney resort. Others, such as local Florida residents with annual passes or those who choose to stay off-site from the theme parks are also largely exempted from the need to plan their trips in such depth. Nevertheless, for many guests, both first time visitors and fans alike, the process of ‘plandom’ that they engage in is a source of pleasure, a key element of building anticipation for the future trip, and a way to connect both literally and imaginatively with a community of fellow theme park visitors and fans. Once such planning has been undertaken, the next step is for the fan/ guest to actually visit the parks. The next chapter focuses in on one specific attraction in order to explore the links between theme parks, transmediality, and participatory cultures. It has been argued that ‘the theme park works as a medium of mass communication’ (Davis 1996, p. 399) and its synergy with other media formats has long been discussed, with particular emphasis on film. As King questions Have rides become more like f ilms, or f ilms more like rides? Which, exactly, is the driving force? To what extent, in the world of a corporate Hollywood that has one eye on potential for exploitation in other media, are some films designed around their ability to be translated easily into the ride or computer game? (2000, p. 176)

Indeed, the synergy between film, rides, games, comics and novelizations suggests that the theme park space is a transmedia space that offers opportunity for immersion, narrative expansion and fannish acts of ‘spatial poaching’. As the next chapter discusses via a case study of Disney’s Haunted Mansion attraction, fans can read and contribute to the world of favourite texts, even under the apparent control of a company such as Disney.

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and Curriculum, edited by Jennifer A. Sandling and Julie C. Garlen (London: Routledge, 2016), pp. 220–232. Hutchins, Amber L. and Natalie T.J. Tindall, ‘Introduction’, in Public Relations and Participatory Culture: Fandom, Social Media and Community Engagement, edited by Amber L. Hutchins and Natalie T.J. Tindall (London and New York: Routledge, 2016), pp. 3–7. Johnson, David M., ‘Disney World as Structure and Symbol: Re-Creation of the American Experience’, Journal of Popular Culture, 15, 1 (1981), 157–165. Kermode, Mark, ‘I Was a Teenage Horror Fan’, in Ill Effects: The Media/Violence Debate, edited by Martin Barker and Julian Petley (London: Routledge, 1997), pp. 126–134. King, Geoff, Spectacular Narratives: Hollywood in the Age of the Blockbuster (London: I.B. Tauris, 2000). King, Margaret J., ‘Disneyland and Walt Disney World: Traditional Values in Futuristic Form’, Journal of Popular Culture, 15, 1 (1981), 116–140. ———, ‘Disneyland and Walt Disney World: Traditional Values in Futuristic Form’, Journal of Popular Culture, 15, 1 (1981), 116–140. Kiriakou, Olympia, ‘“Ricky, This is Amazing!”: Disney Nostalgia, New Media Users, and the Extreme Fans of the WDW Kingdomcast’, Journal of Fandom Studies, 5, 1 (2017), 99–112. Kohnen, Melanie E. S., ‘Time, Space, Strategy: Fan Blogging and the Economy of Knowledge at San Diego Comic-Con’, Popular Communication, Online First (2019), 1–17. Kuang, Cliff, ‘Disney’s $1 Billion Bet on a Magical Wristband’, Wired, 10 March 2015, accessed 11 March 2018. http://www.wired.com/2015/03/disney-magicband/ Kuehn, Kathleen, and Thomas F. Corrigan, ‘Hope Labor: The Role of Employment Prospects in Online Social Production’, The Political Economy of Communication, 1 (2013), 9–25. Lancaster, Kurt, Interacting with “Babylon 5”: Fan Performances in a Media Universe (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001). Ledbetter, Jonathan L., Amira Mohamed-Ameen, James M. Oglesby and Michael W. Boyce, ‘Your Wait Time From This Point Will Be . . . Practices for Designing Amusement Park Queues’, Ergonomics in Design: The Quarterly of Human Factors Applications, 21, 2 (2013), 22–28. Lukas, Scott A., ‘How the Theme Park Gets its Power: Lived Theming, Social Control, and the Themed Worker Self’, in The Themed Space: Locating Culture, Nation and Self, edited by Scott A. Lukas (New York: Lexington Books, 2007c), pp. 183–206. Lupton, Deborah, The Quantified Self (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2016). Lutters, Wayne G. and Mark S. Ackerman, ‘Joining the Backstage: Locality and Centrality in an Online Community’, Information Technology and People, 16, 2 (2003), 157–182.

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Månsson, Maria, ‘Mediatized Tourism’, Annals of Tourism Research, 38, 4 (2011),1634–1652. Milman, Ady, ‘The Role of Theme Parks as A Leisure Activity for Local Communities’, Journal of Travel Research, 29, 3 (1991), 11–16. ———, ‘Evaluating the Guest Experience at Theme Parks: An Empirical Investigation of Key Attributes’, International Journal of Tourism Research, 11, 4 (2009), 373–387. Milner Ryan M., ‘Working for the Text: Fan Labor and the New Organization’, International Journal of Cultural Studies, 12, 5 (2009), 491–508. Morris, Jeremy Wade, ‘Artists as Entrepreneurs, Fans as Workers’, Popular Music and Society, 37, 3 (2014), 273–290. Muniz, Albert M. and Thomas C. O’Guinn, ‘Brand Community’, Journal of Consumer Research, 27, 4 (2001), 412–432. Nelson, Emily, ‘The Art of Queueing up at Disneyland’, Journal of Tourism History, 8, 1 (2016), 47–56. Nigro, D., ‘The Method Behind the Magic’, Meetings and Conventions, 32, 12 (1997), 95–99. Paterson, Mark, The Senses of Touch: Haptics, Affects and Technologies (London: Bloomsbury, 2007). ———, ‘On Haptic Media and the Possibilities of a More Inclusive Interactivity’, New Media and Society, 19, 10 (2017), 1541–1562. Pike, David L, ‘The Walt Disney World Underground’, Space and Culture, 8, 1 (2005), 47–65. Postigo, Hector, ‘America Online Volunteers: Lessons from an Early Co-Production Community’, International Journal of Cultural Studies, 12, 5 (2009), 451–469. Prebensen, Nina K., Eunju Woo, Joseph S. Chen, and Muzaffer Uysal, ‘Experience Quality in the Different Phases of a Tourist Vacation: A case of Northern Norway’, Tourism Analysis, 17, (2012), 617–627. Richardson, Ingrid, and Larissa Hjorth, ‘Haptic Play: Rethinking Media Cultures and Practices’, Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 25, 1 (2018), 3–5. Ritzer, George and Nathan Jurgenson, ‘Production, Consumption, Prosumption: The Nature of Capitalism in the Age of the Digital ‘Prosumer’, Journal of Consumer Culture, 10, 1 (2010), 13–36. Ritzer, George and Allan Liska, ‘McDisneyization and Post-tourism: Complementary Perspectives on Contemporary Tourism’, in Touring Cultures: Transformations of Travel and Theory, edited by Chris Rojek and John Urry (London: Routledge, 1997), pp. 96–109. Salamone, Virginia A. and Frank A. Salamone, ‘Images of Main Street: Disney World and the American Adventure’, Journal of American Culture, 22, 1 (1999), 85–92.

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Scott, Michael, ‘Cultural Entrepreneurs, Cultural Entrepreneurship: Music Producers Mobilising and Converting Bourdieu’s Alternative Capitals’, Poetics, 40, 3 (2012), 237–255. Scott, Suzanne, ‘The Moral Economy of Crowdfunding and the Transformative Capacity of Fan-ancing’, New Media and Society, 17, 2 (2015), 167–182. Shoval, Noam, and Michal Isaacson, ‘Tracking Tourists in the Digital Age’, Annals of Tourism Research, 34, 1 (2007), 141–159. Stanfill, Mel, and Megan Condis, ‘Fandom and/as Labor [editorial]’, Transformative Works and Cultures, 15 (2014), accessed 12 July 2018. http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/593/421 Terranova, Tiziana, ‘Free Labor: Producing Culture for the Digital Economy’, Social Text, 63, 18 (2000), 33–58. The Project on Disney, Inside The Mouse: Work and Play at Disney World (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1995). Thornton, Sarah, Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995). Torres, Edwin N. and Marissa Orlowski, ‘Let’s ‘Meetup’ at the Theme Park’, Journal of Vacation Marketing, 23, 2 (2017), 159–171. Touring Plans, 2019, accessed 11 January 2019. https://touringplans.com/ Tussyadiah, Iis, P., and Daniel R. Fesenmaier, ‘Mediating Tourist Experiences: Access to Places via Shared Videos’, Annals of Tourism Research, 36, 1 (2009), 24–40. Van Maanen, John, ‘The Smile Factory: Work at Disneyland’, in Reframing Organizational Culture, edited by Peter J. Frost, Larry F. Moore, Meryl Reis Louis, Craig C. Lundberg and Joanne Martin (Newbury Park, CA: SAGE, 1991), pp. 58–76. Wang, Dan, Sangwon Park, and Daniel R. Fesenmaier, ‘The Role of Smartphones in Mediating the Touristic Experience’, Journal of Travel Research, 51, 4 (2012), 371–387. Waysdorf, Abby and Stijn Reijnders, ‘Immersion, Authenticity and the Theme Park as Social Space: Experiencing the Wizarding World of Harry Potter’, International Journal of Cultural Studies, 21, 2 (2018), 173–188. Williams, Rebecca ‘From Star Tours to Galaxy’s Edge: Immersion, Transmediality and ‘Haptic Fandom’ in Disney’s Theme Parks’, in Disney’s Star Wars: Forces of Participation and Reception, edited by William Proctor and Richard McCulloch (Iowa: University of Iowa Press, 2019), pp. 136–149. Wills, John, Disney Culture (Newark, New Jersey and London: Rutgers University Press, 2017).

4. Extending the Haunted Mansion: Spatial Poaching, Participatory Narratives and Retrospective Transmedia Abstract This chapter offers detailed discussion of the transmediality of theme parks and how their narratives and experiences extend across media forms. It takes Disney’s Haunted Mansion as an extended case study, a ride which has been turned into a feature film, but has also seen its narrative universe expanded across comics and novelizations, board games, and video games. Despite the fact that the ride lacks a coherent story, fans have demanded a greater narrative to the ride, causing tensions between Disney and its fans. Introducing the concepts of spatial poaching and retrospective transmedia, the chapter focuses on how producers and fans co-construct transmedia narratives through physical spaces, and over extended periods of time. Keywords: spatial poaching, retrospective transmedia, Haunted Mansion, fan/producer relationships, spatial transmedia

Introduction Having outlined how the contemporary theme park utilizes forms of digital media and new technologies to allow guests to plan their trips in detail and pleasurably anticipate their experiences, as well as the importance of an unofficial participatory culture, this chapter moves onto more detailed discussion of the intersections between such fannish attachments and transmedia narratives. It offers detailed analysis of the transmediality of theme park rides and the ways in which their narratives and experiences extend across media forms, beginning from Henry Jenkins’ definition of

Williams, R., Theme Park Fandom. Spatial Transmedia, Materiality And Participatory Cultures. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020 doi 10.5117/9789462982574_ch04

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transmedia storytelling as ‘integrating multiple texts to create a narrative so large that it cannot be contained within a single medium’ (2006, p.95). As Jenkins notes, In many ways, theme parks were one of the spaces where transmedia entertainment first emerged […] The practices of theme park designers, thus, paved the way for the special stories we now associate with games or virtual worlds, translating events in the stories into spaces which we can visit. (Jenkins in Lukas 2012, p. 246)

To begin to better understand the links between theme parks, transmediality and fandom, I turn here to an in-depth analysis of one specif ic ride, Disney’s Haunted Mansion. This also allows a response to Rahn’s assertion that ‘Disney’s films and their effect on children are frequently scrutinized, as are the theme parks themselves, but little detailed attention has been given to individual theme park attractions’ (2011, p. 87). This is not entirely true but when study of particular themed lands or rides has been undertaken it has tended to focus on the ideological representations within those attractions. For example, work has analysed the gendering of history in WDW’s Magic Kingdom’s Carousel of Progress (Weiner 1997), the efforts to distance the Magic Kingdom’s Splash Mountain water ride from its origins in the Disney f ilm Song of the South (Sperb 2005) which includes racist characterizations, the representations of global cultures in It’s A Small World (Baber and Spickard 2015), or the broader representations of turn-of-the-century and colonial America within the Disney parks (Meamber 2011; see also Francaviglia 1981; Johnson 1981; King 1981; Fjellman 1992; Kuenz 1993; Bryman 1995, 2004; Philips 2002; Neuman 2008). In terms of the links between specific theme park attractions and transmediality, Angela Ndalianis has analysed Universal Studios’ Spiderman (2004), and The Mummy (2010) rides, whilst studies of the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction as a transmedia phenomenon have also been conducted (Petersen 2007; Jess-Cooke 2010; Schweizer and Pearce 2016). Indeed, whilst many theme park attractions are based on existing texts and extend their narrative worlds (such as Disney’s rides based on their animated feature films, or Universal’s attractions inspired by films including Despicable Me, The Mummy, E.T, and Jurassic Park), Pirates of the Caribbean functions as an example of a ride that existed first. Given the academic attention that has already focused on Pirates, however, this chapter explores the Haunted Mansion, a ride which has been turned into a feature film but has also seen

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its narrative universe expanded across a series of comics and novelizations, board games, and video games and spawned its own expanded transmedia universe and prompted an active participatory culture via fan sites such as DoomBuggies.com. The Haunted Mansion is one of the most popular rides at the American Disney parks and has attracted a loyal fan following (Baham 2014). It is inspired by the ghost-trains and haunted houses found at traditional amusement parks and, like many other horror-based dark rides, focuses ‘less on the narrative dimensions and the critical and moral interpretations that can emerge from them and more on the affective assault on the participant’ (Ndalianis 2010, p. 22). Despite this, fans have come to demand a more coherent narrative to the ride (which has seen this aspect of the ride strengthened in both California and Florida’s Disney parks) as well as enthusiastically developing a broader expansion of the attraction’s story-world. The chapter thus considers how the narrative of the ride itself has extended across a range of media forms, including the physical; in the Magic Kingdom Park within Walt Disney World, fans of the Haunted Mansion can visit a shop entirely dedicated to selling items related to this attraction which is themed around one of the ride’s characters. The chapter explores both how ‘audiences as well as official authors co-construct transmedia narratives, storyworlds and frames for engagement’ (Stein and Busse 2012, p.14), and proposes the concept of ‘spatial poaching’ to consider the importance of place and space more broadly, as well as specific sites, to understanding contemporary transmedia texts.

Theme Park/Cinema/Television Theme parks are a key site for transmediality and convergence culture, allowing visitors to inhabit the hyperdiegesis of narrative worlds and offering opportunities for synergy between films and rides. This is closely linked to debates over narrative and immersion; as Geoff King states, ‘Theme park attractions […] claim to take us into the physical and experiential space of the movies’ (2000, p. 176). This is not a new development; as noted in the Introduction, from the outset Disneyland ‘physically and imagistically converted Disney media products into tourist attractions. Making film and television spatial, textural and kinetic was an enormous innovation’ (Davis 1996, p. 401). The integration of products and merchandise was part of Walt Disney’s business plan for the park and ‘Disney contracted with major corporations to finance exhibits at Disneyland, and sold licenses to

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merchandising companies to manufacture and sell various products to the park’s themes or Disney films’ (Weinstein 1992, p. 149). Many writers have discussed the synergistic opportunities that theme parks present. For example, Constance Balides notes how ‘Theme park rides borrow film themes, images, and characters but also draw on special effects technologies developed for films and employ personnel working on those effects’ (2003, p. 318). Florian Freitag describes theme parks as ‘permanent commercial installations that seek to immerse visitors into multisensory environments by combining kinetics with a wide variety of different art forms or media, including architecture, landscaping, music, theater and film’ (2017, p. 925) but calls attention to how the relationship between theme parks and movies have been most heavily foregrounded (Freitag 2016b, p. 125). Such discussions often begin with Tom Gunning’s work on the ‘cinema of attractions’, described as ‘a cinema that displays its visibility, willing to rupture a self-enclosed fictional world for a chance to solicit the attention of the spectator’ (1990, p. 57). As Nelson explains, ‘The cinema of attractions recasts pre-classical or primitive cinema as a mode unto itself, distinguished from later cinema’s emphasis on storytelling by an active solicitation of a viewer’s interest by means of overt display’ (2008, online). Although Gunning was focused on early cinema, writers have drawn on the concept of the ‘cinema of attractions’ to argue that contemporary film is similarly more concerned with spectacle than narrative. Linda Williams (2000) argues, for instance, that the ‘new cinema of attractions’ focuses on the visual and auditory and on provoking a bodily response. She notes that In this convergence of pleasures the contemporary, postmodern cinema has reconnected in important ways with the ‘attractions’ of amusement parks. But these attractions themselves have been thematized and narrativized through their connection with the entire history of the movies. (2000, p. 358)

For Williams, theme park attractions share a great deal of overlap with the new cinema of attractions since Either they simulate a diegetic world through cinematic mise en scène […] or they are elaborate updates of early cinema’s Hales Tours, ‘moving’ the audience through virtual, electronically generated space […] [where] the narrative information that we are out of control enhances the virtual sensation of wild careening. (2000, p. 358)

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For example, the latter example that she gives, of a wild careening through various scenes, can be seen in rides such as UOR’s attractions based on Spiderman, Transformers and Harry Potter, and in Disney’s Magic Kingdom’s Winnie the Pooh ride. The linkage between film and the theme park is long established, and much debate has focused on how narrative is either restricted or encouraged on theme park rides. Scott Bukatman notes that in the 1980s and 1990s […] theme park rides and attractions became more narrative than, say, roller coasters had been. They were also extended. Waiting on line for Star Tours was part of the ride, as elaborate sets and amusing droids entertained but also grounded the spectacle. (1998, p. 266)

As Bukatman makes clear, the shift towards a more coherent narrative in rides was linked to the desire to ‘ground’ the guest in the world they were about to enter and also to enhance the immersive experience. In response to arguments about the lack of narrative in both new forms of cinema and in theme park attractions, Geoff King makes a similar point: Attenuated though they may be, the rides themselves rarely lasting longer than about ten minutes, they have their own narrative components […]Video monitors, posters and other media are used [in queues] as ‘warm up’ devices, to keep audiences amused during the wait and to prepare them to get the most from the spectacle that follows. (2000, p. 180)

The attention that both King and Bukatman draw to the immersion of the attraction queues must also be read as part of the parks’ strategies to prevent guest dissatisfaction with waiting in line, as discussed in the previous chapter. But this also speaks to the importance of narrative and immersion, and the use of narrative techniques from cinema within themed spaces. Much of this prior work has focused on theme park attractions that have been based on existing films such as Jurassic Park, Terminator, and Jaws. However, building on these foundations, Nelson (2008) posits that films based on theme park rides work in a different way, whilst also clearly functioning as an example of the ongoing synergy and convergence between the theme parks and other media industries. As noted above, the most famous example of this is the Pirates of Caribbean franchise but Disney’s other ride-to-movie adaptations such as Country Bear Jamboree (2002), Mission to Mars (2000), Tower of Terror (1997) and their entire theme-park-land-inspired movie

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Tomorrowland (2014) have been less successful (although see Garner 2017 for a re-evaluation of the latter film). Nelson likens the process of adapting existing rides such as Pirates of the Caribbean or the Haunted Mansion as akin to adapting a comic book since one must ‘negotiate between remaining faithful to an established iconography and mythology – but not to the point of alienating or turning off those unfamiliar with said elements – while fashioning a new narrative’ (Nelson 2008, online). As Carolyn Jess-Cooke notes in her discussion of Pirates of the Caribbean, such adaptations offer a ‘transposition of a spatial source to a textual ‘world’ and commercial franchise’ (2010, p. 209). Consisting of, at the time of writing, five feature films and a range of tie-in games and other media forms, Pirates is unusual in that it has reworked elements of the cinematic universe back into the ride, engaging in a form of ‘“auto-textual poaching”, where it plundered from itself, then adapted to accommodate its new form’ (Schweizer and Pearce 2016, p. 95), adding the character of Captain Jack Sparrow (played by Johnny Depp) from the film series into the WDW ride in 2006. Schweizer and Pearce argue that, rather than adaptation per se, the Pirates films (in particular the original movie) offer those familiar with the Disney attraction ‘cross-referential indexical moments’ (2016, p. 98) that they recognize from the ride. As discussed below, the Haunted Mansion film adaptation works in much the same way; whilst it borrows from the ride’s storyline and adds a considerable amount to that narrative, it also offers recognizable moments and ‘winks and nods to the members of the audience’ (Schweizer and Pearce 2016, p. 100). However, whilst the Mansion’s extension into the cinematic offers one element of its transmediality, it is also crucial to explore the importance of its status as a physically rooted site (or sites) in order to challenge dominant views of transmedia as ‘flowing’ across spaces (Hills 2017, p. 214). Equally, as the chapter will now go on to discuss, fans’ piecing together of a narrative for the Haunted Mansion over a period of many decades also poses questions about both the typical ‘mother ship’ (Scott 2013) model of transmedia objects as those which circulate around a central and defined originating text, and Fan Studies approaches that are dominated by models of poaching as an exercise associated with ‘texts’ rather than ‘spaces’.

The Haunted Mansion and Spatial Transmedia As the above discussion outlines, theme parks lie at the nexus of forms of media convergence which, as Henry Jenkins explains, ‘is more than

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simply a technological shift. Convergence alters the relationship between existing technologies, industries, markets, genres, and audiences’ (2004, p. 1). Similarly, as Nelson’s (2016) discussion of ‘transtextuality’ in attraction-tomovie adaptations highlights, theme park attractions operate as forms of transmediality. Elizabeth Evans describes transmediality as ‘the increasingly popular industrial practice of using multiple media technologies to present information concerning a single fictional world through a range of textual forms’ (2011, p. 1). As Evans notes, transmediality ‘may relate to practices such as franchising, merchandising, adaptations, spin-offs, sequels and marketing’ (2011, p. 2) but it also works to expand the hyperdiegesis of a narrative universe. The transmediality of the theme park is also reflected in the participatory culture surrounding it, which allows ‘Our world [to be ] […] transformed by participatory knowledge cultures in which people work together to collectively classify, organize and build information’ (Delwiche and Jacobs Henderson 2013, p. 3) since it relies heavily on the attainment, circulation and revision of knowledge. Whilst, as noted, academic work on individual theme park rides has been conducted, there remains almost no study of fandoms that focus on singular theme park rides or attractions. This is striking given the emphasis that Disney in particular places on marketing individual attractions to fans, allowing those with particular favourites to collect ride-specif ic merchandise such as trading pins, T-shirts, jewellery and artwork (see Chapter Seven). Fan attachment to certain rides or attractions is not purely a matter of consumption, however and there is a clear affective element to the theme park experience for the Disney fan (Koren-Kuik 2014, p. 152). The decision to focus here on Disney’s Haunted Mansion results from the fact that it is one of the theme parks’ most popular attractions, as well as one of the few that has been adapted into a f ilm version. The f irst Mansion opened in California’s Disneyland in 1969 with the Walt Disney World Magic Kingdom following in 1971. Like Pirates of the Caribbean which speaks to the ‘complexities of remediation, adaptation, and immersion, because of the ways the fragmentary storyworld established in the theme park ride became codif ied in a transmedia narrative nearly thirty years after its inception’ (Schweizer and Pearce 2016, p. 95), the Haunted Mansion offers the opportunity to consider not just Disney’s official transmedia texts but also the impact of the participatory culture surrounding it. Rather than being an example of planned or intentional transmedia, the development of the Mansion and its extended storyworld has been an ongoing process, challenging the dominant view of transmedia which still often assumes that there

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is a ‘“mothership” […] the primary text that a transmedia story is built around’ (Scott 2013, p. 46). The Haunted Mansion attraction in both Disneyland and WDW is presented as an old manor where ghosts ‘retire’ once they have left the mortal coil. Whilst Disneyland’s version is designed as an old plantation house, WDW’s attraction looks like a more typical old ‘haunted’ house. The ride’s status as an iconic Disney attraction has led to versions being constructed in the global parks. The adaptations in Japan and California look aesthetically different but adhere to the same storyline, and, whilst Disneyland Paris’ version Phantom Manor is arguably more horrific than comedic with a storyline inspired by The Phantom of the Opera and a façade that visually recalls the home of serial killer Norman Bates from the film Psycho (Lainsbury 2000, p. 61), it follows a broadly similar narrative. Whilst the Paris version has to convey more by image, rather than dialogue due to the language differences of European countries (Surrell 2015, p. 44), the Mansion is reinvented as Mystic Manor in Hong Kong Disneyland’s to accommodate the Chinese cultural aversion to spirits (Surrell 2015, p. 49), demonstrating how the ride has been modified for cultural specificity in its non-US versions. As Angela Ndalianis summarises, ‘Originally intended as a walk through attraction in the haunted house/fun park tradition, the ride became a turning point between old and new dark ride technologies’ (2010, p. 19). The resulting Mansion follows a long tradition of dark rides, in which ‘participants board a buggy, train, or boat, and enter a dark, enclosed space. The space is themed – a ghost train, a haunted house, a trip to the moon – and the vehicle on track allows the designers some control over the ways the story unravels’ (Ndalianis 2010, p. 14). The attraction reflects Walt Disney’s intention to create a scary yet family-friendly attraction that was more sophisticated that those seen in the ghost trains of amusement parks but which was still morally ambiguous; the ride ‘surrounded the visitor with ghosts and skeletons which were sometimes funny, sometimes frightening but neither ‘good’ nor ‘bad’’ (Rahn 2011, p. 97). There are (and have been) other horror inspired attractions at WDW, highlighting how ‘The ghost trains, magic phantasmic illusions, tunnels of love and freak shows that first scared audiences in Exposition midways and fairgrounds have continued to make their presence felt in amusement and theme parks today’ (Ndalianis 2010, p. 12). However, the need to be family-friendly is key; Hollywood Studio’s Tower of Terror is an elaborately themed haunted hotel which restricts its riders to those over 40 inches tall due to its thirteen-story drop, and the Magic Kingdom’s

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intense Alien Encounter attraction was replaced by the more ‘kiddified’ Lilo & Stich-themed Stich’s Great Escape after parent complaints (Krosnick 2015). The enduring appeal of the Haunted Mansion results from its ability to balance low-level scares and a tone of creepiness with the ultimate familiarity and reassurance of a Disney attraction. The discussion of the physical ride experience that follows is based on the WDW attraction, however, when necessary, other versions of the ride will be discussed in the analysis. Given the importance of specific aspects of the Mansion to its fans, the ride experience is described in some depth for those readers who are unfamiliar with the attraction. In Walt Disney World, riders approach the Mansion from the Liberty Square area of Magic Kingdom, then queue via a graveyard. This queue space sets the more light-hearted tone of the attraction with gravestones bearing comedic inscriptions such as ‘Dear Departed Brother Dave Chased a Bear Into a Cave’. It also features the tomb and gravestone of Master Gracey, with the inscription ‘Master Gracey, led to rest, no mourning please at his request’. As discussed below, Master Gracey occupies a contentious role in the Mansion’s storyworld and transmedia narrative but his grave is often a focal point for guests in the queue. In 2011 WDW added interactive elements to the queue area including an organ that plays notes when the keys are touched, a ‘haunted’ bookshelf with books that can be pushed out as though by some ghostly hand, and the grave of a Captain Culpepper which sprays the unsuspecting queue member with water. Intended to take advantage of the opportunities that the then-forthcoming MyMagic+ and MagicBands were able to offer (Surrell 2015, p. 65), the queue offers a murder mystery for guests to solve alongside its interactive elements. Once the guest has made their way to the front door of the Mansion, they will also see the tombstone of Madam Leota (a key character in the attraction), a memorial that features her face and its sinister moving eyes. As Nelson notes, much of this pre-show element was designed as a method of queue management; ‘The mansion’s queue broke into three parts: an outdoor cemetery scene, an indoor pre-show room, and a final corridor before the loading zone. The cemetery had a calming influence and informed visitors politely that death would be blended with comedy’ (2016, p. 53). Once arriving at the Mansion doors, guests are greeted by a gloomy cast member who intones a welcome (often ‘the Master will see you now’) before ushering people into a room which features a portrait of a young man hung over a fireplace. As the guests wait, the portrait changes into a decaying skeletal visage. The guests are also introduced to the voice-over of the Ghost Host who will be their narrator and guide for the attraction as

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he welcomes them to the Mansion over the attraction’s theme tune ‘Grim Grinnin’ Ghosts’: GHOST HOST When hinges creak in doorless chambers, and strange and frightening sounds echo through the halls. Whenever candlelights flicker where the air is deathly still – that is the time when ghosts are present, practicing their terror with ghoulish delight! (Disney park scripts 2015)

Guests are then moved into the infamous Stretching Room, a circular space that functioned as an elevator to move guests to a lower floor for ride loading in the Disneyland version of the attraction (Surrell 2015, p. 74). WDW’s Mansion has no need to move guests between floors in this fashion but the Stretching Room serves as another form of ‘pre-show’ and further introduces riders to the spooky but comedic tone of the ride. As the room begins to ‘stretch’, riders notice that apparently respectable paintings on the wall have begun to reveal a sinister secret; for example, a ballet dancer holding a parasol is revealed to be stood on a tightrope over the open jaws of a crocodile, and an elderly woman posing with a flower is actually sat on the tombstone of her dead, presumably murdered, husband. As the room stretches, the Ghost Host intones: (Guests move into Stretching Room.) Welcome, foolish mortals, to the Haunted Mansion. I am your host, your ghost host. Our tour begins here in this gallery. Here, where you see paintings of some of our guests as they appeared in their corruptible, mortal state. Kindly step all the way in please and make room for everyone. There’s no turning back now. CAST MEMBER (Exact wording varies) Please drag your bodies away from the walls and into the dead center of the room. GHOST HOST Your cadaverous pallor betrays an aura of foreboding, almost as though you sense a disquieting metamorphosis. Is this haunted room actually stretching? Or is it your imagination – hmm? And consider this dismaying observation: this chamber has no windows and no doors… which offers you this chilling challenge: to find a way out! Of course, there’s always my way. (Thunderclaps, lights go out, someone screams. Doors begin to open and lights come back on.)

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Oh, I didn’t mean to frighten you prematurely. The real chills come later. Now, as they say, ‘look alive,’ and we’ll continue our little tour. And let’s all stay together, please. (Guests move into hallway.) (Disney park scripts 2015)

This well-known monologue, which dedicated fans often recite along with the Ghost Host (to the chagrin of many guests), ends with the room falling into complete darkness, an eerie shriek, and a flash of light that reveals a body hanging from the ceiling above the Stretching Room. The room doors then open and guests move down a corridor towards the loading area for the ride vehicles, black hooded carriages known as Doom Buggies. Once seated in these, the ride moves through the attraction taking in a range of spooky special effects and set pieces: The attraction paid homage to past visual traditions and illusions but transformed them by placing them within the context of the theme park. The Imagineers remediated multiple media experiences – phantasmagoria and magic lanterns, Pepper’s ghost, automata, the haunted houses and ghost trains of amusement parks – and refashioned them into the kind of hybridised, hi-tech spectacle. (Ndalianis 2010, p. 21)

For example, one of the most impressive scenes involves riders moving across a balcony above a ballroom that is occupied by ghosts dancing, playing an organ, and sitting at a dinner table. This effect is achieved by the Pepper’s Ghost trick that Ndalianis mentions above, a technique perfected in 19th century theatre which created ghostly illusions when ‘thrown onto a plate glass screen fixed at an angle of 45° in front of the stage was the reflection of brightly-lit actors, dressed in ghostly trappings, who were hidden below the raised stage in an area’ (Kwaitek 1995, p. 37). The ride culminates in a graveyard of happy singing ghosts who, as the song that accompanies this set piece notes, have ‘come out to socialise’, before riders move through a sequence where, via updated technology, ‘hitch-hiking ghosts’ appear to be sat in or on top of your Doombuggy, or swap the heads of riders. As the ride draws to a close, a figure intones to riders to ‘hurry back’ and ‘don’t forget your death certificate’. The attraction ends, much as it begins in the outdoor queue line, with the more humorous and light-hearted tone of the singing spooks in the graveyard but it also leaves the rider with a slight sense of disquiet via the invitation to hurry back. For brevity and clarity, this description omits many of the key moments in the ride, some of which will be discussed in more depth below. However,

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it is most important to note that as an example of a dark ride, the Mansion fulfils a specific role as an attraction with a fixed journey: ‘Like most horror films [dark rides] involve an entry into an enclosed space – a journey into the dark that places the viewer in the passive role over the narrative that then unfolds’ (Ndalianis 2010, p. 21) and ‘‘the riders’ view is controlled by the creators at every point in the ride. From the moment the visitor enters the Haunted Mansion, they are confronted with many remediated media illusions’ (Ndalianis 2010, p. 19). Thus, unlike some attractions that offer variations on an experience depending on how well a guest scores in a game (such as WDW’s Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger Spin in the Magic Kingdom, or Toy Story Midway Mania in Hollywood Studios), the Haunted Mansion appears to offer the same experience over and over again. However, much like Pirates of the Caribbean, the ride ‘is not linear, but designed as a repetitively circular experience that one can repeat and enjoy as many times as desired’ (Jess-Cooke 2010, p. 212). As such, attractions such as the Mansion are ‘designed as much as evocative spaces onto which fans may project their own fantasies as rides which take them through a directed path’ (Jenkins, in Lukas 2012, p. 246). The Haunted Mansion has been turned into a feature film, but it has also seen its narrative universe expanded across a series of comics and novelizations, board games, and video games. There are obvious economic imperatives for the film adaptation in particular, since it allows ‘further branding of a branded commodity and creating even greater intertextuality between theme parks and the cinema’ (Lukas 2008, p. 184) but we can also see here the development of the story of the Haunted Mansion highlighting again how ‘Transmedia storytelling is the art of world making’ (Jenkins 2006, p. 21). As noted above, unlike Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, 2003’s The Haunted Mansion film adaptation was not a box office success for Disney, with a box office worldwide gross of £182.3 million. It has, to date, not been followed by a sequel, despite expressions of interest in adapting the attraction to the big screen from the renowned horror filmmaker Guillermo del Toro. The plot involves an estate agent Jim Evers (Eddie Murphy) and his wife Sara (Marsha Thomason) visiting the Mansion after being lured there under the pretence of it being for sale. Once there, the family are trapped in the house as Master Gracey (Nathanial Parker) realizes that Sara is the doppelganger of his lost love Elizabeth. After encounters with characters familiar from the attraction including the disembodied head of clairvoyant Madam Leota (Jennifer Tilly) and the singing busts from the ride’s graveyard scene, it is revealed that the butler Ramsley (Terrance Stamp) – ostensibly the Ghost Host from the

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attraction – killed Elizabeth. The film ends with Gracey, Elizabeth and the majority of the Mansion’s ghosts ascending to heaven whilst the Evers family leave with Leota and the singing busts. The film uses recognizable figures and iconography from the ride, such as the three hitchhiking ghosts (Gus, Phineas and Ezra) that the guest sees before they exit the attraction and a version of the graveyard scene in which the ride culminates. However, ‘moments like those from The Haunted Mansion’s graveyard sequence are less “non-narrative attractions” than moments of transtextuality’ (Nelson 2008, online) that some viewers will recognize but which do not detract from the overall film for the unfamiliar spectator. It is possible to watch the film without having been on the Haunted Mansion ride, but these nods and moment of recognition will not have the same significance. The film also uses characters from the ride such as Master Gracey, Madam Leota and the singing graveyard busts, but takes significant liberties in order to construct its narrative. This, of course, makes sense; whilst a ride through the Mansion attraction takes around 10 minutes, a feature-length film must expand this to its 90-minutes. Whilst the film’s interpretation of the character of Master Gracey has been debated by fans of the ride who are interested in the expanding storyworld of the Mansion (as discussed below), it fails to successfully build a hyperdiegesis in the way that the more successful Pirates of the Caribbean movie did. Whilst ‘the [Pirates] trilogy is predicated on nostalgia, memory, and the concept of entering and participating with a fictional “world”’ (Jess-Cooke 2010, p. 208), the Haunted Mansion film offers fleeting moments of recognition to those familiar with the attraction, but little more. Florian Freitag (2016) draws a distinction between what he views as the ‘intermedial relations’ between movies and theme parks, and the transmedial (2016). He describes these as ride adaptations which ‘work with (partial) reproductions of the movie’s key elements (including its main plot, main characters, famous lines, production design and music), which is possible due to the medially hybrid nature of both movies and theme park rides’ (2016, p. 127). Looking only at The Haunted Mansion film, then, we might conclude that its transmediality is limited, functioning instead as a form of ‘intermedial relation’ that reproduces but does not expand the existing storyworld in any meaningful way. However, as discussed in more depth below, the film has been used as a resource for fans of the Mansion to expand their understandings of the narrative of the attraction, particularly in relation to the character of Master Gracey. Whilst the film itself may be a form of what Henry Jenkins (2009) calls ‘redundant’ transmedia, in that it is essentially an adaptation of key elements of the ride narrative, fans of the Mansion have drawn upon it as a

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resource to expand its storyworld alongside a range of other paratexts and fan interpretations. In addition to the film, the ride has been the subject of a pop-up book (Murphy 1994) and featured in comics; the original series of seven comics, released in 2005, expanded on the characters seen in the Mansion as well as the backstory of the building itself (Haunted Mansion Volume 1 2007). The more recent run of f ive comics, as part of Disney/ Marvel’s Disney Kingdoms brand (which also includes series based on other attractions such as the Enchanted Tiki Room and the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad), told a single story across its issues, about a young boy who encounters the spirits from the Mansion (Williamson 2016). Novels and short stories have also filled in gaps about characters and the mythology of the Mansion in the collection Disney’s Enter If You Dare!: Scary Tales from the Haunted Mansion (Stephens 1995) and the Tales From the Haunted Mansion series of The Fearsome Foursome (Disney Book Group 2016), Midnight at Madam Leota’s (Disney Book Group 2017), Grim Grinning Ghosts (Disney Book Group 2018), and Memento Mori (Disney Book Group 2019). However, Disney has also expanded the narrative world physically, engaging in what I term spatial transmedia – a form of situated transmedia – primarily in its WDW version via the opening of a shop (also) named Memento Mori in 2014. The store is based around the Mansion’s Madam Leota – seen in the ride as a disembodied spirit head in a crystal ball – and offers a continuation of her story alongside the opportunity to buy a range of Haunted Mansion merchandise. Described as Leota’s ‘former abode’, the official site describes how guests may ‘hear her humming a tune or see her visage appear […] from time to time’ (Disney World 2017). Themed consumer spaces are not unusual (see Kozinets et al 2002, Lukas 2012) especially within theme parks where every shop is likely to be selling the same merchandise and therefore each one needs a reason to attract the guest to enter. Whilst many of the Parks’ attractions culminate by making guests exit via the gift store, the Haunted Mansion is the only ride that currently has a separate dedicated shop. Memento Mori is located slightly outside of the Mansion gates in a small building that was formerly dedicated to Disney-themed cooking and homeware. In addition to the merchandise that it sells (ranging from inexpensive Mansion-themed Tsum Tsum soft toys to high-end jewellery, artwork and designer handbags) the store offers the guest the chance to have their own ‘spirit photograph’ taken. This experience, costing $20 per person, enables the guest to have a photo taken which replicates the special effect used on the portrait of Master Gracey that hangs above the fireplace in the lobby of the Mansion. The result is a lenticular portrait that turns

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one’s face into a skeleton and back again, allowing the dedicated guest or fan of the ride to possess a reminder of the physical experience of visiting the Mansion and to access some of the tricks that are used to create the effects. The process of having one’s photograph taken has its own ‘narrative’; once the photo is captured by the spirit photographer, one must wait for it to be delivered from ‘somewhere beyond’ in the spirit realm. As it is developed, the guest must wait near Madam Leota’s cabinet to the sound of a bell to indicate that your spirit has been contacted and your picture has arrived. In addition to this, the shop purports to still have some of Leota’s possessions on display including a range of psychic relics. The shop also features some ‘paranormal occurrences’ including a large portrait that changes its image under ultraviolet light, a mirror where Leota’s apparition briefly materializes, and a range of ‘Bottled spirits’ that appear and disappear on shelves. The economic purpose of the Memento Mori shop cannot be overlooked; it was clearly designed to capitalize on fan and guest desire to purchase items based on the Haunted Mansion and to make money for the Disney Company. However, in extending the narrative of the attraction, in particular one of its most iconic characters, the store operates as a further transmedia space linked to the Mansion, offering the chance to see more of Leota’s backstory and to immersively experience some of her magic. Here, the objects within the shop, ‘all of the material things […] that make up the themed or immersive space’ are ‘used to tell immersive stories and/or create specif ic feelings or moods in guests’ (Lukas 2012, p. 208). Indeed, whilst, as Lukas (2007) notes, themed shops are not unusual, it is rarer to see a store encourage situated transmediality and to function as a form of ‘transmedia experience […] [that is] rooted in specific physical locations’(Hills 2017, p. 214) in the way that Memento Mori does. WDW also expands the character world of the Mansion during its Halloween-themed hard-ticket Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Night parties when the figures of Madame Carlotta or Madame Renatta can be seen outside the attraction, telling stories. On these rarer occasions, guests can talk to and interact with characters from the Mansion although, tellingly these are not ones that are usually encountered in the ride such as Master Gracey or Madam Leota. In this case, the storyworld is expanded by the introduction of new characters (who are apparently Master Gracey’s nieces) who tell tales about the Mansion’s history, but within WDW the regular Mansion dwellers are removed from any possibility of physical encounter with fans or guests (although photo opportunities with rare characters

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including the Hitchhiking Ghosts, The Bride, and The Tightrope Girl were available to fans celebrating the Haunted Mansion’s 50th birthday at a hardticket event in Disneyland in California). Thus, the Mansion ‘proper’ can be protected and its characters can continue to be elusive and open to fannish interpretation (as discussed below) whilst the addition of new figures such as Madame Carlotta or Madame Renatta simultaneously works to broaden the spatial hyperdiegesis of the ride. Furthermore, as discussed in more depth in the next chapter, the fact that fans can only see these characters during the Halloween events, which they must pay extra to attend, adds a level of exclusivity to the encounter. Only fans with the means to pay for hard-ticket events are able to see these limited characters, hear their stories, and experience an arguably deeper level of immersion in the Mansion’s universe.

