The original site plan for California Adventure was a bit strange. It seems like the Imagineers couldn’t quite commit to complete themed areas. As I mentioned in my first DCA Then and Now post, they decided to subdivide.

Condor Flats

One of the four larger lands, Golden State, was originally split into six districts called Grizzly Peak Recreation Area, Golden Vine Winery, Bountiful Valley Farm, Pacific Wharf, The Bay Area, and Condor Flats. At one exit of that district there was once a large billboard advertising “Condor Flats Air Tours” with the typical Disney pun instructing guests to “Bear Left.”

According to the Disney Fandom Wiki, the Imagineers developed an elaborate backstory for Condor Flats. In 2001, Paul Pressler (then Chairman of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts), began the dedication of Soarin' Over California with this statement:

This high desert airfield pays tribute to the daredevils and dreamers who lead us from the barnstorming age to the space age. It is home to the preeminent flight adventure Soarin Over California. From early existence man has looked to the sky with dreams of one day experiencing the thrill of flight. It was in California that many of those dreams were first realized.

It’s a neat idea, having a small part of this park themed to a “high desert airfield” setting reminiscent of Edwards Air Force Base (née Muroc Air Force Base) where Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in 1947.

The original land’s entrance sign was terrible looking, so I don’t have a picture of it. You can find it here.

As with all of California Adventure’s original design, however, the execution of Condor Flats left a lot to be desired. This “Fly ‘n’ Buy” retail location, in the guise of a vintage service station, did indeed feature period-appropriate antique props like these Chevron gas pumps. But the art direction was off.

Great aging and washdown on this metal siding, for example. But the typeface is a 1990s revival serif and doesn’t smack of the right era.

Inside the place was kind of a yard sale. I’ve discussed “prop cages” before but here the effort is more Six Flags than even Universal. The theme appears to be “junk” without any narrative sense or reality to ground the aesthetic. Who is the proprietor of this fill station? What’s the backstory? This is low rent theming.

The tools on the wall tell us this is a service garage. But the license plates and other bric-a-brac makes the place seem more like an antique shop or rural general store. It’s a mess.

The junkyard vibes continue outside and around the corner. Again, the vision comes off as “do something automotive, and by the way we don’t have much of a budget.” Yet—and I’ve stressed this before—not having a lot of money to spend does not automatically mean that a project has to be awful. Especially if a rundown airstrip and filling station in the middle of the desert is your motif, you don’t need much at all.

The problem is lack of planning, lack of thought, and lack of story. None of which cost more than the dozen creative meetings the Imagineers were going to have anyway. Like so much of the original California Adventure (I know, I know, again I harp on this), there were some good ideas but in the end they weren’t successfully followed through, and they were executed poorly. So I’m glad that although it took fourteen years, the original Condor Flats finally got a makeover.

Grizzly Peak Airfield

Condor Flats became Grizzly Peak Airfield in 2015. Three years prior, in the midst of the redesign of the Paradise Pier area, the Golden State land and its districts were officially retired. This was the final phase of that dissolution, and I happen to think it’s one of the best redesign moves that Disney has ever made.

Rather than retheme the area like Pixar Pier—or completely tear it down and do something new from scratch as with Buena Vista Street—the Imagineers simply adapted the area’s setting to serve as a natural extension of the land right next door, Grizzly Peak. Themed to the California National Parks Yosemite and Sequoia & Kings Canyon, that area is home to the park’s signature water attraction, Grizzly River Run.

The basic structures were retained but heavily rethought and reskinned. Rather than a bright and tacky desert outpost, instead we find a reasonably authentic wilderness airfield.

The timeline has been subtly adjusted as well. Condor Flats didn’t feel like a trip to the past; more like it was discovered last week having been abandoned for decades. It was old but not present. The original “junkyard” look has been jettisoned, and now guests feel immersed in a National Park setting during a Great American road trip at midcentury. The gas pumps are still antiques, yet shiny. This is a New Past.

This time around, the designers paid clear attention to the typography and signage throughout.

The advertising of Disney’s sponsor Coca-Cola is era-specific.

The road trip narrative is sprinkled throughout, and it’s not overdone in any one place. Gone are the “piles” of past junk. The station wagon looks like it was just parked for a stop and the family is inside asking for directions. There are all kinds of nice period details like the stickers on the car windows and the luggage and cooler in the back.

Small story elements link the Grizzly Peak Airfield to the National Park theme of Grizzly Peak. These “half-day destinations” are all listed by name, but we don’t get any more information about them. This is a trick borrowed from Tolkien’s elaboration descriptions of Middle-earth. Every single geographic feature, no matter how insignificant, no matter if it has any bearing on the characters in the story, is given a place name. As Louis J Prosperi notes in his Imagineering Pyramid, this has the effect of making a fictional world seem much larger and more realistic. It’s the same here.

