For even the most tuned-in Imagineering aficionado, Shanghai Disneyland tends to feel really, really far away. At least until “Disney Abu Dhabi” manifests, Shanghai Disneyland is probably the farthest of Disney’s six global resorts both geographically and figuratively for most of us. Many readers here (inherently, a very deep Disney Parks fan, I think) probably have the quiet sense that they’re unlikely to ever actually visit Shanghai Disneyland in their lifetimes.
So for the really casual Disney Parks fan, it’s probably fair to say that the goings-on of Shanghai Disneyland are something akin to “palace intrigue;” things that they might see on YouTube, but not necessarily attractions they ever expect to see up close and with their own eyes. In fact, as the E-Ticket wonders of Shanghai Disneyland made their way online, the median response to each basically amounted to: “Bring that to Disney World!”
And to be fair, the benefits of Shanghai’s innovation have already manifested in Disney’s U.S. parks in big and small ways – not the least of which being the cloning of the Modern Marvel: TRON Lightcycle Power Run in Florida, and the alleged adaptation of the park’s Pirates of the Caribbean: Battle for Sunken Treasure ride system for an upcoming AVATAR attraction at Disney California Adventure.
But despite its compelling glimpse into what a post-Wizarding-World Disney Park’s land lineup can look like it just may be that Shanghai’s most talked-about addition is the 2023 opening of the land of “Zootopia”… Sure, this “Living Land” based on the 2016 film is a perfectly lovely project worth examination in its own right, but what’s made Zootopia a major talking point for fans is whether or not this land should come stateside… and if so, whether or not the park that seems its most obvious home might just be the worst place to bring Zootopia to life… Let’s dig into the paradox…
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Zootopia Rises
Images: Disney
In case you missed it, Disney Animation Studios’ 2016 film Zootopia tells the story of Judy Hopps – a rabbit who dreams of leaving the woodlands of Bunnyburrow and making it as a police officer in the big city. That big city is Zootopia, a modern metropolis sub-divided into districts stylized after natural biomes and inhabited exclusively by anthropomorphic animals. Naïve Judy quickly meets Nick Wilde – a con artist red fox – as the two become embroiled in a “buddy cop” detective mystery exploring why the city’s predators are reverting to primitive states and attacking their fellow citizens.
Zootopia was a very successful film, entering the rare club of animated hits that topped $1 billion at the box office. But in the footnotes of the film’s revenue, it was particularly successful in China.
There, the film (whose Chinese name translates to “Crazy Animal City”) earned $235 million, and along the way scored the largest weekend ever for an animated film (its second weekend, when the film made $60 million – an unprecedented 139% increase over its debut weekend). It also became the first animated film in Chinese history to cross $200 million, thus becoming the highest-earning animated film ever in China.
Without a doubt, Zootopia connected with China’s emerging “Middle Class,” serving as an avatar of Disney in a country with little allegiance to Snow White, The Little Mermaid, nor their contemporaries. In other words, you can see why Zootopia was a shoe-in for Disney’s first mainland China park…
Image: Disney
Which, as luck would have it, was already a mold-breaker. You have to remember that 2016’s Shanghai Disneyland served as something of a reinvention as far as the “Disney Parks Formula” goes. In it, “classics” like Space Mountain, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Jungle Cruise were intentionally absent, making room for custom creations born of Disney’s current IP-infatuation and rearranged into a layout divergent from the norm.
That also gives Shanghai Disneyland a kind of new age flexibility that the other five “Disneylands” on Earth lack to varying degrees. For example, few lost sleep when Shanghai Disneyland debuted a Toy Story Land in 2018 – a “-land” that it’s difficult to imagine standing alongside Fantasy and Tomorrow in any other “Castle Park.” But in Shanghai, the ground feels less hallowed; less sacred; more adaptable.
Image: Disney
All of that together summed up to explain why the January 2019 announcement of a Zootopia land in Shanghai made great sense for the park. Here would reside Disney’s next “Living Land.” In one fell swoop, Zootopia would be attuned to the cultural success of the film, embrace Shanghai Disneyland’s inherent contemporaneity, and be positioned as an essential expansion for a still-young park.
It also explains why – except for occasional info drops (like a 2022 D23 sneak peek at the animal citizens that would bring the land to life by way of puppets) – American and European Disney Parks fans kind of seemed to forget that one of Imagineering’s biggest projects was quietly (and per the company’s norm, slowly) taking shape. (Remember that aside from the canceled Avengers attraction at Disney California Adventure and Tiana’s Bayou Adventure at the U.S. “Castle Parks,” Imagineering’s to-do list for its domestic resorts had dried up in the wake of former-CEO Bob Chapek’s capital expenditure draw-down in this era.)