‘Spatially Poaching’ the Haunted Mansion Alongside this officially sanctioned expansion of the Mansion’s narrative, the ride’s fans have been instrumental in the development of its narrative and in contributing to the widening of its storyworld. Angela Ndalianis comments that ‘In the Haunted Mansion, the montage of various disjointed horror stories epitomised Walt Disney’s lack of interest in narrative development and greater concern with immersing the audience in an experience’ (2010, p. 19). Similarly, Rahn notes ‘In a dark ride […] [like the Haunted Mansion] the sequence of scenes is fixed in place – it is the audience which moves physically, in small vehicles, from one scene to the next, literally drawn into the story’ (2011, p. 88). Thus, whilst the ride may immerse the rider in the scenes, Rahn’s description highlights the lack of autonomy that visitors have since they cannot change the fixed nature of the scenes they see before them or change the order in which they view them. In addition to the quite literal physical way that the ride system controls and limits the story narrative, the over-arching Disney narrative tends towards the predictable and safe, no matter what the medium: You have seen the films, are familiar with the cartoon characters, and know that their trials and tribulations are humorous, and will eventually resolve into happy endings. You expect (and know that an omnipresent but unobtrusive management intends) a similar ending from the thrills and spills of your own visit. (Hunt and Frankenberg 1990, p. 107)

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As noted in Chapter Two, however, world-building and storytelling are not necessarily the same thing and the Mansion’s expanded universe has been created despite the lack of coherent narrative in the attraction. As Anne Helen Petersen notes, Disney’s theme park rides represent a culminating ‘closure’ of the original, ‘open’ text. Storylines, character arcs, and emotional development are reduced to an eight-minute tour of loosely interpreted vignettes, animatronic creatures spouting clichéd catchphrases – not from the original text, but from the Disney-appropriated film. (2007, pp. 66–67)

However, as she goes on to argue, this works differently when an attraction is not based on a pre-existing text (for example, Hans Christian Anderson’s Little Mermaid story) and, as such, is more open to interpretation and ‘ricketier’ (Eco 1995, p. 199). Thus, whilst most riders disembark from their Doom buggy satisfied with their narratively fixed tour of the Mansion, more dedicated fans have long sought a greater depth of story for the ride, requests that Disney has, in part, responded to. The Mansion demonstrates how fans can contribute to the development of transmedia narratives and storyworlds as much as official producers and institutions. One example of this can be seen in the Magic Kingdom version of the ride where eagle-eyed fans began to claim that a ‘wedding ring’ belonging to the Mansion’s bride could be seen embedded in the concrete on the ground outside the attraction. Fans developed their own theories about the story behind this feature: Because this ring was a creation of the fans and not Disney canon, the story of the ring varied depending who would tell it. Perhaps Master Gracey had gotten angry at the young woman for cheating on him and tossed it over the balcony in a fit of rage. Or maybe it was the indent of her ring forced into the ground when she flung herself to her death. The delightfully morbid notion took on a life of it’s [sic] own and the little piece of embedded pipe grew into legend. (Kirk 2012, italics in original)

In fact, the ‘ring’ was a steel loop used to hold posts for railings to control the extended queue lines. When maintenance workers had tried to remove the loop, the tip of a chisel had become stuck and broken off, creating the impression of a ring embedded in the ground. Although this was not an officially sanctioned part of the ride, when the Mansion was refurbished in

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2011, Disney Imagineers added an actual wedding ring to the floor outside (Kirk 2012). As the blog Theme Park Tourist outlines, Disney never officially commented on the cement ring even as the stories became more and more widely heard. They actual removed the ring from the pavement in a renovation called the Re-Haunting in 2007, but were met with an uproar of protests from the Disney faithful. In 2011 they brought the sensation back with an official ring that looks like an actual engagement ring instead of a piece of sawed-off pipe. It’s good to know that the Disney parks listen to their fans and respect the parks’ histories, even when those histories didn’t come from Disney itself! (O’Keefe 2014)

In many such online accounts of the ‘bride’s ring’, there is an awareness that Disney acknowledged and responded to fannish readings, incorporating them into the official space of the attraction. Fan discussion of this element of the Mansion often highlights the apparent symbiosis between Disney’s official story of the attraction and the ‘spatial poaching’ that they engage in to fill in the gaps. I use the term spatial poaching here since, whilst we may read the story of the Mansion as a text to be interpreted in the same way as a film or television series, the physical situated realities of its storyworld necessitate a broader understanding of the interpretive acts fans are engaging in here. Working through the specificity of the concept of spatial poaching necessitates a return to both the work of Henry Jenkins, and his foundational study Textual Poachers (Jenkins 1992), and that of Michel de Certeau, whose 1984 book The Practice of Everyday Life offers the basis for Jenkins’ ideas. Fan Studies work inspired by Jenkins has tended to follow his lead and draw largely on de Certeau’s ideas about ‘readers’ who are able to invent in texts something different from what they ‘intended’, he detaches them from their (lost or accessory) origin. He combines their fragments and creates something un-known in the space organized by their capacity for allowing an indefinite plurality of meanings. (de Certeau 1984, p. 169)

As he evocatively suggests, readers ‘move across lands belonging to someone else, like nomads poaching their way across fields they did not write, despoiling the wealth of Egypt to enjoy it themselves’ (de Certeau 1984, p. 174). As Henry Jenkins subsequently argues, the analogy of poaching ‘characterizes the relationship between readers and writers as an ongoing struggle for possession of the text and for control over its meanings’ (1992, p. 24), resulting in his ‘conception of fans as readers who appropriate popular texts and reread

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them in a fashion that serves different interests, as spectators who transform the experience of watching television into a rich and complex participatory culture’ (Jenkins 1992, p. 23). It is, therefore, somewhat surprising that few scholars (if any) within studies of fandom have returned to de Certeau to consider the potential of his broader conceptualization of the concept of poaching, especially in relation to space and place. As the metaphor of nomads moving across the fields of Egypt indicates, ‘The theme of an active movement through time in space brings together a number of operations that will make up the materiality of the everyday for de Certeau. Whether it is reading or walking, a complex of spatio-temporal activities is at stake’ (Highmore 2002, p. 146). Indeed, de Certeau’s chapter on ‘Walking in the City’ has been hugely influential in a range of fields (see Morris 2004) and the related concepts of ‘strategies’ and ‘tactics’ (de Certeau 1984) have ‘been one of the most influential models for cultural studies in recent years’ (Morris 1998, p. 110). However, despite the use of such ideas as the foundation for much of its research drawing on notions of active ‘resistance’ (Morris 2004, p. 679), Fan Studies has largely resisted returning to the centrality of the spatial in de Certeau’s conceptualization of the poacher (one excellent exception is Crawford and Hancock’s work on ‘urban poaching’ (2018)). Focusing on the reader as the key exemplar of the poacher, I would argue, has led to a privileging of the textual at the expense of expanding our understandings of other types of poaching that may be useful in understanding fan practices. De Certeau draws attention to the ‘spatial practices’ (1984, p. 96) that ‘secretly structure the determining conditions of social life’ (1984, p. 96). However, in ‘Walking in the City’, he outlines the potential for ‘a process of appropriation of the topographical system on the part of the pedestrian’ (1984, p. 97). For example, the walker is able to choose which route to take, whether to create short-cuts to circumvent established pathways, and to control and design his own movement: if on the one hand he actualizes only a few of the possibilities fixed by the constructed order (he goes only here and not there), on the other he increases the number of possibilities (for example, by creating shortcuts and detours) and prohibitions (for example, he forbids himself to take paths generally considered accessible or even obligatory). He thus makes a selection. (de Certeau 1984, p. 98)

Much like his characterization of ‘the reader’, ‘the walker’ acts as a poacher, intruding into the territory owned and controlled by others in order to borrow or plunder his/her own meanings and ‘readings’, whether of a

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text or a space; ‘to read is to wander through an imposed system (that of the text, analogous to the constructed order of a city’ (de Certeau 1984, p. 169). Given the centrality of space and place to his work, and his call for attention to be paid to the ‘the details, the banal, the mundane interactions that can reinvigorate a spatialized experience – whether of the page, the city, the street, the concept, or some other moment. [In order to allow] […] ‘walkers’ [to] re-make spaces and one’s connections to such spaces’ (Rice 2012, p.1), I would argue that the concept of textual poaching is not entirely adequate for understanding fannish re-making of narratives and stories that have a spatial component. The ‘hand of [hidden] human control’ (Borrie 1999, p. 79) enacted in themed spaces, as discussed in the prior chapter, may mean that those within them cannot entirely walk wherever they choose, as they may in within a city which offers ‘a repository of possibilities, [where] walking is the act of speaking that language, of selecting from those possibilities’ (Solnit 2002, p. 213). However, as Bartkowiak notes in his discussion of behind-the-scenes walking tours within the Disney Parks, Like Michel De Certeau’s examination of individuals walking in the city, visitors at Disney appropriate ‘the topographical system’ of the parks and enunciate use values and relationships to the parks where ‘Walking affirms, suspects, tries out, transgresses, respects, etc…’ the private space provided for the visitor ([de Certeau 1984] 97–99). (Bartkowiak 2012, p. 950)

To return to theme park fandom, then, the concept of spatial poaching, as opposed to ‘textual poaching’ (Jenkins 1992) per se, allows for consideration of the importance of being present at sites such as the Haunted Mansion in order to read, and re-read, certain elements of the narrative and to add to these. Whilst watching the film adaptation or reading the comics works to expand the narrative textually, it is the work of fans who seek to interpret and add to physical markers of the Mansion’s story that functions as spatial poaching. Another example of spatial poaching can be seen in the fan debate that rages over the identity of the figure seen in the first room of the ride in both California and Florida’s versions (DaffyStardust 2016). This figure is seen in a portrait as a young gentleman who morphs before our eyes into a decayed skeleton. Fans have debated whether this was the same figure as the ‘Ghost Host’ – the character who, as described in the ride script above, welcomes guests to the infamous part of the ride that has no windows and no doors and who is revealed to have hung himself from the rafters

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of this stretching room before guests enter a hallway and embark on the ride itself in the ‘doom buggy’ vehicles. The Ghost Host then provides a voiceover as the vehicles move through the subsequent scenes of the attraction. Alternatively, another character subject to a great deal of debate is Master Gracey – a character first mentioned in the graveyard section of the Haunted Mansion in California, and now included in the WDW version. As noted above, his gravestone reads ‘Master Gracey, laid to rest, no mourning please by his request’. Fans have most typically interpreted the character in the portrait as Master Gracey and also debated whether he is, in fact, also the Ghost Host who leads you around the Mansion (Achille Talon 2016). Disney themselves have been ambiguous on this point; as Jason Surrell’s Disney-endorsed history of the Mansion notes, the tombstone was a Tribute to special-effects wizard Yale Gracey and has led many fans to incorrectly assume that the master of the house – and thus the Ghost Host – is named Gracey. This urban legend took on such a life of its own over the years that it has become an accepted part of Haunted Mansion lore almost by default. (2015, p. 64)

Later he also points out that ‘Contrary to another popular theory that has made the rounds over the years, the Ghost Host is not the master of the house – Gracey or otherwise – but merely one of the 999 happy haunts’ (Surrell 2015, p. 73) who dwell there. However, Disney continues to sell T-shirts, pins and other merchandise with the Gracey portrait and Ghost Host written on them, apparently much to the anger of the Imagineers who tried to clarify the confusion. As one online site comments, ‘The real Imagineers who knew the real stories kept fighting the merchandise guys who used the fanon story, resulting in various items being taken back from shops by the Imagineers, only to be put back there by the Merchandisers, etc’. (Achille Talon 2016). Disney have also drawn on the fan theory that Master Gracey was the head of the house and Ghost Host in their cinema adaptation of the ride and in the first series of comics. Equally the Haunted Mansion comic has also had Master Gracey and the Ghost Host as the same character. However, fan blogs inform us that the title of Master in the initial gravestone was meant to imply a small child (too young to be referred to as a Mister) rather than the Master of the house (Achille Talon 2016). Resultantly, competing interpretations continue to be put forward, with often simultaneous sanctioning and disavowal of fan readings by Disney. Indeed, in the case of debates over Master Gracey,

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there is an acknowledgement that many of these interpretations are fan-led. As one comment on a blog notes, I think I can safely say that fans have put more thought into the backstory of the Haunted Mansion attraction than the Imagineers who made it. The story of the attraction is, there is no story. Guests experience a haunted house with all the gimmicks and gags the Imagineers could conceive of the fact that the attraction has inspired such speculation just shows how much imagination went into its design. But I really don’t think anyone involved in making the original attraction was concerned with any of these questions. (leBeau December 27, 2016 at 6:42pm, in DaffyStardust 2016)

As this comment makes clear, too, it is the lack of a coherent narrative – the perception that ‘there is no story’ – that has allowed the Mansion to be interpreted in a range of ways and for the apparent gaps in the story to be filled in; in Henry Jenkins’ vernacular, allowing fans to ‘scribble in the margins’ (1992, p. 155). Indeed, the fan extrapolation of Master Gracey as the owner of the Mansion has endured and he continues to function as a central point of identification and enjoyment for many fans. It is not unusual, for instance, to see fresh flowers having been placed on his grave when standing in line for the Mansion, an act that was initiated by cast members but is sometimes also carried out by fans (Haunted Mansion Wiki, no date). This again highlights the interplay between official and fannish practices at the same time as Disney continues to distance themselves from particular interpretations. As these debates indicate, despite the often contradictory efforts of Disney themselves, the particular fan readings of Master Gracey as the Master of the House and/or the Ghost Host have been sanctioned and endorsed in various ways, demonstrating how, ‘the most successful storyworlds […] are not conceived all at once. They are pieced together over time’ (Schweizer and Pearce 2016, p. 96). Fandom and participatory culture are frequently vital to this enduring and often open-ended process of what Jason Mittell calls ‘forensic fandom’ (2015, p. 12) where this ‘piecing together’ works to form a more dispersed and gradual expansion of a storyworld; a form of ‘retrospective transmediality’. Haunted Mansion fans’ collective efforts to solve the mysteries presented by a ride initially seemingly lacking in narrative exemplify Jenkins’ definition of participatory culture since they are creating and sharing content, information and advice, operating as ‘active participation of knowledge communities’ (2006, p. 21). In their attempts to do so, theme park fans read across the different transmedia texts of the Mansion as well as formulating

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and circulating their own theories in an effort to ‘seek out new information and make connections among dispersed media content’ (Jenkins 2006, p. 3), including physical places linked to the narrative world. Fan efforts to engage in acts of world-building challenge viewpoints that devalue fannish practices, such as Samutina’s argument that Mark J.P. Wolf’s characterization of fan fiction as one of the furthest ‘circles of authorship’ (Wolf 2012, pp. 268) works to ‘dismiss […] it in the context of the construction of imaginary universes’ (2016, p. 433). The attempts by Haunted Mansion fans to expand the narrative and world of the attraction also allows us to turn attention away from the ‘text’ of what is being built and a subsequent focus on ‘geographies of the imagination’ (Saler 2011, p.4) and to pay more attention to the links between ‘these worlds and those who engage in them’ (Saler 2011, p.4). Furthermore, the Haunted Mansion’s development from an attraction to a movie and across other transmedia formats such as novels, games, and comics demonstrates the limits to the ‘mothership’ view of transmediality which assumes that development of a narrative world is consistent and coherent. It has been argued that ‘the most successful transmedia franchises have emerged when a single creator or creative unit maintains control’ (Jenkins 2006, p. 106) since this reassures ‘audiences that someone is overseeing the transmedia text’s expansion and creating meaningful connections between texts’ (Scott 2013, p. 43). However, the Mansion’s fragmentary move towards a more expansive storyworld and hyperdiegesis suggest that we need to consider how transmediality can develop over time and be more dispersed. Unlike the case of Pirates of the Caribbean, in which the attraction and movie cyclically inform and almost cannibalize one another (Schweizer and Pearce 2016), the Haunted Mansion’s transmedia narrative draws on the attraction and the film version, whilst also incorporating interpretations that originated in more fannish readings and appearing to permit more ‘collaborative authorship and participatory spectatorship’ (Scott 2013, p. 43). In this case, as well as engaging in acts of textual poaching, fans of the Mansion also indulge in forms of spatial poaching, reading the expanded world of the attraction via its physical and rooted spaces and the opportunities for spatial transmedia afforded by being present in the attraction and associated locations such as the Memento Mori store. However, as the existence of that shopping location highlights, fans are also hailed by companies like Disney for financial purposes; as one online site observes, ‘either merchandise designers are also fan-theorists, or they want to sell stuff to fan-theorists, because the Ghost Host/Foyer Guy/ Master Gracey connection was used in several merchandise items’ (Achille Talon 2016, italics added). In her discussion of Disney ‘lifestylers’, Olympia

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Kiriakou (2018) characterizes such relationships as ‘vampiric’ since they ‘expose […] the limits of [fans’] influence and reinforce […] the economic dynamics between fans and media producers. In this case, the lifestylers are cannibalistic consumers, buying products based on their own ideas yet kept outside of the profit structure’. As in the work required of visitors in terms of usage of the My Disney Experience app and the My Magic + system, as discussed in the previous chapter, we must remain aware of the contradictions inherent in how fans engage with sites such as theme parks, and the fact that ‘questions remain over whether the conditions of these productive free labor communities can be understood solely from a perspective that sees their relations to capital as another form of capitalist exploitation of media consumers’ (Postigo 2009, p.452). Indeed, in the case of the Haunted Mansion we can see echoes of Henry Jenkins’ caution that convergence requires media companies to rethink old assumptions about what it means to consume media, assumptions that shape both programming and marketing decisions […] media producers are responding to these newly empowered consumers in contradictory ways, sometimes encouraging change, sometimes resisting what they see as renegade behavior. And consumers, in turn, are perplexed by what they see as mixed signals about how much and what kinds of participation they can enjoy. (2006, p. 19)

As in many cases of convergence, transmedia storytelling, and participatory culture, the line between producer and consumer (or fan/theme park guest) becomes blurred, as issues of ownership, power, and interpretation are (re) negotiated by both.

Conclusion As this chapter demonstrates, theme parks continue to be ‘important parts […] of what is becoming a global media system […] a new kind of mass medium, one that synthesizes many previous entertainment, advertising, marketing and public relations activities’ (Davis 1996, pp. 399–400). As work by writers such as Tom Gunning (1990), Linda Williams (2000), and Geoff King (2000) makes clear, the links between theme parks, attractions and film are long-standing and highlight questions of narrative and immersion for those who engage with both. Concerns have been raised that narrative is being lost in both media forms. However, King’s conclusion that

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‘There is a strong connection between these theme-park attractions and the films, but it is not best described as an eclipse of narrative concerns at either extreme. The attractions are built around and extend the spectacular potential of the films, but they also play on narrative resonances’ (2000, p. 182) highlights the possibilities for the narrative to be continued outside of the rides themselves. Whilst attractions based on films are common, this chapter has sought instead to explore how one popular ride, Disney’s Haunted Mansion, has expanded its transmedia storyworld across comics, novelizations and games despite, in contrast to Disney’s successful Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, its cinematic failure. Thus, in addition to offering the companies who own them ‘seemingly limitless opportunities to cross-promote goods and imagery produced in other parts of the conglomerate or acquired elsewhere’ (Davis 1996, p. 406), theme parks also offer visitors and fans the chance to further immerse themselves in a variety of storyworlds. This can, in the case of existing texts offer fans a range of experiences akin to more traditional practices such as visiting filming locations or important sites. However, as Waysdorf and Reijnders note in relation to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, The existence of the story-world across multiple media means that the theme park is seen as simply another depiction. Its authenticity is judged on its own character as a medium – its ability to represent the story-world in physical space. Because it is accurate, whether the fan has the books or the films in mind, it feels not only valid, but good art. (2018, p. 180, italics added)

Haunted Mansion fans, in contrast, are often required to fill in the blanks for themselves, adding detail in conjunction with others who seek to expand the narrative and flesh out the storyworld. This ‘demonstrates how the practices of world-building have expanded through active fan culture’ (Norris 2016, p. 676) but, whilst Disney has incorporated some of these fannish readings into the ride (e.g. the addition of the bride’s ring at the WDW ride), it seeks to limit other interpretations. For example, Anne Helen Petersen argues that the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie is an attempt to shut down the open-ended narrative of the ride and was intended to ‘effectively close the available messages to consumers worldwide’ (2007, p. 76). In the case of the Haunted Mansion, so too has Disney sought to limit the readings that fans can make of the ride and the ‘spatial poaching’ that they can engage in. Whilst debates over whether the Ghost Host is Master Gracey or not might

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seem trivial, the example of the Haunted Mansion has much to tell us about the relationships between those who own corporate, branded, and themed spaces and those who are fans of them, as well as the positions taken by both in debates over meaning and interpretation. Much as fans of other media forms such as television, comics, and film engage in battles over meaning, interpretation and canon, so too do those whose object of fandom is the theme park space or a specific attraction within it. As this discussion of the Haunted Mansion has highlighted, theme park fans often focus on specific points of identification such as the character of Master Gracey. As the next chapter explores, the chance to meet characters within themed spaces offers a range of pleasures for fans even as they are aware that those they are encountering are theme park employees in costume. Focusing on understanding how these types of fan/character meeting challenge established ideas of celebrity and stardom, the next chapter also explores the hierarchies and modes of distinction at play when meeting rarer characters, as well as the opportunities for immersion that specific locations for meet-and-greets can offer.

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Crawford, Garry and David Hancock, ‘Urban Poachers: Cosplay, Playful Cultures and the Appropriation of Urban Space’, Journal of Fandom Studies, 6, 3, (2018), 301–331. DaffyStardust, ‘DaffyStardust Takes On Haunted Mansion Theories’, LeBeau’s Le Blog, 27 December 2016, accessed 25 January 2019. https://lebeauleblog. com/2016/12/27/daffy-stardust-takes-on-haunted-mansion-theories/ Davis, Susan G., ‘The Theme Park: Global Industry and Cultural Form’, Media, Culture and Society, 18 (1996), 399–422. De Certeau, Michel, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984). Delwiche, Aaron and Jennifer Jacobs Henderson, ‘Introduction: What Is Participatory Culture?’ in The Participatory Cultures Handbook, edited by Aaron Delwiche and Jennifer Jacobs Henderson (New York: Routledge, 2012), pp. 3–9. Disney Book Group, Tales From the Haunted Mansion: Volume I: The Fearsome Foursome (Los Angeles and New York: Disney Press, 2016). ———, Tales From the Haunted Mansion: Volume II: Midnight at Madame Leota’s (Los Angeles and New York: Disney Press, 2017). ———, Tales From the Haunted Mansion: Volume III: Grim Grinning Ghosts (Los Angeles and New York: Disney Press, 2018). ———, Tales From the Haunted Mansion: Volume IV: Memento Mori (Los Angeles and New York: Disney Press, 2019). Disney Park Scripts, ‘Haunted Mansion: Magic Kingdom’, Disney Park Scripts, 12 August 2015, accessed 13 December 2018. http://www.disneyparkscripts.com/ haunted-mansion-magic-kingdom-script/ Disney World, ‘Memento Mori’, Walt Disney World, No date, accessed 1 December 2018. https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/en_GB/shops/magic-kingdom/ memento-mori/ Eco, Umberto, Faith in Fakes: Travels in Hyper-reality (London: Minerva, 1995). Evans, Elizabeth, Transmedia Television: Audiences, New Media and Daily Life (London: Routledge, 2011). Fjellman, Stephen M., Vinyl Leaves: Walt Disney World and America (Oxford: Westview Press, 1992). Francaviglia, Richard V., ‘Main Street U.S.A.: A Comparison/contrast of Streetscapes in Disneyland and Walt Disney World’, Journal of Popular Culture, 15 (1981), 141–156. Freitag, Florian, ‘Autotheming: Themed Spaces in Self-Dialogue’, in A Reader in Themed and Immersive Spaces, edited by Scott A. Lukas (Pittsburgh, PA: Carnegie Mellon: ETC Press, 2016), pp.141–150. ———, ‘Movies, Rides, Immersion’, in A Reader in Themed and Immersive Spaces, edited by Scott A. Lukas (Pittsburgh, PA: Carnegie Mellon: ETC Press, 2016b), pp. 125–130.

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———, ‘Critical Theme Parks: Dismaland, Disney and the Politics of Theming’, Continuum, 31, 6 (2017), 923–932. Garner, Ross P., ‘Tomorrowland: A World Beyond (Brad Bird 2015)’, Journal of Science Fiction Film and Television, 10, 2 (2017), 294–298. Gunning, Tom, ‘The Cinema of Attractions: Early Film, Its Spectator and the AvantGarde’, in Early Cinema: Space, Frame, Narrative, edited by Thomas Elsaesser (London: BFI Publishing, 1990), pp. 56–62. ———, ‘An Aesthetic of Astonishment: Early Film and the (In)Credulous Spectator’, in Viewing Positions: Ways of Seeing Film, edited by Linda Williams (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1995), pp. 114–133. Haunted Mansion Volume 1, Welcome Foolish Mortal (San Jose, CA: SLG Publishing, 2007). Highmore, Ben, Everyday Life and Cultural Theory: An Introduction (London and New York: Routledge, 2002). Hills, Matt, ‘Transmedia Under One Roof: The Star Wars Celebration as a Convergence Event’, in Star Wars and the History of Transmedia Storytelling, edited by Sean Guynes and Dan Hassler-Forest (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017), pp. 213–224. Hunt, Pauline and Ronald Frankenberg, ‘It’s a Small World: Disneyland, the Family and the Multiple Representations of American Childhood’, in Constructing and Resurrecting Childhood: Contemporary Issues In the Sociological Study of Childhood, edited by Allison James and Alan Prout (London: Falmer Press, 1990), pp. 94–117. Jenkins, Henry, Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture (New York: Routledge, 1992). ———, ‘The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence’, International Journal of Cultural Studies, 7, 1 (2004), 33–43. ———, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (New York: New York University Press, 2006). ———, ‘The Revenge of the Origami Unicorn: Seven Principles of Transmedia’, Confessions of an Aca-Fan, 12 December 2009, accessed 18 October 2018. http:// henryjenkins.org/blog/2009/12/the_revenge_of_the_origami_uni.html Jess-Cooke, Carolyn, ‘Sequelizing Spectatorship and Building up the Kingdom: The Case of Pirates of the Caribbean, or How a Theme Park Attraction Spawned a Multibillion-dollar Film Franchise’, in Second Takes: Approaches to the Film Sequel, edited by Carolyn Jess-Cook and Constance Verevis (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2010), pp, 205–224. Johnson, David M., ‘Disney World as Structure and Symbol: Re-Creation of the American Experience’, Journal of Popular Culture, 15, 1 (1981), 157–165. King, Geoff, Spectacular Narratives: Hollywood in the Age of the Blockbuster (London: I.B. Tauris, 2000).

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King, Margaret J., ‘Disneyland and Walt Disney World: Traditional Values in Futuristic Form’, Journal of Popular Culture, 15, 1 (1981), 116–140. Kiriakou, Olympia, ‘Meet Me At the Purple Wall: The Disney “Lifestyler” Influence on Disney Parks Merchandise’, In Media Res, 4 April 2018, accessed 4 April 2018. http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/imr/2018/03/26/ meet-me-purple-wall-disney-lifestyler-influence-disney-parks-merchandise Kirk, Kristen, ‘The Haunted Mansion: Legend of the Bride’s Ring’, Walt Disney World for Grownups, 12 April 2012, accessed 25 January 2018. http://www.wdwforgrownups.com/articles/haunted-mansion-legend-brides-ring Koren-Kuik, Meyrav, ‘Desiring the Tangible: Disneyland, Fandom and Spatial Immersion’, in Fan Culture: Essays on Participatory Fandom in the 21st Century, edited by Kristin M. Barton and Jonathan Malcolm Lampley (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2014), pp. 146–158. Kozinets, Robert V., John F. Sherrya, Benet DeBerry-Spencea, Adam Duhacheka, Krittinee Nuttavuthisita, and Diana Storm, ‘Themed Flagship Brand Stores in the New Millennium: Theory, Practice, Prospects’, Journal of Retailing, 78, 1 (2002), 17–29. K rosnick, Brian, ‘Disney Had to Close its Scariest Ever Attraction. Here’s Why’, Theme Park Tourist, 15  March 2015, accessed 12  March 2018. https://w w w.themeparktourist.com/features/20150310/30034/ depth-retrospective-extraterrorestrial-alien-encounter Kuenz, Jane, ‘It’s a Small World After All: Disney and the Pleasures of Identification’, South Atlantic Quarterly, 92, 1 (1993), 63–88. Kwaitek, Brandon, ‘The Dark Ride’, Western Kentucky University: Masters Theses and Specialist Projects, 1 August 1995, accessed 1 December 2017. http://digitalcommons.wku.edu/theses/914 Lainsbury, Andrew, Once Upon an American Dream: The Story of Euro Disneyland (Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2000). Lukas, Scott A., ‘Theming as a Sensory Phenomenon: Discovering the Senses on the Las Vegas Strip’, in The Themed Space: Locating Culture, Nation and Self, edited by Scott A. Lukas (New York: Lexington Books, 2007), pp. 75–79. ———, Theme Park (Objekt) (London: Reaktion Books, 2008). ———, The Immersive Worlds Handbook: Designing Theme Parks and Consumer Space (New York and London: CRC Press, 2012). Meamber, Laurie A., ‘Disney and the Presentation of Colonial America’, Consumption, Markets and Culture, 14, 2 (2011), 125–144. Mittell, Jason, Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling (New York: New York University Press, 2015). Morris, Brian, ‘What We Talk About When We Talk About ‘Walking in the City’, Cultural Studies, 18, 5 (2004), 675–697.

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Morris, Meghan, Too Soon Too Late: History in Popular Culture (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1998). Murphy, Chuck, Disney’s Haunted Mansion Pop-up Book (Santa Monica, CA: Disney, 1994). Ndalianis, Angela, Neo-Baroque Aesthetics and Contemporary Entertainment (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2004). ———, ‘Dark Rides, Hybrid Machines and the Horror Experience’, in Horror Zone: The Cultural Experience of Contemporary Horror Cinema, edited by Ian Conrich (London: I. B. Tauris, 2010), pp. 11–26. Nelson, Andrew, ‘Cinema From Attractions: Story and Synergy in Disney’s Theme Park Movies’, Cinephile: The University of British Columbia’s Film Journal, 4 (2008), accessed 12 December 2017. http://cinephile.ca/archives/volume-4-post-genre/ cinema-from-attractions-story-and-synergy-in-disney%E2%80%99s-themepark-movies/ Neuman, Robert, ‘Disneyland’s Main Street, USA, and Its Sources in Hollywood, USA’, The Journal of American Culture, 31, 1 (2008), 83–97. Norris, Craig, ‘Japanese Media Tourism as World-building: Akihabara’s Electric Town and Ikebukuro’s Maiden Road’, Participations, 13, 1 (2016), accessed 6 March 2018. http://www.participations.org/Volume%2013/Issue%201/S3/10.pdf O’Keefe, Matt, ‘3 Stories Behind the Legendary Bride’s Ring at the Magic Kingdom’s Haunted Mansion’, Theme Park Tourist, 29 July 2014, accessed 24 January 2018. https://www.themeparktourist.com/features/20140728/19697/ legend-bride-s-ring-haunted-mansion-walt-disney-world-s-magic-kingdompopula?page=1 Petersen, Anne, ‘You Believe in Pirates, Of Course…Disney’s Commodification and “Closure” vs. Johnny Depp’s Aesthetic Piracy of Pirates of the Caribbean’, Studies in Popular Culture, 29, 2 (2007), 63–81. Philips, Deborah, ‘Consuming the West: Main Street, USA’, Space and Culture, 5, 1 (2002), 29–41. Postigo, Hector, ‘America Online Volunteers: Lessons from an Early Co-Production Community’, International Journal of Cultural Studies, 12, 5 (2009), 451–469. Rahn, Suzanne, ‘The Dark Ride of Snow White: Narrative Strategies at Disneyland’, in Disneyland and Culture: Essays on the Parks and Their Influence, edited by Kathy Merlock Jackson and Mark I. West (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2010), pp. 87–100. Rice, Jeff, Digital Detroit: Rhetoric and Space in the Age of the Network (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 2012). Saler, Michael, As-if: Modern Enchantment and the Literary Prehistory of Virtual Reality (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).

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Samutina, Natalia, ‘Fan Fiction as World-Building: Transformative Reception in Crossover Writing’, Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies, 30, 4 (2016), 433–450. Schweizer, Bobby and Celia Pearce, ‘Remediation on the High Seas: A Pirates of the Caribbean Odyssey’, in A Reader in Themed and Immersive Spaces, edited by Scott A. Lukas (Pittsburgh, PA: Carnegie Mellon: ETC Press, 2016), pp. 95–106. Scott, Suzanne, ‘Who’s Steering the Mothership? The Role of the Fanboy Auteur in Transmedia Storytelling’, in The Participatory Cultures Handbook, edited by Aaron Delwiche and Jennifer Jacobs Henderson (New York: Routledge, 2013), pp. 43–52. Solnit, Rebecca, Wanderlust: A History of Walking (London: Granta Publications, 2002). Sperb, Jason, ‘“Take a Frown, Turn It Upside Down”: Splash Mountain, Walt Disney World, and the Cultural De-rac[e]-ination of Disney’s Song of the South (1946)’, Journal of Popular Culture, 38, 5 (2005), 924–938. Stein, Louisa Ellen and Kristina Busse, ‘Introduction: The Literary, Televisual and Digital Adventures of the Beloved Detective’, in Sherlock and Transmedia Fandom: Essays on the BBC Series, edited by Louisa Ellen Stein and Kristina Busse (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2012), pp. 9–24. Stephens, Nicholas, Disney’s Enter If You Dare! Scary Tales from the Haunted Mansion, (New York: Hyperion, 1995). Surrell, Jason, The Haunted Mansion: Imagineering A Disney Classic (New York: Disney Editions, 2015). Waysdorf, Abby and Stijn Reijnders, ‘Immersion, Authenticity and the Theme Park as Social Space: Experiencing the Wizarding World of Harry Potter’, International Journal of Cultural Studies, 21, 2 (2018), 173–188. Weiner, Lynne Y., ‘There’s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow’: Historic Memory and Gender in Walt Disney’s “Carousel of Progress”’, Journal of American Culture, 20, 1 (1997), 111–116. Weinstein, Raymond M., ‘Disneyland and Coney Island: Reflections on the Evolution of the Modern Amusement Park’, Journal of Popular Culture, 26, 1 (1992), 131–164. Williams, Linda, ‘Discipline and Fun: Psycho and Postmodern Cinema’, in Reinventing Film Studies, edited by Christine Gledhill and Linda Williams (London: Arnold, 2000), pp. 351–378. Williamson, Joshua, Disney Kingdoms: The Haunted Mansion, (Marvel, 2016). Wolf, Mark J.P., Building Imaginary Worlds: The Theory and History of Subcreation (London: Routledge, 2012).

5.

Of Mice and Minions: ‘Ani-embodiment’ and ‘Metonymic Celebrity’ in the Theme Park Character Encounter Abstract This chapter explores the activity of meeting characters within theme parks which provides the opportunity to meet recognizable ‘stars’ from Disney (such as the Princesses and Villains) or Universal (including Shrek, SpongeBob SquarePants, The Simpsons and the Minions). It considers how meeting characters provides an avenue for adult fans to present their own preferences regarding characters, f ilms or brands despite their awareness that these characters are not ‘real’. It argues that theme park meet-and-greets necessitate complex negotiations of immersion, participation and affective attachment. Introducing the concepts of ani-embodiment and metonymic celebrity, the chapter explores what it means to view character interactions as forms of celebrity encounter, and how this complicates established dichotomies of ordinary/celebrity, star/character, and live-action/animation. Keywords: celebrity, ani-embodiment, metonymic celebrity, immersion, theme park characters, meet-and-greets

Introduction This chapter explores the activity of meeting characters within theme parks which provides the opportunity to meet recognizable ‘stars’ from Disney media (such as the Princesses and Villains) or Universal properties (including Shrek, SpongeBob SquarePants, The Simpsons and the Minions). It has been argued that the chance to meet Disney characters operates as another way in which its child audiences are indoctrinated into both commercial and celebrity cultures (Merlock Jackson, 2011) and a similar point

Williams, R., Theme Park Fandom. Spatial Transmedia, Materiality And Participatory Cultures. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020 doi 10.5117/9789462982574_ch05

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could be applied to the Universal Studios characters. However, this chapter instead argues that the opportunity to meet characters offers an important aspect of adult fan interaction with theme park spaces, providing another avenue for fans to present their own preferences regarding characters, f ilms or brands. Drawing on work on the ‘virtual star’ (Hills 2003) and ‘digital stardom’ (King 2011) this chapter considers the importance of theme park meet-and-greets, and argues that these necessitate complex negotiations of immersion, participation and affective attachment. As with traditional celebrity encounters, fans may experience excitement, nervousness or disappointment after meeting a theme park character (Ferris and Harris 2011). Such practices also threaten a potential desecration of the notion of what celebrity itself means; since the characters are costumed actors it is not they who are objects of adoration but the fictional figures they stand in for, allowing them to function as a form of ‘metonymic celebrity’ and, in the case of characters from animated films, as ‘ani-embodied characters’ or celebrities. Much as ordinary people can become famous by crossing media thresholds (Couldry 2002) normal theme park employees can assume the trappings of celebrity, albeit temporarily, by stepping into the costume of Mickey Mouse or the dresses of Disney Princesses. The interactions themselves also offer a way for fans to become immersed in the theme park environment and this is especially pertinent for adult fans who, unlike some of the child visitors, are aware of the potential artifice of the encounter. In many cases, the space where these meet-and-greets take place is crucial to the sense of immersion in the narrative world. For example, guests at Disney’s Magic Kingdom must queue through an underground grotto to meet The Little Mermaid’s Ariel or wait in line for a limited audience with Belle from Beauty and the Beast. Universal Studios offers the chance to meet Despicable Me’s Minions in a disco room where you can also dance with the Minions and witness some of their disruptive ‘despicable’ behaviour if you are there are the ‘right time’ – often early in the morning or later in the evening. Other meet-and-greets are only available if guests are willing to pay extra – Beauty and the Beast fans can only encounter The Beast if they dine in the Be Our Guest restaurant at Magic Kingdom in WDW – or use the My Magic+ system to reserve a timeslot (e.g. to meet the hugely popular Anna and Elsa from Frozen at EPCOT). There are also rare characters who are only available during specific themed events; for example WDW’s Halloween parties which offer the chance to meet figures such as Jack and Sally from Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas, all seven of Snow White’s dwarves, Abu from Aladdin or

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Mickey Mouse in his special Halloween costume. Information about how to meet certain characters is widely shared within the online theme park fandom but there remain varying levels of capital afforded to different character encounters – economic, cultural and symbolic – depending on which characters are met, and where and when this occurs. There are also numerous online resources such as blogs and websites dedicated to recording where best to encounter certain characters and the likelihood of meeting them. Such sites offer future visitors information about how to plan their visits to maximize the opportunities for important character interactions, feeding into the circuit of participation within theme park fandom. However, adult encounters with characters also fulfil crucial functions in establishing affective connections to the themed spaces. They may also provide physical evidence of the encounter via photos which can be shared on digital media sites – both during and after the trips themselves – and offer another form of cultural capital, and evidence of ‘being there’. The chapter argues that we consider these meetings as celebrity encounters where fans negotiate the excitement about interacting with this type of ‘famous’ figure alongside their knowledge of the artificiality of that persona, and their acceptance of the roles that both celebrity and fan must play. Firstly, however, the chapter explores what it means to view character meet-and-greets and interactions in the theme parks as forms of celebrity encounter, and how this complicates established dichotomies of ordinary/ celebrity, star/character, and live-action/animation (Barker 2003).

