Sounds and music shape how an audience interacts with art. Is the mood light or heavy? Is the ambience inviting or foreboding? The exact same product, space, or experience can be perceived entirely differently based on what the observer hears.
A New Vision for a Familiar Space
The basic shell of 2023’s overhauled Toontown at Disneyland remains the same as its original 1993 iteration, but the new music on this official album, and within the land, indicates how Imagineers might want guests to approach the area differently than before.
The former Toontown presented itself as a bustling cityscape, its background music boisterous, wacky, and often loud. This reflected the explosive world the land emulated, inspired by early Mickey Mouse cartoons from the 1930s (and to some extent the 1988 film “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” and the Disney afternoon TV programming block, both big hits at the time). Sight gags abounded within the architecture, music cues suggested chaotic moments from the heyday of cartoons, and a functioning trolley (now long gone) bustled through the street.
The grand opening of Mickey’s Toontown in 1993
While Toontown is still where Mickey and his pals live and thrive, its new music is calmer, warmer, and at times zen-like. It’s easy to imagine some of the tracks playing in a local coffee shop. On paper, this seems at odds with Toontown’s inherently zany vibe; however, it indicates the shift in what Imagineers instilled into the reimagined land.
Popcorn Park in the reimagined Toontown offers a calm space that contrasts with the hustle and bustle of the land’s former reputation
Photo by Melanie Gable
Toontown is still hyper-sensory by nature, but now invites guests to take a breather with new play elements and decompression zones. The music contributes to that invitation. It prompts visitors to experience many of the same areas with a different lens, less as a metropolis and more as a hometown neighborhood. In its least-hectic moments, the new Toontown music even feels like it could belong in Camp Minnie-Mickey, the defunct land at Disney’s Animal Kingdom known for its laid-back atmosphere (and replaced by Pandora – The World of Avatar).