The interior of the filling station has been revamped as a mercantile for campers, hikers, and river goers. And it works! There’s about the same amount of propping as before, but it’s more orderly and thoughtful. There’s a rhyme and a reason here. And we feel grounded in a real midcentury setting; all the products, packaging, and various ephemera has been carefully selected for verisimilitude.

The land’s public restrooms have been reimagined along the same lines as the filling station. The washed down color palette of barn door red and forest green is consistent, and feels lived in yet not abandoned like the buildings of Conor Flats did.

Again, great attention paid to the typography. This gothic sans rings true for mid century, when the early twentieth century designs of Trade Gothic, Franklin Gothic, and News Gothic were still very popular.

Perhaps my favorite touch are the little bits of National Park signage employed throughout. I’m fascinated with the brand identity of the parks system, so this was a special treat. Curiously, the look of these signs was all due to a single career ranger with no professional design experience.

It’s perhaps a bit design hipster to my eye (and a little too Pacific Northwest) but I like that Disney graphic designers are at least trying. The Grizzly Peak shield appears to be based on the actual arrowhead logo for the US National Parks system, though various parks have employed their own logos over the years.

Here we have the classic Sign Painter script by the infamous House Industries foundry.

Just across the way from the filling station and restrooms now tands a lookout tower built in forced perspective. Before, this metal framework was part of a “cooling station” in the form of a large thrust bell from the Space Shuttle. Coca-Cola was sold there and the rocket engine was a large outdoor mister. It was pretty ugly, so I never snapped a picture of it, but you can see it here in a shot from Daveland.

Nice type here, all set in Interstate which was designed throughout the nineties in the style of United States Federal Highway signage dating back to 1949. Great to see the Imagineers actually routing lettering into wood rather than it being an applied graphic.

I love seeing informational (or “didactic”) text embedded in vernacular graphic design, especially signs like this one. I made a few of them myself when I was a designer at the Oakland Museum of California working on their History Gallery Reinstallation Project (2008–2011). I also designed signs very much like this one for a John Muir exhibit there.

The designers could have used just a piece of metal here, but again it’s routed in wood. Terrific.

Here is one of my favorite graphic pieces at Grizzly Peak Airfield. This map done in the National Parks guide style is reproduced more than once throughout. Like the wilderness activities list at the filling station, this map applies a “Tolkien's Mountains” approach in showing guests a larger, unseen one.

Clever signs like this educate as well as amuse. Disney Legend Marty Sklar called this design technique “An Ounce of Treatment for a Ton of Treat” in his Mickey’s Ten Commandments.

The signature attraction for this land when California Adventure opened was Soarin’ Over California. Although the show building was a nondescript aircraft hanger in its original incarnation, the Imagineers actually came up with an extremely elaborate backstory for its existence:

Condor Flats was once a Mecca for pilots and aeronautical innovators. As the aviation industry moved into more sophisticated jet, rocket and radar research, it moved into more sophisticated headquarters, but the old hanger remained. And then a group of younger aviation enthusiasts found out that the old test site was still around. This group of dedicated aviators developed a sort of "flying theater," a simulator in which everyone can experience the exhilaration of flying.

The new version of the attraction is Soarin' Around the World (which also debuted at Shanghai Disneyland in 2016, where it is called Soarin’ Over the Horizon). The entry sign is now an interpretation of a typical National Park treatment, with California Craftsman trappings that rhyme with the adjacent Grand Californian Hotel and Spa. I’ve noted this natural connection between the NP lodges and the Craftsman style before.

Note the rustic, Craftsman-like fixtures at either side of the entrance walk. The attraction’s show building has now been washed down to match the rest of the redesigned land’s color palette.

The land’s primary fast food outlet used to be called the Taste Pilots’ Grill. Once again the design was so tacky that I didn’t even take any pictures of it. It’s now the Smokejumpers Grill.

Tying in with the wilderness setting of Grizzly Peak, the eatery’s theme now honors the smokejumpers of the US Forest Service. The same attention to detail that we’ve seen throughout the filling station, restrooms, and Soarin’ building is evident here. None of the kitsche of the Taste Pilot’s Grill remains.

Exiting back towards Buena Vista Street, a small “Thanks for Visiting!” sign hangs, routed in wood and painted modestly. You could also miss it. But that’s sort of the point. Where Condor fell flat was in the lack of story structure, incoherent design execution, and a dearth of details and subtlety. The new Grizzly Peak Airfield has it all, and this sign is a great reminder of it. It’s both subtle and detailed.

Good job all around.

Continued in Part 9.