The Theme Park Character Encounter One of the key distinctions that Walt Disney drew between his original Disneyland Park and the traditional amusement park was the ability to meet beloved and recognizable characters, as well as enjoying a range of rides and attractions (Ghez no date, p. 130, in Younger 2016, p. 363). Across both the Disney and Universal Studios Parks, such interactions often provide some of the most memorable moments for guests, both adults and children alike. As David Younger summarizes, Costumed Characters are the performers who dress up as a specif ic character, being divided into two types: Face Characters, where the performers face is visible to the guest, and Rubberhead Characters, in which they wear a mask. Both are used for walk-arounds, Meet & Greets […], shows […], and Character Dining. (2016, p. 363)

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The demands on both are different; whilst those in Rubberheads are often hot and uncomfortable, they do not face the acting challenges required of Face Characters who can ‘interact verbally with the guests, in addition to emoting through their facial expressions, requiring performers to also be able to affect the accent and tone of a character’s voice […] Face Characters are able to address, question and interact with guests’ (Younger 2016, 365). This often requires quick-thinking and improvization when challenged by a guest who is not fully buying into the performance; whether a child querying whether they are the ‘real’ Cinderella or Elsa, or an adult who is reluctant to play along. The requirements of the theme park worker who is employed as a character have been well documented. The Project on Disney discusses how theme park staff in masks often collapse in the Florida heat (1995, pp. 135–136) and the golden rule that characters are never to be seen ‘out of character’, particularly without their heads on, to avoid destroying ‘the park’s magic, the illusion that the characters are real’ (1995, p. 137). The Parks, especially Disney, work hard to maintain this illusion; for example, they will ‘often be strict in ensuring that no duplicates of characters can be seen’ (Younger 2016, p. 363), pulling characters from meet-and-greets during parades or shows to perpetuate the idea that, for instance, there is only one ‘real’ Mickey Mouse. This is similarly seen in Universal Orlando Resort where one will only ever encounter one Beetlejuice, Cat In The Hat, or SpongeBob SquarePants in one place at a time and when one-to-one encounters are typically halted during the Universal Superstar Parades. Characters are also meant to be encountered in thematically appropriate designated areas; as Wright notes, The backstage workplace areas and the employee manuals contain diagrammatic and written distinctions between ‘good show’ and ‘bad show’ and one of the main rules for park employees is to avoid actions and intrusions, e.g. Snow White turning up in Frontierland, that would disrupt the credibility of the show. (Wright 2006, p. 307)

Disney also works to avoid confusion and duplication regarding its characters by prohibiting adult guests from dressing in costumes outside of special events (e.g. its Halloween parties) (although see Chapter Eight on how fans have responded to this ban). The child guest may go along with this without question; as Merlock Jackson argues, ‘Disney theme parks attract children fascinated by Disney characters, and, by so doing, they cultivate one of children’s earliest experiences with star culture’ (2011, p. 207) and ‘children first encounter their favorite Disney

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characters in person and learn behaviors suggestive of star adoration’ (2011, p. 208). This may be so, but I am interested here in exploring why adult fans continue to meet the characters within the theme parks. Indeed, It is often a theme park’s policy that these characters really are the characters from their IP: children actually get to meet the stars of their favorite films, posing for photos, asking for autographs, and otherwise interacting with the characters, and just as importantly adults are almost always happy to play along as well. (Younger 2016, p. 363, emphasis added)

Unlike children, however, adults are well aware that there is no one ‘real’ Mickey and that the character they are meeting is a theme park employee in a costume. Cypher and Higgs refer to this as a ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ (2001, 416), whilst Carson argues that it demonstrates the ‘willing employment of make-believe’ (2004, 233). Despite being aware of the potential artifice of the encounter, then, why do adult guests at the parks stand in lengthy lines for photo opportunities with people who they know are neither the actual characters they are fans of, nor the actors who may have voiced or played them? Drawing on existing work on celebrity cultures and forms of stardom, I want here to propose the concepts of ‘ani-embodiment’ and ‘metonymic celebrity’ to understand the enduring allure of the theme park character for adult fans, and to explore how the existence of such forms of celebrity works to challenge existing boundaries and ‘previous dichotomies such as realism/formalism as well as star/character and live-action/animation’ (Hills 2003, p. 84). Whilst viewing ‘ordinary’ people in costumes as potential ‘stars’ or celebrities may seem strange, it is clear that ‘Characters are the theme park’s celebrities, pursued by guests eager for photographs and autographs as if they were Hollywood stars’ (Younger 2016, p. 367).

‘Ani-embodiment’ and ‘Metonymic Celebrity’ In his work on the Hollywood star system Richard deCordova writes, discursive practices produce the star’s identity, an identity that does not exist within the individual star (the way we might, however naively, believe our identities exist within us), but rather in the connections between and associations among a wide variety of texts – films, interviews, publicity photos, etc. The star’s identity is intertextual, and the star system is made up in part of those ongoing practices that produce

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the intertextual field within which that identity may be seized by curious fans. (2001, p. 12)

Such a star system is predicated upon a distinction ‘between the image and the body, the public and private, the historical, biographical person, and the location of many fictional biographies, between the scripted and the ‘real’’ (Flanagan 2007, pp. 300–01). However, in the case of non-embodied characters or figures (that is, animated or digital characters), these separations cannot always hold since the character has no ‘real’ persona or biography to draw on. For example, in discussion of the virtual star Lara Croft (who originated in video games but has a transmedia presence in films, comics, and across various other objects of popular culture), Bob Rehak notes that, ‘The fan movement surrounding Lara Croft – one of the most recognizable, globally popular and lucrative media stars working today – is all the more remarkable given that its object does not, in any localized or unitary sense, exist’ (2003, p. 477). Debates over what has been termed ‘cyberstardom’ (Creed 2000) or ‘digital stardom’ (King 2011) have tended to focus on the labour involved in creating such digital actors or ‘synthespians’ (Stahl 2011), or the uncanny reanimation of actors who have passed away (Bode 2010), a point well-illustrated by the mixed response to Disney’s use of deceased actor Peter Cushing to reprise his character Grand Moff Tarkin in the Star Wars movie Rogue One (Pulver 2017). However, the issue of stardom in animation is even more complex. Paul Wells argues that ‘Animated characters becoming ‘stars’ is not a new phenomenon, of course. In the pre-war era of cartooning, Felix the Cat, Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Betty Boop, Bugs Bunny and Popeye all transcended their status as animated drawings to become bona fide cultural figures’ (2003, p. 96) whilst Hills notes that such ‘characters […] take on an iconic status and thereby move through popular culture as mobile signifiers detached from their originating texts’ (2003, p. 83). Such cartoon characters, however, became stars by dint of their own iconic status, not by the fact that those who voiced them were already famous. Indeed, with reference to the established concept of stardom as outlined by DeCordova above, Martin Barker questions ‘what do we say about the characters who are voiced? Can they be classed as ‘stars’ in their own right? […] There are arguments that cartoon figures cannot be stars because they do not have a life outside the films in which they appear’ (2003, pp. 21–22). Matt Hills extends these debates in his analysis of Star Wars character Jar Jar Binks as a ‘virtual star’, arguing that ‘Binks does not circulate in extratextual, official secondary texts, and thus a major aspect of stardom – where the star’s ‘authentic’ lifestyle and persona are drawn on in publicity

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narratives- is seemingly absent’ (2003, p.82). Therefore, ‘Since Jar Jar has no off-screen life, then he cannot be thought of as a conventional star: ‘his’ extratextual, publicity circulation is restricted’ (2003, p. 83). However, as Hills goes onto argue, ‘the virtual star becomes both an effect and a textual performance: they are both something ‘in’ the text, and something that transcends their textual appearance, albeit without this transcendence being tied back to a real-world persona or identity’ (2003, p. 83). The ability to meet characters who may have been animated or virtual seems to complicate the assertions made here; whilst theme park guests can never actually meet Jar Jar (or other digital stars) or those who voiced or represented them via motion-capture, for example, their potential presence within the theme park space does offer them a form of embodiment that exists in the ‘real-world’. When considering the types of character that theme park guests may encounter, we must also consider the fact that many of these are voiced by famous actors who bring elements of their existing star persona to the role. Examples include Robin Williams’s Genie from Aladdin, Idina Menzel’s Elsa, Tom Hanks’s Woody from Toy Story, or Mike Myers’s Shrek who can be met at Universal Orlando Resort. Barker argues that stars in animation can voice a character, and thus transfer to it some of the resonances of their established persona. But they cannot own it. When Tom Hanks speaks the words of Woody in Toy Story, Hanks’s persona contributes to, but must not supplant, that of the animated character. (2003, p. 20)

In such instances some elements of an actor’s established star persona may mesh with the reading of the character they voice but the character must still be able to stand on their own, outside of the associations that the actor may bring. As Wells notes, ‘Woody and Buzz are predicated only through modes of artifice; they exist as their iconic form. Tom Hanks and Tim Allen dressed as Woody and Buzz would be exactly that, and categorically not the characters’ (2003, p. 94). In focusing on the performances within the Toy Story films themselves, Wells draws attention to how ‘the disciplinary boundary that [Buzz and Woody] cross (existing as ‘animated’ rather than live-action figures) changes the nature of how the idea of acting, performance and art may be reconfigured’ (2003, p. 92). I would argue, however, that the opportunity to meet characters such as Woody and Buzz within theme parks such as WDW’s Magic Kingdom and Hollywood Studios adds another dimension to how we consider their celebrity. Detached from their animated world and/or the voices of their famous actorly counterparts, such characters move into being of the real-world,

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becoming ‘fleshed out’ by their physical presence. Such a process has been discussed in relation to fans of Lara Croft, who engaged in ‘‘casting’ the avatar with actual human beings, a practice fans shared with producers. As part of Tomb Raider’s marketing, dozens of women have stepped into the avatar’s clothing and hairstyle, attempting to ‘flesh out’ a fictive persona’ (Rehak 2003, p. 485). However, unlike Croft, who functioned as a form of what Rehak calls an ‘artefact: a software-generated character without human referent’ (2003, p. 478), I propose that figures such as Mickey Mouse become incarnated as forms of ‘ani-embodied characters’, those whose origins are in animation and who do not (and cannot) exist outside of the animated world but who have become ‘alive’ via their personification through costumes, mannerisms, behaviours, and the literal body of the theme park cast member. When meeting ani-embodied characters who exist only in Disney or Universal’s animated films, such negotiations may be relatively simple since Mickey Mouse, The Simpsons nor the Minions have any real-life referent with which to compare them, and characters voiced by famous actors continue to be associated with their visual image in meet-and-greets, rather than the actor who voices them. This is largely because many of the Rubberhead Characters one encounters do not talk to the guests and so any vocal dissimilarity is not noticed – Buzz and Woody may wave at guests and gesture in order to communicate, but they have no voice and so the fact that they are not Tim Allen or Tom Hanks does not matter. Similarly, when meeting the Disney Princesses the lack of vocal resemblance to the film versions is often rendered inconsequential, primarily because (aside from the recent famous voices of Elsa and Anna in Frozen), many of the classic Princesses such as Cinderella, Snow White, or Aurora from Sleeping Beauty were not voiced by a star who would be recognized today. However, character encounters become more complex when theme park guests meet human characters played by a human actor (e.g. Chris Pratt’s Star Lord, Chris Evan’s Captain America, or Adam Driver’s Kylo Ren). Here, we see the potential intrusion of the fleshy embodiment of both the actor who voiced or played a role, as well as the physical presence of the theme park cast member at the encounter. Whilst theme park guests may well be able to appreciate meeting Mickey Mouse who, as a Rubberhead Character offers no trace of the human agent inside, the guest meeting Star Lord is palpably aware that this is not Chris Pratt. In both instances, the theme park characters function as a type of metonymic celebrity since, in the absence of access to the actual characters, this fusion of textual iconography (e.g. costume, mannerisms, famous lines of dialogue) with the physical corporeal body is the only way that they can be brought to life and embodied.

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In her discussion of Disney cosplay, Amon argues that ‘The translation of an animated image onto a corporeal body is a deviation that transfers an object from one medium of expression and reinterprets the image onto a drastically different format’ (2014, para: 4.2). In a similar way, the inhabiting of the persona of a character (whether animated or not) within the theme park also offers a form of ‘deviant translation’ between the text and the corporeal body. Here, however, the possibility of temporary fame is also offered since the theme park employee assumes the borrowed recognizability of the character they are embodying, allowing them (albeit briefly) to move from the space of the ordinary and everyday into the temporary realm of the celebrity. The tension between the ‘ordinary’ and the ‘extraordinary’ has long been part of the construction of contemporary celebrity since ‘“Ordinariness” […] has always occupied a place among the repertoire of celebrity discourses’ (Turner 2010, p. 12) and there is a clear ‘contradictoriness of the discourses of celebrity – their capacity to simultaneously valorize a celebrity’s elite status whilst nonetheless celebrating their ‘intrinsic ordinariness’ (Turner et al, 2000, p. 13). As more ‘ordinary people’ have found themselves invited into the media world through genres such as reality television or via digital media platforms – what Turner (2010) refers to as the ‘demotic turn’ – writers have begun to interrogate the relationship between the ordinary and extraordinary, and the ‘everyday’ and media worlds. For example, in his work on reality television, Nick Couldry has drawn attention to the ‘boundary between ‘ordinary person’ and ‘media person’’ (2004, p. 60) and how particular forms of media ritual (Couldry 2003), such as the evictions of contestants in series such as Big Brother or Survivor, work to represent the crossing of this boundary. As ordinary people cross this threshold, they are granted access to ‘a route to visibility through a sanctioned crossing into a “space of public attention,”’ (McElroy and Williams 2011, p. 9). However, for many their time in this space is fleeting and the multiple crossings (including returns) entailed in such rituals are perhaps more frequent and less readily put to rest than [Couldry’s] theoretical outline can demonstrate. Crossing into the media space is but one side of the coin; crossing back into the ‘ordinary’ world is another and may entail a sense of loss as significant as the sense of gain that media visibility may confer. (McElroy and Williams, 2011, p. 9)

As McElroy and Williams point out, for many the crossing into the media space can be fleeting and a loss of fame, and the associated passing back across the media threshold, is more common that we may imagine.

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Such approaches to celebrity are helpful in understanding the appeal of the theme park character encounter and in beginning to explore why such meetings continue to have importance for non-child guests. Both ani-embodied and metonymic characters within the parks are imbued with forms of value and recognizability when they inhabit the masks or costumes of the characters. In these moments, they cross a threshold similar to Couldry’s media threshold, and assume the trappings of fame such as being recognizable, being asked for autographs, and posing for photographs. During the time of inhabitation, the ‘rewards’ of being part of the media/celebrity realm are bestowed upon them and the theme park guest recognizes that they, too, are part of this system. However, unlike many celebrity encounters where it is ‘the ordinary person who has to figure out how to solve the problems this situational impropriety creates by deciding how to respond to the celebrity’ (Ferris and Harris 2011, p. 34), the theme park character encounter is set up precisely for the meeting to take place. Once the theme park worker removes their costume and steps out of their role as Cinderella, Mickey Mouse or Homer Simpson, however, they move back out of the realm of celebrity and cross back into being ‘ordinary’. There are very few theme park employees who have achieved recognition and renown on their own terms and, when specific versions of characters have become too popular, Disney in particular has been conscious about maintaining a focus on the role they are playing, rather than the individual. For example, the character of Gaston from Beauty and the Beast who appears at WDW’s Magic Kingdom has achieved significant recognition for his interaction with guests. As Younger notes, ‘In addition to simply looking like a character, the performer must have the ability to act (and talk if a face character) as that character as well, often requiring significant improvisational skills’ (2016, p. 364) and Gaston has demonstrated the ability to respond quickly and wittily to challenges from guests with his interactions with children in particular, often going viral online (McDermott 2017). In contrast, when online female fans began to comment on the physical attractiveness of an actor playing Marvel’s Loki at Disneyland on Twitter, others cautioned against displaying overt fandom of him, rather than the character: Disneyland Loki is serving LOOKS (27 Nov 17) He seems like a swell guy but please don’t find his name…i’ve heard that one of the peter pans got fired because people found out the actor’s name and that ruined the ‘disney magic’…i’m just concerened I don’t want him to be unemployed lmao (29 Nov 17)

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does disneyland loki know the entirety of marvel twitter is attacted to him? (31 Jan 18) Guys pls remember Disney take the privacy of their cast really seriously and if find out his social medias, he could get fired. Please don’t actively search for his accounts or do anything that could jeopardise his job. (31 Jan 18)

As these exchanges highlight, there is awareness that theme park celebrities are the characters themselves, rather than the actor who is playing them. To learn too much about the person behind the mask is to risk the sense of make-believe, the ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ (Cypher and Higgs 2001, p. 416), that is necessary to engaging in the character interaction. Whilst Gaston’s popularity remains centred resolutely on the character, fans work to police the lines between Disneyland Loki and the actor who portrays him, aware of the risks inherent in crossing the line into viewing the actor as the celebrity and destroying the concept of ‘Disney magic’ that meet-and-greets are meant to evoke.

Negotiating Access: Characters, Immersion and Hierarchy Having established the type of celebrity that theme park characters function as – both metonymic in terms of their ‘standing in’ for famous people and ani-embodied when representing characters from animated texts – this section discusses in more depth the physical experience of meeting these figures. Discussing a range of opportunities to interact with characters, including Walk-Arounds (where characters freely roam the parks), Meetand-Greets, and Character Dining, the chapter argues that these various encounters link to the immersive nature of the theme park fan experience, and that access to some can be limited by economic or subcultural capital. In so doing, the section argues that meeting characters, especially those who are only available during ‘up-charge’ or ‘hard ticket’ events, contributes further to the forms of hierarchy and cultural distinction at work within theme park culture. The act of meeting characters forms just one element of the experience of encountering them within the theme parks. Guests may also see recognizable figures taking part in events such as Magic Kingdom’s Festival of Fantasy Parade or Universal Studios’ Superstar Parade, an event where the park itself frames the characters as ‘famous’ via its very title. Thus, in addition

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to actually encountering characters, other trappings of celebrity culture are in evidence as guests can see them in other contexts. As Merlock Jackson notes in her own remembrance of visiting Disney, ‘Star watching became a game, perhaps even an obsession, connecting us to others at the park as well as to the characters whose autographs we sought’ (2011, p. 209). As she makes clear, engaging with characters works to create a shared culture amongst guests whilst they are physically within the parks, as well as before and after they visit, as discussed below. In addition to encountering characters wandering the Parks, a guaranteed chance to meet them is offered by more formalized Meet-and-Greets. These are a more organized version of Walk-Around Characters, which needed to be implemented as the focus shifted from a group of guests from different parties playing with a character to the desire to get one on one interaction, alongside photographs and signatures, which necessitated the introduction of queue lines and standardized contact time. (Younger 2016, p. 454)

As Younger notes, as guests began to expect to have a photograph and an autograph with each character, the Parks needed to more strictly control access to those characters and ensure that queues move at a reasonable pace. The typical meet-and-greet involves lining up in either a specially designed and themed space to meet a character or, for more minor characters, queuing up in a designated area of the park in an outside space. Each guest is able to pose with the characters whilst a professional Disney or Universal Studios photographer takes a photo. Guests are also permitted to take pictures with their own cameras or phones, and, in some cases, a theme park employee will also undertake this for you. If desired, the characters will then sign an autograph (consisting of an actual signature or a stamp, depending on the size and flexibility of the character’s costumed hand), sometimes engage in a little interaction (most typically with child guests), and once the encounter is over, the guest is given a card or ticket to enable them to view and purchase their official photographs and ushered out of the area. Depending on crowd level and time of year, these types of interaction can last between a few seconds and several minutes, but the main focus of the employees is to ensure that everyone in line is able to meet the character. I want here, however, to focus in on two examples of character meetand-greets to consider the pleasures of engagement and immersion that can result from their theming and the physical place where these encounters occur. First, the section discusses the process of meeting Disney Princess Ariel from The Little Mermaid in the Magic Kingdom, considering how the

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theming of her land outside and the process of entering the Grotto space to meet her works to frame expectation of the encounter to come, as well as immersing the guest in the environment and helping to engender an affective response to the meeting. Secondly, it considers a meet-and-greet opportunity at Universal Studios where guests can encounter the Minions at the end of the Despicable Me: Minion Mayhem ride. These examples offer different experiences via the level of their theming, the type of character that is encountered, and the sense of immersion in the narrative world that is created. As this book has argued throughout, ‘Fans and theme parks are tied into a reciprocal relationship marked by immersion’ (Koren-Kuik 2014, p. 146). Whilst this sense of immersion is produced by the theming of lands and spaces, it also results from a complex blend of affective, haptic and sensory encounters, allowing ‘theme parks [to] continue to provide rich, personal experiences’ (Geissler and Rucks 2011: 128). These experiences can also result from the moment of entering into the Meet-and-Greet space where both character and place work together to offer immersion. In the case of meeting Ariel in her grotto, the theming of the experiential space begins well before actually coming face-to-face with the character. Her designated location, Ariel’s Grotto, is housed within the Fantasyland area of the WDW Magic Kingdom park, next to the dark ride Under The Sea: The Journey of the Little Mermaid. From the outside, the ride and the Grotto are clearly themed around iconic imagery from the movie, with Prince Eric’s castle located on a hill and a statue of Ariel herself on the front of a ship. The queues for both attractions take the guest past waterfalls and ‘rocks’ embedded with shells and stones, and the under-the-sea theming works immediately to suggest that the guest is inhabiting the world of The Little Mermaid. Once the end of the line is reached, guests sit with Ariel in a giant seashell whilst she talks and interacts with them, and photographs and autographs can be obtained. Although Ariel takes time with each guest, this is largely focused on children and, in my observations of meeting her, with adult female guests rather than men. This is the only instance where Ariel is guaranteed to be met in her mermaid form (largely because of the difficulty of walking and moving in the costume), although she does appear in her human Princess guise at other locations. Themed Meet-and-Greets such as these work to build anticipation for the character encounter to come, furthering the immersive sense of being in the narrative world; in the case of Ariel’s Grotto this is doubly layered since the surrounding Fantasyland is already themed around fairy tales more broadly. This ‘strategy of immersion allows visitors […] to

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affectively experience the theme. Thus, the theme becomes ‘real’ – even though it may have never existed in the first place, as in the case of myths’ (Carla and Freitag 2015, p, 151) or, in this case, fairy tales. The immersive effect of being in the grotto as you queue and interact enhances the sensory experience; since one can reach out and touch the walls of the space or hear the echoes of waves meant to evoke the sense of being near the sea. As in the examples of both ani-embodied and metonymic celebrity discussed above, the adult guest understands that the Ariel they meet is a stand-in but the immersion offered by these more themed meet-and-greet spaces highlights how ‘in the theme park world the individual uses all the senses and understands that knowing is achieved through immersion, participation and seeing for oneself’ (Lukas 2008, p. 242). In the case of the Universal parks, character interactions are often more spontaneous; there is a list of daily character times but these often take place outside attractions such as Beetlejuice’s attendance at the Horror Makeup Show, the presence of Megatron or Optimus Prime beside the Transformers ride, or the appearance of Sideshow Bob and Krusty the Clown in The Simpsons’ land. Whilst some characters can be encountered within more typical themed meet-and-greet spaces, these are significantly less elaborate than those established in the Disney parks although they can, as I will discuss here, offer their own immersive pleasures. For example, Universal Studios offers the chance to meet the Minions from the Despicable Me franchise in a ‘Disco Room’ at the end of the Minion Mayhem attraction. Other characters from the movies, such as Gru, the villainous Vector and Gru’s adopted daughters can be encountered during an outdoor meet and greet, and at a character breakfast for additional cost. However, the Disco Room offers the only chance to meet the regular Minions without paying an up-charge (and Gru can sometimes, although rarely, be spotted in the Disco Room too). This meet-and-greet differs from many others (in particular those found in WDW) since it is primarily promoted as an opportunity one gets at the end of the Minion Mayhem ride. Once that attraction ends, the exit doors open into a large circular room which plays the song ‘Boogie Fever’ from Despicable Me and projects images of dancing Minions onto screens over live footage of the guests as they move through the room. If one chooses, they can line up for a photograph with the Minion characters or, alternatively, exit immediately via the gift shop. Unlike the example of The Little Mermaid at WDW, the immersive experience here is linked more to the guests’ viewing of, and engaging in, the ‘despicable’ behaviour of the Minion characters, rather than a more elaborately themed staging of the space. For example, the Minion characters

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may fight, photobomb each other or the guests, cause general havoc, or interact with people. On one occasion, I witnessed a guest present the characters with a banana (narratively, the Minions’ favourite foodstuff) and watched as they fought over it, before one kept it in their pocket for the remainder of the photo session. Similarly, if a guest gets to see a handover between different Minions (ostensibly when the cast member playing them goes for a break or finishes their shift) they will often get to witness more spontaneous Minion interactions; one early morning we saw one take over the photo printing desk, apparently ignoring the pleas of ‘his’ handler. Each experience here, then, can be quite different depending on the behaviour and interactions of the guests, the timing of the visit, and the Minions available at different times of the day. There appear to be four Minions that appear, sometimes individually and sometimes in pairs, with some being more difficult to see than others (during one 10-day stay at UOR, and approximately ten visits to the Disco Room, one minion, ‘Jerry’, was only available on one occasion). For fans of the franchise, or those who more generally enjoy engaging in the practice of meeting theme park characters, the variability of the encounter encourages repeat visits. Whilst, then, the themed space is not as elaborate or expansive as, for example, Ariel’s Grotto, the Disco Room offers an immersive encounter with the Minions via its music, and the sense of fun and ‘mayhem’ that the franchise, and the attraction, embody. Finally, at the most restricted end of the scale is the chance to meet characters via an ‘upcharge’ experience or a ‘hard ticket’ event. Upcharge attractions ‘charge the guest an additional fee to participate, beyond the park’s entrance price’ (Younger 2016, p. 414) such as arcade games, shooting galleries, or Character Dining. Character Dining refers to experiences in sit-down restaurants where characters move between the tables, signing autographs, posing for photos, and typically spending more time with guests that the traditional meet-and-greet allows for (see Chapter Six for more on food and drink in the parks). Merlock Jackson (2011, p. 209) notes the opportunities to pay extra for the guaranteed chance to meet characters at events such as ‘Mickey’s Tropical Luau, Minnie’s Menehune Breakfast, Breakfast with Mary Poppins and Friends, Breakfast with Admiral Goofy and Crew […] and Buffet Dinner with Chip ‘n’ Dale as TV’s ‘Rescue Rangers’’. More recently, Disney World has offered Character Dining including Cinderella’s Royal Table (at a cost of $60 per adult) where guests can meet Cinderella and other Princesses, Tiana’s Riverboat Party where Tiana and Prince Naveen from The Princess and The Frog host an ice cream and dessert party, and Mickey’s Backyard BBQ where one can meet the titular Mouse.

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In contrast, hard-ticket events are those that are ‘held after hours or in an area of the park into which regular ticket holders are restricted, which require the purchase of an event ticket rather than a regular park ticket’ (Younger 2016, p. 276). These are often linked to seasonal holidays; in the Orlando parks, Disney offers ‘Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party’ and ‘Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party’, whilst Universal Studios targets an older demographic with their long-running ‘Halloween Horror Nights’ and ‘Mardi Gras’ parties. Such special events ‘help establish regular and seasonal connections with guests’ (Lukas 2012, p. 241) and, in the case of Disney, many hard-ticket events offer the opportunity to meet more rare characters who are less often encountered in the Parks on an everyday basis. Here, as in many other aspects of theme park fandom, there are hierarchies of value and distinction afforded to those who are able to meet less common characters, primarily at hard-ticket events. As part of the participatory culture that operates around the Disney parks, there are a range of online resources dedicated to cataloguing rare and retired characters and/or advising theme park fans on how to meet the most elusive, such as Disney Fanatic, WDW Magic, Character Central, Theme Park Tourist, WDWRadio and the fansite Kenny the Pirate which offers extensive listings of current and former character opportunities. To meet Mickey and Minnie is commonplace and functions as an expected rite of passage for the theme park guest. To stand in line for hours to meet rare characters such as the Hercules villain Hades, or The Nightmare Before Christmas’ Oogie Boogie, however, demonstrates a level of dedication and perseverance on the part of the theme park fan especially since these meet-and-greets often attract substantive queues. Access to such limited events demonstrates how hierarchies are dependent on the fact that ‘Exclusivity itself is a powerful concept, one that is produced not by the presence of special content or audiences, but by the production of absences through exclusion’ (Hanna 2017, p. 216). As in the collection and curation of physical objects related to the parks, as discussed in Chapter Seven, the experiential ‘collection’ of meeting more unusual characters, and circulating this via photos on online platforms, allows fans of the parks to display both their expressions of self-identity (via the choice of characters they have met with) and the forms of subcultural, symbolic and economic capital that this imbues them with.

Conclusion It may seem strange for theme park fans, many of whom are adults, to engage in the practice of meeting theme park characters, especially given their acute

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awareness of the potential artifice of the encounter and their knowledge that they will not, and cannot, meet figures who exist only in animation or on-screen. However, as this chapter has demonstrated, encounters with characters, who are constructed and accepted as the celebrities and stars of the theme park world, offer a range of complex pleasures for adult fans and visitors as well as contributing to hierarchies of access and economic and subcultural capital. Despite knowing that characters are costumed theme park employees, encounters with characters continue to be signif icant since ‘Through touching, hugging, photographing, and receiving the autographs of [our] favourite characters, [we make] meaningful contact’ (Merlock Jackson 2011, p. 210). For many fans, this is linked to the sheer pleasure of meeting a favourite Princess or Disney Villain, or encountering Beetlejuice wandering around Universal Studios. The thrill of meeting ani-embodied characters is predicated on the acceptance that these versions are ‘real’ and that this is the only way they can be made incarnate. Equally, such suspension of disbelief is even more essential when meeting characters played by actors in non-animated movies since these Face Characters may often look quite physically different beyond their costume. Many ‘animated characters […] take on iconic status’ (Hills 2003, p. 83) and circulate beyond their original texts, whilst more recent forms of ‘virtual star’ such as Lara Croft or Jar Jar Binks present us with a form of ‘textualtranscendence-without-embodiment’ (Hills 2003, p. 83). However, animated stars such as Frozen’s Anna and Elsa or the Minions can be embodied via the theme park encounter with costumed employees who temporarily make them corporeal. As discussed above, these encounters vary depending on factors including the type of character being met (e.g. Face Characters or Rubberheads), and whether a character was voiced by a famous actor (e.g. Buzz and Woody). Whilst these characters can be considered as ani-embodied, since they function to bring ‘animated characters (lacking an indexical referent)’ (Hills 2003, p. 84) to life, other types of character encounter offer forms of ‘metonymic celebrity’ when theme park workers take on roles such as Beetlejuice, Star Lord, or Captain Phasma. Whilst animated characters have not previously been embodied, in the case of physical actors, guests are often aware that these figures have been played by famous people. The moment of meeting offers a form of stand-in celebrity for the theme park worker who is embodying them, as well as allowing both they and the guest to engage in the transactions and practices of celebrity encounter such as taking photographs or obtaining autographs. Such movement between modes of celebrity encounter, engaging in the established practices of being

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at the theme park, and the immersive potential of themed spaces for such practices, speaks to the playful pleasures that adult theme park fans and guests can gain from character meetings.

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Hanna, Erin, ‘The Liminality of the Line and the Place of Fans at Comic-Con’, Journal of Fandom Studies, 5, 2 (2017), 209–227. Hills, Matt, ‘Putting Away Childish Things: Jar Jar Binks as an Object of Fan Loathing’, in Contemporary Hollywood Stardom, edited by Thomas Austin and Martin Barker (London: Arnold, 2003), pp. 74–89. King, Margaret J., ‘The Disney Effect: Fifty Years After Theme Park Design’, in Disneyland and Culture: Essays on the Parks and Their Influence, edited by Kathy Merlock Jackson and Mark I. West (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2011), pp. 223–226. Koren-Kuik, Meyrav, ‘Desiring the Tangible: Disneyland, Fandom and Spatial Immersion’, in Fan Culture: Essays on Participatory Fandom in the 21st Century, edited by Kristin M. Barton and Jonathan Malcolm Lampley (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2014), pp. 146–158. Lukas, Scott A., Theme Park (Objekt) (London: Reaktion Books, 2008). ———, The Immersive Worlds Handbook: Designing Theme Parks and Consumer Space (New York and London: CRC Press, 2012). McDermott, John, ‘How Gaston Became the World’s Most Beloved Disney Villain’, MEL Magazine, 17 March 2017, accessed 20 August 2018. https://melmagazine. com/how-gaston-became-the-worlds-most-beloved-disney-villain-faffd48661f0 McElroy, Ruth and Rebecca Williams, ‘Remembering Ourselves, Viewing the Others: Historical Reality Television and Celebrity in the Small Nation’, Television and New Media, 12, 3 (2011), 187–206. Merlock Jackson, Kathy, ‘Autographs for Tots: The Marketing of Stars to Children’, in Disneyland and Culture: Essays on the Parks and Their Influence, edited by Kathy Merlock Jackson and Mark I. West (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2011), pp. 207–214. Pulver, Andrew, ‘Rogue One VFX head: ‘We Didn’t Do Anything Peter Cushing Would’ve Objected To’, The Guardian, 16  Januar y 2017, accessed 13  December 2017. https://w w w.theguardian.com/f ilm/2017/jan/16/ rogue-one-vfx-jon-knoll-peter-cushing-ethics-of-digital-resurrections Rehak, Bob, ‘Mapping the Bit Girl: Lara Croft and New Media Fandom’, Information, Communication and Society, 6, 4 (2003), 477–496. Stahl, Matt, ‘The Synthespian’s Animated Prehistory: The Monkees, The Archies, Don Kirshner, and the Politics of ‘Virtual Labor’’, Television and New Media, 12, (2011), 3–22. The Project on Disney, Inside The Mouse: Work and Play at Disney World (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1995). Turner, Graeme, Ordinary People and the Media: The Demotic Turn (London, SAGE, 2010). ———, Frances Bonner and P. David Marshall, Fame Games: The Production of Celebrity in Australia (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

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Wells, Paul, ‘To Affinity and Beyond: Woody, Buzz and the New Authenticity’, in Contemporary Hollywood Stardom, edited by Thomas Austin and Martin Barker (London: Arnold, 2003), pp.90–102. Wright, Chris, ‘Natural and Social Order at Walt Disney World: The Functions and Contradictions of Civilising Nature,’ Sociological Review, 54, 2 (2006), 303–317. Younger, David, Theme Park Design and the Art of Themed Entertainment (USA: Inklingwood Press, 2016).

6. Turkey Legs, Dole Whip and Duff: Consumables, Diegetic Paratexts and ‘Cult-Culinary’ Objects Abstract This chapter considers food and drink within theme parks as consumable paratexts which may occupy different levels of status depending on fan distinctions surrounding their perceived authenticity, adherence to expectations about the product, and status as branded or non-branded products. The chapter considers the immersive potential of such items, as well as themed restaurants and bars, and also analyses the cult following that theme park fans have afforded to certain products that originate within the parks themselves such as the Dole Whip (a pineapple ice-cream that has a cult fandom amongst many Disney fans). It also examines the implications when pre-existing fans of other artists (in this case, American singer Jimmy Buffett) may clash with the commercially owned spaces of the theme park. Keywords: culinary paratexts, diegetic paratexts, paratexts, cult-culinary items, food and drink, themed restaurants

Introduction This chapter focuses on a different element of the fan visit to theme parks by exploring the importance of non-ride experiences. It considers food and drink as potential paratexts (Gray 2010), and restaurants and bars as themed spaces. There are numerous online spaces dedicated to discussing the food and drink available at the Disney and Universal theme parks and many of these meticulously list restaurants, food and drink options and prices, and tips on the best choices to make when in the parks. As well as performing informational functions for future guests, such archiving also allows visitors

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to review and remember their own visits by passing on advice to others and discussing their own experiences as part of the cyclical nature of fannish trips. For example, certain restaurants within the Disney theme parks are considered to be extremely poor and those who end up eating in them are often dismissed as ill-informed ‘newbies’. The chapter also considers how food and drink as an important element of the immersive theme park experience. The provision of food and drink is clearly key to themed spaces, especially in relation to its links to immersion and world-building; as Milman notes, ‘In today’s theme parks […] theming is reflected through architecture, landscaping, costumed personnel, rides, shows, food services, merchandising, and any other services that impact the guest experience. (2010, p. 221). For example, fans can partake in drinking The Simpsons’ Duff beer or eating a Krusty Burger, indulging in Harry Potter’s world by drinking Butterbeer or Hogs Head brew, or consuming themed foodstuffs that have been created specifically for the theme parks such as the Despicable Me themed drink The Freeze Ray or Transformers’ Energon drink. Such consumable paratexts occupy different levels of status depending on fan distinctions surrounding their perceived authenticity, their adherence to expectations about the product, and their status as branded or non-branded products. These distinctions may relate to the difference between food and drinks as ‘Diegetic merchandise [which] refers to products that belong to the fictional world of the series, products that the characters themselves own or use’ (Johnson 2007, p. 14), such as Butterbeer or the Krusty Burger, or ‘pseudo-diegetic merchandise […] that do not appear in the series’ diegesis, but that stem from or directly relate to the series’ fictional world’ (Johnson 2007, p. 14) such as the Freeze Ray drink. This discussion explores the importance of food and drink as potential paratexts, considering how the opportunity to consume such products contributes to fans’ sense of immersion in specific areas of the theme park via their use of ‘hyperdiegetic paratexts’, and offering an extension to existing analyses of the pleasures afforded to fans of specific franchises or texts. It also contributes to work on fandom by exploring how the consumption or creation or food and drink related to a fan object offer avenues for fan connection, participation and pleasure (see Fuchs 2015). It builds on the arguments in Chapter Three surrounding the concept of ‘haptic fandom’ and the importance of considering the physical embodied experiences of fandom which work across the senses, and on the discussion in Chapter Four regarding the concept of spatial transmedia. Throughout, the chapter considers the dedicated following that theme park fans have afforded to certain products that originate both within texts

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(e.g. Butterbeer) or within the parks themselves such as the Dole Whip (a pineapple ice-cream that has a cult fandom amongst some Disney fans) and the turkey legs available across a range of parks, as well as particular fan favourite restaurants and bars (such as WDW’s ‘Trader Sam’s Grog Grotto and Tiki Bar’). The chapter identifies three types of theme park food: (1) the text-generated cult-culinary (e.g. Butterbeer, Duff), (2) the park-generated cult-culinary (e.g. Freeze Ray), and (3) the fan-generated cult-culinary (e.g. Dole Whip, turkey legs).

Considering the importance of such elements of the theme park fan experience, the chapter explores the under-researched area of food and drink as paratexts alongside the cult appeal of certain items which can be used to demonstrate one’s familiarity with the parks as well as knowledge of these products. Fans familiar with the range of consumable paratexts or dining and drinking options in the parks are able to demonstrate the subcultural capital of ‘being there’ via their knowledge or the sharing of photos during and after their trips.