Image: Disney
In September 2023 (just a few months ahead of the land’s planned opening), Disney finally provided a more substantial glimpse into the area. Of course, that included the hallmarks of the “Living Land” formula pioneered by The Wizarding World more than a decade before: “in-universe” character, retail, and dining opportunities.
Those entail the aforementioned meets-and-greets (including encounters with a puppeted polar bear), Fashions by Fru Fru clothier (located on the city’s “Mane Street”), and Jumbeaux’s Cafe (where guests can indulge in police officer Clawhauser’s favorite donuts or paw-shaped popsicles pulled straight from the film).
Image: Disney
Make no mistake: Zootopia is a great environment, with some great puns, hidden details, and plenty of love and care – even if it doesn’t exactly transcend the IP the way Pandora: The World of Avatar or Cars Land does. But y’know, it doesn’t need to! As when Stitch joined the chorus of the Enchanted Tiki Room in Tokyo, sometimes American park fans simply learn to let go and embrace the fact that other cultures gravitate to different stories, different standards, and different contexts than we might prefer for our own parks. Zootopia works for Chinese audiences, and works in the context of Shanghai Disneyland, so more power to ’em, right?
Image: Disney
In terms of rides, Zootopia features just one – Zootopia: Hot Pursuit. Disney’s September news drop helped paint the picture of this family dark ride wherein guests would be recruited to the Zootopia Police Department (ZPD) for a night of patrolling the city’s streets. As rookies on the team, guests naturally find themselves assigned with traffic duty ahead of the Gazelle concert in town.
Fortunately for riders, what could be a boring night of ho-hum moving violations gets a whole lot more interesting when the antelope pop star gets kidnapped, instantly elevating recruits from parking enforcement to private eyes, hot on the kidnappers’ tail. Er, trail.
And so it went when the ride officially made its debut on December 20, 2023. Guests flooded into Disney’s newest land, getting a primer from an impressive Animatronic of the donut-loving Sergeant Clawhauser (above) before queuing in Zootopia’s city prison, its cells packed with Easter eggs and good natured puns about its animal prisoners.
Image: Disney
From there, guests hop aboard ten-person ZPD police cruisers that are actually – say it with us – trackless ride vehicles… Disney’s new go-to system for dark rides. Recruits join Judy and Nick in a race through the biome-stylized neighborhoods of the city, where the trackless technology sees vehicles slide through Tundra Town’s icy streets, plunge through the Rain Forest’s canopies, and more.
Given that Shanghai Disneyland doesn’t have Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure, Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance, or Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway (the doubly-duplicated trackless dark rides du jour), a bit of each of their DNA can be found in Hot Pursuit. There are diverging pathways; simulated motion; integrated projections; forward, sideways, and reverse movement; and of course, several notable animatronics.
Image: Disney
In addition to animatronic encounters with Sergeant Clawhauser and Chief Bogo (a buffalo) in the queue, the ride features its fair share of substantial figures – not the least of which being a ride-along-ready Judy and Nick in a police car (eh hem, see Runaway Railway) and a hip-popping Gazelle when guests finally make it to her show.
In other words, Zootopia: Hot Pursuit is a perfectly wonderful ride, and the land it’s within is clearly a very nice project worked on by very skilled designers. Both are bright, colorful, and showcase the very best of modern Imagineering, even if neither is necessarily a game-changer. Basically, Zootopia is a really nice fit for Shanghai Disneyland – a park that’s a little less concerned with tradition and timelessness, while being more in tune with what Chinese audiences want from a contemporary Disney. No harm done!
Image: Disney
…But then things get tricky.
It’s no secret that “cloning” is far from a dirty word at Disney. In fact, once a park has paid the research and development costs to design, engineer, fabricate, and install a new ride, the allure of simply building another one becomes hard to ignore. On paper, it’s a “win-win” to give audiences in Orlando or Anaheim or Paris their own copy of a ride in Shanghai or Tokyo or Hong Kong (or vice versa) – one that the median U.S. Disney Parks visitor probably doesn’t know exists at all.
But for better or worse, sentiment around Shanghai’s Zootopia land began to change when it entered a new context – the discourse around if this neon city of animal cops and pop stars should come to the U.S. at all and, crucially, if so, where…?
Read on…!