Food, Fandom, and Tourism The importance of food to our everyday lives has been established in work on culinary phenomena such as celebrity chefs and cookery programmes (Collins, 2009), food blogging (Rousseau 2012), ‘dining out’ (de Solier 2013), and the subsequent rise of the figure of the ‘foodie’ (Johnston 2015). The discipline of Tourism Studies has paid a great deal of attention to the intersections between tourist activity and food cultures, discussing how ‘food is directly or indirectly connected with specific destinations; it encourages tourists to taste and experience a region’s cuisine. More importantly, researchers indicate that food can be used as a means of marketing and branding a tourism destination’ (Lin et al 2011, p. 31). The links between tourism and food cultures have also been examined from a range of perspectives (see Everett 2016), highlighting how ‘every tourist is a voyeuring gourmand’ (Lacy and Douglass 2002, p. 8) who can be encouraged to visit specific locations since ‘Whole countries or individual cities are promoted for their unique culinary attractions’ (Cohen and Avieli 2004, p. 758). As Parasecoli notes, Food has come to the forefront [of the tourist experience], together with art, history, and landscape: the physical involvement of travellers with the places they visit has reached new and unexpected heights. Symbolically,

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economically, and materially, tourists consume and ingest the communities they visit. (2008, pp. 128–9)

However, despite the clear overlaps between fannish behaviours and those interested in food and culinary cultures, with the exceptions discussed below, work that takes seriously how fandom and the consumption of food and drink intersect remains relatively scant. In his analysis of the representation of food in the television series Hannibal, Christian Fuchs discusses fans’ attempts to recreate the dishes they see on-screen, arguing that this ‘indicates that the repeated spotlighting and excessive visualization of food may spur viewers to transform textual traces into lived experience’ (2015, p. 108). He proposes that in so doing they work to ‘establish identities. The dishes, in this context, occupy not only a liminal space ‘[b]etween the “textual” and the “extratextual”’ (as Matt Hills has described fan practices at large [2002: 131]), but also embody a liminal moment’ (Fuchs 2015: 108). This linkage between fandom, food and identity is also foregrounded in Madison Magladry’s (2018) research into unofficial fan cookbooks. She argues that fan cookbooks allow the fan (as author and reader) to negotiate meaning through play that is charged with power as well as pleasure and is integral to identity formation. The convergence of fan and food cultures in a single medium, the fan cookbook, offers an embodied experience of media consumption which further blurs the boundaries between producer and consumer, and politics and pleasure. (2018, p. 112)

Her work offers the first sustained attempt to understand the links between fandom and food culture, and to interrogate why fans have so readily accepted the presence of cookbooks related to their favourite texts. Of particular relevance here is her proposal that cooking recipes from fantasy texts such as Game of Thrones ‘functions as a type of culinary tourism that can disrupt the conceptual boundaries between places and between the self and other’ (2018, p. 118). Magladry argues that By eating food representative of or associated with another place or culture, the consumer can have a sensual, embodied experience of another place without having ever been there. By this principle, if the consumption of ‘Italian’ food makes it possible to experience ‘Italy’ from home, then the same can be done with dishes that evoke ‘Westeros’ (the fictional world of Game of Thrones). (2018, p. 118)

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Much as with fans’ other attempts to ‘inhabit […] the world’ (Bukatman 1998, p. 226) of a favourite text (such as fan tourism or engaging in cosplay), cooking and eating food inspired by objects such as Game of Thrones can offer an opportunity to playfully cross the boundaries between the text and the self and to imaginatively and figuratively travel to the places seen within them. Whilst this idea is intriguing (and I will return to the ideas explored here below), other work has noted the importance of food and drink to the physical fannish experience of ‘being there’. Craig Norris’ discussion of fans of the Japanese anime Kiki’s Delivery Service and their trips to the Ross Bakery Inn and Ross Village Bakery in Tasmania notes how they ‘focused on enjoying the local food and atmosphere of [these places]’ (2013, para. 9.1). In their sampling of the Ross Bakery’s pies, these fans were able to ‘reinforce […] a positive link between the Ross Bakery and Kiki’ (Norris 2013, para. 9.2). Similarly, Stijn Reijnders (2013) also draws attention to the importance of food to the media/fan experience in his analysis of tourism based on the Kurt Wallander novels and television series in Ystad, Sweden: the local konditori decided to market a special ‘Wallander cake.’ It was an obvious initiative: the konditori has an important role in the Wallander stories. The café served as a place of rest, where the inspector tried to put his thoughts in order while having a cup of coffee and a cake. Not surprisingly, the konditori is a regular stop on the Wallander Tour. Entirely in keeping with the theme of the series, the Wallander cake was drenched in alcohol and covered with thick, police-blue icing. (2013, p. 40)

Reijnders’ highlights this as a moment where the concept of ‘lieu d’imagination’ (places of imagination) breaks down as a result of disputes over ownership and copyright when Henrik Mankell, Wallander’s creator and author, objected to the use of the character’s name. He calls attention to how ‘authors, producers, municipal authorities, city marketeers and local commercial enterprises all ascribe different meanings to these places, thereby defending their own, sometimes conflicting, interests’ (2013, p. 41). However, he also discusses the distinctively ‘material’ character of the tourist’s performances on the locations that were studied. Tourists attempt to call up their world of imagination, by eating certain cakes at the location, by sitting on certain chairs, or by drinking certain drinks: coffee for Wallander, beer for Inspector Morse, and cognac for Baantjer’. (Reijnders 2013, p. 51)

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Here, albeit briefly, we can see how tourism and food and drink intersect for the media tourist, allowing them to ‘consume their own imagination’ (Reijnders 2013, p. 40). More recently, and with specific reference to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at the Universal Studios theme parks, Waysdorf and Reijnders observe how visitors do what would if they were visiting any other urban tourist destination: they buy things, they wander the streets, get something to eat or drink, perhaps see a performance or people-watch. These can all be done convincingly, with ‘local delicacies’ like butterbeer and exclusive souvenirs, in a way that adheres to the narrative memories and details of the Harry Potter series. (2018, p. 183, italics added)

In many ways, then, there are clear parallels between the theme park visitor and the more traditional tourist, particularly with regards to the importance of food and drink, ‘local delicacies’ that may be specific to a country or region or to an imagined place such as Harry Potter’s Diagon Alley. Before discussing in more depth the transmedia possibilities offered by theme park food and drink, it is worth sketching out some of the complexities of eating and drinking in the parks, especially for those visiting Walt Disney World. As discussed at length in Chapter Three, ‘a visit to Walt Disney World [is like] […] a dance, one that you must prepare and practice for’ (Huddleston et al 2016, p. 225). Alongside the wealth of other resources, fans and visitors can access blogs and other resources dedicated to navigating the food and drink options at Walt Disney World. Whilst Universal Resort Orlando also offers a range of restaurants and bars, most of the pedagogical information focuses on Disney, primarily as a result of the size of the resort and the fact that the majority of guests who are staying on-site at Disney resorts will take advantage of the Disney Dining Plan. There are four main types of restaurant found within theme parks; Table Service restaurants where guests sit at tables and are served by waiting staff, Counter Service restaurants where patrons chose food (often from a buffet or a ‘shop’ style self-service) and choose their own unassigned seating, Quick Service restaurants (offering a fast food service where limited option meals are ordered at a counter), and vending, which includes food carts selling snacks such as pretzels, turkey legs and hot dogs (see Younger 2016, pp. 353–354). WDW provides guests with opportunities to dine across these, offering three Dining Plans to guests; the Deluxe Dining Plan (Three meals in any combination of table or counter service, two snacks, and refillable drinks mug at $116.25 per night), the Standard (One table service meal,

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one quick service meal, two snacks and a refillable drinks mug at $75.49 per night), and the Quick Serve (Two quick service meals, two snacks and a refillable drinks mug at $52.50 per night). This means that guests need to not only plan which Park they will be in on each day but also where they plan to eat. Furthermore, because restaurant reservations open for booking 180 days before guests arrive, the apparently simple act of eating at Disney ‘demands almost continuous decision-making and problem-solving’ (King and O’Boyle 2011, p. 15). One cannot simply turn up on the day and expect to eat at some of WDW’s most popular restaurants. The navigation of the various types of restaurant, the type of cuisine they serve, and their popularity and availability are thus subject to the same level of planning and organization as the overall trip. To assist guests, and fans, in understanding these complexities, knowledge of specific restaurants and eateries is circulated within the participatory culture surrounding theme parks. As with the wider planning of a trip as discussed in Chapter Three, resources such as recommendations from theme park bloggers via social media, the consumable-focused Disney Food Blog and the irreverent guidebook Drinking at Disney (Miller and Rhiannon 2016) engage in quasi-pedagogical work to recommend specific places to eat or drink and to maintain hierarchies regarding their quality.

‘I Just Came For the Snacks’: Text-generated, Park-generated and Fan-generated ‘Cult-Culinary’ Objects Whilst, as discussed in the next chapter, there has been study of the merchandise and material objects that surround media texts, once again, very little of this focuses in on the importance of consumables such as food and drink. However, the centrality of such items to the theme park fan experience offers an opportunity to consider how they contribute to a sense of immersion and how they function as a form of ‘paratext’, a concept defined by Jonathan Gray as deriving from ‘the prefix “para-”, defined by the OED both as “beside, adjacent to,” and “beyond or distinct from, but analogous to”’ (2010, p. 6). Gray argues that paratexts may ‘take a tangible form, as with posters, videogames, podcasts, reviews, or merchandise’ (2010, p. 6) and, since food and drink occupy the category of merchandise, we can also consider consumables in this way. As this section will explore, there are examples of food and drink available to the theme park visitor which function very clearly as recognizable objects from a range of films, television series, or other mediated texts (for example, in Universal Studio’s Wizarding

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World of Harry Potter one can find an array of diegetic foodstuffs including Butterbeer, Chocolate Frogs and Bertie Botts’ Every Flavour Beans). However, other options are more tangentially connected to the central text; for example Disney Park’s offering of Star Wars themed foods such as the Royal Guard burger at WDW’s Hollywood Studios whose only connection to the storyworld appears to be that the bun is black, and therefore linked to the ‘dark side’. This example echoes Jonathan Gray’s discussion of a Dominos ‘Gotham City pizza’, created as part of the promotion for the Batman movie The Dark Knight, which he views as an example of a paratext that ‘contributes nothing, or takes away from the text’ (2010, p. 210). More recently, in discussion of paratexts and hype and commercial excess, Gray again dismisses branded tie-in foodstuffs, commenting ‘When Star Wars: Episode VII: The Force Awakens produces BB-8 oranges, that’s just silly’ (Brookey and Gray 2017, p.109), presumably because this, like the Gotham pizza is an object that contributes nothing to how the movie itself is read. I want, therefore, to raise two issues here. Firstly, I would argue that the characterization of the BB-8 orange, the Gotham City pizza, or the Star Wars burgers at Disney Parks, as ‘unincorporated paratexts’ that ‘contribute nothing meaningful to the text or its narrative, storyworld, characters or style’ (Gray 2010, p. 210) doesn’t account for the enjoyment that fans of either may have derived from consuming the item nor how they themselves may have negotiated its (admittedly tenuous) relationship with the fan object or text itself. Secondly, and as this chapter will go on to discuss, we need to expand out our concept of the paratext since food and drink cannot be fully understand via the definitions proposed by writers such as Genette (1997) and Gray (2010). If, as Brookey and Gray (2017, p. 101) summarize, Genette ‘used the term to describe all those things that surround the actual literary work that we may be inclined to consider not wholly a part of it, but that nevertheless append themselves to it’ and shape our reading and understanding of a text, can food and drink really belong to this category? Equally, whilst media and cultural studies scholars have used the concept to analyse ‘the huge world of promos, hype, trailers, merchandise, licensed games, DVD bonus materials, ancillaries, transmedia extensions, fan texts, and more’ (Brookey and Gray 2017, p. 101), and food and drink clearly constitute a form of merchandise, it remains debatable whether consuming them has any real impact upon how one reads a film, TV series, or other media text. Given these debates, it is pertinent to return to consideration of food and drink as forms of merchandise, albeit ones which can have an important role to play in terms of immersion, authenticity, and capital when consumed in fannish sites.

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Although related to television, when trying to map out the different types of food on offer within themed spaces, Catherine Johnson’s work on the branding of the HBO series The Sopranos, is useful. Johnson distinguishes between different types of merchandise. She argues that ‘Diegetic merchandise refers to products that belong to the fictional world of the series, products that the characters themselves own or use’ (2007, p. 15) whilst ‘pseudo-diegetic merchandise refers to products that do not appear in the series’ diegesis, but that stem from or directly relate to the series’ fictional world’ (2007, p. 15). In relation to her cases study of The Sopranos, examples include the wide range of BaddaBing [the name of the strip club featured in the series] products […] such as the black thong printed with the words ‘Property of the BaddaBing Club’, the BaddaBing inscribed ashtray, cigarette case, cigar holder, coasters, shot glasses and hip flask. In addition, the Artie Bucco Food Gift set, which contains cooking sauces branded with Artie Bucco’s name, and The Sopranos Family Cookbook, including recipes for dishes featured on the series, would also fit into this category. (2007, p. 15)

We can use these categories as a starting point to begin to unpack the range of foods on offer within the parks and to consider how they may operate as forms of paratext. For example, diegetic foodstuffs include examples of food and drink literally consumed by characters within media texts, such as Butterbeer in the Harry Potter series, Coconutty biscuits as seen in Despicable Me, or the drinks Duff and the Flaming Moe or food such as the Krusty Burger in The Simpsons. Based on Johnson’s definition, pseudo-diegetic items include those linked to the fictional world, but not seen directly within it, such as the frozen Freeze Ray drink inspired by Despicable Me, a pork shank served at the Beauty and the Beast-themed ‘Gaston’s Tavern’ in WDW’s Magic Kingdom, or the Dragon Scale and Wizards’ Brew beers at the Leaky Cauldron pub in the Wizarding World of Harry Potter’s Diagon Alley. These latter examples are not explicitly seen in the original texts but share enough thematic or iconic overlap that they could legitimately exist within that fictional world. However, we may question to what extent some food or drinks can really be considered as pseudo-diegetic, given that there is often a tendency within theme park catering to name something after an attraction, text or character without the food itself having any connection. In such cases, the food may be ‘conventional and standardized fare, in contrast to the [theme] which may be extraordinary and unusual. […] To the extent that there is a link

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between the food and the theme it is likely to reside in its naming on the menu’ (Beardsworth and Bryman 1999, 244). Examples here include the fare on offer at UOR Universal Studios’ ‘Classic Monsters Café’ which is styled around the early monster movies produced by the studio. Whilst the Café itself is themed around key horror characters such as Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, and the Wolfman – and contains a plethora of museum-worthy artefacts including original shooting scripts, images, and props – the food on offer includes generic burgers, chicken, and ribs sold under the title of the ‘Monster Combo’. We can even question the extent to which some of the items sold within the ultra-immersive WWOHP are truly pseudo-diegetic since, in many cases, strict canonical fidelity is eschewed for food and drink that echo the general tone or theme of an existing world or text. As Ric Florell of UOR notes in relation to Diagon Alley’s ‘Leaky Cauldron’, The tricky part was creating a menu when there was no mention of any of the food items in the books and only one mention in the films to Split Pea Soup. So, we devised a menu with delicious dishes you would find in a British Pub. […] Our goal is to give our guests a culinary experience that immerses them in the fun, excitement and wonder of The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. (Florell in Younger 2016, p. 356)

The food available at this site, including a range of British classics such as Fish Pie, Toad in the Hole, Bangers and Mash, and a Ploughman’s Platter could be served within the text of the Harry Potter novels and films, but this is not done so explicitly. Equally, unlike some pseudo-diegetic examples such as the Freeze Ray drink, these items could be lifted out of the Harry Potter themed land and served elsewhere, such as in a British pub in another area of Orlando. Here, we see echoes of Saler’s (2012) concept of the ‘ironic imagination’ as fans consume foods not seen within the storyworld but that could be. Thus, in the case of theme park consumables such as food and drink, the concept of the paratext needs some deconstructing. Here, there are clearly examples which would fit into what Johnson refers to as diegetic and pseudo-diegetic objects. However, in the case of many foodstuffs and beverages, the linkage is more to do with the concepts of immersion and world-building; such examples both ‘invite us to engage in the fictional world of the series’ (Johnson 2007, p. 16) and encourage us to imagine the broader narrative world that we do not see. In this sense, some food items belong to the ‘hyperdiegesis’ of the text, ‘the creation of a vast and detailed narrative space, only a fraction of which is ever directly seen or encountered within

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the text, but which nevertheless appears to operate according to principles of internal logic and extension’ (Hills 2002, p. 137). This hyperdiegesis can also be experienced spatially by the ‘material extension’ (Hills 2002, p. 145) into the places of fandom, in the case of food and drink, inviting us to assume that, even if we have not seen characters on-screen in the Harry Potter movies eating meals such as toad-in-the-hole or fish pie, they may well do so in the action that takes place beyond what we ourselves can witness. Such objects, which I would term ‘hyperdiegetic paratexts’, work to encourage those within themed spaces to immerse themselves further in the constructed world, and to draw on culinary objects to do so. The items’ authenticity or diegetic fidelity can thus only be assumed by the theme park fan. These foods can only ever live up to what exists in the imagination since What it means for food to be ‘authentic’ to either Westeros or [real countries like] Italy is based on the consumer’s conceptualization of these places: therefore, creation of either place through food presents no distinction between ‘fictionl’ [sic] or ‘real’ places as they are equally constructed and dependent on mediation. (Magladry 2018, p. 118)

Items like Harry Potter’s Shepherd’s Pie or the dishes in WDW’s ‘Skipper Canteen’ (see below) can be judged on their believability within the hyperdiegesis of an existing narrative world or, in the latter case, the hyperdiegetic world beyond the ride/attraction itself. In contrast to these text-originated and park-originated cult-culinary objects, some cult foodstuffs are granted special status by theme park fans and visitors themselves. As discussed below, many restaurants within theme parks have stories based on original creations of characters or worlds, such as the ‘Skipper Canteen’ or ‘Toothsome Chocolate Emporium’. Both these, and locations based on existing texts such as Harry Potter or The Simpsons, often offer unique and exclusive items alongside the opportunity to become immersed within the storyworld. This has led to some theme park food and drink becoming icons of specific parks or attracting a more typically cultish following which originated within theme park fandom itself. For example, Disney Parks produce clothing and other merchandise (including keyrings and even car air fresheners!) for the popular giant turkey legs sold from catering carts across the Parks, as well as using iconic foodstuff such as Mickey-shaped pretzels or ice creams on T-shirts alongside slogans such as ‘I just came for the snacks!’. These items are not, however, especially rare and can be purchased throughout WDW. In contrast, one of Disney Parks’ other popular foodstuffs is both iconic and occupies a cult position; their

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Dole Whip creation of pineapple and ice-cream which is only sold in Walt Disney World in Aloha Isle in the Magic Kingdom and the Polynesian Village Hotel. These items can be characterized as ‘fan-originating cult-culinary’ objects and can be linked either to a pre-existing fandom or related only to one’s fandom of the theme park or the item itself. The cult following attached to these items reflects how ‘theme parks have identified the value of cult items: unique and unusual food or beverages sold with some degree of exclusivity, to purposefully cultivate a cult following – directly translating into higher than average sales’ (Younger 2016, p. 356). This relative exclusivity can also be seen within UOR via its limiting of the sale of Butterbeer to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter and The Simpsons themed drinks the Flaming Moe and Duff beer to the Springfield area of the park, items we can view as text-originating cult-culinary objects. Consuming both these, and fan-originating foodstuffs such as Dole Whip, both works to further immerse the fan in the themed space but also enables display of forms of knowledge and capital. Indeed, ‘Cult items typically rely on restricting access to the item […] While opening additional outlets to sell these items would reduce queues, the parks recognize the value of the experience and the exclusivity surrounding the item’ (Younger 2016, p. 357). Thus, whilst as discussed in Chapter Three, queuing within parks is often hidden by the management and disliked by guests, waiting in line for either limited merchandise or special foodstuffs may actually work to imbue the fan with capital. Writing about the lines for panels at Comic Con, Hanna argues that queuing is a form of fan labour since ‘their bodies construct the material trajectory and hierarchies of the line and because their willingness to wait produces – or at least enhances – the perceived value of these promotions’ (Hanna 2017, p. 214; see also Booth 2016). Such hierarchies of waiting can also be seen within the theme park space; as Ledbetter et al note the goal is not always to divert guests’ attention away from the wait. At Tokyo DisneySea® theme park, for example, the line at the Mysterious Island Refreshment Station is notorious for very long wait times. Although other stations in the park serve the same food, the very act of waiting in the Mysterious Island line is considered a rite of passage – an attraction in and of itself. (2013, p. 27)

The badge of honour in having waited in line as a dedicated fan, especially for food and drink that may only be available during limited events (such as WDW’s annual Food and Drink Festival at EPCOT), demonstrates a fan’s

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levels of cult-culinary capital, but also their broader fannish subcultural, social and symbolic capital. Here, Naccarato and Lebesco’s (2012) concept of ‘culinary capital’ is useful since it allows for the fact that forms of cuisine that may be considered ‘low-brow’ can also confer levels of distinction and status within specific circles on those who indulge in them since, rather than assuming that culinary capital circulates in a f ixed and predictable pattern (for instance, that certain foods or food practices always confer culinary capital while others do not), [there are] […] the multiple and potentially contradictory ways in which it may function. (2012, p. 2)

In the case of the theme park, this means that those who indulge in specific limited food or drink at special seasonal events (such as WDW’s Food and Drink Festival or Halloween-themed Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party) are afforded forms of culinary capital that accord them prestige within the subculture of theme park fans that they belong to. Whilst such culinary capital would have no value amongst other groups (e.g. those who favour haute-cuisine in expensive restaurants), amongst theme park fans, the attainment of limited cult-culinary objects (whether available in restricted places such as Butterbeer in the WWOHP, Dole Whip in the Magic Kingdom’s Adventureland, or Jack Skellington toffee apples at the WDW Halloween Party), offers another opportunity for immersion, connection, and the pleasure and status of ‘being there’. Indeed, the focus on being physically present when consuming food and drink within the parks differs from the ways that acts of fan cookery have been discussed, especially with regards to how the making of recipes is incorporated into everyday life. Whilst Magladry argues that ‘In the case of fan cooking and food, the physical ingestion of the object is both a playful and political act of identity formation and negotiation of the ‘everyday’’ (2018, p. 119), fans who visit themed spaces and consume cult items such as Dole Whip are resolutely not engaging in this as part of their usual routines. Here, the quest for, and consumption of, these culinary objects is precisely linked to the fact that they are not ordinary and cannot be consumed in the usual rhythms and routines of the fan’s life. Their availability only in specific locations imbues them with a sense of the extra-ordinary; whilst fans can buy official and fan-created Disney cookbooks, draw on unofficial online Butterbeer recipes to try to make their own versions, or attempt to replicate the food and drink they eat within the parks, these are not auratic. Whilst the fan may gain pleasure from these acts of cooking and creation, it is only

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when within the physical spaces of the parks themselves that the actual items can be purchased and enjoyed, again speaking to the interlinking of place, authenticity and experience that ‘being there’ allows.

Themed Restaurants, Spatial Transmedia and Immersion Whether we conceive of theme park food and drink as paratexts (Gray 2010), as examples of diegetic and pseudo-diegetic merchandise (Johnson 2007), as objects that extend the hyperdiegesis (Hills 2002) of a narrative world, or as cult-culinary objects, they clearly speak to the importance of consumable items in building the immersive experience for fans within the themed space. This highlights the fact that, whilst ‘Theming has sometimes been understood only as a static phenomenon – as a combination of architecture, interior design, signage and associated forms of performance that relate to the common theme’ (Lukas 2007, p. 75), we must pay attention to the ‘flexible and lived nature of theming, particularly as the five senses are utilized in the maintenance of themed venues’ (Lukas 2007, p. 75). As this section discusses, food and drink (and associated sensory connections such as smell) help construct the theme of a space, in particular the themed restaurant. Indeed, the use of smell and taste works thorough the theme park space to invite the guest in, to evoke memories and emotions, and to demarcate specific themed lands and places. For example, WDW’s Magic Kingdom’s Main Street, USA, is filled with the scent of traditional foods such as candyfloss, baked pastries, and hotdogs to conjure the sense of turn-of-the-century small town America and to ‘evoke nostalgia for an Age of Innocence’ (Salamone and Salamone 1999, p. 85). The importance of the senses to the theme park fan experience contributes to a ‘sensory order of immersion’ (Lukas 2007, p. 80–81) and offers modes of haptic fandom related primarily to smell and touch. The role of both senses here reflects the broader interplay between the body and the experience of visiting the Parks where Rides also offer the opportunity to expand the experience with physical sensations appropriate to the narrative: the disorientation of flashing lights and smoke, the evocative smell of charcoal, appropriate temperature changes, the rush of wind, and the confirmatory sensory input associated with floating or soaring. (King and O’Boyle 2011, pp. 6–7)

For example, in their discussion of the ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ ride, Schweizer and Pearce note that it ‘creates a strong olfactory sensation that

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is entirely unique to the physical theme park attraction medium: you can actually smell the world, with its dank, moldy, dusky aroma; it is at once evocative of a pirate world, but also smells distinctly like a theme park ride’ (2016, p. 98). Given the centrality of the senses to the theme park experience, and in particular to the creation of immersion, the ability to consume themed food and drink is a key source of pleasure. However, whilst some paratextual food and drink can be consumed anywhere within a park – such as the Freeze Ray drink which can be purchased and then carried around the Streets of UOR – specific dining locations offer the opportunity for themed foodstuffs alongside fixed spaces of pleasurable immersion. Beardsworth and Bryman (1999) define the themed restaurant as an eating establishment which clothes itself in a complex of distinctive signs that are largely extraneous to the activity of eating itself. Such a complex can justifiably be termed a ‘theme’ if it is constituted out of one of a wide range of readily recognisable narratives drawn from popular culture. (1999, p. 228)

They distinguish between ‘reliquary theming’ (1999, p. 240) in restaurants such as ‘Planet Hollywood’ and the ‘Hard Rock Café’ which display artefacts from popular culture, ‘parodic theming’ (1999, p. 241) where ‘ambience is created primarily through the use of artefacts and decorative devices which are explicitly fake’ (1999, p. 241) such as the ‘Rainforest Café’, ‘ethnic theming’ (1999, p. 242) where a restaurant is based on a specific form of cuisine based on country, and ‘reflexive theming’ (1999, p. 243) where the brand itself becomes the theme (as in, for instance, McDonalds). Beardsworth and Bryman acknowledge that theme parks often include themed restaurants (1999, p. 238), and the Orlando parks clearly contain each of the types of eatery discussed here (in the ‘Planet Hollywood’ at Disney Springs, the themed country restaurants in EPCOT’s World Showcase, and in the numerous Starbucks coffee shops on-site). However, I want to focus on what they refer to as examples of ‘parodic theming’ where the artifice of the location is explicitly foregrounded, in order to move beyond the implicit judgement of such sites being ‘fake’ or ‘inauthentic’. The concept of authenticity in relation to theme park restaurants is often complex; as Salamone discusses in relation to the replica ‘San Angel Inn’ in the Mexico Pavilion in EPCOT, whilst ‘many people argue that the San Angel Inn in Mexico City is authentic, while the one at Disney World is not […] both are equally authentic, reflecting different aspects of the multilayered reality

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that is Mexican culture’ (1997, pp. 311–312). Instead, I want to interrogate the ways in which these forms of themed restaurant work to encourage pleasurable immersion for theme park fans and, in some cases, create and extend storyworlds. Theme park restaurants are often themed to specific types of cuisine (as in EPCOT’s World Showcase which features a range of table, counter and quick service options based on its eleven countries including Japan, China, Mexico, France and Germany). They may have broader themes with a confluence of food, atmosphere and employee behaviour; for example Walt Disney Studios’ ‘50s Prime Time Diner’ features home-style American cuisine such as meatloaf and fried chicken, Formica furniture, and waiting staff who scold diners for not finishing all their food or leaning with their elbows on the table. In many cases, the link between a restaurant, its food and its ambiance are relatively tenuous and built on cultural knowledge of the types of cuisine associated with broad geographical areas or time periods such as pasta with Italy, BBQ with the Wild West, or sushi with Japan. However, in other cases, ‘story elements […] [are often] incorporated into the design of a restaurant: who runs it, why did they set it up in that location, what are their interest, what was it before, how has it changed, and who are the usual patrons?’ (Younger 2016, p. 354). The experience of eating within certain theme park restaurants often offers unique opportunities for theming and immersion and, in cases such as the Wizarding World of Harry Potter eateries ‘The Three Broomsticks’ (UOR, Islands of Adventure) and ‘The Leaky Cauldron’ (UOR, Universal Studios), offer moments of spatial transmedia.

Attraction-Based Restaurants, Original Properties and the Spatial Hyperdiegesis Many of the examples discussed above are themed restaurants based on a pre-existing text or intellectual property (IP) (e.g. the locations in Universal’s Harry Potter Wizarding Worlds, the Magic Kingdom’s Beauty and the Beast themed ‘Be Our Guest’ restaurant, Disney Springs’ Indiana Jones bar ‘Jock Lindsay’s Hangar Bar’ or the food court in Universal Studio’s Simpsons inspired Springfield). Another, less common, example is an eatery being designed from scratch and developing its own story and theming. This latter type includes the Magic Kingdom’s ‘Skipper Canteen’ or WDW’s Polynesian Resort’s ‘Trader Sam’s Grog Grotto and Tiki Bar’ which continue the theming and narrative of the popular ‘Jungle Cruise’ attraction, and

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Universal CityWalk’s chocolate themed ‘Toothsome Chocolate Emporium and Savory Feast Kitchen’. Restaurants and bars are treated the same as rides or experiences since each ‘attraction has its own “back story,” which may or may not be made known to “our guests” – a “myth or legend” in the form of a basic outline, oral or written story, or even a poem” […] which “explains” how the attraction came to be’ (Rahn 2011, p. 88). In these cases, we can again consider how the concept of a storyworld or a hyperdiegesis is created and sustained spatially, sometimes standing alone and sometimes speaking to and expanding other attractions or texts. Two examples will suffice here; one from WDW and based on an existing Disney attraction and one from UOR CityWalk which introduces an original IP and storyline for a themed restaurant. The first, the Magic Kingdom’s ‘Skipper Canteen’ is a relatively unusual example of a restaurant being based on a pre-existing attraction, in this case the classic opening day ride ‘Jungle Cruise’. The ride itself offers a gentle boat tour through the rivers of the world, moving with little respect for actual geography from Africa to Asia and South America, and encountering audio-animatronic animals such as elephants, hippos and alligators en route. The ride is accompanied by a live audio commentary from your ‘Skipper’, who offers a light-hearted and comedic narration, which is often largely improvised, alongside the experience (a typical sample joke will make a pun about denial, linked to being on the Nile river). ‘Jungle Cruise’ is positioned as a family-friendly attraction that draws attention to the fact that, in comparison to newer rides with more sophisticated ride systems or effects, it is somewhat outdated. Despite this, it is considered a Disney ‘classic attraction’ and, since it is often the first ride that guests will encounter if they begin working their way around the Magic Kingdom in a clockwise fashion, it remains popular. The ride’s spin-off restaurant, fully titled ‘The Jungle Navigation Co. Ltd. Skipper Canteen’ opened in December 2015 and continued the tropical and adventure theming of the ‘Jungle Cruise’, as well as its comedic tone. When visiting the restaurant, your waiter/waitress will entertain you with jokes and puns whilst the menu itself continues this theming. The general conceit of the restaurant is that Dr. Albert Falls (an explorer mentioned in the ‘Jungle Cruise’ ride) and the Skippers have ‘opened the doors and kitchens of their tropical headquarters to fellow adventurers and famished families’ (Skipper Canteen, online). The restaurant’s webpage continues, Delight your big and little explorers with premium table-service dining in 3 curiously quirky rooms: the crew’s colonial-era Mess Hall (which is not messy at all, thank you very much); the Jungle Room, former family

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parlor of Dr. Albert Falls himself; and the S.E.A. Room – a once-secret meeting place for the Society of Explorers and Adventurers! (Skipper Canteen, online)

This brief description works to set the tone of the immersive nature of the restaurant, introducing key characters (Dr. Albert Falls), gesturing towards the ‘hyperdiegesis’ of the attraction-world (via the reference to the Society of Explorers and Adventurers), and highlighting the emphasis on comedy and puns. Here we can see the importance of narrative and immersion to the space and how Disney ‘Imagineers create elaborate back stories even for restaurants and swimming pools’ (Rahn 2011, p. 88). The restaurant also has a role within a broader transmedia universe, that of Disney’s Society of Adventures and Explorers (S.E.A.), a multi-park storyworld that encompasses characters, restaurants, and attractions in Tokyo DisneySea, Hong Kong Disneyland, the waterpark Typhoon Lagoon, and California’s Disneyland. This universe, sharing characters and narratives across global parks, is relatively unique in that ‘this isn’t a single narrative driving a single attraction. It’s an epic tableau, with the potential to drive a limitless number of attractions around the world’ (Niles 2013) and one that was designed specifically for the spaces of the Parks themselves. The Global Avengers Initiative, as discussed in the Conclusion, similarly offers an unfolding narrative experience across multiple Disney sites based on an existing Intellectual Property and narrative world (i.e. the existing Marvel Cinematic Universe). However, the S.E.A storyworld offers fans who pay attention the opportunity to explore a still-evolving narrative (Niles 2018, 2019) as Disney works to ‘create […] space in its as-yet under-developed Society narrative for our own imaginations to fill in, further engaging us in the story’ (Niles 2013). The food at Skipper Canteen shares clear thematic overlaps with the ‘Jungle Cruise’ ride, offering dishes inspired by Africa, Asia and South America. Some refer to the attraction or the storyworld in their titles, such as the ‘Falls Family Falafel’ starter or ‘Dr Fall’s Signature Grilled Steak’, whilst others also include puns or wordplay such as the ‘Lot at Steak salad’. The spin-off of a restaurant from an existing ride thus allows guests to more fully immerse themselves within the created universe, visiting themed spaces ‘created’ and apparently staffed by figures encountering on the attraction itself. The story outlined in the restaurant’s menu details how Alberta Falls, granddaughter of Dr. Albert Falls, who founded the Jungle Navigation Company on which the Jungle Cruise ride is based, opened the home offices of the Cruises to ‘hungry travelers’ after a downturn in

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trade for their original cargo shipping business. As the menu notes, ‘The crew’s mess hall, our old family room and even my grandfather’s old secret meeting room are now open to our diners!’. In keeping with the irreverent and comedic tone of the Jungle Cruise ride, however, the menu humorously urges you to ‘Please relax and enjoy your meal, then get out’. At present, the storyworld created by the attraction and the restaurant offer an intriguing opportunity to explore spatial transmediality not in the ways in which Hills considers how transmedia of specific texts works within spaces such as conventions (2017, p. 213) but, rather, how the space itself can come first, working to create and expand narrative worlds and diegesis that originate from the physical attraction which is grounded in a precise location. It will be interesting to see how this expands when Disney releases its cinematic version of Jungle Cruise in 2020 and if, or how, this refers to the ride and the characters or organizations referenced in both this and the ‘Skipper Canteen’. Equally, how these may reincorporate elements of the movie, as Disney’s ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ ride has done via its ‘auto-textual poaching’ (Schweizer and Pearce 2016, p. 95) will also offer opportunities to explore the cycle of spatial transmedia at work in both rides and other themed spaces such as restaurants. A contrasting example of a themed space based on an original concept can be seen in Universal Orlando Resort’s ‘Toothsome Chocolate Emporium and Savory Feast Kitchen’ (hereafter ‘Toothsome Emporium’), located in its CityWalk dining and shopping district. The chocolate-themed space consists of a full-service bar, dining area, and confectionary and its aesthetic is based on a Victorian steam-punk factory. As the name suggests, chocolate is a key component of many of the items on the menu including signature milkshakes, a range of cocktails, and unique dishes including warm chocolate almond bread with salted caramel butter. Beyond the chocolate-inspired items, the menu offers more traditional dishes including burgers, salads, and pasta dishes. However, like the ‘Skipper Canteen’, the ‘Toothsome Emporium’ also offers a detailed backstory for the creation of the restaurant and its characters: From the Alps to the empire of the Aztecs, from Mongolia to Madagascar, Professor Doctor Penelope Tibeaux-Tinker Toothsome learned new and fascinating methods of infusing chocolate into the most extraordinary recipes, making friends and receiving honors everywhere she went. Upon returning home to London, Penelope determined that she would share her love and knowledge of chocolate with the world. She set about building The Toothsome Chocolate Emporium & Savory Feast Kitchen, an enchanting

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19th century themed, Steampunk inspired dining establishment with a façade of towering smokestacks and an interior adorned with intriguing gadgets and gizmos. (Bilbao 2016, online)

Alongside the immersive story, guests can often find Penelope and her steampunk robot companion Jacque wandering the restaurant and interacting with guests, further adding to the experience and the theming of the space. Unlike the Skipper Canteen, the Toothsome Emporium has no existing backstory on which to base its theming and works to create its own characters and mythology as part of its immersive experience. Instead, it offers an original world designed to evoke recognition of ‘widely-known cultural resources’ (Beardsworth and Bryman 1999, p. 236) such as the steampunk era, Victoriana and, as a Chocolate Factory, the figure of Willy Wonka from Roald Dahl’s children’s’ novels and subsequent film adaptations. The Toothsome Emporium follows the common template of the themed restaurant; ‘The narrative is made visible and tangible in the physical structure of the restaurant’s interior and very often of its exterior’ (Beardsworth and Bryman 1999, p. 236) via its industrial décor; from the outside the Emporium resembles a factory (albeit an aesthetically pleasing one) with large chimneys, machinery cogs and steam pipes. The interior continues this aesthetics with a palette of brown, bronze and gold, evoking the chocolate theming that is further present via smell and many of the dishes on the menu. As an example of a ‘parodic restaurant’ (Finkelstein 1989), the Emporium evokes the guests’ imagination with a ‘stylized atmosphere and theatrical setting of a reconstituted reality’ (Finkelstein 1989, p. 77) and works to ‘create a magical environment based up a strong motif. […] [and to] create a sense of involvement in the fantastic’ (Beardsworth and Bryman 1999, p. 241). However, the experience of this form of themed restaurant is limited, since there are currently no transmedia extensions to the storyworld of the Emporium’s characters, dining there is a relatively bounded moment. It demonstrates the ongoing push for more detailed theming and narrative at theme park restaurants but also highlights the limits when these eateries are not linked to pre-existing franchises (as in Harry Potter and the Diagon Alley/Hogsmeade restaurants, or Disney Springs’ Indiana Jones themed Jock Lindsay’s Hangar Bar) or attractions with a legacy within the Parks themselves (as in Skipper Canteen and Jungle Cruise). Whilst such restaurants may present detailed theming and opportunities for immersion, this remains temporary with little to encourage the guest to seek to play within, or expand, the storyworld or its narratives once they pay their bill and leave.

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‘Wasting Away Again in Margaritaville’: Themed Restaurants, Pre-existing Fandoms, and (Anti)consumerism Finally, there are other, albeit relatively rare, examples of restaurants and bars located within theme parks and themed spaces that have pre-existing fan associations not with franchises such as Harry Potter or Star Wars but with musical acts, celebrities, or popular chefs. For example, UOR’s CityWalk featured a restaurant by popular US chef Emeril Lagasse (which closed in 2018) and Disney Springs boasts a ‘Bongo’s Cuban Café’, created by musicians Gloria and Emilio Estefan. Perhaps most interesting, however, is the presence of a branch of the chain of Jimmy Buffett’s ‘Margaritaville’ eateries, also located in CityWalk, especially given the presence of a longstanding and dedicated fan base for the singer (Bowen 1997; Ingersoll 2001; Mihelich and Papineau 2005). This enduring fan base, known as Parrotheads, includes fans across a range of ages (Ingersoll 2001, p. 255), who privilege ‘notions of utopian paradise’ (Ingersoll 2001, p. 256) and engage in an emotional and imaginative search for the site of Margaritaville, the title of one of Buffett’s most famous songs. As Mihelich and Papineau summarize, ‘‘Margaritaville,’’ a leisurely sundrenched place where individuals could experience the magic, mystery, and spontaneity absent in the ‘‘real’’ world of their everyday lives. Facilitated by Buffett’s music and imagery, fans fashioned their own understanding and meaning of this constructed paradise through buying Buffett’s albums and cultivating ‘‘Margaritaville’’ in private parties and the small-scale venues where Buffett played. (2005, p. 175)

Much as many fandoms have a physical site that connects with their fan objects (such as Elvis fans’ Graceland, or Harry Potter’s Wizarding World), Buffett fans have a connection with the abstract site of Margaritaville which is both ‘real and imagined. Its reality is reflected in Key West and the many tourist towns found in tropical regions. More important, it is a place of the mind, a refuge where worldly concerns disappear, and a place to escape from the hassles of everyday life’ (Bowen 1997, p. 99). Some fans have visited ‘New Orleans, Louisiana, and Key West, Florida, […] two places that have had a great impact on Buffett and his music’ and ‘many [fans] have visited the sacred sites’ (Ingersoll 2001, p. 257). These places offer the potential for pleasurable moments of pilgrimage and fan tourism, but the existence of the Margaritaville cafes/restaurants means that there is also an official themed space related to their fandom which seeks to embody in

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a specific place the concept and attitude of Margaritaville and which may challenge Buffett fans’ stance of anti-consumerist resistance. This is highlighted by the fact that the UOR CityWalk ‘Margaritaville’ is not the only restaurant in the chain; ‘In 1984, [Buffett] opened a T-shirt shop that has transformed into a chain of restaurants and retail operations, known as ‘“Margaritaville Café” […] In the same year, he convinced Group Modelo with its Corona beer to serve as his corporate sponsor’ (Mihelich and Papineau 2005, p. 183). However, given its site as a themed restaurant within an already themed space, the CityWalk location offers the chance to consider how multiply layered and themed places may work differently for different fans; in this case, the ‘theme park fan’ and the ‘Jimmy Buffett fan’. Some Buffett fans reacted angrily to what they perceived as his ‘selling-out’, leading to a schism between many fans’ desires and the commodified trajectory of Buffett’s career. After the opening of the ‘Margaritaville’ chain, and the sponsorship with Corona, many fans ‘adopted the identity of ‘‘Parrothead,’’ developed and embraced the meanings of Parrothead subculture, and pursued the fanciful ‘‘Margaritaville’’ while Buffett developed his ‘‘Corporitaville’’ in predictable and rationalized ways’ (Mihelich and Papineau 2005, p. 175). The dismissive and derisive ‘Corporitaville’ tag speaks to how a range of fandoms resist overly commodified and commercialized elements of their fan culture, as discussed in more depth in the next chapter. Indeed, the theming of the restaurant fits into Beardsworth and Bryman’s concept of ‘reliquary theming’ (1999, p. 240) via its display of items relevant to Buffett’s career, as well as ‘parodic theming’ (1999, p. 241) through the overt fakery of its tropical setting and the carefully-timed explosion of a ‘volcano’ every thirty minutes. The food and drink on offer are themed around the tropics and have links to Buffett’s songs; the ‘Cheeseburger in Paradise’ is named for one of his hits but is a standard (if very well-cooked) burger, whilst the ‘Volcano Nachos’ (named for another of his famous songs) are a typical, but large, portion of tortilla chips. Equally, the drinks menu offers a range of flavoured Margaritas, loosely tropical-themed cocktails and Buffett’s own lager Landshark. Given the somewhat tenuous links between the food and drink on offer and Buffett’s material, and the fact that ‘theme and food are linked by linguistic and semantic markers rather than by culinary markers’ (Beardsworth and Bryman 1999, pp. 244–245), fannish critique of the ‘Margaritaville’ sites initially appears justified. But, despite this, there are signs that some fans view visiting ‘Margaritaville’ restaurants as a form of fannish pilgrimage. As noted during one of my trips to Orlando, the CityWalk restaurant, for instance, features graffiti scrawled on the bathroom mirrors and on the bar, quoting lyrics from Buffett’s songs and

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echoing the laid-back Margaritaville philosophy. On my first visit I wondered whether these were genuine fannish statements and acts of subversion, or official modes of decoration meant to replicate actual ‘vernacular memorial practices’ (Alderman 2002, p. 29). However, when visiting again two years later, much of the graffiti in the bathrooms had been removed, suggesting that these messages and statements were, in fact, actual evidence of fans’ ‘inscriptions and message writing’ (Alderman 2002, p. 33). Fans’ leaving of messages at sites such as the walls of Graceland (Alderman 2002), the walls outside Abbey Road Studios (Brabazon 2002) where The Beatles recorded much of their music, the park benches in Viretta Park near the site of Nirvana singer Kurt Cobain’s death in Seattle (Garner 2014), or in official visitor books (Norris 2013) may be officially or semi-officially sanctioned, with comments allowed to remain in situ. Universal has also tolerated temporary sites of remembrance within its attractions, with employees and guests allowed to leave flowers and notes at the door for the Potions Master at the Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey ride after the death of actor Alan Rickman who played Professor Snape in the Potter movies, and a red rose placed in the line for the Spider-Man attraction to commemorate Marvel creator Stan Lee after his death in 2018, reflecting the common practice of leaving commemorative artefacts at important sites (Richardson 2001). However, the case of ‘Margaritaville’ suggests that places of media pilgrimage may not always tolerate this type of fannish declaration or message when they are located within broader corporately owned themed spaces. Whilst the reasons for the removal of much of the Buffett-related inscriptions can only be surmised, it is telling that the function of this site as a potential locus for fan tourism and pilgrimage appears, in part, to extend only to its official function as a themed restaurant, selling food and drink linked to Buffett’s music and image. When fan practices move outside of this sanctioned sphere of consumption, there seems to be a tacit attempt to limit these and to shut down fans’ desires to leave their discursive, vernacular mark on the site.

Conclusion This chapter has brought together prior work on fan and media tourism with studies of food to explore the importance of both as an intrinsic part of contemporary material culture and as an important element in the broader theme park fan experience. Within the broader tapestry of theme park fandom, the ‘consumption of food and drink related to a fan object offer[s] avenues for connection, participation and pleasure’ (Williams 2015, online)

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and participation in practices of consumption offers the fan the chance to replicate and inhabit those moments moving, as in acts of more general fannish tourism, their fandom from the textual into the bodily and the spatial. There are a range of different opportunities for culinary consumption within the theme park space and these have various degrees of intensity in terms of their function as paratexts, their use in furthering immersion within a themed world, or allowing the fan guest to accrue levels of subcultural culinary capital which ‘confer[s] status and power on those who know about and enjoy’ (Naccarato and Lebesco 2012, p. 3) certain ‘cult-culinary objects’. Furthermore, ‘The smell and taste of food and drinks also connects’ (Lukas 2007, p. 86) guests to the immersive world, as the concept of ‘haptic fandom’ discussed across the book also emphasizes. Throughout this chapter, the concepts of consumption and the consumer have been used exclusively to refer to the practices of eating and drinking foodstuffs within the theme park environment and those who engage in these acts. However, consumption has a much broader meaning, one which has often proven contentious within fan cultures themselves and in study of them. Indeed, ‘The imagined subjectivity of the “consumer” is […] hugely important to fans as they strive to mark out the distinctiveness of fan knowledge and fan activities’ (Hills 2002, p. 27) and within many fandoms, ‘‘‘good” fan identities are constructed against a further imagined Other: the “bad” consumer’ (Hills 2002, p. 27). The next chapter continues the discussion of consumption begun here, exploring how theme park fandom offers a chance to move beyond the often still rigid dichotomies of consumer/producer that operate. Like many other fandoms, theme park fans are aware of the consumption driven nature of the sites that they love, and the critiques that have been levelled against them for this very reason; the accusation that The theme park landscape as it has developed is exhaustively commercial to its core, a virtual maze of advertising, public relations and entertainment, especially in the chain parks. It is the site for the carefully controlled sale of goods (souvenirs) and experiences (architecture, rides and performances) ‘themed’ to the corporate owners’ proprietary images. (Davis 1996: 402)

However, fans also operate their own hierarchies and distinctions based on certain goods or items of merchandise and often marking themselves out in opposition against ‘bad consumers’ (such as those who purchase huge numbers of limited-edition items in order to sell them on eBay). As the next chapter will demonstrate, the practices of curation and collecting are key to theme park fans and are often intimately woven with their displays of fannish self-identity.

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Gray, Jonathan, Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers and Other Media Paratexts (New Hanna, Erin, ‘The Liminality of the Line and the Place of Fans at ComicCon’, Journal of Fandom Studies, 5, 2 (2017), 209–227. Hills, Matt, Fan Cultures (London: Routledge, 2002). ———, ‘Transmedia Under One Roof: The Star Wars Celebration as a Convergence Event’, in Star Wars and the History of Transmedia Storytelling, edited by Sean Guynes and Dan Hassler-Forest (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017), pp. 213–224. Huddleston, Gabriel S., Julie C. Galen and Jennifer A. Sandling, ‘A New Dimension of Disney Magic: MyMagic+ and Controlled Leisure’, in Disney, Culture, and Curriculum, edited by Jennifer A. Sandling and Julie C. Garlen (London: Routledge, 2016), pp. 220–232. Ingersoll, Julie J., ‘The Thin Line between Saturday night and Sunday Morning: Meaning and Community Among Jimmy Buffett’s Parrotheads’, in God in The Details: American Religion in Popular Culture, edited by Eric Michael Mazur and Kate McCarthy (New York and London: Routledge, 2001), pp 253–266. Johnson, Catherine, ‘Tele-branding in TVIII: The Network as Brand and the Programme as Brand’, New Review of Film and Television Studies, 5, 1 (2007), 5–24. Johnston, Josee, Foodies: Democracy and Distinction in the Gourmet Foodscape (London: Routledge, 2015). King, Margaret J. and J.G. O’Boyle, ‘The Theme Park: The Art of Time and Space’, in Disneyland and Culture: Essays on the Parks and Their Influence, edited by Kathy Merlock Jackson and Mark I. West (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2011), pp. 5–18. Lacy, Julie A. and William A. Douglass, ‘Beyond Authenticity: The Meanings and Uses of Cultural Tourism’, Tourist Studies, 2, 1 (2002), 5–21. Ledbetter, Jonathan L., Amira Mohamed-Ameen, James M. Oglesby and Michael W. Boyce, ‘Your Wait Time from This Point Will Be . . . Practices for Designing Amusement Park Queues’, Ergonomics in Design: The Quarterly of Human Factors Applications, 21, 2 (2013), 22–28. Lin, Yi-Chi, Thomas E. Pearson, and Liping A. Cai, ‘Food as a Form of Destination Identity: A Tourism Destination Brand Perspective’, Tourism and Hospitality Research, 11, (2011), 30–48. Lukas, Scott A., ‘Theming as a Sensory Phenomenon: Discovering the Senses on the Las Vegas Strip’, in The Themed Space: Locating Culture, Nation and Self, edited by Scott A. Lukas (New York: Lexington Books, 2007), pp. 75–79. Magladry, Madison, ‘Eat Your Favourite TV Show: Politics and Play in Fan Cooking’, Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies, 32, 2 (2018), 111–120. Mihelich, John and John Papineau, ‘Parrotheads in Margaritaville: Fan Practice, Oppositional Culture, and Embedded Cultural Resistance in Buffett Fandom’, Journal of Popular Music Studies, 17, 2 (2005), 175–202.

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Miller, Daniel, and Rhiannon, Drinking at Disney: A Tipsy Travel Guide to Walt Disney World’s Bars, Lounges and Glow Cubes (Bamboo Forest Publishing, 2016). Milman, Ady, ‘The Global Theme Park Industry’, Worldwide Hospitality and Tourism Themes, 2, 3 (2010), 220–237. Naccarato, Peter and Kathleen LeBesco, Culinary Capital (London: Bloomsbury, 2012). Niles, Robert, ‘Look East – Far East – for Disney’s Best Response to Harry Potter’, Theme Park Insider, 16 May 2013, accessed 14 January 2019. https://www. themeparkinsider.com/flume/201305/3482/ ———, ‘How Well Do You Know Disney’s Secret Society of Theme Park Characters?’, Theme Park Insider, 24 December 2018, accessed 14 January 2019. https://www. themeparkinsider.com/flume/201812/6497/ ———, ‘Tokyo DisneySea Announces Soaring Opening, and its S.E.A. Link’, Theme Park Insider, 19 January 2019, accessed 20 January 2019. https://www. themeparkinsider.com/flume/201901/6551/ Norris, Craig, ‘A Japanese Media Pilgrimage to a Tasmanian Bakery’, Transformative Works and Cultures, 14 (2013), accessed 12 February 2018. http://journal. transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/470/403 Parasecoli, Fabio, Bite Me: Food in Popular Culture (Oxford: Berg, 2008). Rahn, Suzanne, ‘The Dark Ride of Snow White: Narrative Strategies at Disneyland’, in Disneyland and Culture: Essays on the Parks and Their Influence, edited by Kathy Merlock Jackson and Mark I. West (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2010), pp. 87–100. Reijnders Stijn, Places of the Imagination: Media, Tourism, Culture (London: Palgrave, 2013). Richardson, Miles, ‘The Gift of Presence: The Act of Leaving Artefacts at Shrines, Memorials and Other Tragedies’, in Textures of Place: Exploring Human Geographies, edited by Paul C. Adams, Steven Hoelscher and Karen E. Till (Minnesota, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), pp. 257–272. Rousseau, Signe, Food and Social Media: You Are What You Tweet (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2012). Salamone, Frank A., ‘Authenticity in Tourism: The San Angel Inns’, Annals of Tourism Research, 24, 2 (1997), 305–321. Salamone, Virginia A. and Frank A. Salamone, ‘Images of Main Street: Disney World and the American Adventure’, Journal of American Culture, 22, 1 (1999), 85–92. Schweizer, Bobby and Celia Pearce, ‘Remediation on the High Seas: A Pirates of the Caribbean Odyssey’, in A Reader in Themed and Immersive Spaces, edited by Scott A. Lukas (Pittsburgh, PA: Carnegie Mellon: ETC Press, 2016), pp. 95–106. Skipper Canteen, Walt Disney World, no date, accessed 5 December 2017. https:// disneyworld.disney.go.com/en_GB/dining/magic-kingdom/jungle-navigationskipper-canteen/

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Waysdorf, Abby and Stijn Reijnders, ‘Immersion, Authenticity and the Theme Park as Social Space: Experiencing the Wizarding World of Harry Potter’, International Journal of Cultural Studies, 21, 2 (2018), 173–188. Williams, Rebecca, ‘Cooking with Hannibal: Food, Fandom and Participation’, In Media Res, September 23, 2015, accessed 1 December 2017. http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/imr/2015/09/23/cooking-hannibal-food-fandom-participation Younger, David, Theme Park Design and the Art of Themed Entertainment (USA: Inklingwood Press, 2016).

7.

Embodied Transmedia and Paratextual-Spatio Play: Consuming, Collecting and Costuming Theme Park Merchandise Abstract This chapter explores how hierarchies of cultural value operate in relation to theme park merchandise through the example of Disney pin-trading which allows fans to display their fan identities (e.g. preference for certain characters, attractions, or hotels) or presence at particular events (via the acquisition of limited edition event pins). It also explores how theme park fans display their fandom on their bodies via clothing and subversive forms of costuming known as DisneyBounding. The link between clothing and specific sites within the park allows fans to engage in forms of ‘embodied transmedia extension’ since fans can engage in ludic imaginative spaces. The chapter acknowledges how theme park fans enter into acts of commercial exchange whilst also operating their own hierarchies regarding acts of consumption. Key words: paratextual-spatio play, cosplay, DisneyBounding, embodied transmedia, fan fashion, material culture

Introduction One of the key activities undertaken by theme park fans is the purchase and collection of merchandise. As a brand Disney has long been seen to demonstrate ‘a careful integration of entertainment and fun with commodification and consumption’ (Wasko 2001, p. 158) and Universal Studios has certainly followed this pattern with huge profits made from its in-park merchandising of key properties such as Shrek, Despicable Me, SpongeBob SquarePants, Jurassic Park and, via the opening of The Wizarding World

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of Harry Potter, the Potter franchise. The availability of tie-in products is also key to transmediality which can ‘relate to practices such as franchising, merchandising, adaptations, spin-offs, sequels and marketing’ (Evans 2011, p. 2, italics added) as well as narrative expansion. However, as argued throughout, theme park fans are not the often assumed ‘simpletons easily influenced by the postmodern culture of the image who willingly purchase and adulate any cleverly marketed product’ (Koren-Kuik 2014, p. 14). Instead they operate complex hierarchies and systems of cultural value surrounding the merchandise that they collect and curate. For example, Disney fans can buy merchandise ranging from inexpensive postcards and pens to high-end products and brands such as official Pandora jewellery, handbags and luggage by designers Dooney and Bourke, and limited-edition artwork and prints, whilst Universal Studios offers a similarly broad range of items including expensive Harry Potter clothing and artwork. The Disney parks also frequently offer limited edition merchandise such as pins which can only be purchased during special events (such as Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party) or which have limited availability. Acquiring these in person (not via eBay) also functions as a marker of symbolic and subcultural capital, imbuing the guest with higher levels of both by virtue of having been physically present in the parks for special and limited-time events. This chapter f irst draws on Lincoln Geraghty’s (2014b) work on the collection of pins by fans of the Hard Rock Café chain, and pays specific attention to the fan activity of pin-trading, which is particularly key to Disney fandom. It explores how the collection and trading of pins allows fans to display elements of their fan identities (e.g. by displaying their preference for certain characters, attractions, or hotels) or their presence at particular events (evidenced by the acquisition of limited-edition pins at events such as Park anniversaries). As Elizabeth Affuso and Avi Santo (2018) note, While object-oriented fans have drawn scorn from some fan communities as inauthentic shills for the media industries, […] collecting and curation are important practices among participants seeking to legitimate often devalued forms of popular culture and affective experiences with media.

Thus, the chapter demonstrates how theme park fans willingly accept and enter into acts of commercial exchange and commodification whilst also operating their own hierarchies regarding ‘good’ and ‘bad’ acts of consumption and displaying forms of subcultural capital. They also use merchandise to represent and reinforce their own fan identities within the

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broader umbrella of Disney/Universal or theme park fandom since ‘goods provide opportunities for self-expression and personal development’ (Lunt 1995, p. 249). It is especially imperative to turn attention to the importance of physical material objects within the transmedia theme park experience since, as Nicolle Lamerichs notes, ‘In studies on transmediality, few scholars pay attention to the merchandise and fashion which also mediates these existing stories and characters’ (2018, p. 176). Given the fact that one of the most commonly purchased items is clothing, the chapter also explores how theme park fans display their fandom on their bodies via the purchase of wearable merchandise and, in some cases, subversive forms of costuming or cosplay known as DisneyBounding. This is a practice whereby participants ‘strive to dress like Disney characters in their everyday lives’ (Brock 2017, p. 302) but also, as this chapter focuses on, within the theme park spaces themselves. Many fans who engage in the practice of DisneyBounding post photos of their outf its in online spaces such as Instagram, functioning as examples of Disney ‘lifestylers’ or social media ‘influencers’ (Abidin 2016, 2018). As with other forms of cosplay – a portmanteau for costume and play – DisneyBounding offers the chance to ‘add to debates around fandom, subculture, participatory culture, urban appropriation and more beyond’ (Crawford and Hancock 2018, p. 302). However, I would also argue that it can also contribute to the exploration of transmediality, especially when the practice takes place in specific important sites, allowing fans to engage in a form of ‘embodied transmedia’. Indeed, it is often specific locations within Parks that become meaningful to DisneyBounders via inclusion in photos and videos online, alongside the clothing or accessories that are being worn and displayed. DisneyBounding has been argued to function as ‘a form of transformative work, and as a subset of cosplay’ (Brock 2017, p. 303). Responding to claims that ‘the site of the body has been largely neglected in previous work on fan cultures’ (Hills 2002, p. 158), the chapter considers the importance of the physical embodied fandom that such practices represent and argues that the practice of DisneyBounding functions within the space between transformative and affirmational fandom, as well as a form of mimetic fandom (Hills 2014).

Materiality, Tourism and Fan Cultures Writing from a Tourism Studies perspective, Haldrup and Larsen argue that the field has ‘failed to understand the significance of materiality and

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objects in modern tourism, the ‘sensuous immediacy’ of material culture to tourists’ (2006, pp. 276–76). This, they suggest, results from the fact that the discipline has largely emphasized ‘cognitive and human processes such as thinking, imagining, interpreting and representing, [and] has dematerialized bodies, things and places as culturally inscribed signs or imagescapes, to sign-value’ (Haldrup and Larsen 2006, p. 276). Many writers may well have taken up the ‘hegemonic position of the ‘representational’ in cultural studies of tourism [and] [illustrated] the ‘dematerialized’ nature of much tourist writing’ (Haldrup and Larsen 2006, p. 277); indeed, they point to John Urry’s (2002) work on the ‘tourist gaze’ as one such example. However, attention has been paid to the importance of materiality in the tourist experience, whether through the taking of photographs at important sites (Kim 2010, 2012), the prevalence of shopping as a tourist activity (Hobson et al 2004), or other acts of consumption (see Lury 1997, Wang 2002). As Morgan and Pritchard argue in their discussion of memory and materiality: The material objects of tourism – souvenirs, paintings, photographs, clothes, memorabilia and so forth are important elements of material culture and also embody emotions, memories and associations derived from personal and interpersonal shared experience. (2005, p. 37)

Whilst studies of tourism have been seen by some to privilege the visual over the material, Fan Studies has also been accused of focusing on ‘texts and the textual practices of fandom without paying much attention to the material, physical dimension of fan culture, despite its clear importance to many fans’ (Hoebink et al 2014, para.4.6). Clearly, however ‘Fandom is about more than reading and writing; it also about touching, smelling, controlling, and collecting the objects of fandom’ (Hoebink et al 2014, para.4.6). As Avi Santo argues, the aversion to taking material fan practices seriously has led to large gaps in studying what fans actually do with the merchandise they acquire and how these material objects function as veritable sites of struggle and negotiation over what constitutes fandom and who can gain access to/ status in within a particular community. (2018, p. 329)

However, some studies have begun to interrogate ‘object-oriented fandom’ (Rehak 2014) and the associated ‘materialities of fandom’ including objects such as ‘sports memorabilia, music collectibles, and theatrical props [which] all constitute meaningful bridges between the abstract semiotics of the

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screen and the lived, tactile experience of audiences’ (Rehak 2014, para. 1.3). As Rehak points out, we can explore ‘the material practices of fandom through craft, commodity, collection, and curation’ (2014, para. 1.4). Previous work has focused on the materialities of fandom via the collection and modification of action figures (Godwin 2014, 2015a, 2015b) or dolls (Heljakka 2017), fan purchasing of items from auctions (Stenger 2006, Hills 2014, Hills 2018b, Williams 2018), fashion and cosplay (as discussed below), and a range of other forms of collection, curation and engagement with material cultures (see, for example, Rehak 2013, 2014, Geraghty 2014, Hoebink et al 2014, Woo 2014, Cherry 2011, 2016). Some of these fan practices exist in conflict with the preferences and officially sanctioned uses of companies and organizations, throwing fans and media producers into opposition with one another (as discussed below in relation to Disney theme parks), often because Where the entertainment industries use merchandise to engage fans in guided promotional and lifestyle branding practices, fan communities have repeatedly used film [and media] merchandise as resources for knowledge-cultivation, establishing bonaf ides, authenticity, social, symbolic and cultural capital, and as means of challenging the scriptural economy. (Affuso and Santo 2018)

As noted at the end of the prior chapter, fandom has often been beset by the tension between resisting overly-commodified practices and an awareness that fandom often involves participation in acts of consumption and collecting, echoing a broader cultural ‘binary link between commercial and inauthentic, and non-commercial and authentic’ (Banet-Weiser 2012, p. 11). Equally, as discussed in the Introduction and in Chapter Two, one of the main critiques levelled at theme parks is that they are ‘temple[s] of consumption made possible by leisure, surplus value, technology and consumerism’ (King 1981, pp. 120–1) and that their ‘Visitors become passive consumers, neither actively engaged in the construction of their experience, nor particularly aware of the high degree of manipulation and influx of capital required to maintain the experience’ (Borrie 1999, p. 74). However, theme park fans, as I have argued throughout, are not unaware of these tensions. They both accept their position as consumers within the commodified spaces of the parks whilst also operating a range of distinctions regarding the types of consumption and goods that they value and those who engage with different types of object. When considering the importance of collecting, curation and consuming to theme park fans we must acknowledge that ‘fandom is related to wider shifts within consumer culture, such as the increase in

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consumption-based social and communal identities’ (Hills 2002, p. 28) and accept that there is a ‘potentially curious co-existence within fan cultures of both anti-commercial ideologies and commodity-completist practices’ (Hills 2002, p. 28). Within the complex flow of consumption within theme park spaces, fans maintain their autonomy and their ‘ability to reflect on both the pleasures and the displeasures of their experiences, to articulate the gains and the losses, and to make self-conscious choices within the options which are available’ (Buckingham 1997, p. 290). Thus, for many fans, the financial cost of particular theme park merchandise (or experiences) ‘will often stand in no relation to the pleasures and intense emotional involvement that fans derive from these purchases’ (Sandvoss 2005, p. 116), meaning that ‘fans give their consumption an inherently private and personal nature that removes their object of consumption from the logic of capitalist exchange’ (Sandvoss 2005, 116). Given the often intense affective attachments fans that have to specific elements of theme park culture (such as specific attractions or characters), fans may prioritise the ‘object of fandom[s] […] function as an extension of the self’ (Sandvoss 2005, pp. 115–16) over the financial cost associated with engaging in that fandom. Theme park fans may engage with different levels of merchandise ranging from relatively inexpensive keepsakes such as keyrings or magnets, to high-end jewellery or collectibles, and sometimes including expensive limited items such as those sold at auctions. As Heljakka notes, ‘To have a collection means to possess a group of objects under a connective theme. The collection comes to exist by means of its principle of organization’ (2017, p. 93). For some theme park fans the ‘principle of organization’ is the type of object being collected; pin badges, magnets, mugs and so on. For others, it is a specific park, attraction or character where a collection may include a range of object types, but which all relate to a specific theme. In contrast, some collecting may be focused around specific events (such as Park anniversaries) or collating items related to particular trips as a whole (e.g. prioritizing merchandise with the year of a visit in order to commemorate a clearly defined period), highlighting how ‘the accumulation and consumption of the physical artefacts of tourism materialize self-identity and mediate our sense and memory of place’ (Morgan and Pritchard 2005, p. 30). The parks themselves are happy to oblige these different types of collector since, within the theme park space, ‘Each level of consumer is a niche market that can be catered to in this fantasyland’ (Bartkowiak 2012, p. 944). The willingness of theme park fans to engage in the acquisition and collection of merchandise reflects the importance of the link between favourite elements of the park and their own sense of self-identity, with specific items often associated

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with certain trips or events. As Heather Urbanski notes in her self-reflexive discussion of her status as a Disney theme park and Star Wars fan, ‘official’ merchandise often marks a particular trip to the Disney Parks, either with a year on the item itself or just a specific memory attached to it (such as the BB-8 ears my niece bought me after I had struggled to complete the runDisney Dark Side Challenge), while also not requiring fans to be able to construct their own handcrafted items that often carry more prestige in fandom circles. (2017, p. 261)

Here, a fans’ inability to construct and make their own items is not seen as a barrier to participation in theme park fandom, as it may be in fandoms that privilege handicrafting and building above purchasing commodified and commercially available goods (see Hills 2014). Whilst there is a thriving culture of fan-crafted costumes and accessories circulating around theme park fandom via sites such as the ‘artisanal marketplace’ of Etsy (Close 2016, p. 1901), fans are not required to possess the skills to produce such items themselves. In this way, the theme park offers the fan a plethora of objects to choose from whilst not necessarily facing being devalued or dismissed by fellow theme park fans. Furthermore, as Urbanski continues, ‘Rather than feeling manipulated against my will, or treated only as a profit center, I do also see the merchandise available in the parks as souvenirs of family time spent on vacation and a way to identify myself to fellow fans’ (2017, p. 261). This identification to fellow fans can take place outside of the parks themselves and can involve both official merchandise and the unofficial; for example, recognizing someone who has visited a favourite attraction by a T-shirt they are wearing. Over the course of visiting the Florida parks, I have seen and experienced countless examples of people actively recognizing and praising the merchandise worn by others, ranging from approving smiles and nods, shouts of ‘I love your T-shirt’ across the parks, to being actively stopped and questioned about where an item was purchased (on one day alone, an unofficial Star Wars/Ariel Princess mash-up T-shirt received over six different types of compliment from both staff and other theme park attendees). Clothing also works to identify fellow fans of specific rides, experiences or characters whilst physically present within the parks themselves. This allows more dedicated fans to recognize each other amongst the wider theme park attendees of holidaymakers and families, enabling a subtle subcultural nod of recognition when others recognize a more obscure reference to a ride, text, or character on one’s clothing or accessories.

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Collecting and Consuming in Disney Pin Trading One of the main ways that theme park fans display their particular connections or investments is via the collection, display and trading of themed pins. These can be themed to specific parks, hotels, attractions, characters, seasons, or hard-ticket events, and so on. The practice of Pin Trading originated in Disney Parks, but this can also be undertaken at UOR, albeit with fewer guests and staff actively participating in swapping pins. Pin Trading involves guests buying pins from the range of shops across WDW and then taking these to the Parks and displaying them. This is most typically done on a lanyard hung around the neck but those with a larger collection that they wish to swap may also take specially designed pin trading bags. Once in the Parks, guests can approach staff and swap pins, whilst guests may also wish to swap with each other. Pins that had a limited-edition run, such as those associated with specific themed events or part of limited numbers, are the most sought-after whilst the more generic and common pins are generally less popular. There are echoes here of Lincoln Geraghty’s study of collectors of pins from the Hard Rock Café chain and his argument that ‘traveling to and collecting unique pins from locations across the globe creates a different fan dialogue that centers on tourism and the collecting practices associated with curatorial and souvenir consumption’ (2014b, para 1.4). In the case of theme park pins, however, fans are less likely to be traveling across the globe to collect (trips to the international theme parks in France or Asia notwithstanding) and more likely to be obtaining pins that reflect specific visits or evoke certain memories at the same sites (e.g. Walt Disney World or Universal Orlando Resort). In the same way at the Hard Rock Café fans, however, there is a clear linkage between the physical object, the act of collecting, and the experience of traveling to and visiting important sites. Here we can see how theme park fans use merchandise such as pins to represent their fannish identities, which are ‘partly defined by what people choose to collect and partly determined by where they travel and what they do when they get there’ (Geraghty 2014b, para. 2.6). Whilst pins had always been produced and sold at Disney resorts, the practice of pin trading was formally introduced and sanctioned in 1999 at WDW as part of the Resort’s Millennium Celebration (Disney, ‘Pin Trading Around the World’). Pin trading is a practice that Disney actively seeks to encourage, but it is regulated with a list of rules that guests must abide by. These include: – The general rule on what constitutes a tradeable pin is that it is a cloisonné, semi-cloisonné or hard-enamel metal Disney pin, or an acceptable

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operating participant pin, that represents a specific Disney event, place or location, character or icon. Guests may only trade one pin of the same style with a Cast Member. Trade one pin at a time, hand to hand. For safety, trade pins with the backs attached. Guests can make up to two pin trades per cast member per day. Please refrain from touching another person’s pins or lanyard. If you need a closer look, ask the person wearing the lanyard if they can bring it into clearer view for you. When trading with Cast Members, Guests should offer a pin that is not already displayed on the Cast Member’s lanyard. Monies or gifts may not be exchanged or used in trade for a pin. (Disney, ‘Pin Trading Etiquette’)

Many of these points of etiquette are an attempt to discourage theme park guests from acquiring rarer pins to sell online via sites such as eBay. Such practices are common (from both pin trading and via buyers purchasing large numbers of limited edition pins from pin trading shops within the Parks) but they are divisive since many of these quasi-professional online sellers buy limited edition merchandise in large quantities from the Parks, then sell this on for hugely inflated prices. This is a commodified practice which long-term fans oppose, with frequent calls for the parks to reduce to the number that people can purchase of one item to be reduced from ten. This dislike of inappropriate acts of buying and selling is common across fan cultures which involve the acquisition and circulation of merchandise which may be limited and theme park fans on Twitter and blogs often report seeing other guests buying large amounts of limited edition merchandise that can only be purchased in the parks; one Tweet posted on 19 August 2018 speculated sarcastically that a guest buying an entire shelf-full of limited edition Haunted Mansion plush dolls was named Mr. Edward Bay (as in Mr. E. Bay). Similarly, online bloggers reported queues of several hours for fans to purchase limited edition Funko Pop Vinyl dolls modelled on the Orange Bird mascot from the Magic Kingdom’s Adventureland Terrace counter service café. They also posted photographs of people carrying large bags filled with the maximum number of items they were entitled to buy, likely to be listed on eBay almost immediately. This fannish resentment of those who cheat the system and deny others the opportunities to acquire merchandise within the parks echoes Geraghty’s work on Hard Rock Café pin collection in which one fan expressed a wish to ‘restrict […] the number of specific pins bought at one time to stop “evil-bay” sellers making a profit;

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rerunning pins so that people who missed them in store can buy them again to fill gaps in their collections’ (2014, para 4.5). Fans are not only happy to participate in consumerist systems of collection and curation but are also keen to police what they view as the ‘fair’ and equitable chance for the acquisition of merchandise. However, whilst a collection of pins can be built and maintained via second-hand trade on sites like eBay (despite the broader fan disapproval of organized eBay ‘pirates’) , the act of pin trading is framed by Disney, and many fans, in terms of its opportunities for engagement and interaction within the physical spaces of the Parks. When away from the theme parks, fans may share their collections with others via images online or keep them private but, in both cases, they work to form a personal collection of pins that are linked to specific trips or events in the Parks, or that depict their favourite characters or movies. As Avi Santo argues, the acts of acquiring and collecting media-oriented objects are also an integral part of how individuals express their identity and individuality within a consumer society. Merchandise can materially encapsulate their acquirer’s memories of a particular event or experience, bits of their biography, or elicit affect tied to nostalgia or a sense of place that is only tangentially related to the text upon which an item is based. (2018, pp. 330–31)

Thus, ‘When bought, each pin is incorporated into a collection that represents an individual’s identity and sense of self […] enhance[ing] both the emotional and physical relationship that pin collectors have with their collected items’ (Geraghty 2014b, para. 3.6). In this way, collecting ‘can be seen as a means of individualizing the uniformity of the mass-produced. In a consumer society, we all look for ways to alleviate the routine of the functional. In collecting, a certain depth or another dimension is found’ (Martin 1999, pp. 146–47). The decision by theme park fans to collect certain types of pin function as a fans’ ‘personalised depictions of history – mirrors to the self. Objects therefore embody memories of things past and inform activities and what you do with the collection in the present’ (Geraghty 2014, 4). Pin trading represents the interplay between fans’ own choices for expression of the fannish self via the pins they choose to collect, and the commercial imperatives of the Disney and Universal parks in that the purchase and exchange of pins is explicitly sanctioned, as long as fans play by the rules. Wearing of pins on lanyards or other clothing is also accepted, allowing fans to display their collections and the subsequent forms of capital that this

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denotes. This is not always the case, however, with some physical displays of fandom within the Parks and other forms of consumption and embodiment more heavily controlled. This is particularly evident in the policing of the practices of costuming and cosplay in the Disney Parks, which has led to a complex relationship between fans and the Disney Company in which initial acts of fannish resistance or practice have been variously challenged, co-opted, and commercialized.

Dressing for Disney: Cosplay and Costuming In addition to pin trading, one of the most commonly purchased forms of theme park merchandise is clothing. Alongside accusations of neglecting the importance of material cultures and objects, Fan Studies has also been seen to overlook the centrality of the physical body in fannish practices. It has been argued that this stems from the fact that practices such as costuming and impersonation have often been feminized and thus devalued, associated with fans’ lack of self-awareness and a fixed notion of the ‘self’, or derided for being inferior copies in a society that values the auratic ‘original’ (see Hills 2002, pp. 158–171). However, the writing of one’s fandom on the body has often been discussed in relation to acts of cosplay (Lunning 2012, Winge 2018, Crawford and Hancock 2018), the practice by which ‘fans of popular culture (e.g., television series, games, movies) produce their own costumes inspired by fictional characters’ (Lamerichs 2011, para: 1:2), in analysis of fannish tattoos (Jones 2014, 2015), and more extreme cases of impersonation and physical modification of the body to look like favourite stars (Hills 2007). Dressing to display one’s fandom is common across fan cultures from the act of wearing a shirt or jersey from a favourite sports team, a t-shirt purchased at a concert of a beloved band, or the use of badges and jewellery inspired by TV series such as Doctor Who or Twin Peaks. As Nicolle Lamerichs notes, clothing is a universal marker of fandom. Fashion and clothing express fandom to both insiders and outsiders, and allow fans to visualize their affect for certain texts. Clothing evokes our connection to a story, and can even be a way of engaging in storytelling by re‐enacting a specific character. (Lamerichs 2018, pp. 176–7)

Lamerichs identifies ‘three categories of fan fashion […] (1) as re‐enactment or cosplay; (2) as pop‐cultural apparel or casual clothing; and (3) as couture

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made by fans and inspired by fiction’ (2018, p. 176). However, despite these various examples, academic work has tended to highlight cosplay, which ‘creates an intimate and complex relation between the fan and the character […] [and through which] the fan constructs his or her identity in relation to fiction and enacts it ‘(Lamerichs 2011, para 3.1), as the dominant mode of fannish engagement with clothing and fashion. I would argue that this is partially due to the focus within Fan Studies on transformative works which privileges fannish ‘twisting’ of source material in opposition to affirmational works which ‘reinforce the official author’s power and control over their own works’ (Hills 2014, para. 2.1). Many of the fashion-related practices that theme park fans engage in, however, do not fit readily into this binary opposition, as I will discuss in more depth below. This section seeks to advance our understandings of the physical practices that theme park fans engage in by exploring the importance of dress and costuming including but not limited to forms of cosplay, particularly within the Disney Parks where ‘The fan’s body […] is playful and present’ (Lamerichs 2018, p. 178). Whilst fans can engage in cosplay outside of the theme parks themselves, they are limited in the opportunities to do so when actually within those spaces given Disney’s restrictive dress codes. However, as I will examine, fans have developed ways to subvert these rules via the concept of ‘DisneyBounding’, the practice of dressing in the colour schemes of characters or in keeping with their specific ‘mood’ or palette to evoke particular characters or Disney icons without explicitly dressing as them. The marketing of fashion items to fans is commonly accepted and forms part of the media industries’ targeting of fans as niche consumers who actively seek to purchase and collect merchandise. Disney, and to a lesser extent Universal, are no strangers to this; Disney with its own ranges based on its own original properties as well as Marvel and Star Wars and, within its Parks, Universal’s sale of clothing based on Harry Potter, Marvel, and Despicable Me. The importance of marking one’s specific theme park fandom via t-shirts, dresses or jewellery highlights again the close linkage between the parks and fans’ sense of identity and points of identification. These items can be worn in everyday life, as a subtle reminder of one’s trips and experiences. Acts such as wearing fan-inspired make-up, wearing Mickey Mouse earrings or carrying a Pirates of the Caribbean handbag to work allows theme park fans to develop ‘a look for integration into everyday life. This creates a quotidian fan practice that is about subtly wearing your fandom in ways that are not clearly marked’ (Affuso 2018, p. 188), a form of what many fannish communities refer to as ‘stealth cosplay’ (Edidin 2014). Disney produces

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its own ranges of clothing through lines such as Kingdom Couture and its Dress Shop brand, via its own Disney Stores, and by licensing the rights to produce merchandise to shops including the UK’s ASDA/George line and Primark stores. However, its partnership with the Her Universe company is perhaps the most overt example of their clothing-related merchandising deals. As Derek Johnson summarizes, In April 2010 […] Lucasfilm announced a partnership with the Araca Group to launch a line of licensed products called HerUniverse, in which “fashion forward apparel for the female sci-fi fan” would be sold via an online retail website of the same name, going live that July. (2014, p. 900)

Since then, HerUniverse has expanded to produce merchandise based on a range of Marvel properties (including Captain America, Thor, and Spiderman). In addition, Disney’s own Dress Shop has produced dresses, skirts, knitwear and accessories based on specific iconography of rides and parks, demonstrating their recognition of the importance of high-end merchandise alongside more affordable wearables such as T-shirts. Disney’s attempt to hail a more fashion-conscious female consumer reflects Johnson’s assertion that the development of branded Star Wars merchandise via HerUniverse ‘supported a very specif ic, postfeminist model of consumer lifestyle’ (2014, p. 896) and Affuso’s argument that ‘The move of branded fan merchandise into this feminized market speaks to the dominance of female fans in contemporary fan cultures and the distinctive needs of this group’ (2018, p. 184). However, Disney’s decision to not only licence its pre-existing Intellectual Properties (such as Star Wars and Marvel, and its own back-catalogue of animated features) but to draw on the iconography of its Theme Parks speaks to its recognition of the connections between fans and these spaces. In selling dresses featuring the colour schemes and iconography of attractions (such as It’s A Small World, Pirates of the Caribbean, or the Haunted Mansion), modelled on the costumes that the theme park employees wear (as in the Tower of Terror range), or featuring key scenes from rides (as in the Haunted Mansion dress and skirts), Disney appears to recognize that fans do not connect only with specific characters or films. Rather, their offering of apparel and accessories to fans of the parks themselves suggests an awareness of the fandom that circulates around those specific places whilst, as discussed below, also suggesting the possibility of corporate co-option and constraining of fan practices it seeks to control.

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DisneyBounding, Paratextual-spatio Play and ‘Embodied Transmedia Extension’ However, it is to the use of clothing and accessories within the parks themselves that I now turn. As Heather Urbanski notes, ‘In my own Disney Parks observations, the in-person fan performances range from full-on cosplay […] to more subtle displays of iconic images, such as my Alex and Ani bracelet collection’ (2017, p. 262). Theme park fans, especially within Disney Parks, run the gamut of fannish performance from the discrete through to the more fully immersive. The immersive art of cosplaying Disney characters has been explored by Amon who argues that they are unique in their relationship to the characters they perform because of the Disney brand’s reliance on innocence as a narrative trope and character element. The innocence of the Disney brand becomes deviant through transposing animated characters onto corporeal bodies. The Disney cosplayer’s deviance is a performance that at once invokes the original nostalgic character while at the same time presenting an uncanny departure from the official company-created character design and narrative. Disney cosplaying is simultaneously deviant and nostalgic; it looks backwards to innocent childhood characters but it performs those innocent characters on the bodies of adults. (2014, para: 1.1)

Much as the Disney characters discussed in Chapter Five became transformed once they were embodied and made corporeal by the physical form of the theme park worker, Amon argues here that the act of cosplaying conflates innocence with deviance by ‘refram[ing] fictional characters onto the bodies of ordinary people’ (2014, para. 2.3). However, whilst many cosplayers seek to challenge and subvert narratives and characters, to rework and ‘and extend them with their own narratives and ideas’. (Lamerichs 2011, para: 1.2), Amon found that the Disney cosplayers she researched were more concerned with narrative and imagic fidelity. In this case, ‘Dressing as the characters is not used to play out alternative stories for the characters. Instead, the point of Disney cosplaying is to appear and perform as close to the original source as possible’ (2014, para: 2.2). This type of overt cosplay may be evident outside of the theme park space itself, and fans do explicitly cosplay at events such as the official annual D23 convention, but Disney seeks to limit the presence of what we understand as typical forms of cosplay within its parks. In its webpage on ‘inappropriate attire’ for the parks, Disney states that ‘Costumes may not

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be worn by Guests 14 years of age or older’ and ‘Masks may not be worn by Guests 14 years of age or older (unless they are for medical purposes)’. It also lists other unsuitable attire such as clothing featuring offensive material, torn clothing, excessive exposure of the body, and ‘objectionable tattoos’. These rules are relaxed a little for the special events Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party and Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party where ‘All Guests may dress as their favorite character, but may not pose for pictures or sign autographs for other Guests’ as long as their costumes as not ‘offensive, objectionable or violent’ and do not contain any weapons or replica weapons (Walt Disney World, no date). In response to these limitations, Disney fans have developed means of dressing and costuming that falls within the remit of the Parks’ rules but still allows them to perform their identities and to display their fan attachments to specific characters, attractions or movies. This practice, known as DisneyBounding, allows fans to dress in clothing of a particular colour scheme that evokes a character or attraction, or to use accessories to allude to these. For example, a male fan dressed in shades of white, purple and bright lime green can be seen to be DisneyBounding the Toy Story character Buzz Lightyear, whilst fans dressing in black and white pinstripes and using accessories such as skull jewellery may be DisneyBounding as The Nightmare Before Christmas’s Jack Skellington. There is a lively subculture based on this practice; ‘Focused primarily on social media sites such as Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram and Reddit, DisneyBounders post pictures of their attire, of themselves at Disney theme parks and of potential bounding clothes. Additionally, DisneyBounders frequently visit the Disney theme parks and, from time to time, have organized meet-and-greets’ (Brock 2017, p. 302). The term arises from the title of a blog by Disney fan Lesley Kay who explains, I can’t take credit for coming up with the idea of using clothes to style character inspiration, but DisneyBound began when I had a trip planned to Disney World for the first time since I was a kid – I was literally Disneybound. One weekend a few months prior to the trip, I started to create outfits based off of my favorite Disney characters. Within a few days the blog quickly grew to have a few thousand followers… then tens of thousands. Within three weeks I was on national television and what was just a blog name became the name for a new Disney fashion trend. (Gibson 2017)

In her empirical study of DisneyBounders, Nettie A. Brock found that the two main reasons for participating in the practice were ‘an increased sense

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of self-confidence and an emphasis on living the Disney spirit through DisneyBounding. Additionally, the DisneyBounders stressed the importance of the DisneyBounding community in their personal growth’ (2017, p. 305). Such work begins to address the fact that the linkage between fashion and fandom beyond cosplay is still relatively under-explored despite the opportunities for bridging text or fan object and the self that clothing and accessories offer. However, in discussion of an auction of props from the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer Josh Stenger argues that fans were particularly keen to own items of clothing since, the clothes afforded fans such rich opportunities for fantasy production and role-playing, as well as for the focused fetishization of characters and actors. Closely linked to gender identity and sexual desire, to the authentic and the performative, the body and the gaze, these items promised the chance to close – or at least to clothe – the distance between fan, character and actors. (2006, p. 33)

As in a recent post-series auction of objects from the TV series Hannibal, the opportunity to buy clothing allows fans ‘to feel closer to the characters and those who play them, bringing elements of a beloved narrative world and its inhabitants into fans’ own spaces and, in some cases, quite literally into and onto “themselves”’ (Williams 2018, p. 454). Similarly, whilst not writing about the auratic clothing acquired via auctions, Sarah Gilligan argues that ‘Costume, fashion and merchandising enable the formation of ‘tactile transmediality’ for the spectator by bridging the gap between the virtual ‘worlds’ on-screen and the lived material body’ (2012, p. 25). This ‘tactile transmediality’ offers a form of haptic fandom since it highlights how ‘Through the haptic pleasures of textiles and adornment, the spectator is able to form their own narrative world in which touch and feel plays just as integral a role to the transformation and performance of identity as visual signifiers do’ (Gilligan 2012, p. 26). For Gilligan, the relationship between costume and audience is often distilled via the function of celebrity, one can replicate what is seen on-screen to, as in Stenger’s work on the Buffy auction, feel a link with a character and the person who played them. In the case of theme park fandom, however, there are many instances where the characters that people are DisneyBounding have no real-life celebrity referent to consider. As discussed in Chapter Five, it is the animated characters themselves who function as the celebrity here, and the characters and their iconic images (e.g. colour palettes) who inspire the fashion that fans engage with.

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Given Disney’s own rules, the efforts of fans to engage in DisneyBounding may be incredibly subtle and often ignored by the majority of park guests. Much like the fan makeup and accessories discussed by Affuso which are ‘not designed to be recognized as fan-oriented products, [and] allow […] fans to participate in an everyday cosplay that only they are aware of’ (2018, p. 191), DisneyBounding is often relatively covert and understated in its displays of fandom, especially to those within the parks who are unfamiliar with the subculture and its practices. Furthermore, due to its linkage with fans’ sense of self-identity, it functions as a more restrained mode of costuming than overt cosplay. As Brock notes, DisneyBounding is not about putting on a show, instead it is a selfreflective act of performing a fan-centred, but deeply personal identity […] DisneyBounding is about finding a personal identity through the Disney magic and sharing that identity with a group of like-minded individuals. This difference makes DisneyBounding a subset of cosplay – everyday cosplay. (2017, p. 313)

However, as in many other fan cultures, there is pleasure and capital to be gained from the recognition that can be displayed by a knowing wink or nod, or a positive comment. As creator Leslie Kay notes, ‘It’s definitely a thing that Disney fans understand. Disney fans are their own breed. As far as other people who maybe aren’t the biggest fans they’ll recognize a Minnie Mouse but the biggest Disney fanatics are going to understand the more complicated outfits’ (Nasserian 2013). The subcultural activity of DisneyBounding offers theme park fans an avenue for creativity and subversion of Disney’s own rules about park-suitable attire. There may be subtle changes (for example, in the category of ‘rule-breakers’ where guests will Bound as non-Disney characters) and, in some cases, gender-swapping of male and female characters since fan costuming is a way for ‘fans [to] express their affection for existing stories and rework them through various media. Like fan fiction, fan movies, and fan art, cosplay motivates fans to closely interpret existing texts, perform them’ (Lamerichs 2011, para: 1.2). However, for the most part, as in the case of Disney cosplay discussed by Amon where potential ‘freedom of play is often ignored in favor of adherence to the Disney canon’ and where ‘Departures from Disney canon are framed as playful acts rather than as overt challenges to canon’ (2014, para: 2.2), DisneyBounding outfits themselves are usually loyal to the canonical version of the character and demonstrate a ‘devotion to authenticity’ (Amon 2014, para: 5.2). This, I would argue, partially challenges Brock’s characterization

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of DisneyBounding as ‘a form of transformative work’ (2017, p. 303). Indeed, as in Gilligan’s concept of ‘tactile transmediality’ which encompasses a variety of ‘processes of copying, consumption and role-play enable the formation of an individualised world that both connects and diverges from the original narrative source’ (Gilligan 2012, p. 26), DisneyBounding straddles acts of creation, replication, and physicality which blur the boundaries between being a practice of transformational and affirmational fandom (obsession_inc 2009). It functions both as ‘raw material for productive play […] that [may] go against the presumed intentions of the original’s creator’ (Mittell 2015, p. 115) when fans gender-swap characters or otherwise subvert a characters’ appearance, but can also ‘work to reinforce an author’s vision […] and canonical narrative content’ (Mittell 2015, p. 114) via fannish devotion to the sanctioned official versions of various characters. As such, it also has much in common with Matt Hills’ concept of ‘mimetic fandom’ (2014) which focuses on ‘the creation of highly screen-accurate prop replicas’ (para. 1.2), but which can also apply to the creation of accurate replicas of costumes. Mimetic fandom ‘begins to deconstruct the binary of fan productions that either transform or imitate mainstream media content’ (para. 1.2) since it appears to be affirmational from a distance, but transformational details are evident when viewed closely. It seems authentic by virtue of noncommerciality, but it indicates inauthentic brand extending and so-called grassroots marketing when considered from a commercial perspective. It centers on material culture and haptic presence but indicates the value of a framing immateriality. (Hills 2014, para. 2.17)

Alongside this complex spanning of resistive, affirmational, and mimetic elements, DisneyBounding offers opportunities for ludic moments of fannish engagement which are predicated on the importance of being physically present within the theme parks. Within the Parks, the fan practice of DisneyBounding allows for what I have termed ‘paratextual-spatio play’ where ‘the use of a specific paratextual object within a location or site related to a fan object offers specific opportunities for transmedia engagement, and the possibility of spatially-rooted but imaginative world-building or narrative extension’ (Williams 2019). This can involve posing for photographs to recreate scenes from fictional texts (Kim 2010) or using physical items such as Funko Pop! Vinyl dolls or toys within specific places (Williams 2019) to negotiate the lines between self, text, and place. However, fashion and wearable objects also allow for this form of paratextual-spatio ludic engagement in sites and allow us to

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examine how items such as clothing, make-up and jewellery function as aspects of transmediality. Such notions have been previously explored through Sarah Gilligan’s concept of ‘tactile transmediality’ (2012) and Nicolle Lamerichs’ (2018, p. 176) argument that transmediality offers a lens through which to consider the links between fictional worlds, material culture, and fans’ own corporeal bodies. We may question the transmedia potential of fashion items, however, since very few can be read as expanding a transmedia narrative or world-building. One exception would be the use of in-world brands on clothing or jewellery such as the Hogwarts Houses in Harry Potter, or the name of companies and institutions such as the Weiland Corporation from the Alien movie series. However, whilst clothing and accessories may largely function as promotional rather than ‘transmedia paratexts’ (see Gray 2010), operating as examples of ‘transmedia branding’ (Jenkins 2009) which ‘may enhance [a] franchise’s branding but […] may have limited contribution to make to our understanding of the narrative or the world or the story’ (Jenkins 2009), they do offer opportunities for fannish play within imaginary transmedia worlds of fictional films and TV shows within the theme park space. As argued throughout, audience engagement and creation also contribute to forms of transmediality, and this can be seen especially via their use of transmedia paratexts. As Elizabeth Evans argues, ‘Merchandise such as board games and action figures offered a form of engagement with the universe of [a] series in non-audio-visual formats as they allowed viewers to create their own stories through play’ (2011, p. 23). Objects such as action figures therefore represent resources where players can expand their understanding of the fictional world through play. Minimally, they enhance transmedia play, but in so far as coherent stories emerge through this play, they may also contribute to the expansion of the transmedia story. (Jenkins 2009)

Such forms of what Lincoln Geraghty terms ‘paratextual play’ (2015, p. 2) allow us to examine how fans relate to ‘fictional worlds and narratives’ and how narrative universes are constructed and ‘reflected in the rituals of fan paratextual production’ (Geraghty 2015, p. 2). Fan engagement in practices such as DisneyBounding offers a playful space to negotiate the self, character/ text, and the physical space of the theme park itself; many DisneyBounders seek to take photographs in their outfits at specific places that are significant. For example, somebody DisneyBounding Ariel the Little Mermaid will take photographs outside her attraction, whilst someone DisneyBounding a

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specific Disney foodstuff , such as Dole Whip, as discussed in the previous chapter, will seek to take photos in the associated Adventureland location, and often whilst holding or eating the food itself. Such manoeuvres allow fans to work to embody, even in an abstract way, the characters or attractions they connect with, allowing fan identities to be performed and displayed and for the links between the imaginary narrative world and the characters to be mediated. It is only when located in the theme park locations themselves, however, that this can be undertaken, given the ‘basic corporeality’ of tourism and the fact that ‘It is through our bodies-in-motion that we perform, and ‘make sense’ – physically, semiotically and poetically – of spaces and places’ (Haldrup and Larsen 2006, p. 279). In these moments, fans are partaking in modes of haptic fandom, since they are dressed in clothing and are able to physically reach out and feel elements of the surrounding immersive environments. For fans, these embodied experiences demonstrate how ‘Touching thereby encompasses the affective, the emotional (the notion of touching as feeling) (Paterson 2007, p. 3) and allow them to bring together ‘touch, haptics and tactility’ (Richardson and Hjorth 2017, p.4). In this way, fans taking part in acts such as DisneyBounding are operating as forms of what I refer to as ‘embodied transmedia’ since these practices allow for transmedia possibilities only so long as the fan/guest is in the Park space and able to engage in this ludic imaginative space. As paratexts such as clothing, costumes, and accessories are used by the physical present body of the fan in particular spaces, the potential for expansion of narratives, worlds, and characters can be enacted and embodied. Much as in the forms of paratextual play discussed by Geraghty (2015) and Evans (2011), this particular form of paratextual-spatio-play (Williams 2019) enables acts of embodied transmedia extension to take place.

Influencers, Labour and DisneyBounding Distinction Relatedly, the Parks themselves have become more aware of the uncompensated labour they can get from fans, especially those who identify as Disney lifestylers or ‘influencers’ on social media. Crystal Abidin defines social media influencers as: everyday, ordinary Internet users who accumulate a relatively large following on blogs and social media through the textual and visual narration of their personal lives and lifestyles, engage with their following in ‘digital’ and ‘physical’ spaces, and monetize their following by integrating ‘advertorials’

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into their blogs or social media posts and making physical paid-guest appearances at events. A portmanteau term combining ‘advertisement’ and ‘adeneditorial,’ advertorials in the Influencer industry are highly personalized, opinion-l promotions of products/services that Influencers appear to personally experience and endorse for a fee. (2016, p. 3)

Many of those who participate in DisneyBounding, especially on Instagram, can be classified as influencers and the Disney brand has been quick to utilize the free publicity and promotion that these figures can offer. Whilst researching for this chapter, for example, the Disney jewellery brand Couture Kingdom chose to celebrate the one-year anniversary of changing its name from Disney Couture to Couture Kingdom UK by offering fans the chance to become one of five new so-called ‘brand reps’ on Instagram. To earn the opportunity to take on the role, fans were encouraged to post photos of their Couture Kingdom jewellery in the most artistic ways possible, as well as posting reasons why they felt they would be well-suite to acting as a brand rep under the hashtag #CKUKbrandrep (Couture Kingdom UK 2018). Whilst this was not a paid role, the successful reps were entitled to 5 pieces of jewellery from the range every quarter (up to the value of £150) and in exchange were expected to post one story or photo advertising these pieces each week. Clearly, the main advantage here for the successful brand reps is the exposure their Instagram accounts would garner, and the potential benefits from being associated with a recognizable global brand such as Disney. However, whilst Disney in particular has been accused of parasitically ‘borrowing’ from Disney fans to commercialize and sell their own ideas back to them, the majority of fans remain uncritical of this; when Disney lifestylers on Instagram began posting a large number of photos in front of a specific purple wall at the Magic Kingdom, the Company was quick to cash in, producing official merchandise such as hats, a Purple Wall slushie drink, and as of October 2018 a dedicated cart located at the Purple Wall to sell Purple Wall Candyfloss. In turn, ‘Some Disney fans now wear the official purple wall merchandise in their wall photos, which shows that they perceives this appropriation positively – regardless of the fact that their idea was monetized without their consent and without compensation’ (Kiriakou 2018). Thus, much as in the opportunity to become a relatively uncompensated brand rap for Couture Kingdom UK, the brand proximity generated by overt endorsement of one’s fandom, and the fact that such ‘fandom gets validated or, at the very least, publicly acknowledged by Disney’ (Kiriakou 2018) supersedes any ill-will fans may feel about having their ideas

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co-opted without consent or working for free for a multi-billionaire-dollar company. Issues of economics rear their head elsewhere, however, and there are hierarchies at work within DisneyBounding and in the use of theme park fashion more broadly. As Avi Santo cautions, ‘merchandise can help fans establish their legitimacy within particular communities while also functioning as a status symbol that reinforces hierarchies and differences within that community’ (2018, p. 331). Many of the items that Disney itself sells are not cheap with dresses based on theme park attractions such as the Haunted Mansion, Tower of Terror, or It’s A Small World retailing at over $100. There are also issues regarding how those who are extremely successful or well-known within the theme park or Disney fan community display and share their experiences within the Parks. These Disney ‘lifestylers’ operate a form of gatekeeping, since their collective discursive power has shaped what it means to be a Disney fan in the new media age through an emphasis on producing and sharing marketable brand content. Their willingness to provide Disney with unsolicited publicity enables the company to produce demographictargeted merchandise. (Kiriakou 2018)

As such, it is arguably the prevalence of DisneyBounding as a fan practice that prompted the Company to begin to produce its own merchandise to target that audience via its Dress Shop line of clothing, and to take seriously the work of DisneyBounding founder Lesley Kay by endorsing her brand Cakeworthy as an official Disney licensee and inviting her to consult on lines for the Disney clothing and lifestyle brand Oh My Disney (Kay 2018). Kay functions as an ‘authentic voice of brand advocacy for Disney, and offers a valuable opportunity to reach a niche audience not usually associated with the brand’ (Hutchins and Tindall 2016b, p. 108). As in Disney’s incorporation of fan-created narrative elements into the attraction at the Haunted Mansion discussed in Chapter Four, here we see another example of fan/corporate symbiosis as fan practices are co-opted, made official and sanctioned by the creators. Whilst adults cannot dress explicitly as characters in the Parks, Disney tacitly tolerates the practice of DisneyBounding, and seeks to ward off challenges to its intellectual property on unofficial sites like Etsy and RedBubble, by selling fans what they want, at an inflated price of course. It also implicitly sanctions the act of DisneyBounding via the introduction of Character Couture Packages at its WDW Resort Salons where adult women can have make-overs including make-up, hair, and manicures in the style of their favourite Princess or Villains characters (Schmidt 2018).

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Despite this, the discovery and acquisition of pieces of clothing, jewellery and accessories to use in DisneyBounding, often via unofficial sites and stores, is a key source of pleasure for many fans. The online fandom that circulates around the practice, led by the official DisneyBound blog which has a presence on social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, speaks to the importance of collating and sharing information within this participatory culture. Fans can put together ‘looks’ inspired by specific Disney texts or icons, as well as sharing images of their own outfits and trips to the parks. Much like fashion and beauty blogging more broadly, the emphasis here is on a ‘sharing economy of consumption’ (Affuso 2018, p. 189), but often with a particular focus on making DisneyBounding affordable in order to extend the number of people who can participate. The owner of the DisneyBound blog, Lesley Kay, has often encouraged blogs and posts featuring budget items, and worked to dispel emerging hierarchies predicated on the level of detail in costumes, the amount being spent on these, and the amount of attention being garnered by more recognizable DisneyBounders within the subculture. Kay has been quick to remind DisneyBounders that the practice is not a competition and, in one interview she recommends, ‘My main tip is to have fun with it. Make it your own. Start with items in your own closet before buying something new. You never know what Disney character is hiding in your closet’ (Gibson 2017). Here we see the echoes of the grassroots movements within fandom identified by John Fiske (1989) in his work on ‘making-do’, and in more recent studies of handicrafts and material cultures within fandom (see Cherry 2016). Thus, despite the need to buy expensive park tickets in order to DisneyBound on the property and the cost of some of the items often circulated within the subculture, again theme park fans can attempt to negotiate some of the contradictions between purchasing and creating items, between high and low cost items, and the subcultural and symbolic capital that can be accrued.

Conclusion As this chapter has demonstrated, acts of collection, curating and costuming are integral to the theme park experience. Since they allow fans to display their own specific connections with theme park spaces, they also function as signifiers of forms of subcultural and symbolic capital and, in the case of merchandise worn on the body, allowing fans to recognize one another. The collecting and creation of forms of merchandise that is often embodied, as in the examples of Disney pin trading and the wearing of specific items of

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clothing via official merchandise such as T-shirts. The practice of Disney pin collecting and trading, as in Geraghty’s study of Hard Rock Café pin traders demonstrates how ‘fans are creating self-styled identities from a corporate brand’ (Geraghty 2014b, para. 5.3) by selecting which types of pin to collect from the plethora of Disney-sanctioned options. Similarly, theme park fans debate the ethics of e-Bay ‘scalpers’ who buy large quantities of limitededition pins and other items to sell on for profit and offer their opinions via blogs and social media on the range of merchandise being produced. Theme park fans construct their own hierarchies of consumption and construct distinctions around the types of object that are considered ‘good’ and ‘bad’ examples of merchandise, even as they recognize the corporate and commodified nature of the theme park space itself. The choices made regarding what objects to collect also demonstrates the strong ‘relationship between tourism, materiality and self-identity’ (Morgan and Pritchard 2005, p. 30), as fans opt to focus on specific types of merchandise to collect (e.g. pins, jewellery, mugs) or to maintain a collection of different objects related to a specific attraction, character, or event (e.g. collecting items themed to WDW’s Space Mountain attraction). Furthermore, the chapter’s focus on the links between fashion and theme park fandom via the practice of DisneyBounding highlights how there remains a need for further academic work that seriously examines clothing, accessories and adornment, and does not relegate material cultures to the realm of the frivolous. Costume design, fan costuming and fashion are complex signif iers offering a range of meanings and pleasures. (Gilligan 2012, p. 30)

Indeed, ‘Clothing plays a key role in the text-spectator relationship through its capacity to enable the construction, transformation and performance of imagined, virtual and ‘real life’ identities’ (Gilligan 2012, p. 30). The practice of DisneyBounding and engaging with theme park inspired fashion demonstrates how fans can come to embody and personify the characters, attractions or spaces that they most relate to within the theme park environment via moments of paratextual-spatio play, highlighting ‘the role of fashion in fan culture as a way to mediate and embody existing stories’ (Lamerichs 2018, p. 177) and the opportunities for forms of embodied transmedia. The tendency towards DisneyBounding, not just as characters, but also as attractions such as the Haunted Mansion and the Pirates of the Caribbean, or even as foodstuffs such as the iconic Dole Whip demonstrates how such practices can link ‘the branded story world

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or hyperdiegesis and the fan’s everyday life’ and cross the boundary ‘from textuality to reality’ (Hills 2013, para. 3.3). The work that fans engage in to compile outfits that will not violate theme parks’ own guidelines for entry, will be recognizable to fellow fans familiar with the DisneyBounding subculture, and the emphasis on everyday ordinary items as the basis for outfits highlights the complex modes of creativity and knowledge that are negotiated within this theme park fan practice. Since ‘Fans move betwixt and between fictional, visual, and corporeal texts’ (Lamerichs 2018, p. 176), such forms of ‘tactile transmediality’ (Gilligan 2012) within the theme park space further demonstrate how these sites offer opportunities for forms of transmedia engagement via immersion in both the spaces themselves and as embodied physical actors within them. However, as always, there are forms of subcultural hierarchy at work here in relation to forms of economic and subcultural capital, as well as a complicated relationship between the fans and Disney itself. Contemporary fans exist ‘within both dominant and resistant identities/practices simultaneously’ (Booth 2015, p. 14). But, whilst the sharing of images across social media platforms ‘gives corporations a direct window to the marketplace, allowing them to articulate and shape the values associated with their brand in order to better align with those of their consumers’ (Kiriakou 2018), there continue to be questions raised about the nature of the relationship between theme park fans and their corporate masters, and the forms of labour that they engage in.

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Borrie, William T., ‘Disneyland and Disney World: Designing and Prescribing the Recreational Experience’, Society and Leisure, 22 (1999), 71–82. Brock, Nettie A., ‘The Everyday Disney Side: Disneybounding and Casual Cosplay’, Journal of Fandom Studies, 5, 3 (2017), 301–315. Buckingham, David, ‘Dissin’ Disney: Critical Perspectives on Children’s Media Culture’, Media, Culture and Society, 19, 2 (1997), 285–293. Cherry, Brigid, ‘Knit One, Bite One: Vampire Fandom, Fan Production and Feminine Handicrafts, in Fanpires: Audience Consumption of the Modern Vampire, edited by Gareth Schott and Kirstine Moffat (Washington D.C.: New Academic Publishing, 2011), pp. 137–155. ———, Cult Media, Fandom, and Textiles: Handicrafting as Fan Art (London: Bloomsbury, 2016). Close, Samantha, ‘The Political Economy of Creative Entrepreneurship on Digital Platforms: Case Study of Etsy.com’, IEEE Computer Society, (2016), 1901–1908. Couture Kingdom UK, ‘Couture Kingdom Brand Rep’, Couture Kingdom UK, No date, accessed 11 October 2018. www.couturekingdom.co.uk/brandrep Crawford, Garry and David Hancock, ‘Urban Poachers: Cosplay, Playful Cultures and the Appropriation of Urban Space’, Journal of Fandom Studies, 6, 3, (2018), 301–331. Disney, ‘Pin Trading Around the World’, Disney Online, No date, accessed 1 July 2018. http://disney.go.com/eventservices/whatispintrading.html ———, ‘Pin Trading Etiquette’, Disney Online, No date, accessed 1 July 2018. http:// disney.go.com/eventservices/howtopintrade.pdf Edidin, Rachel, ‘How To Get Away With Dressing Like A Superhero at Work’, Wired. com, 27 January 2014, accessed 30 April 2018. https://www.wired.com/2014/01/ stealth-cosplay/ Evans, Elizabeth, Transmedia Television: Audiences, New Media and Daily Life (London: Routledge, 2011). Fiske, John, Understanding Popular Culture (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989). Geraghty, Lincoln, Cult Collectors (London: Routledge, 2014). ———, ‘It’s Not All About the Music: Online Fan Communities and Collecting Hard Rock Café Pins’, Transformative Works and Cultures, 16 (2014b), accessed 12 July 2017. http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/ view/492/438 ———, ‘Introduction: Fans and Paratexts’, in Popular Media Cultures: Fans, Audiences and Paratexts, edited by Lincoln Geraghty (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2015), pp. 1–14. Gibson, Brittney, ‘Meet the Mastermind Behind Everyone’s Favorite Disney Fashion Trend’, Sweety High, 3 January 2017, accessed 8 March 2017. https://www. sweetyhigh.com/read/disneybound-leslie-kay-interview-010317

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Gilligan, Sarah, ‘Heaving Cleavages and Fantastic Frock Coats: Gender Fluidity, Celebrity and Tactile Transmediality in Contemporary Costume Cinema’, Film, Fashion, and Consumption, 1, 1 (2012), 7–38. Godwin, Victoria L., ‘Customized Action Figures: Multi-dimensional Fandom and Fannish Fiction’, Journal of Fandom Studies, 2, 2 (2014), 111– 125. ———, ‘GI Joe vs. Barbie: Anti-Fandom, Fashion, Dolls, and One-Sixth Scale Action Figures’, Journal of Fandom Studies, 3, 2 (2015a), 119–133. ———, ‘Mimetic Fandom and One-sixth-scale Action Figures’, Transformative Works and Cultures, 20 (2015b), accessed 25 November 2018. http://journal. transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/686/550 Gray, Jonathan, Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers and Other Media Paratexts (New York: New York University Press, 2010). Haldrup, Michael and Jonas Larsen, ‘Material Cultures of Tourism’, Leisure Studies, 25, 3 (2006), 275–289. Heljakka, Katriina, ‘Toy Fandom, Adulthood, and the Ludic Age: Creative Material Culture as Play,’ in Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World (Second Edition), edited by Jonathan Gray, Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington (New York: New York University Press, 2017), pp. 91–105. Hills, Matt, Fan Cultures (London: Routledge, 2002). ———, ‘Michael Jackson Fans on Trial? “Documenting” Emotivism and Fandom in “Wacko About Jacko”’, Social Semiotics, 17, 4 (2007), 459–477. ———, ‘From Dalek Half Balls to Daft Punk Helmets: Mimetic Fandom and the Crafting of Replicas’, Transformative Works and Cultures, 16 (2014), accessed 12 March 2018. http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/ view/531/448 ———, ‘Screen-used Materials at Auction: The Materialism of ‘High-end’ Fan Collecting and Quasi-participatory Culture’, Paper presented at Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS) Conference 2018, Toronto, Canada, March 2018. Hobson, J.S. Perry, Dallen J. Timothy, and Youn-Kyung Kim, ‘Special Issue: Tourist Shopping’, Journal of Vacation Marketing 10, 4 (2004). Hoebink, Dorus, Stijn Reijnders, and Abby Waysdorf. ‘Exhibiting Fandom: A Museological Perspective’, Transformative Works and Cultures, 16 (2014), accessed 24 April 2016. http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/ view/529/433 Hutchins, Amber L. and Natalie T.J. Tindall, ‘New Media, New Media Relations: Building Relationships with Bloggers, Citizen Journalists and Engaged Publics’, in Public Relations and Participatory Culture: Fandom, Social Media and Community Engagement, edited by Amber L. Hutchins and Natalie T.J. Tindall (London and New York: Routledge, 2016b), pp. 103–115.

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Jenkins, Henry, ‘The Revenge of the Origami Unicorn: Seven Principles of Transmedia’, Confessions of an Aca-Fan, 12 December 2009, accessed 18 October 2018. http://henryjenkins.org/blog/2009/12/the_revenge_of_the_origami_uni.html Johnson, Derek, ‘“May the Force be With Katie”: Pink Media Franchising and the Postfeminist Politics of Her Universe’, Feminist Media Studies, 14, 6 (2014), 895–911. Jones, Bethan, ‘Written on the Body: Experiencing Affect and Identity in My Fannish Tattoos’, Transformative Works and Cultures, 16 (2014), accessed 1 April 2017. http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/527/443 ———, ‘Fannish Tattooing and Sacred Identity’, Transformative Works and Cultures, 18 (2015), accessed 1 April 2017. http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index. php/twc/article/view/626/499 Kay, Leslie, ‘Leslie Kay Styles Her Favourite Pieces From the Oh My Disney Inspired By Collection For a Day at the Disney Parks’, Oh My Disney, 13 August 2018, accessed 24 October 2018. https://ohmy.disney.com/news/2018/08/13/ leslie-kay-oh-my-disney-inspired-by-collection-styles/ Kim, Sangkyun, ‘Extraordinary Experience: Re-enacting and Photographing at Screen Tourism Locations’, Tourism and Hospitality Planning and Development, 7, 1 (2010), 59–75. Kim, Sangkyun, ‘Audience Involvement and Film Tourism Experiences: Emotional Places, Emotional Experiences,’ Tourism Management, 33, 2 (2012), 387–396. King, Margaret J., ‘Disneyland and Walt Disney World: Traditional Values in Futuristic Form’, Journal of Popular Culture, 15, 1 (1981), 116–140. Kiriakou, Olympia, ‘Meet Me At the Purple Wall: The Disney “Lifestyler” Influence on Disney Parks Merchandise’, In Media Res, 4 April 2018, accessed 4 April 2018. http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/imr/2018/03/26/ meet-me-purple-wall-disney-lifestyler-influence-disney-parks-merchandise Koren-Kuik, Meyrav, ‘Desiring the Tangible: Disneyland, Fandom and Spatial Immersion’, in Fan Culture: Essays on Participatory Fandom in the 21st Century, edited by Kristin M. Barton and Jonathan Malcolm Lampley (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2014), pp. 146–158. Lamerichs, Nicolle, ‘Stranger Than Fiction: Fan Identity in Cosplay’, Transformative Works and Cultures, 7 (2011), accessed 12 June 2017. http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/246/230 ———, ‘Fan Fashion: Re-enacting Hunger Games Through Clothing and Design’, in Wiley Companion to Media Fandom and Fan Studies, edited by Paul Booth (Oxford, UK: Wiley Publishers, 2018), pp. 175–188. Lunning, Frenchy, ‘Cosplay & the Perfor mance of Identit y ’, Quodibetica, 6, 1 (2012), accessed 24 July 2019. http://www.quodlibetica.com/ cosplay-and-the-performance-ofidentity/

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Lunt, Peter, ‘Psychological Approaches to Consumption’, in Acknowledging Consumption, edited by Daniel Miller (London: Routledge, 1995), pp. 238–263. Lury, Celia, ‘The Objects of Travel’, in Touring Cultures: Transformations of Travel and Theory, edited by Chris Rojek and John Urry (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), pp. 75–95. Martin, Paul, Popular Collecting and the Everyday Self: The Reinvention of Museums? (London and New York: Leicester University Press, 1999). Mittell, Jason, Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling (New York: New York University Press, 2015). Morgan, Nigel and Annette Pritchard, ‘On Souvenirs and Metonymy: Narratives of Memory, Metaphor and Materiality’, Tourist Studies, 5, 1 (2005), 29–53. Nasserian, Daniel, ‘Interview: DisneyBound Explained by Leslie Kay’, Disney Geekiary, 3 October 2013, accessed 1 December 2017. http://www.disneygeekery. com/2013/10/03/interview-disneybound-explained-leslie-kay/ obsession_inc. 2009. ‘Aff irmational Fandom vs. Transformational Fandom.’ Dreamwidth.org, 1 June 2009, accessed 18 October 2018. https://obsession-inc.dreamwidth.org/82589.html Paterson, Mark, The Senses of Touch: Haptics, Affects and Technologies (London: Bloomsbury, 2007). Rehak, Bob. ‘Materializing Monsters: Aurora Models, Garage Kits, and the Object Practices of Horror Fandom’, Journal of Fandom Studies, 1, 1 (2013), 27–45. ———, ‘Materiality and Object-Oriented Fandom [Editorial]’, Transformative Works and Cultures, 16 (2014), accessed 26 April 2018. http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/622/450 Richardson, Ingrid, and Larissa Hjorth, ‘Haptic Play: Rethinking Media Cultures and Practices’, Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 25, 1 (2018), 3–5. Sandvoss, Cornel, Fans: The Mirror of Consumption (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005). Santo, Avi, ‘Fans and Merchandise’, in The Routledge Companion to Media Fandom, edited by Melissa A. Click and Suzanne Scott (London and New York: Routledge, 2018), pp. 329–336. Schmidt, Jennifer, ‘Inside Look at Walt Disney World Character Couture’, Inside the Magic, 5  October 2018, accessed 11  October 2018. https:// insidethemagic.net/2018/10/character-couture-walt-disney-world/?utm_ content=buf ferbd0c8&utm _ medium=social&utm _ source=t w itter. com&utm_campaign=buffer Stenger, Josh, ‘The Clothes Make the Fan: Fashion and Online Fandom When Buffy the Vampire Slayer Goes to eBay’, Cinema Journal, 45, 4 (2006), 26–44. Urbanski, Heather, ‘The Kiss Goodnight from a Galaxy Far, Far Away: Experiencing Star Wars as a Fan-Scholar on Disney Property’, in Star Wars and the History

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of Transmedia Storytelling, edited by Sean Guynes and Dan Hassler-Forest (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017), 253–264. Urry, John, The Tourist Gaze: Second Edition (London: SAGE, 2002). Walt Disney World, ‘Disney Theme Parks and Water Parks – Frequently Asked Questions: Q. What is the Best Way to Dress for a Visit to the Parks?’, Walt Disney World Help Centre, no date, accessed 14 June 2017. https://disneyworld.disney. go.com/faq/parks/dress/ Wang, Nina, ‘The Tourist as Peak Consumer’, in The Tourist as a Metaphor of the Social World, edited by Graham Dann (Oxford: CABI, 2002), pp. 281–296. Wasko, Janet, Understanding Disney: The Manufacturer of Fantasy (Cambridge: Polity, 2002). Williams, Rebecca, ‘“Fate Has a Habit of Not Letting us Choose Our Own Endings”: Post-object Fandom, Social Media and Material Culture at the End of Hannibal’, in Wiley Companion to Media Fandom and Fan Studies, edited by Paul Booth (Oxford, UK: Wiley Publishers, 2018), pp. 447–459. ———, ‘Funko Hannibal in Florence: Fan Tourism, Participatory Culture, and ­Para-textual-spatio Play’, Jomec Journal: Journalism, Media & Cultural Studies (Special Issue on Transmedia Tourism), 14 (2019), pp. 71–90, accessed 18 November 2019. http://doi.org/10.18573/jomec.179 Woo, Benjamin. ‘A Pragmatics of Things: Materiality and Constraint in Fan Practices’, Transformative Works and Cultures, 16 (2014), accessed 24 April 2016. http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/495/437

8. Replacing and Remembering Rides: Ontological Security, Authenticity and Online Memorialization Abstract Drawing on Anthony Giddens’ idea of ontological security, this chapter considers fan reactions when favourite rides are closed or replaced. First it explores fan responses to the closure of the Maelstrom ride at Walt Disney World’s EPCOT Park which was replaced by attractions based on the animated film Frozen and how opposition was linked to the importance of ‘classic attractions’ to the park’s history and Disney’s brand, and a desire to remain ‘true to’ EPCOT’s original emphasis upon education. Second, the chapter looks at how Disney’s abandoned River Country Water Park in Florida has offered some of the most detailed instances of fan archiving, curation and discussion online, considering what remembering, representing and discussing the park online offers fans within participatory theme park culture. Keywords: ontological security, fan remembrance, archives, fan endings

Introduction This chapter considers another common element of theme park fandom; fan responses to the closure of favourite attractions or, in some extreme cases, entire parks. Whilst Rahn (2011) has discussed the upgrade of Disney’s Snow White ride in relation to changes to the rides’ narrative structure and Olympia Kiriakou (2017) has discussed nostalgia for previous versions of the Disney Parks, little work in theme park, tourism, nor audience studies has explored how fans react when beloved rides are replaced. However, the loss of fannish places is worthy of our attention since such moments enable researchers to ‘examine the role that sites of fan-tourism have on

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fans’ memory-making processes and the ways in which these processes are affected when these sites close’ (Jones 2017). The closure and replacement of favourite places or attractions is part and parcel of theme park fandom which is entrenched in a perpetual and oftentimes nerve-wracking sense of physical evolution […] the landscape of Walt Disney World is always changing, and remains unstable and forever ‘incomplete’. Maintenance and building are ongoing processes, and attractions, hotels and entertainment complexes are constantly being built, modified or dismantled. In short, virtually every visit to the World has the potential to be different from the last. (Kiriakou 2017, p. 105)

To better understand how fans respond to moments of change and rupture in theme park fandom, this chapter first considers the replacement of a ride at Walt Disney World’s EPCOT Park. This involved the closure of the popular Maelstrom ride from the Norway pavilion in the World Showcase section of the park and replacing it with attractions based on the animated film Frozen. This is in addition to the presence (and perceived dominance) of Frozen in two of the other WDW parks which included the opportunity to meet Frozen princesses Elsa and Anna in the Magic Kingdom and the addition of a Frozen sing-along stage show and the Frozen Summer Fun events in Hollywood Studios. The chapter considers online reactions to this move, primarily on Twitter, exploring fan discussions and devaluations of the Frozen attraction based on discourses of authenticity (i.e. what belongs within EPCOT) and the film’s apparent lack of longevity (e.g. it is only a fad that its current fans will grow out of). These discourses are closely linked to fan discussion about the importance of ‘classic attractions’ to the park’s history and Disney’s brand, a desire to remain ‘true to’ EPCOT’s original emphasis upon education and representing real countries in World Showcase, and fans’ own affective attachments. Considering online reactions to these closures, and how fans discuss their opposition in terms of the importance of ‘classic attractions’ to the park’s history, and their own affective attachments, this chapter considers how fans of theme park rides react when these are replaced or updated. Drawing on Anthony Giddens’ idea of ontological security and how this has been used to understand the importance of place (Giddens, 1986:367) and fan endings (Williams, 2015), the chapter considers potential threats to theme park fan’s ontological security when favourite rides are closed or replaced. The chapter then moves on to explore the themes of loss and replacement so prominent in discussion of the closure and replacement of theme

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park rides by focusing on how such attractions are remembered and memorialized by fans. Considering how certain attractions have been subject to a form of canonization by some fans, the chapter focuses on how Disney’s abandoned River Country Water Park (and to a lesser extent its disused wildlife park Discovery Island) in Florida has offered some of the most detailed instances of fan archiving, curation and discussion online. Offering ‘the romantic aura that goes with rust and invading nature, and inspires the souls of industrial archaeologists’ (Walton 2017, p. 171) the site demonstrates how ‘abandoned places […] have the capacity to evoke buried memories and a sense of loss’ (Walton 2017, p. 160) for their fans. Drawing on sites and blogs featuring articles about the Water Park alongside reader comments, the chapter considers how River Country has assumed an almost mythical status within Disney Park fandom since it functioned as an unusual case of an abandoned attraction being allowed to rot and disintegrate within (limited) view of guests before its demolition in 2019. Drawing on work on fan mourning and remembrance as well as studies of online commemoration and memorialization, the chapter argues that this appears to work against more common discourses of Disney Parks such as its ‘architecture of reassurance’ (Marling 1997). It considers how such online memorialization can offer an ongoing avenue for fan ‘ontological security’ (Giddens 1984) since it allows fans to rearticulate and restate their attachments to specific attractions. The chapter also considers why River Country has been a source of such fascination to some fans, what functions the acts of remembering, representing and discussing the park online perform for fans within participatory theme park culture, and how these acts of remembrance intersect with cultural value and fan ontological security and attachment.

Change and Replacement in the Theme Park Industry As a site of leisure within an economically driven industry, change and progress within theme parks is inevitable. Innovations in ride systems themselves necessitate upgrades and replacement whilst one of the consequences of a move toward theming attractions based on existing media intellectual properties is that these can quickly become obsolete; whilst a ride based on the Shrek franchise was relevant and exciting in 2003, for instance, it may have less appeal for visitors once new animated movies become more popular and the child audience moves on.

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Furthermore, the launch of new attractions is proven to have a positive impact on theme park attendance and earnings. As Cornelis summarizes in a study of a new ride in the European theme park Efteling, There should be considerable economic effects from increased ticket sales, as well as increased employment from growth in attendance during the shoulder seasons. The new ride will lead to an increase in the capacity of the park […] and it will simultaneously spread visitor pressure across different areas of the park. The result of this will be an increased guest satisfaction and a longer average visitor stay in the park, which will in turn lead to an increase of repeat visits and a higher secondary spending. (2010, p. 263)

In Orlando, Universal has tended to be viewed as the more brutal organization in its willingness to replace classic opening-day rides with new attractions. Its only remaining original attraction in Universal Studios is a ride based on E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial whilst a range of other beloved films have been erased from the park. These include the replacement of a ride based on the Back to the Future franchise with an attraction based on The Simpsons, (and an entire Springfield-themed land), a King Kong attraction replaced by an indoor rollercoaster themed around The Mummy, and the removal of the iconic (but flawed) Jaws ride to make way for the Diagon Alley expansion of The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. Attractions that adhered to the park’s original theme of seeing how films are made, peeking behind the curtain, have also fared badly. An Alfred Hitchcock themed attraction (involving live actors and audience participation) was razed to make way for Shrek 4D and, most recently, the Disaster attraction (combining audience participation, insider information on stunts and camera tricks and a simulated action scene) has paved way for a high-octane experience based on the global Fast and the Furious franchise. In 2017, UOR announced the end of its long-standing evening stunt show, the closure of its Terminator 3-D attraction, and the demolition of its Harry Potter-themed rollercoaster Dragon Challenge (a ride that had been an opening day attraction for Universal’s Islands of Adventure under the original name of Duelling Dragons). Such updates make sense; Terminator was a fairly dated experience and its recent cinematic reboots have failed to offer commercial or critical success enough to maintain visitor interest in the attraction whilst Dragon Challenge was an intense rollercoaster which offered a series of inverse loops and steep drops which were unsuitable for the younger rider who may be a fan of the Potter franchise. Its replacement, which UOR has promised will be ‘fun

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for the entire family’ (Clark 2017), offers a better fit for the child-friendly Wizarding World. Whilst some nods to these past attractions remain (for example, characters from retired attractions such as Beetlejuice or Back to the Future’s Doc Brown can be found for photo opportunities in the parks), Universal has consistently been ruthless in its willingness to replace fan favourites with new, more popular and lucrative, franchises. In contrast, Disney has been perceived as less keen to eradicate original and classic attractions. However, whilst some ‘safe’ classic rides remain (such as Magic Kingdom’s iconic Space Mountain, Haunted Mansion, Jungle Cruise, and Pirates of the Caribbean) Disney has become increasingly willing to update and replace attractions. As discussed below, fannish discontent has often been directed at the changes being made to WDW’s EPCOT but more recently, Disney’s decisions to make widespread changes to both Animal Kingdom and Hollywood Studios have also been met with fan ire. For example, whilst, the movement of Star Wars into Disney’s parks has been contested by fans, the opening of a specifically themed land Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge at Hollywood Studios has been largely welcomed (Williams 2019). Disney’s other wide-ranging changes, however, such as replacing that Park’s iconic opening-day Great Movie Ride with one themed on Mickey & Minnie Mouse cartoons and the removal of its behind-the-scenes Studio Backlot Tour have been more heavily critiqued. As with Universal Studios, it seems that Disney’s Studios’ conceit of showing guests ‘the mechanics of Hollywood filmmaking and ‘behind-the-scenes’ production of special effects’ (Blackwood 2018, p. 518) is no longer a priority. More broadly, between 2014 and 2019, Disney also transformed it Downtown Disney shopping and recreation area into Disney Springs, added a new ride at its Typhoon Lagoon waterpark, replaced its nightly fireworks show at the Magic Kingdom, expanded its Animal Kingdom Park to include a land based on the Avatar movies, and announced new rides for its EPCOT Park (one based on the Marvel movie Guardians of the Galaxy, and another based on the Pixar movie Ratatouille). In Disney theme park fandom in particular, reactions to each of these (and many more) were greeted by fans on social media in various ways. For example, as Olympia Kiriakou (2017) notes in her analysis of the Disney podcast Kingdomcast, some fans take a strong critical stance ‘to reconcile with their ambivalence towards the current state of the parks, and to express their nostalgic attachment to a version of the resort that no longer exists’ (2017, p. 100). Whilst these fans articulate their responses to changes in the parks via a discourse of nostalgia, I want here to explore fan reactions via a different lens. Looking at the case of the closure of the Maelstrom ride at WDW’s EPCOT Park and its replacement with an attraction based on Frozen,

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I draw here on Anthony Giddens’ (1984) concept of ontological security to understand how fan reactions to changes in theme parks can be linked to notions of ‘home’ and a sense of constancy.

Fan Endings, Ontological Security and Place Fans across a range of media have intense affective ties to the objects of their fandom and often react with strong emotions when these fannish attachments are lost or come to an end. Much of the work in this area has focused upon fan responses to the endings of television programmes (see Williams 2015, Todd 2011, Click and Holladay 2018, Brennan 2018) or examined reactions when favourite celebrities pass away (Radford and Bloch 2012; Courbet & Fourquet-Courbet 2014). When fan objects such as television shows come to an end, fans employ a range of discourses to deal with this including grief and sadness or, in rarer cases, ‘expressing relief at their demise and critically evaluating their final episodes.’ (Williams 2015, p. 197) They also draw on various practices to maintain their fandom such as re-watching favourite episodes of a television show, writing fanfiction, or discussing the text with fellow fans. However, when the focus of fandom is a specific geographical place or location, fans may respond very differently. Elsewhere (Williams 2015) I have argued that when fan objects end, fans suffer a sense of threat to their fan self-identity and their ontological security. Anthony Giddens’ (1991) concept of ontological security refers to ‘a comfortable mental state in which actors engage in taken for granted activities in familiar surroundings and in the company of unthreatening others.’ (Cohen 2008, p. 328) It is the reassurance that we can cope with anxieties in our everyday lives, offering ‘a protection against future threats and dangers which allows the individual to sustain hope and courage in the face of whatever debilitating circumstances she or he might later confront.’ (Giddens 1991, p. 40) Thus, when beloved fan objects such as TV shows end, fans need to come to terms with the threat perceived to their ontological security to adjust to, for example, the fact that the programme will no longer be an ongoing source of new episodes for the fan to enjoy and discuss. This concept is still applicable when thinking about places as objects of fandom. Indeed, Giddens himself notes the importance of place to ontological security since a sense of place seems of major importance in the sustaining of ontological security precisely because it provides a psychological tie between the

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biography of the individual and the locales that are the settings of timespace paths through which the individual moves. (1986, p. 367)

It is often everyday and familiar places that have greatest impact since ‘Feelings of identification with larger locales – regions, nations etc. – seem distinguishable from those bred and reinforced by the localized contexts of day-to-day life’ (Giddens 1986, p. 367) The concept of ‘home’ has most often been discussed in terms of ontological security and place because home is seen to ‘provide a sense of constancy in the social and material environment’ since it ‘constitutes a spatial context in which daily routines of human existence are performed’ and it offers ‘a secure base on which identities are constructed.’ (Kinnvall 2006, p. 31) However, I would argue that other places can offer a sense of ontological security for individuals, especially fans who often possess strong emotional and affective ties to specific places. This offers fans ‘the rare opportunity to relocate in place a profound sense of belonging which has otherwise shifted into the textual space of media consumption’ (Sandvoss 2005, p. 64). As discussed throughout this research, fans’ close attachments to places associated with their fandom have often been analysed from a range of perspectives. Cornel Sandvoss makes the link between fandom and ‘home’ explicit, convincingly arguing that ‘fandom best compares to the emotional significance of the places we have grown to call ‘home’, to the form of physical, emotional and ideological space that is best described as Heimat.’ (2005, p. 64). This, according to Sandvoss, results from the common tendency amongst fans of popular culture to talk about the ‘sense of security and stability’ (2005, p. 64) they gain from their fandom. If fandom can be viewed as a form of ‘home’, as a source of ontological security, how might fans respond when this is threatened? The example of replacement of theme park rides and attractions, as in the example of Frozen and EPCOT discussed below, offers one way to begin to map such fannish reactions. EPCOT is one of four current theme parks within the WDW complex in Orlando, Florida. The Park was originally envisioned by Walt Disney as a place where people could live and work (Chytry 2012, p. 268) and ‘Epcot, an acronym for Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, was originally conceived by Walt Disney to become a permanent living community for its guests’ (Milman 2013, p. 74). It eventually became a theme park which saw many of its rides and attractions sponsored by corporations such as General Motors, General Electric, and AT&T (Wallace 1985, p. 41). This tendency has continued, with recent funding for attractions such as the park’s iconic ‘golfball’ Spaceship Earth (by Siemens) and ongoing link-ups between motor

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company Chevrolet and the car simulator ride Test Track and fruit company Chiquita and Living With The Land, an attraction dedicated to the sustainable production of food. There are usually thematic links between the attraction and its sponsor and an emphasis on how certain world issues (e.g. sustainable food sources, saving the oceans) could be tackled. Many guests at the park find that EPCOT helps them ‘explore world and possibly present solutions to some of the problems [presented in the park], a perception that Walt Disney and corporations contributing to the “attractions” do, indeed, want to promote’ (Firat and Ulusoy 2011, p. 196). EPCOT is divided into two distinct areas; the front of the park is dedicated to Future World which includes attractions dedicated to space and the universe (Mission: Space), the ocean (The Seas with Nemo and Friends), and the natural world (Living With The Land). The latter half of the park is devoted to World Showcase, a range of eleven pavilions which are each themed around a specific country. These pavilions typically house restaurants, fast food options, bars and shops. Indeed, one of only two rides housed in World Showcase was Maelstrom, a short boat ride through the landscape and mythical history of the Vikings and trolls of Norway which was located in the Norway pavilion (the other ride, which still exists, is the Gran Fiesta Tour Starring The Three Caballeros boat ride in the Mexico pavilion). Whilst not a particularly thrilling attraction, Maelstrom was generally well-liked as a result of the dearth of other rides in World Showcase and because it had been a staple in Norway since the pavilion opened in 1988. However, on 12 September 2014 it was announced that the ride would be removed to make way for the new Frozen attractions, the centrepiece of which was the dark ride Frozen: Ever After. This attraction offered a gentle boat journey through key scenes with recognizable characters, as riders travel to Arendelle to be greeted by Queen Elsa. However, the ride takes place after the film and seeks to offer familiar songs whilst placing the rider inside the action. As such, ‘the ride isn’t so much an adaptation of Frozen as it is an adaptation of the experience of watching Frozen; the ride is more expressive than interpretive’ (Meikle 2019, p. 153). Unlike the Haunted Mansion, as discussed in Chapter Four, Frozen’s transmedia expansion is limited in the ride, which instead replays familiar moments and songs, albeit in a new story and via physical haptic experience. Online fans began to oppose the announcement of the replacement of Maelstrom almost immediately. Broadly speaking, this opposition was framed in three ways; (1) fans highlighted the importance of ‘classic attractions’ to the park’s history and Disney’s brand, (2) they discussed a desire to remain ‘true to’ EPCOT’s original emphasis upon education and representing real countries in World Showcase, and (3) engaged in a

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wider dismissal of Frozen which was often gendered and related to age. To uncover the discussions taking place amongst fans, the research for this chapter was conducted primarily on Twitter, by searching for the hashtag #savemaelstrom, alongside my involvement in the broader method of online participant observation within theme park fandom. This search brought up all the tweets labelled with this hashtag between 9 January 2014 and 22 May 2015. Each Tweet was archived and read, and key themes were identified across this sample. All tweets from the @savemaelstrom twitter account were also included, totalling 40 Tweets (including retweets from other accounts) which were posted between 6 August 2014 and 25 January 2015. Although Twitter has often been perceived as a public space, and all Tweets used here can be freely accessed by searching the #saveMaelstrom hashtag, ‘Tweeters’ are not identified by their real Twitter usernames but by date of tweet only. All Tweets are presented unedited for spelling or grammar in order to best capture the user’s expressions and Twitter’s unique mode of conversation’ (Williams 2013, p. 156).

Classic Attractions and EPCOT’s Vision For fans of themed spaces, the knowledge that one can return to these places repeatedly is often a key aspect of their fandom. The importance of being within a particular physical space and experiencing certain elements of the theme park environment offers a sense of reassurance and comfort. For example, TV fans come to understand the routines and rhythms of favourite television series’ and expect that ‘fixed [television] schedules, in which the same programme is put on at the same time of the day […] mean that audiences can come to find the overall shape of output to be ordered and predictable’ (Moores 2005, p. 20). Equally, theme park fans can draw reassurance from the knowledge that a favourite place (whether a park, attraction, restaurant or bar) remains unchanged. It could be argued that the assumption that favourite elements of the parks are permanent can be linked to Disney’s ‘architecture of reassurance’ (Marling 1997) and the fact that ‘the design and organization of the parks have led to a kind of predictability that people have come to expect, based on the company’s promotion, visitors’ previous experiences, and the reputation that the parks have built over the years’ (Wasko 2001, p. 165) However, I want to argue here that for many fans, reactions to the removal of favourite attractions are linked to affective and emotional ties to the parks that have seldom been explored in academic analysis of Disney. For such fans,

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memories of previous visits, their emotional connections to those and to other related experiences, and their broader connections to the park can be sources of their upset or anger, since the removal of certain spaces poses a threat to their sense of fan identity or their ontological security. Indeed, the importance of place and the experiential and affective dimensions to this mean that fans often respond angrily or emotionally when important places and spaces are changed or replaced. For example, some fans posted their emotional reactions to the closure of Maelstrom on Twitter: Oct 6 Crying my eyes out because I’m looking at all the #savemaelstrom and #maelstrom tweets May 9 Getting rid of the troll ride for a fad like Frozen is literally making me sick @DisneyParks @WaltDisneyWorld #savemaelstrom

Although we must read these tweets as performative texts, the emotive nature of the language here is clear; fans discuss crying or feeling nauseas, highlighting the physicality of their reactions and the interplay between emotion and the bodily. Many of the tweets posted under the #savemaelstrom hashtag, however, consisted of fans who visited EPCOT to ride Maelstrom on its final evening on October 6th, 2014. These fans posted images and messages from their final visit, as well as updates on the length of the queue to ride (which reached a peak of several hours at one point during the evening). As in many other instances of theme park fan practice, such as standing in line for limited edition food and drink or to meet event-exclusive characters, the notion of what Paul Booth calls ‘“fanqueue” culture’ (2016, p. 24) is in effect here as fans wait for hours to take one final ride on a beloved attraction before it disappears forever. Such final visits are also often encouraged by the theme parks themselves; as Hugo Martin notes, ‘in the last few years, the $55-billion [theme park] industry increasingly has promoted when attractions go away. The motivation: Supercharge attendance and revenues by tapping into fans’ nostalgia, and sometimes, their anger’ (2018). Even after Maelstrom had closed its doors, fans continued to use the hashtag to post images of themselves at EPCOT either humorously attempting to enter the now-closed ride via a large pair of wooden doors or posing with sad faces in front of the attraction. For these fans the opportunity to

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visit the park and ride Maelstrom for the final time was too good to miss and fans articulated online their experience of ‘one last visit’. As Bethan Jones notes in her discussion of the closure of the Doctor Who Experience in Cardiff, this ‘highlight[s] not just the importance of the site to fans, but the desire to ‘be there’ at its close and become part of the [attraction’s] legacy in addition to the closing day forming part of the fandom experience’ (Jones 2017). There were clear levels of ‘subcultural capital’ (Thornton 1995) to be attained from being physically present to bear witness to these final few hours of Maelstrom’s operation. For example, the opportunity to do so extended only to those already in the park on that day who were unaware of the significance of the day (i.e. ordinary holidaymakers who were not fans of the ride) or those fans who were local to the Orlando area and able to make the trip to the park. For these fans ‘being able to say you were there translates into symbolic capital in the appropriate cultural contexts’ (Auslander 1999, p. 158) but it also serves an affective purpose, offering an opportunity to say goodbye to the ride and partake in the physical and emotional experience of one final visit. Fan reactions were often linked to EPCOT’s original vision which was to present educational opportunities for guests in the form of the Future World pavilions (which included the sea, the land, and the universe) and the traditions, history and culture of the world’s countries in World Showcase. The World Showcase ‘pavilions offer ‘‘staged authenticity’’ experiences through architecture, landscaping, food and beverage, merchandise, rides, shows, music and even accents of the employees, originally from the respective countries featured in the pavilions.’ (Milman 2013, p. 75) and has often been accused of ‘present[ing] an almost totally artificial re-configuring of culture’ (de Caro 1997, p. 27). However, EPCOT’s emphasis has always been on education and cultural literacy since ‘World Showcase does not rely on exciting rides […] Rather, it offers tours and exhibitions, […] paralleling the definition of tourism which stresses information and inspiration as the paramount goals’ (Mintz 1998, p. 56). It is the move away from information and inspiration that is at the heart of many fan criticisms of the Frozen attraction; even if the Norway pavilion continues to offer information about the country itself, the ideological heart of the park has been violated.

Authenticity, the Author and Saving EPCOT Related to this, the ‘authenticity’ of EPCOT has long been heralded as important to those who visit it (see Houston and Meamber 2011). In his

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empirical audience research, Ady Milman finds that ‘While there is no specific meaning to or agreed on definition of ‘‘authenticity’’ or a valid measurement to quantify this multifaceted term, we may conclude that overall, guests perceived their experience at Epcot’s World Showcase to be truthful, authentic, and realistic’ (2013, p. 79). The idea that a Frozen attraction was ‘inauthentic’ was common in Tweets posted with the #savemaelstrom hashtag. For example, users post: Sep 12 What did you learn at Epcot today children? I learned all about Arendelle and a talking reindeer and snowman. #savemaelstrom Jan 20 So sad. Whoever had this idea should be ashamed. I love Frozen but it doesn’t belong in EPCOT. #savemaelstrom Oct 6 Again, I like Frozen. I like it a lot. I don’t like Disney putting a Frozen ride in the World Showcase #RIPmaelstrom #savemaelstrom

Another online poster from the anonymous waltdisneyconfessions page on Tumblr posted: I’m kinda upset that they’re re-doing the Norway ride in Epcot to be Frozen themed. It just feels like a stunt to get more money. I don’t see a Mulan show in China, a Aladdin ride in Morocco or an Beauty and the Beast show in France. The world showcase is just that, a showcase for the world, a place to learn about cultures, and it makes me sad that they’re going to use it just for more money rather than education.

This Tumblr page offers a space for fans to post anonymous secrets thoughts and opinions about Disney, revealing ‘how their recurrent encounters with Disney, films that they find safe and comforting, ground them and enable them to read their own lives’ (Ausman and Radford 2016, p. 43). Posting about one’s upset about changes to EPCOT on this site highlights the close links between the theme park spaces and the personal attachments that fans have, connections that often have an intimate tie to their own self-narratives and sense of identity. For many fans, the Fantasyland area of the Magic Kingdom park was a more obvious choice for locating a new Frozen ride since Fantasyland

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was already ‘home’ to various Disney princesses such as Cinderella and Snow White and houses rides based on popular films including The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast. Frozen’s detractors not only opposed the replacing of educational and culturally appropriate rides with a Frozen attraction, they also stated strong preferences regarding which of the WDW parks it did belong in: Sep 3 Inspired by Norway. Not Norwegian. AKA: suitable for Fantasyland, not EPCOT. Oct 6 Well, I’m bummed #savemaelstrom didn’t work. Epcot is my favourite park and invading it with fantasy stuff instead of education just stinks.

In contrast to fans who stated that other WDW parks were better suited to the Frozen attraction, others focused on the perceived dominance of Frozen across all of the Parks. One Twitter user responded to the news of the plans for the Frozen expansion – which included the replacement of Maelstrom and the addition of a new building which would incorporate a meet-and-greet area and restroom facilities – with incredulity. Online fans were quick to point out the huge size of the new building was disproportionate to similar attractions for meet and greet facilities in other parks and humorously commented on this: Jan 13 Queen Elsa and her 13,000 square foot restroom #Epcot2016 Jan 13 Elsa gets her own pavilion, a private restroom and personal parking _lot_ #Epcot2016

Implicit here, as in many of the other fan discussions, is that Frozen is being granted special status by Disney and being allowed to take over the parks in a way that other films have not. One image that was circulated online as part of the #savemaelstrom campaign summed up many of the fan objections: So… the world of Frozen very loosely resembles a Scandinavian country – I know lets demerit all of Walt Disney’s great work in creating the

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Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow by ripping out the Norway pavilion in the World Showcase … A timeless ride that has for over twenty years educated visitors on the rich culture and mythology of the country…and replace it with a feeble ploy to cash in on a mediocre film that will have lost all its appeal well before the two years it takes to build! #savemaelstrom

Here, the emphasis upon Frozen as both a fad which will soon fade away and its links to economics is clear. Frozen is positioned here as a temporary craze which will soon lose its appeal and, moreover, it is not perceived here as a ‘good’ Disney text. Even though Disney as a brand has been long seen to demonstrate ‘a careful integration of entertainment and fun with commodification and consumption,’ (Wasko 2001, p. 158) fans themselves operate their own levels of internal distinction regarding what they consider to be ‘too commercial’. For many Maelstrom fans, Frozen is the epitome of this tendency to ‘cash in’. The dismissal of Frozen also echoes wider cultural derision towards girls’ media products, highlighting how the tastes of young females are often overlooked or disparaged. In fan response to the replacement of Maelstrom, the notion that Frozen was disposable – a passing fad – was often articulated. The sense from many fans was that those who liked Frozen would ‘grow out of it’ and that, once the film’s popularity waned, the new attraction would be superfluous and out-of-place This image also highlights how the linkage between the violation of EPCOT’s original aims and the wishes of Walt Disney was made by many fans: Oct 6 How insane that fans have to try to save the spirit of the park from the powers that be #savemaelstrom #wetriedwalt

Fans across a range of fandoms often privilege the authors of favourite fan texts and such figures often act ‘as a point of coherence and continuity’ and ‘fans continue to recuperate trusted auteur figures.’ (Hills 2002, pp. 132–33) The invocation of Walt Disney as the original creator of the ethos and ideology of the Disney brand and WDW, especially EPCOT, allowed fans to base their objections on the apparent desires of the ‘author’ of the theme parks and to utilize this trusted figure as an imagined opposer to the Frozen plans. In actuality, Walt passed away in 1966 and did not live to see the opening of EPCOT in 1982 but his plans for the ethos of the park are still often referred to by fans. Indeed, whether or not Walt Disney himself would support or oppose the replacement of Maelstrom is immaterial, but for fans that

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intertwined their discussion of EPCOT’s vision and supposed authenticity with a discourse of authorship of the space such linkages were crucial. Some of the tweets posted under the #savemaelstrom hashtag went further, suggesting that the loss of Maelstrom represented a broader threat to both World Showcase and EPCOT in its entirety. One poster drew attention to the loss of original opening day attractions from the park (i.e. remaining attractions that were present when the park opened in 1982): Oct 6 Just realized that Impressions de France is the last classic Epcot Center attraction currently in operation #Maelstrom #savemaelstrom

Others commented: Sep 14 The more important point out of all this conversation should be #SaveWorldShowcase. That’s really what’s at stake here. Oct 6 I’m extremely nervous for the fate of the World Showcase, and what the future holds in store for it #Maelstrom #EPCOT #savemaelstrom

For fans invested in the original ethos of EPCOT, the closure of Maelstrom is not only a cause for potential anger or upset. Equally, Frozen’s arrival poses broader threats to the aims of the park, aims that were apparently sanctioned by the authorial stamp of Walt Disney himself. For these fans, it is equally the absence of Maelstrom and the presence of Frozen that causes anxieties. As discussed, when attractions are replaced, fans often respond in a range of ways including trying to visit the rides on the final day of operation and continuing to discuss their memories and experiences with other fans. However, when rides are closed and replaced with new attractions, there is a sense of consistency and continuity for theme park fans and visitors. The new attractions may be different – and may cause fans to complain and compare these with the previous ones – but there is an acceptance that progress and the need to innovate necessarily leads to the replacing of rides. Although more unusual, cases where rides or attractions have simply been abandoned offer different threats to the security offered to fans by theme parks. In these cases, the closure cannot be rationalized by recourse to a narrative of progress or improvement in the theme park industry. This may, as discussed below, lead to more complex responses from

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fans since ‘a sense of place seems of major importance in the sustaining of ontological security precisely because it provides a psychological tie between the biography of the individual and the locales that are the settings of time-space paths through which the individual moves’ (Giddens 1986, p. 367). The remainder of the chapter explores fannish acts of remembrance and memorialization of the abandoned Disney waterpark River Country, considering how this site provokes memory and nostalgia, much of which are linked to a fascination with its status as a ruined place and one which appears to contradict Disney’s emphasis on control and order, especially with regard to nature (Wright 2006).

Abandoned Theme Parks and the Allure of River Country There is an ongoing contemporary fascination with photographing and visiting abandoned sites and places, perhaps none more than the dormant amusement or theme park. Blogs featuring photos of the Six Flags Park in New Orleans, which was abandoned after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Japan’s eerie Nara Dreamland which features rotting rollercoaster tracks reclaimed by the forest, and Berlin’s Spreepark which has been abandoned since 2002 can easily be found online. As David Bell notes, ‘The ghostly ruins of abandoned theme parks are surely iconic of our age’ (2007, p. xi). Perhaps surprisingly given the perception of these spaces as heavily controlled and commodified, the presence of abandoned attractions and parks extends to those located within the Orlando area. There are currently unused rides and buildings at Disney’s EPCOT Park at Disney World in Florida, unused riverboats at its Animal Kingdom Park and a nature reserve Discovery Island which has been abandoned near Florida’s Magic Kingdom. These and other dormant and replaced attractions are meticulously listed on fan sites such as Yesterland and Walt Dated World. However, one of the most unusual abandoned attractions in the history of theme parks is Disney’s water park River Country. The park was opened in 1976 and closed in 2001 although the reasons for the closure are varied, ranging from alleged drownings, accusations of the water being infected with a brain eating amoeba, and a general downturn in tourism after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 (Sim 2015). However, rather than being demolished, the site continued to stand on the shore of Bay Lake and could still be seen by guests who know where to look until its demolition in Spring 2019 to make way for a new hotel complex (Gailey 2019). The park has been considered an anomaly since it offered a rare case where Disney allowed visible evidence

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of one of its ‘failures’ to endure for many decades. Whilst many rides and attractions have been replaced or knocked down at the various Disney parks, this usually results in the complete disappearance of the attraction; it vanishes from view entirely and is subsumed into the new attraction. River Country could still be seen by guests staying on the Disney resort and, whilst the site was officially off-limits to guests, online websites and blogs carry photos and reports from so-called urban explorers who have visited it and documented its run-down state. In addition to closing the parks and restricting access, Disney has entirely eradicated River Country (and its ‘sister’ park Discovery Island) from their otherwise extensive efforts to generate revenue from their own textual and spatial properties. This ‘transmedia amnesia’ (Bartolome Herrera and Dominik Keidl 2017, p. 163) is especially striking given their general willingness to draw on the history of the Company’s films and its theme parks across other forms of media. Florian Freitag refers to theme parks’ tendency to cannibalize their own histories and iconography as ‘autotheming’ (2016, p. 142) whilst, as Cornf ield (2015) notes, Disney’s Tomorrowland movie ‘casts its newest vision of the future in the mold of its own past’ via attractions such as the EPCOT Park and rides such as Space Mountain and the Carousel of Progress. However, one of the most complex examples of Disney’s re-circulation of its own legacy occurs within the domain of video games. In discussion of the Epic Mickey game, Colleen Montgomery (2015) draws attention to Disney’s widespread practice of ‘vaulting’, the tactic of ‘releasing already amortized products in home video formats as well as promoting them in other ways, thus maintaining the stable of classic Disney characters for exploitation throughout the company’s various businesses’ (Wasko 2001, p. 44). The game, which takes place in Cartoon Wasteland, ‘a world filled with retired and disused classic Disney media’ (Montgomery 2015, p. 80), depicts ‘richly intertextual worlds whose characters and environments are drawn from an immense compendium of archival Disney media ranging from theme-park rides to characters, comic books, toys, and films’ (2015, p. 81). Of most interest here is the game’s representation of theme parks spaces and attractions; as Montgomery notes, To develop Cartoon Wasteland’s environments, many of which are based on Disney themepark spaces, the team used original park blueprints and visited Disneyland after hours, riding several of the theme-park attractions with the lights on to gain a better sense of their spatial dimensions. (2015, p. 81)

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Clearly, Disney’s practices of vaulting, re-issuing films on DVD and Blu-Ray in ever-expanding ‘Special Editions’, and their permitting of theme park developers to draw on old and forgotten Disney iconography demonstrates their willingness to acknowledge their own history and, even, some of their failures. There is evidently an economic imperative to this strategy since ‘every Disney product is both a commodity and an ad for every other Disney commodity’ (Budd 2005, p. 1). However, Epic Mickey’s very textuality and modes of gameplay demonstrate that Disney is not averse to recognizing the potential pleasures of, not only allowing people to see old and classic Disney characters and landscapes, but also the allure of seeing these fall into disintegration. The Epic Mickey player has the option of either restoring the game’s decaying characters and settings or precipitating their disintegration – a dynamic that has important implications for the game’s ideological conception of the archive and remediation and as a site of both consumer and affective desire. (Montgomery 2015, p. 86)

Epic Mickey demonstrates that, in certain circumstances and through certain forms of media, Disney is willing to engage with its own past via the use of archival properties and acknowledge that some Disney fans have a fascination with the sense of decay and disintegration that older media forms can suffer. The game ‘plays on Disney fans’ knowledge of and nostalgia for obsolete Disney media (such as retired characters and defunct theme-park attractions)’ (Montgomery 2015, p. 90) but only within the controlled confines of the game. Once fan knowledge and nostalgia for ‘defunct theme-park attractions’ escapes the controlled on-screen world of Cartoon Wasteland and becomes activated in the ‘real-world’, Disney works to both restrict physical access to the sites and ceases to draw on this ‘forgotten’ iconography in its endless vaulting and re-circulation of its own past. This detour through the case of Epic Mickey and Disney’s enthusiasm for re-presenting ‘dead’ or forgotten characters and spaces makes their complete disavowal of sites like River Country and Discovery Island even more interesting. Whilst Disney’s attempts to prevent people visiting the abandoned sites of River Country and Discovery Island make sense from the perspective of health and safety and legal issues around liability, there is arguably currency to be gained from some celebration of those former Disney parks. Whilst they continue to honour and commemorate some retired attractions such as Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride (which has a toad gravestone in the

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Haunted Mansion’s pet cemetery), and sell merchandise related to defunct rides (such as artwork for Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride and Snow White’s Scary Adventures within WDW’s Disney Springs), Disney’s entirely abandoned parks are culturally exnominated from the company’s repertoire of classic attractions and icons.

Urban Exploration and Online Memorialization Given Disney’s own lack of information about the state of both locations, it fell to the unofficial circulation of knowledge within digital and participatory cultures to offer clues about what these places looked like since their abandonment. This information is often acquired by so-called urban explorers and re-circulated and framed by the plethora of unofficial Disney fan sites and blogs. For example, in 2009 the urban explorer Shane Perez posted details of his unsanctioned visit to Discovery Island online, an event that was covered in a range of online Disney and theme park blogs. Bradley Garrett defines urban exploration as ‘the discovery and exploration of unseen parts of the built environment, usually with a focus on derelict places’ (2011, p. 1048) and it is important to note here that, rather than being a theme park fan specifically, Perez has engaged in such acts across a range of abandoned places and spaces. He visited Discovery Island with a group of friends, swimming across Bay Lake to access the site after entering via the abandoned River Country Park. Noting that ‘Disney seems to like keeping all the lights on even in their abandoned properties in order to give the impression that they are still functional’, the group found abandoned properties including animal cages and old documents, photographs, and food and drink detritus (Perez 2009). Perez’s comment about the lights remaining on may be the cause of an oft-circulated rumour that Disney continued to play music at the River Country site despite its closure (see Liebig 2015). The sites were also photographed by urban explorer and photographer Seph Lawless (2016) and a poster at the online Disboards forums (Tri-Circle-D 2009), both of whose images often feature on Disney blogs and websites about River Country. More recently a YouTube user named MattSonswa posted videos of the first visit to Discovery Island since Shane Perez’s exploration, and exploration of parts of River Country that had not previously been accessed (Disney Journal 2017). Despite the threats of legal action or banning from the parks, as well as the possibility of encountering Florida wildlife including alligators, snakes and vultures, enthusiasm for exploring Disney’s abandoned sites has clearly not abated.

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The recounting of tales of urban exploration and the posting of images and videos is closely linked to how fans frequently discuss and memorialize River Country, and to a lesser extent some of the other ‘standing but not operating’ rides at WDW, online. Online spaces are often utilized by fans during moments of transition and loss For example, Courbet & FourquetCourbet (2014) explored how Michael Jackson fans responded online to the singers’ death in 2010 arguing that their ‘findings show the important role of social media […] in the mourning process’ (2014, p. 288). Similarly, Radford and Bloch explored how fans used online message boards after the death of NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt Senior to consider how ‘celebrity-related grief leads to online social interaction’ (2012 p. 139). They argued that ‘Following the death of a celebrity, internet forums become especially active as fans seek to share their grief with others who will truly understand their feeling and provide a level of support that may not be available from family or friends’ (Radford and Bloch 2012, p. 142). At first glance, mourning the death of a favourite celebrity may seem to be quite different from feeling the loss of, and memorializing a theme park ride. However, there are similarities in how fans deal with these different losses; as discussed above, when faced with the closure of theme park rides fans often respond using language very similar to that of loss and grief and react in highly emotional and affective ways by discussing their connection to a specific attraction with other fans. In addition to discussing a dormant fan object with other fans, the process of archiving and saving materials to memorialize or commemorate allows fans a way to protect themselves from potential threats to their ontological security as a result of the cessation of the object. This can be sharing and archiving memories of a beloved celebrity but can also take place in relation to cancelled television series or, in the case of River Country, a physical location. Alexis Lothian draws attention to the importance of the archive within fan cultures, arguing that Creative fan culture makes ephemera endure by virtue of its status as digital media, but it is also characterized by specific archival practices and processes. Thinking about fan cultures through digital archives and digital archives through fan cultures can help us to unpack media theory’s generalized assertions about what ‘we’ do in and with the digital. (2012, p. 544)

Acts of online memorialization and remembrance can be seen across sites and platforms from the examples of mourning celebrities discussed above to marking the deaths of loved ones (Veale 2008). As Knudsen and Stage

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argue, a ‘web culture of commemoration characterized by easy access, openness, and interactivity underlines this increasing individualization of grief’ (2012, p. 423) and online platforms allow the ‘virtual and actual […] memorial [to] become […] a commemorative emergence due to the fact that it is continuously reinvested with new meanings’ (2012, p. 419). The collection of memories and photos relating to River Country allows fans to remember and commemorate the site, sharing their own stories and experiences of a place that is now derelict and unavailable. Various unofficial websites have archived information about the River Country water park, considering the information presented on these and how fans discuss their memories of the site such as Theme Park Tourist, Imagineering Disney, All Ears, and Walt Dated World. For example, the blog Imagineering Disney similarly features a detailed overview of the attraction including photos showing the deterioration of the site. Finally, the popular blog Walt Dated World has a page dedicated to the water park (as well as other abandoned or replaced Disney attractions) although only the f irst three of these have comments sections for theme park fans to leave their memories and feelings about the sites. This discussion focuses on Theme Park Tourist, the site that features the most comprehensive history of the water park including photographs of then and now, old advertisements for the park, and attempts to pull together information from the range of other sites dedicated to the park. It offers a f ive-page history of the origins, success and ultimate failure of River Country, offering a detailed archive of images including comparative photos of then and now, old maps and tickets, information on each of the rides, information on commemorative coins and other merchandise and discussion of what led to the park’s closure. It brings together sources from other websites to present a more definitive discussion of the park, representing participatory culture and highlighting how, whilst in some cases ‘The archival formations of online fandom developed in order to informally share amateur art and writing through generations of rapidly changing technologies of communication and reproduction’ (Lothian 2012, p. 544), this can also be the case for the sharing of memories and material related to spaces and places.

The Strange Visibility of Disney Decay Much discussion around River Country focuses on its decline and disintegration. For instance, Theme Park Tourist contains numerous photos of River

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Country across its years of decay, with particular emphasis on before-andafter photographs to highlight the decline. This type of comparative photo is common across sites that discuss the park, highlighting how important it seems to be for fans to make visible its degradation. The fact that the site remained standing for almost twenty years, and could still be seen by guests who knew where to look, was often highlighted with a tendency to articulate how surprising it is that Disney, a company known to be extremely controlling about its image and park properties, has allowed this to happen. In his study of memory, place and nostalgia, The Aesthetics of Decay, Dylan Trigg argues that ‘Through falling from its previous function, and thus outliving the use originally conferred upon it, the ruin transgresses and subverts our everyday encounter with space and place’ (2006, p. xxv). He suggests that whilst ancient ruins have been appropriate by heritage and the aesthetic, ‘The ruins of contemporary society, […] which simultaneously invoke reactions of repulsion and subliminity’ are able to function as ‘mirrors [of] an alternative past/present/future’ (Trigg 2006, p. xxvi). The contemporary ruined place both fascinates and appals us since it shows the failure of the past (e.g. industry in abandoned factories) but also presents the possibility of future failure and an ending in decay and ruin. I want to draw on Trigg’s idea here to posit that the ruin of River Country, and the other abandoned-but-standing attractions at theme parks like Disney World, work in a similar fashion. They stand as a symbol of the failure of the past but also present a very visible reminder of the potential of future failure of the parks and their attractions. Whilst removing or replacing an attraction can be rationalized via discourses of consumerism and progress (e.g. Frozen replaced Maelstrom because it will sell more merchandise), rotting attractions pose a threat to how fans understand these beloved places. They remind fans of the potential ending of other attractions as well as threatening their sense of trust and security by functioning as very visible, unruly, reminders of the possibility of failure and decay; as Theme Park Tourist’s report describes: The slides are gradually disappearing underneath dense plant life, and swimming in the dank pools is not advisable. In short, Disney’s River Country is decaying and dissolving, the millions of visitors that passed through its gates now a thing of the past. And it’s all happening right in front of our very eyes – parts of the park are still clearly visible from boats passing by on Bay Lake, while the entire area stands just meters away from the Fort Wilderness Resort. (Sim 2015)

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The endurance of River Country appears to work against more common discourses of Disney Parks as ordered and well-maintained places which Carl Hiaasen describes as an example of ‘clockwork orchestration’ (2010, no page) where nothing ‘unrehearsed would occur in your presence’ (Hiaasen 2010, no page). There is therefore a thrill of peeking ‘behind the curtain’ of Disney’s well-managed and ordered spaces. Garrett notes that Urban exploration gives agency to places with an appreciation for the life of an architectural feature or system that continues after abandonment, with an acknowledgement that, though the capitalist use-life of all places will inevitably end, places do not ‘die’ […] Where and how to interpret these post abandonment stories, regardless of who ‘owns’ them in an economic sense or whether they are ‘true’ in an empirical sense, may be guided by the people who are personally invested in those places. (2011, p. 1050, emphasis added)

Whilst the capitalist use-life of River Country has ceased for the Disney Company, for fans there remains great pleasure in granting meaning to the site and continuing to, as Garett points out, interpret and reinforce stories about the decline of the site. In addition to this, the presence of abandoned attractions offers an almost ghostly encounter for the fan who is able to gain access or who witness the ongoing process of decay via online photographs and videos. As each trip or visit to the theme park (or indeed any place that is visited repeatedly) adds new layers of experience to the palimpsest of memory, the spaces become imbued with personal encounters as well as a shared communal collective memory maintained and recirculated through participatory culture. The ruined place of River Country offers even greater opportunity for these types of ghostly or uncanny responses, reflected in comments by fans on the Theme Park Tourist site: I got chills just looking at the pictures of the park, almost as if a ghost were haunting it and I could feel it watching me. Its very sad to see something like that just go to waste. The least Disney could do is invest a little money to turn it into a nature sanctuary or something. I’d like that better than them adding all of these new things. If we just kept improving and improving and never trying to save any of the old stuff, then there would be no history for anyone to look back on. It makes me wanna cry. (29 March 2015 17:35)

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Spooky stuff. I never got the chance to go to River Country but I can tell it meant a whole lot to a whole lot of people. I love Disney but I am kind of disappointed they would just let one of their prized creations turn to rot like that. Interesting article, though! (21 June 2015 15:51)

As noted in Chapter Three, within Disney parks, ‘the norms of civility prevail, through reference to the coded use by WDW planners of symbols of civil order embedded in the construction of nature within the site’ (Wright 2006, p. 304). One of the key ways that this order is maintained is via landscaping and, as such, ‘The positive representation of civilised nature constitutes a main ideological theme in Walt Disney World’ (Wright 2006, p. 312). The fact that River Country remained standing but was clearly overgrown and not intended to be visited appears to work against the norms associated with WDW spaces. As the comments above attest, some fans do not expect (or want) to see Disney spaces in these states of decay because this both appears to contradict the norms associated with these branded locations but also because this has the potential to disrupt or unsettle memories of previous visits. As the language of hauntings, ghosts, chills and spookiness suggest, the witnessing of the decay of physical sites offers an almost uncanny encounter, where the fan/visitor must work to reconcile their own memories and experiences of the site with its current state of decay where ‘nature swallows the built environment’ and demonstrates ‘the fear of annihilation that ruins often represent’ (Levitt 2017).

Memories, Childhood and Narrating the Self Fans themselves can seek to manage this ontological insecurity by discussing and memorializing River Country (and to a lesser extent some of the other ‘standing but not operating’ rides at WDW) online. As discussed above, the use of online resources by fans to deal with emotions or to respond to periods of transition and loss is well documented. The collection of memories and photos relating to River Country allows fans to remember and commemorate the site, sharing their own stories and experiences of a place that is now derelict and unavailable. Such ideas share overlaps with Julian Hoxter’s work on The Exorcist fans in which he draws on the psychoanalytical work of Melanie Klein (1932) to argue that horror offers a safe ‘contained’ space for fear’ (Hoxter 2000, p. 181). Hoxter argues that, as The Exorcist is widely perceived to have attained ‘cultural status as ‘the film which cannot be contained’’ (2000, p. 181) fans

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may turn to online websites to help them ‘work through any anxieties the experience of spectatorship has brought up’ (2000, p. 182). Although drawing on the different theoretical framework of psychoanalysis – rather than ontological security – Hoxter’s work is instructive here in demonstrating how fan websites can offer ‘basic comfort and security simply through the recognition of commonality of experience’ (2000, p. 185). Whilst he refers to the possible anxieties caused by horror film viewing, it can be argued that anxieties caused by other events or experiences (such as the ending of favourite objects) can also be managed by engaging with other fans online and sharing experiences. In the case of River Country fans discuss their memories of visits to the park, which often took place when they were young children or teenagers. Others had their memories jogged by the article and went on to remember experiences they had previously forgotten or felt inspired to dig out old photographs or souvenirs. For example, the article about the waterpark on the Theme Park Tourist site included memories from people who had visited: ‘Oh my gosh – this place was fabulous,’ […] ‘We used to camp at Fort Wilderness every summer and would spend a couple days at River Country. I can remember going home after the first visit – having never been to a water park (there weren’t any back around 1976) and struggling to explain to my friends exactly WHAT it was…So much fun. It felt big, and there was a lot of ground to cover.’ ‘Sometimes you’d get knocked out of your inner tube and have to try and grab on to another one to finish going down. The first time I went to River Country I was five and too little to ride it, but eventually it was my favorite ride in the park’. ‘I remember going there when I was about 13 (I’m 32 now),’ says Jenn. ‘Even though River Country was a bit ‘old’ and worn, we still enjoyed it.’ (Cited in Sim 2015)

The commonality with which posters discuss their young age when they visited River Country highlights the importance of personal memory and narrativization and an emphasis on childhood continues in the comments posted on the Theme Park Tourist article (Sim 2015): Great and informative article. Thanks for the walk down memory lane, and all of the pictures. I didn’t realize I had been there until I saw the slides

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with the 7 foot drop! I may have been 7 or 8 years old. I do hope something will become of the property. It is truly unique. (29 March 2015 16:42) Loved this article, had me running to my mom’s to dig out old family vacation photos. Sure enough, there we were on the tire swing and on the Slippery Slides drop. Awesome! (24 May 2015 00:52, italics added)

Linda Levitt (2017) argues that ‘photographs of abandoned amusement parks […] call attention to the lost pleasures of childhood and a kind of nostalgia that resonates strongly and personally with many viewers’. For some fans, nostalgia is weaponized as a mode of critique when theme parks replace favourite rides; as Kiriakou notes ‘Loss and nostalgia pervade [fan conversations]. They express their feelings in fairly vague terms, but manage to pinpoint Disney’s monetary greed and their systematic path of destruction of sentimental attractions as the root of their collective distain’ (Kiriakou 2017, p. 103). In contrast, however, the fans who are reminiscing about River Country do not use nostalgia or memory as a form of criticism toward Disney for closing the Park. Instead, their shared recollections are offered as a way to connect with fellow fan-visitors and to return to happy moments in their own individual, personal theme park histories. Offering these as part of the collective mosaic of remembrance that takes place online allows fans to reflect on how such beloved but abandoned ‘sites of lost pleasure, childhood and fun became an emblem of celebratory individual and collective memory’ (Walton 2017, p. 172).

Conclusion Exploring fan reactions to endings and replacements within a spatial context allows further consideration of the importance of place in contemporary fandom and another important element of the theme park fan experience. The debates over the replacement of Maelstrom with attractions based on Frozen highlights how, for many fans there is a clear tension between the different brand associations of the Disney company. For the majority of visitors to the parks, the Disney brand connotes safety, security and reassurance and implied in the contract between visitor and guest is that the parks will remain relatively unchanged, offering both literal and emotional or affective security. In other areas of the Disney Company, however, the brand appeal prioritizes children and, in particular, girls who have long been target consumers for the princess branding of the company’s film characters.

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Far from being the passive consumers often imagined in academic critique and mainstream media coverage, Disney fans are complex, and different groups may clash over what the company itself stands for; in the case of Maelstrom’s campaigners the fissure between largely adult theme park fans and the younger target demographic for Frozen and its merchandise. Furthermore, many theme park visitors actually operate sophisticated levels of cultural distinction, adding weight to the argument that ‘The parks need to be explored and interpreted on their own terms, as contemporary popular culture, as participatory theater, as leisure environment, and as text[s]’ (Mintz 1998, 50) which are interpreted and experienced in various ways. The interwoven debates over the decision to replace Maelstrom with Frozen speaks to the complex ways in which theme park fans negotiate issues such as authenticity and artifice when they traverse created and themed spaces and how they respond when these locations are replaced or transformed. Similarly, when rides or parks are abandoned, we can also begin to see a disjuncture between the brands of the theme parks and the fandom that surround them. As Garrett notes, ‘Urban exploration is a practice through which individuals take the opportunity to create memories of places that can sit alongside, or at times even undermine, official histories, creating a symbiotic exchange between body and place’ (2011, p. 1052). Thus, whilst the majority of fans will not engage in acts of trespass, both the physical exploration of Disney’s abandoned parks and the online (re)circulation of reports of those experiences can allow people to challenge the dominant ideologies associated with the Company and its spaces. As outlined in the Introduction to this book and discussed throughout, theme parks in general are associated with control and order with Disney’s destinations viewed as particularly regulatory in how its guests behave; ‘No-one accompanies the visitors and insists they go through Main Street at least twice, or that they disperse themselves throughout the park. They do so because the park is structured to lead them to do so’ (Ritzer and Liska 1997, p. 106). The chance to look behind the curtain of the controlled leisure environment of the theme park offers unique pleasures for the interested fan in a way that even the park’s own sanctioned behind-the-scenes tours cannot satisfy. Whilst those tours work to ‘capitalize […] astutely on the ardent fan, the curious and potential critics with the introduction of a capital-driven plan to give those searching for an insider’s knowledge of the park a means to an end’ (Bartkowiak 2012, p. 944), access to both River Country and Discovery Island was and is prohibited. Moreover, as highlighted here Disney also appears to seek to close down the shared cultural memory of those sites, resisting the opportunity to recirculate

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their presence as part of the re-use and commemoration of other licensed Disney properties or theme park attractions (as in video games such as Epic Mickey or the Tomorrowland movie). Whilst then Disney ‘encourages participatory fandom in its most complex and wide range form’ (Koren-Kuik 2014, p. 147) and has attempted to harness fan dedication and attachment, in a range of ways it still works to shut down and regulate some modes of fannish engagement. Furthermore, when attractions are closed but not replaced or removed (becoming standing-but-not-operating), fans’ sense of trust in a space can be threatened especially when their presence works to contradict the dominant values associated with that place (e.g. Disney’s usual emphasis on control and order and reassurance). Whilst this can offer fans the pleasure of subverting these dominant associations, the witnessing of decay of a favourite place or attraction can threaten ontological security via its making visible of the threat of failure and ending of other beloved rides as well as tapping into broader cultural anxieties about endings, decay and even death. In these instances, fans can attempt to ward off these ontological threats via acts of archiving, commemoration and remembrance, drawing on elements of online fandom and participatory culture to keep memories of a derelict site alive and to share these with fellow fans.

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Brennan, Joseph, ‘“Is This What You Call a Breakup?”: The Cancellation of Merlin, Perceived Producer Disloyalty, and “Television-as-Lover Fando”’, in Everybody Hurts: Transitions, Endings, and Resurrections in Fandom, edited by Rebecca Williams (Iowa: University of Iowa Press, 2018), pp. 101–112. Budd, Mike, ‘Introduction: Private Disney, Public Disney’, in Rethinking Disney: Private Control, Public Dimensions, edited by Mike Budd and Max H. Kirsch (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2005), pp. 1–33. Chytry, Josef, ‘Walt Disney and the Creation of Emotional Environments: Interpreting Walt Disney’s Oeuvre from the Disney Studios to Disneyland, CalArts, and the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow (EPCOT)’, Rethinking History: The Journal of Theory and Practice, 16, 2 (2012), 259–278. Clark, Kristen, ‘New Generation of Thrill Ride Coming to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter – Hogsmeade’, Universal Orlando Blog, 24 July 2017, accessed 11 December 2017. https://blog.universalorlando.com/whats-new/ new-ride-wwohp-hogsmeade/ Click, Melissa A. and Holly Willson Holladay, ‘Breaking Up with Breaking Bad: Relational Dissolution and the Critically Acclaimed AMC Series’, in Everybody Hurts: Transitions, Endings, and Resurrections in Fandom, edited by Rebecca Williams (Iowa: University of Iowa Press, 2018), pp. 61–73. Cohen, Ira J., ‘Anthony H. Giddens’, in Key Sociological Thinkers: Second Edition, edited by Rob Stones (Hampshire: Palgrave, 2008), pp. 323–337. Cornelis, Pieter C.M., ‘Impact of New Attractions on Theme Park Attendance’, Worldwide Hospitality and Tourism Themes, 2, 3 (2010), 262–280. Cornfield, Li, ‘“They Repackaged It”: Technofuturism in Tomorrowland’, Antenna, 1 June 2015, accessed 12 March 2018.http://blog.commarts.wisc.edu/2015/06/01/ they-repackaged-it-technofuturism-in-tomorrowland/ Courbet, Didier and Marie-Pierre Fourquet-Courbet, ‘When a Celebrity Dies… Social Identity, Uses of Social Media, and the Mourning Process Among Fans: The Case of Michael Jackson’, Celebrity Studies, 5, 3 (2014), 275–290. de Caro, Frank, ‘Strategies of Presentation and Control at Disney’s EPCOT: ‘‘Field Notes’’ on Tourism, Folk Ideas, and Manipulating Culture’, Southern Folklore, 54, 1 (1994), 26–39. Disney Journal, ‘The Best Disney Urban Explorer: MattSonswa’, The Disney Journal, 22 June 2017, accessed 30 June 2017. https://thedisneyjournal.com/2017/06/22/ the-best-disney-urban-explorer-mattsonswa/ Fırat, A. Fuat and Ebru Ulusoy, ‘Living a Theme’, Consumption, Markets and Culture, 14, 2 (2011), 193–202. Freitag, Florian, ‘Autotheming: Themed Spaces in Self-Dialogue’, in A Reader in Themed and Immersive Spaces, edited by Scott A. Lukas (Pittsburgh, PA: Carnegie Mellon: ETC Press, 2016), pp.141–150.

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9. Conclusion: Ways Forward for Theme Park and Fan Studies Abstract This chapter reiterates how theme parks offer a crucial site for the exploration of transmediality and the development of paratexts, offering an ongoing site for analysis of the intersections between fandom, media texts, and merchandise, as well as fans’ own affective and physical responses to visiting the parks. It highlights the ongoing commercial and economic value of themed spaces and the continuing expansion of such sites around the world. Arguing for a move away from Western-centric views of themed spaces and transmedia theory, the chapter concludes by proposing avenues for the future of studying theme park spaces, their fans, and the ongoing tensions that occur when fans of themed spaces and their intellectual properties come into proximity with one another. Keywords: transnational theme parks, transnational transmedia, play, anti-fandom, fan labour

Introduction Writing in 2000, Constance Balides argues that ‘The theme park often figures as a metaphor for the extensive reach of commerce and for simulation as a general mode of experience’ and that it has come to stand in for ‘the derivative nature of cultural forms’ (2000, p. 140). Now, twenty years later, such views persist in many quarters of contemporary society, as examples such as the Katy Perry video for ‘Oblivia’ and the College Humor video discussed in the Introduction demonstrate. Indeed, as I finished writing this conclusion, debate reared its head online about whether childless ‘millennials’ should be visiting Disney Parks at all. Inspired by a (apparently fake) Facebook post where a disgruntled Disney guest bemoaned ‘It pisses me off TO NO END!!!! When I see CHILDLESS COUPLES AT DISNEYWORLD. People without

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CHILDREN need to be BANNED!!!! […] I fucking hate childless women with a BURNING PASSION!!!!’, theme park fans online quickly moved to argue against the views being expressed and to defend their right to spend their time (and money) wherever they chose. The story was quickly picked up by The New York Post (Olekinski 2019) and The Guardian in the UK (Mahdawi 2019) with both columnists equally damning those who chose to visit the Parks as ‘weird’ (Oleksinski 2019) or having ‘something very wrong with [them]’ (Mahdawi 2019). Clearly, the cultural derision towards adult theme park guests continues. However, as this book has asserted, theme parks and their fans are worth our attention. The parks themselves function as unique and multi-faced sites that bring together ‘new media concepts including remediation, transmedia storytelling, participatory culture, and convergence’ (Baker 2018: 56). Moreover, as argued throughout, they work to ‘offer the consumer/ fan a spatial platform’ (Koren-Kuik 2014, p. 147) to engage in and display their fandom. Far from the imagined cultural dupes who blindly attend and spend money on an over-priced experience, many theme park visitors are active and knowledgeable (and often critical) fans, whether of specific parks, characters or rides or of the Disney or Universal theme park experience in general. As the various examples analysed here demonstrate, many of these visitor-fans operate sophisticated levels of cultural distinction regarding their favourite aspects of the parks, the merchandise they choose to purchase and collect, or the activities they engage in whilst visiting. As I have argued elsewhere, ‘As Fan Studies moves forward, studies of fan tourism must continue to complicate and challenge our ideas of who fan tourists are, the places they visit, and the fan practices they engage in before, during and after their visits to these sites’ (Williams 2018, p. 105). Better understanding theme parks and their fandom offers one avenue to begin to explore these challenges. Studying these places and the fannish practices that take place both inside and outside of the parks allows us to better answer a range of important questions including those surrounding themed space and place, fan spaces and pilgrimage, and the relationship between fans and producers of themed spaces. It enables consideration of how and why people become fans of theme parks and their attractions, and develop emotional and affective connections to these, whilst being acutely aware of the consumerist nature of the themed environment. Thus, moving away from the notion of theme-park visitors as naïve, controlled and duped into excessive consumption, the book has argued that we take seriously the range of ways that theme park fans form active, reflective and pleasurable attachments to theme parks and their rides, attractions, and experiences.

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In conclusion, this chapter identif ies some of the affordances and challenges of continuing work on theme park fandom, highlighting five of the key themes or areas which ongoing research may wish to develop: the importance of play and ludic pleasure within themed spaces; the potential for anti-fandom and fannish discontent as new intellectual properties such as Star Wars and Marvel appear in the Disney Parks; ongoing tensions between fans and producers and debates over labour and fan exploitation; a shift in focus away from the Disney-dominated study of theme park spaces towards other companies and sites (there is no comprehensive academic cultural history of Universal Studios in the English language, for example); and greater engagement with non-Western sites and work on themed spaces and on transmediality as a theoretical concept.

Play and Ludic Pleasure The engaged adult fans analysed in this book contradict the ‘oft-cited emphasis on children’ since ‘Disney’s products cut across age groups in assorted ways […] It is generally recognised that the theme parks, in particular, were designed not only for children but to a great extent, for adults’ (Wasko 2001, p. 185). Indeed, many of these adult fans are involved in a fandom that necessitates negotiation of hierarchies of cultural value, a sense of self, and their affective and physical negotiations of themed spaces and places. As many of the examples discussed throughout this book attest, we should be wary of dismissing the reflexivity and awareness that visitors bring to the theme park (or theme landscape) experience. Visitors understand theming, just as they understand advertising, or reality television. The savvy spectator takes pleasure in their knowing immersion in the game of themes, a playful satisfaction in the simulacrum. (Bell 2007, p. xi)

The notion of playfulness, of knowing engagement with the spaces of theme parks has emerged throughout, as fans understand and negotiate the realities of such immersive sites. As J. P. Telotte notes, Disney in particular ‘offers not just an illusion or pleasant fantasy, but ultimately a different awareness, actually a kind of play or playfulness’ (2011, p. 181) and the same can be said for the spaces of Universal Orlando Resort. The theme park fan knows that these sites are created, that the characters they are meeting are employees in costumes, but they are still able to operate their own modes of judgement regarding the authenticity of these experiences as well as gaining pleasure

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from taking part in them. Indeed, future work on theme park fans may want to pick up the invitation from writers like Telotte and John Newman (2015) to interrogate further how such sites allow guests to ‘socialize, interact and play together in a ludic present’ (2015, p. 66), or develop further Crawford and Hancock’s (2018) use of Michel de Certeau (1984) to explore the intersections between cosplay, play, and space. Such research would enable further development of the concept of haptic fandom and how fans themselves negotiate opportunities for ludic interaction and immersion through in-park games such as Disney’s Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom, the use of RFID-enabled physical objects such as wands in the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, or the spread of augmented reality games, both those endorsed by the parks themselves (Jung et al 2015) and those that are not (such as Niantic’s Pokémon Go and the Harry Potter game Wizards Unite!) Fan-tagonism, Anti-fandom and Interloping Fans Such opportunities for fannish play will only multiply as theme parks continue to develop. At the time of writing, Walt Disney World is concluding a massive transformation of its Hollywood Studios Park in Orlando having added areas devoted to its Toy Story movies and the Star Wars franchise in its Galaxy’s Edge land, expanding the attractions at its EPCOT Park with new rides based on Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy and the Pixar animation Ratatouille, developing a new shopping and entertainment district, and planning new hotels including one based on an immersive Star Wars-themed experience that will unfold over the course of guests’ multiple-day stays. Disney has also announced its multi-park ‘global Avengers Initiative’ known as the Worldwide Engineering Brigade (or WEB) including Iron Man and Ant-Man and the Wasp attractions in Hong Kong Disneyland, the preexisting Guardians of the Galaxy: Mission BREAKOUT! at Disney California Adventure, and new attractions involving characters such as Doctor Strange, Captain Marvel, Iron Man, Spider-Man, and Black Panther in both the California Adventure Park and Disneyland Paris (Drake 2018). Billed as an ‘expanding of this epic story universe in a way that, for the first time ever, will allow you to take on an active role alongside these superheroes’ (Drake 2018), the interconnected stories told across three of Disney’s global theme park sites demonstrate their commitment to new forms of storytelling and physically-rooted modes of transmediality. Not wanting to be left behind, Universal Studios announced its newest venture, the Epic Universe theme park in Orlando in August 2019, bringing the total number of its parks there to four. Theme park development in the Florida region shows little

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sign of slowing down whilst the dedicated fandom that circulates around it continues to flourish. However, as Disney in particular, continues to develop theme park spaces based on the intellectual properties (IPs) it has acquired (namely Star Wars and Marvel), the possibility of tensions between fans of those IPs and theme park fans becomes more pressing as divergent and competing practices and fannish expectations come into conflict. Writing before the opening of Galaxy’s Edge, I cautioned that, As the Star Wars universe and the worlds of the Disney theme parks continue to move in the same orbits, tensions over how Disney will impact Star Wars and, equally, how Star Wars will come to inhabit the spaces of Disney, remain subject to negotiation. (Williams 2019, p. 148).

Whilst Star Wars fans’ initial fears of ‘‘Disney-fication’ of the fan object’ (Proctor 2013, p. 213) appeared to be somewhat assuaged, as the Galaxy’s Edge lands developed and opened, it was clear to see how Space and immersion are constructed and contested by fans with competing dominant interests – those whose primary focus is the Star Wars universe and those who prioritize their love of the Disney theme parks, suggesting that both groups must negotiate the opportunities and threats that the purchase of Lucasfilm presents (Williams 2019, p. 139).

For example, debates raged over why Galaxy’s Edge was not based on a location familiar from the Star Wars universe (such as planets including Endor, Tatooine, and Hoth) but on the previously unseen planet of Batuu. Whilst this allowed Disney to expand the transmediality of the franchise universe via modes of spatial transmedia and the creation of new characters, places, and spaces (such as Oga’s Cantina bar) not seen in the official canon, both Star Wars and Disneyland fans argued over whether this decision increased or detracted from their immersion in the world and narrative of the land. The perceived lack of immersion was facilitated by often inconsistent enforcement of Disney’s rules regarding costumes for guests aged over the age of 14 (as discussed in Chapter Seven). Whilst items including Jedi robes and lightsabers could be purchased within Galaxy’s Edge, older guests were often prohibited from wearing or using them, leading to confusion regarding what was permitted within the land (Whitten 2019). This attitude was frequently contrasted by theme park fans with the approach from Universal Studios parks within the Wizarding World of Harry Potter where costumes and RFID-enabled wands were sold, but where costuming (even

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in clothing not purchased inside the parks) and moments of play were actively encouraged and endorsed (Whitten 2019). Within Galaxy’s Edge, however, fans lacked the ‘freedom to ‘geek out’ and act like a fan in a way that transgresses society’s normal proscriptions against such behaviour’ (Waysdorf and Reijnders 2018, p. 184). Fan practices, echoing broader fan behaviours such as the wearing of cosplay and re-enacting moments from favourite objects (e.g. lightsaber duals) were thus seen to be shut down by Disney, even at the same time as they co-opted these practices and sold them back to fans at huge cost (charging $200 for a lightsaber, for instance). There are similar debates regarding the inclusion of Disney’s Marvel properties in its theme parks with many fans outraged over the decision to turn Disney’s California Adventure Park’s Tower of Terror drop ride into one based on Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, and the demolition of the long-standing Universe of Energy attraction in WDW’s EPCOT to allow for a replacement by a Guardians of the Galaxy rollercoaster (indeed, many of the fan critiques of this mirror the fannish discourses put forward to argue against the presence of Frozen in the park, as discussed in the previous chapter). In moments when theme park fans object to apparent intrusions into the Parks by existing properties such as Marvel or Star Wars that Disney has acquired, we thus see the potential for ‘fan-tagonism’ (Johnson 2007) between fans of the franchises and the Parks themselves. As both Disney and Universal expand, and the possibilities of their acquisition of new IPs continue, such fissures and clashes are likely to continue. As theme park fans are forced into cultural proximity with properties, brands, and objects that they may typically have no connection to, the potential for modes of theme park anti-fandom, and challenges between perceived ‘interloping fans’ (Williams 2013), will be central to ongoing study of theme park fans. Labour and Fan Work We can, of course, view fans’ loyalty to large global corporations such as Disney and Universal quite cynically and adhere to more negative arguments that suggest that, when in the theme parks, ‘Visitors become passive consumers, neither actively engaged in the construction of their experience, nor particularly aware of the high degree of manipulation and influx of capital required to maintain the experience’ (Borrie 1999, p. 74). Across the course of this research I have been surprised at the intensity of responses aimed at Disney as a Company in particular by fellow researchers in media and cultural studies. These ranged from ‘mocking distaste to vitriolic hatred’ (King 1981, p. 117) and including outright refusals to acknowledge that we can move

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beyond political economy-rooted approaches grounded in critique to a more sensitive re-evaluation of audience and fans’ attachments and engagements, and the tacit insinuation that such studies are inherently frivolous, particularly within the current political moment. As a researcher who self-identifies as a fan of theme parks, and of Disney more broadly, I can perhaps be seen as a traitor to the Cultural Studies cause, guilty of falling blindly in-step in support of a global corporation. Indeed, ‘themed and immersive spaces […] have been relegated to the junk pile of social research in that they either are not studied at all or they are addressed through simplistic, reductionistic and essentialist analyses’ (Lukas 2016, p. 168). However, as writers such as Sarah Banet-Weiser assert, dismissals of certain forms of research or topics as simply ‘fun’ or as frivolous ignore the often ‘complicated production and articulation’ of that work (1999, p. 4). Moreover, there are cultural and political imperatives in play here since such dismissals ‘immediately and apparently unselfconsciously defin[e] particular cultural sites as worthy of intellectual attention and others […] [as] junk’ (1999, p. 4). In studying sites such as theme parks, we do, of course, need to manage our own pleasures and investments alongside our critical faculties, an agenda that Fan Studies (building on feminist media and cultural studies) has long sought to advance. As this research has demonstrated, we must also remain aware of the labour and work that theme park fandom (and studying it as an academic) entails, both in terms of planning for and engaging with physical experiences and in contributing to the information economy of the participatory culture around it. In Exploiting Fandom, Mel Stanfill argues that viewing fan labor as ‘not really labor’ that does not require remuneration since it is freely undertaken for pleasure is ‘inattentive to both the unequal position from which fans choose to do this work and ow being a fan on industry’s terms fundamentally differs from traditional fandom by and for fans’ (2019, p. 158). For Stanfill, ‘industry embrace of fans is a privatization of fandom that turns fans into a workforce for industry’s benefit’ (2019, p. 158). Other writers within Fan Studies have argued instead that fans are often aware of their own position and that ‘We obviously cannot equate all fan labor on digital platforms with exploited labor, or assume that fans are not deeply cognizant of the economic and promotional motivations precipitating the media industry’s conditional embrace of fan culture’ (Scott 2019, p. 8). Closer examination of the relationship between fans and those who own and control themed spaces offers a route for more detailed understanding of the unpaid work that fans undertake in promoting brands such as Disney and Universal, and the power relations inherent in all contemporary cultural exchange.

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Challenging Disney-centrism and Western-centrism It must also be acknowledged that the intention at the start of this study was to address the relative lack of academic study of the Universal Studios theme parks in Florida, which are often neglected or discussed only in terms of how the ‘media polarized the two companies’ (Lillestol et al 2015, p. 234). What became clear throughout this research, however, was the continued dominance of Disney and the frequency with which its theme parks come to stand in for the practices of all theme parks, working as a branded synecdoche. Despite my stated intention to look equally at both Disney and Universal’s theme parks in Orlando, this proved more difficult than anticipated due to the focus of both previous scholarly work and the current participatory culture that surrounds the parks. Whilst many fan resources do cover both Walt Disney World and Universal Orlando Resort, the majority of examples discussed in this book tend to come from Disney. Whilst I have tried to offer cases where UOR has presented forms of transmediality in the theme park experience and noted occasions where distinctions have been drawn between the two brands, I have to concede that the research is skewed towards Mickey Mouse, rather than the Minions. This is due to the sheer dominance of Disney in terms of park developments, news and examples and the fact that, in many of the fannish practices discussed in this book, there are no comparable Universal-centric points of comparison. For example, UOR has no abandoned space to rival Disney’s River Country, nor a named practice of fan costuming and cosplay such as DisneyBounding. I continue to assert, however, that Universal’s themed spaces and the fandom that operates around them, are worthy of more serious academic scrutiny. Perhaps for this to truly happen, those parks need to be the sole site of analysis in more dedicated study, allowing the wealth of opportunities for immersion, transmedia storytelling, and fan engagement provided at Florida’s Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure, as well as Universal’s global parks, to step out from behind the shadow of Disney’s dominance. One way for this to develop is to look beyond the prevalent Anglo-centric focus as work on theme parks from a Fan Studies perspective continues. Theme park development on a global scale continues to prosper with companies, tourism organizations and governments in countries across Europe well aware of the economic benefits that such sites offer (IAAPA 2014). The markets in Asia are a particular target for both Disney and Universal who are keen to develop their existing parks (which, according to the TEA/ AECOM (2017, p. 6) report, occupy the four spots in the top ten most visited

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parks in the World not filled by parks in the US). Local companies within China, Japan, Malaysia, and South Korea (Zhang 2007; Ali et al 2016; Erb and Ong 2017) seek expansion and development, whilst countries such as Abu Dhabi and Dubai in the Middle East move into the theme park industry via partnerships with companies such as Warner Bros (El Brogy 2018). Universal Studios is on track to expand its Singapore site and open a new Beijing park whilst Disney is extending both its Hong Kong and Shanghai operations. The debates over Disney’s global dominance are well-rehearsed with some critics arguing that cultural imperialist tendencies mean it erodes local cultures (a position that Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto (1994) outlines in discussion of Tokyo Disneyland), and others considering the company’s disregard for specific national working practices and touristic behaviours, as Kimberley Choi (2012) and John Matusitz (2011) note in relation to Disneyland Hong Kong. Others such as Van Maanen (1992) and Raz (1999, 2004) have emphasized a more positive ‘flow of culture’ to explore the relationships between glocal and local cultures in theme parks such as Tokyo Disneyland, or the ‘blend of ‘universal spaces’ carved by ubiquitous corporate practices and ‘unique places’ tempered by a sensitivity towards local considerations’ of Universal Studios Singapore which ‘sits astride the glocalization forces of global corporatization and local customization’, as discussed by Chang and Pang (2017). But, broadening our understandings of spatial transmedia to consider global adaptations of attractions and rides and how the meanings of cultural sites such as theme parks travel internationally allows for wider research into how the physicality of transmedia texts operates. As Erb and Ong argue in their Introduction to a journal special issue on theming in Asia, ‘concepts surrounding the theme park industry and the meaning of theming and theme parks might similarly be argued to originate from the perceived Euro-American origin of theme parks’ (2017, p. 145). Equally, many of the concepts relevant to examining transmediality have been Western-centric, overlooking the ‘significant differences in what “transmedia” means within various geographic and industrial contexts’ (Jenkins 2017, p. 222). Questions therefore arise such as whether we can read the versions of attractions such as the Haunted Mansion in Tokyo, Paris, and Hong Kong as transmedia extensions of the existing narrative. How do the cultural specificities needed to adapt these for the glocal market impact upon this? Are they adaptations (or mere copies of existing texts) or do the multiple versions of the Mansion and its narratives available to us offer something more complex? Such questions demonstrate the need for developing and ‘applying alternative modes of the transmedia phenomenon to the needs and structures of a nation’ (Freeman and Proctor 2018, p. 1) Extending research into the

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fandom and participatory culture that circulates around these non-Western sites will work to counter the tendency within Fan Studies to default to the ‘norm [of] white, middle class, cisgender, and [Anglo-]American’ (Pande 2016, p. 210) and open up opportunities for studies into transcultural theme park fandom, as well as more localized networks of knowledge. As new technologies are developed and launched within the parks and as new attractions are built, fan and audience studies have a key role to play in understanding how people make use of these sites, both whilst they are physically present and before and after their visits. Whilst much previous research has ‘Largely focused on a critique of [the theme park] form, particularly from a postmodern perspective that focuses on the role of simulation in an image-focused society’, it has also overlooked ‘the visitors themselves and how they make meaning out of such simulated environments’ (Waysdorf and Reijinders 2018, p. 174). As this book has sought to make clear, we need to move beyond established discourses that dismiss theme parks as fake or inauthentic, as solely commercial and commodified spaces, as the ‘degree zero of Western capitalism, the demon seed of theming, the ne plus ultra of marketplace icons’ (Brown 2018, p. 179), and those who frequent them as no more than complicit cogs in a corporate machine. Instead, theme parks and their fans offer a new frontier for understanding contemporary audience engagement, debates over fan labour and forms of fan work, the importance of materiality and the haptic in fan experience and, via the concepts of ‘spatial transmedia’ and ‘haptic fandom’, the ongoing importance of physical rooted places in our study of transmediality, convergence, and participatory cultures.

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Index adult theme park fans: 10-11, 14-16, 45, 134-37, 145-46, 148-50, 194, 202, 237, 244-45 affect: 17, 27, 30, 76, 190-91 affective: 56, 69, 92, 103, 107, 200, 220-21, 228, 230, 236 attachments to theme parks: 23, 29-30, 68, 134, 186, 212 connections: 9, 11, 16-17, 135, 216-17, 219, 244 experience: 47, 145-46, 182 negotiation: 52, 134, 245 relationships with theme parks: 19, 48 ani-embodiment: 25, 133-35, 137-143, 146, 149 Animal Kingdom: 42, 44, 47, 79, 215, 226 archives: 28, 153, 213, 230, 238 attractions: 9, 11-12, 18, 28, 43-44, 46, 50, 54, 77, 79, 81, 83-84, 86, 88, 102-08, 114, 124-25, 135, 170, 188, 193, 211, 214, 228, 246, 251-52 abandoned: 225-26, 231-33, 238 as transmedia: 17, 50-51, 102, 107 classic: 211-15, 218-19, 225, 229 closure: 28, 211-15, 220-21, 225-26, 229-30 commemoration: 74 corporate sponsorship of: 174, 218 culinary: 155 fandom of: 11, 23, 49-50, 56, 107, 112, 182, 186, 195, 213, 244 hierarchy: 80 memorialization: 28-29, 211, 213, 226, 229-31, 234 merchandise: 27, 202, 204 queuing for: 76, 79, 86-87 replacement: 17, 28-30, 212-18, 223-24, 236, 248 upcharge: 147 authenticity: 26, 125, 153-54, 160, 163, 166-67, 185, 197, 211-12, 221-25, 237, 245-46 blogging: 49, 155, 203 Bourdieu, Pierre: 53-54, 91 branding: 12, 14, 17, 48, 51, 56, 69-72, 112, 155, 161, 185, 199, 236-37 capital: 69, 164, 190-91, 197 cultural: 53, 135, 182, 185 economic: 24, 55, 135, 143, 148-49, 205 geographical: 50, 54 social: 53, 55, 87, 165, 185 subcultural: 53-55, 85, 91, 143, 148-49, 155, 165, 176, 182, 203, 205, 221 symbolic: 24, 54-55, 85, 87, 135, 148, 165, 182, 185, 203, 221 see also cult-culinary capital; distinction; hierarchy

celebrity: 25-26, 126, 133-35, 137-46, 149, 155, 196, 230 characters Character Dining: 135, 143, 147 Face Characters: 135-36, 149 meet-and-greets: 25, 51, 133-37, 140, 143-48, 195, 223 Rubberheads: 135-36, 140, 149 see also ani-embodiment; metonymic celebrity convergence: 22, 50-52, 56, 68, 104-97, 124, 156, 244, 252 culture: 50-52, 68, 103 cosplay: 17, 27, 141, 157, 183, 185, 191-92, 194, 196-97, 246, 248, 250 policing: 191 rules about: 192, 195, 197, 247 cult-culinary capital: 26, 164-65, 176 objects: 153, 155, 159, 163-66, 176 de Certeau, Michel: 118-20, 246 Despicable Me: Minion Mayhem: 145-46 DisneyBounding: 27, 71, 91, 183, 192, 194-206, 250 as transformative work: 183, 197-98 see also cosplay Disneyfication: 11 Disneyland: 10, 13, 18, 42-43, 46, 50, 55, 76, 84, 103, 107-08, 110, 116, 126, 135, 142-43, 170, 227, 246-47, 251 Disney Springs: 42, 44, 167-68, 172-73, 215, 229 Disney, Walt: 43, 50, 135, 217-18, 224-25 distinction: 23, 30, 53-55, 126, 143, 148, 154, 165, 176, 204, 224 EPCOT: 10, 42, 44, 79-80, 83, 134, 164, 167-68, 211-12, 215, 217-27, 246, 248 Facebook: 21-22, 29, 68, 73, 78, 85, 88-89, 195, 203 fandom affirmational: 183, 192, 198 mimetic: 183, 197-98 participatory: 238 transformative: 183, 198 see also haptic fandom; place-based fandom; theme park fandom fan fashion: 88, 91, 183, 185, 191-93, 195-96, 198-99, 202-04 fan pilgrimage: 10, 14-15, 23, 27, 51, 83, 173-75, 244 fan/producer relationship: 72, 124, 156, 176

258  fans blogs: 21-24, 56, 68-69, 73, 78, 85, 87, 91, 118, 121-22, 135, 158-59, 189, 195, 200-01, 203-04, 226-27, 229, 231 exploitation of: 24, 73, 90, 92-93, 124, 245, 249 female: 142, 145, 193, 224 see also adult theme park fans; labor fan studies: 15-20, 24, 53-54, 72, 78, 106, 118-19, 184, 191-92, 244, 249-50, 252 Giddens, Anthony: 56, 212-13, 216-17, 226 haptic: 9, 11-13, 67, 73, 78, 80-84, 145, 154, 166, 176, 196, 198, 200, 218, 246, 252 Haunted Mansion, The: 12, 24-25, 51, 74, 84, 93, 101-03, 105-26, 189, 193, 202, 204, 215, 218, 229, 251 hierarchy cultural: 11, 30, 52-53, 55, 181-82, 245 fan: 26, 53-55, 126, 148-49, 164, 176, 202-04 theme park: 45, 80, 159 Hollywood Studios: 42, 44, 84, 112, 139, 160, 212, 205, 246 hyperdiegesis: 50, 105, 107, 113, 123, 162-63, 166, 205 spatial: 116, 163, 168-70 immersion: 12-13, 24, 26, 30, 41, 45-47, 52, 56, 75-76, 84, 93, 103, 105, 107, 116, 124, 126, 134, 143-46, 154, 159-60, 162, 165-68, 170, 172, 176, 245-47, 250 influencers: 15, 87, 183, 200-01 Instagram: 21-22, 29, 85, 88-89, 91, 183, 195, 201, 203 labor anticipatory: 24, 69, 84-92 fan: 24, 56, 67-73, 89-92, 164, 200-01, 205, 243, 245, 248-49, 252 Maelstrom: 28, 211-12, 215, 218-225, 232, 236-37 Magic Kingdom: 14, 17, 24, 42, 44, 84, 102-03, 105-09, 112, 117, 134, 139, 142-45, 161, 164-66, 168-69, 189, 201, 212, 215, 222-23, 226, 246 materiality: 13, 26-27, 47-48, 81, 115, 119, 156-57, 159, 164, 175, 183-87, 190-91, 196, 198-99, 203-04, 252 merchandise: 16, 24, 26-27, 29, 42, 54, 56, 71, 74, 103, 114, 159-61, 163, 181-93, 199, 201-04, 221, 231-32, 237, 244 diegetic: 154, 161, 166 limited edition: 164, 176, 182, 189-90 pseudo-diegetic: 154, 161, 166 ride-specific: 107, 114, 121, 123, 193, 228-29 metonymic celebrity: 25, 133-35, 137, 140-43, 145-46, 149

Theme Park Fandom

ontological security: 211-13, 216-17, 220, 226, 230, 234-35, 238 Orlando (Florida): 18-19, 21-23, 41-45, 50, 85, 88, 136, 214, 217-18, 221, 226-27, 250 resident theme park fans: 20, 86-87, 93, 221 paratexts: 24, 26-28, 114, 153-55, 159-60, 163, 166, 176, 199-200 participatory culture: 16, 22-24, 26, 41, 51-52, 69, 72, 85-86, 92, 103, 107, 119, 122, 124, 148, 159, 203, 231, 233, 238, 244, 249-50, 252 Perry, Katy: 9, 243 pin trading: 27, 182, 186, 188-91, 203-04 place-based: 10, 12, 18, 26-27, 29, 44-49, 51, 55-56, 79, 90, 103, 119, 134, 144, 158, 166, 173-74, 189, 212, 216-20, 225-26, 231-38 plandom: 56, 68-69, 84, 93 pleasure: 29, 46, 69, 73, 92-93, 149, 154, 156, 165-67, 175, 197, 203, 233, 236, 238, 245-46, 249 poaching: 24, 106, 118-20, 123, 171 spatial: 24, 93, 101, 103, 116, 118-20, 123, 135 River Country Water Park: 28, 44, 211, 213, 226-37, 250 social media: 15, 21-23, 29, 56, 68-69, 77-78, 85, 87, 89, 91, 159, 183, 195, 200-01, 203-05, 215, 230 see also Facebook; Instagram; Twitter; YouTube Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge: 84, 215, 246-48 themed attractions: 12, 108-109, 114, 145, 204, 214-15 events: 68, 87, 116, 134, 136, 143, 147-48, 164-65, 182, 186-88, 190, 195, 212 food: 160-62, 164, 167, 174 hotels: 42, 46, 246 meet-and-greets: 25, 145-47 restaurants: 26, 46, 153-54, 161-62, 166-69, 171-75 spaces: 11-13, 18, 20, 26-27, 29-30, 42-43, 45-49, 52, 84, 102, 105, 108, 114-115, 120, 126, 135, 144, 150, 154, 163-66, 170-76, 218-19, 237, 244-46, 249-50 theme park fandom: 13, 15, 18, 23, 28, 42, 50, 52, 54-55, 69, 73, 84, 87, 91, 120, 148, 163, 175-76, 183, 187, 192, 196, 204, 211-12 and labor: 55, 72-73, 83, 92, 249 as participatory culture: 91-92, 135 scholarship on: 17-23, 245 transcultural: 251-52 theme parks abandoned: 28-29, 213, 225-29, 231-33, 236-37, 250 and cultural studies: 15, 248-49

259

Index

and decay: 228, 231-34, 238 and reassurance: 109, 213, 216, 219, 236, 238 and self-identity: 19, 26, 29, 41, 48, 52, 56, 87, 148, 157, 176, 186, 190, 197, 204, 216, 222, 245 transnational: 44, 108, 226, 243, 251-52 see also adult theme park fans tourism: 14, 22, 48, 52, 85-88, 90, 92, 155, 184, 186, 188, 200, 204, 221, 226, 250 culinary: 155-56, 158 fan: 14, 23, 49, 157, 173, 175-76, 211, 244 media: 12, 23, 48, 175 studies: 22, 45, 52, 155, 183-84, 211 transmedia: 12-13, 17, 23-28, 30, 49-52, 81, 93, 103, 107, 112-15, 122-25, 138, 160, 196, 198-200, 205, 245, 250-52 amnesia: 227 embodied: 27, 181-83, 194, 199-200 expansion: 26, 168, 170, 172, 218, 246 retrospective: 12, 25, 122 spatial: 12, 23-25, 30, 49, 106, 114-16, 123, 125, 166, 171, 198, 246-47, 251 storytelling: 47, 51-52, 101-03, 112-17, 123-25, 244 theme parks as: 50-52, 93, 101-03, 170, 246 theme park attractions as: 101-03, 107-09 transnational: 243, 245, 250-52 Twitter: 21-22, 24, 29, 68, 73, 78, 85, 88-89, 142-43, 189, 203, 212, 219-20 Universal Orlando Resort: 18, 23, 42, 44, 49, 68-69, 71, 80, 82, 87, 90, 93, 136, 139, 171, 188, 245, 250 attractions: 17, 22, 42, 50, 54, 75, 77, 83, 102, 105, 145-46, 175, 214-15, 246, 251

hotels: 18, 42, 44, 46 merchandise: 26-27, 71, 181-83, 192 restaurants: 44, 134, 147, 158, 162, 164, 167-69, 171, 173-74 Tapu Tapu: 78, 80, 82-83, 92 Universal Express Pass: 69, 76-77 see also Despicable Me: Minion Mayhem; Wizarding World of Harry Potter Walt Disney World: 10, 13, 24, 43-44, 74, 79, 87, 108, 134, 146, 163, 166, 212, 215, 217, 223-24, 229-30, 234 attractions: 10, 22, 27, 44, 50-51 FastPass: 74, 76, 79-80, 89 history: 41, 43-45, 102, 121, 212, 218, 226, 231 hotels: 18, 42, 44, 67, 69, 74, 79, 89, 164, 182, 188, 212, 246 MagicBand: 67, 74, 78, 80, 82-84, 92, 109 merchandise: 188, 202, 204 My Disney Experience: 67, 74, 80, 84, 124 MyMagic+: 67-69, 73-74, 76-85, 92-93, 109 restaurants: 155, 158-62, 163, 166, 168-69 see also Animal Kingdom; Disney Springs; EPCOT; Hollywood Studios; Magic Kingdom; River Country Water Park; Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge Wizarding World of Harry Potter: 17, 43, 47, 49, 71, 125, 158, 161-62, 164-65, 168, 173, 181-82, 214-15, 246-47 YouTube: 22, 73, 88-89, 229