With Disneyland’s diamond celebration well underway, it has been very exciting to be able to virtually explore the lands and attractions with Disney Infinity and their Disneyland Project. The Disneyland Project is a complete recreation of the Anaheim park using the Infinity 2.0 video game. The Infinity game designers built the entire park, from Main Street USA to the Hub and all the surrounding lands and attraction facades. Then, they enlisted the help of players to build the individual attractions. Everything was then linked together, so you could explore the park. All this took place over the past few months, and the entire park with attractions is now available for download in the Toy Box for players.

Players got very creative using the tools at hand in the Disney Infinity 2.0 Toy Box. I love to dabble in building fun games in the Toy Box mode, but even I am stumped at how some of these attractions were accomplished. The Toy Box attractions range from spot on ride through to more abstract representations. Most of the game mechanics work incredibly well, while some are a bit troublesome. Over this three part series, I will give my thoughts on each build and ask for yours as well.

We will start with the Disneyland park as a whole and the Fantasyland attractions.

 

Disneyland

You start outside the gates and get to walk through the tunnel into town square. It is about as faithful as it can be, using the toys at hand. You then walk down Main Street USA and enter the Hub, where a statue of Mr. Incredible stands where Walt and Mickey would be. Not too much to see or explore here, the highlights for me are the actual land entrances and the Plaza Inn area. Of course, the castle dominates the skyline here. From here, you can enter a land and enjoy the attractions.

Pinocchio’s Daring Journey

The builder went very simple here, using only black walls and ceilings with minimal sets. It seems like a very authentic way to recreate a dark ride. There is no vehicle to hop in. Instead your character is pushed along with a gentle wind technique and guided by invisible boundaries. The character appearances are fun, but I was taken out of the moment by some jarring and ill pointed camera movements. Not having some of the Pinocchio characters available, the designer was forced to use some replacement actors. Overall it made sense as a recreation, but lacked real excitement.

Snow White’s Scary Adventure

This Toy Box uses an amazing effect… your character stays put and you are switched to 1st person point of view. The cameras move along a rail automatically, so you just sit back and enjoy. This is the most dark ride like attraction I encountered. It really mimics just sitting in your vehicle and enjoying the show. The camera slowly moves from scene to scene with quick turns and no cuts. Even story dialogue appears to tell the tale. Characters come into view along the way. The first scene had bad camera placement, but the rest were good. Traveling through the scary woods was amazing. It had the perfect use of sound effects and music. Not a lot of characters, but beautifully recreated show scenes. Overall, it was about as close to perfection as a Toy Box attraction could get.

Peter Pan

This was a very clunky toy box. First off, you must have helicopter flying skills to maneuver through this one. An experienced player will be able to handle it, but many players will have issues with this. It does take away from the enjoyment of the scenes, because you have to think about what you are doing the entire time. There are also some small doors to fly through. On the positive, there is great perspective and show scenes. And the sound effects work really well. But there are zero characters. Overall,  knowing that other designers can put you on auto rails, this one is a slight miss.

Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride

 

Here you have the choice of driving or sitting back and watching. Watch puts you in first person POV and the cameras move you forward. It is very fast and choppy… just like the ride! Good sound effects use. Poor glitchy camera jumps. It kept jumping back to my character on the load platform for split seconds. Drive mode makes a car appear. I’d recommend using the Mr. Toad car disc if you have it, because it not only gives you the actual ride vehicle, it also loads the actual music and makes it more real. It is a very easy to drive course. It also forces you to push the gas in short spurts, and that helps mimic the jerkyness of the ride. There are some gags. Great sound effects. Overall, it is a boring set design that seems trapped between two ideas. Good story line. Horrible train effect, but at least they tried. The Hell scene could have been better.

It’s a Small World

Perfect atmosphere using the terrain and sky discs. There are pop-up facts that make things more interesting, although most of them are not great. You get into some Guardians of the Galaxy vehicle that is an odd choice mostly due to sounds it triggers. You then fly along the river route at your own leisure. I expected better sets, but some of them lack interesting. There are also some characters that pop up. Overall, it is a nice experience, but lacked a wow visual impact.

Matterhorn

This one was going to be intriguing, because the builder had to go above and beyond just the Matterhorn prop that is supplied in the Toy Box. It has a very nice start that gives you feel of hopping in the queue. It is all riding the rails with your character as expected. The Pros: It is a long course with lots of dips and curves. It is also very themed at end with water and pine trees like at the bottom of the mountain. There is also the perfect sound effects of wind and growls. Con: There is ZERO payoff. No glimpse of abominable snowman. No attack scene. Nothing like that. It is only riding the rails around a mountain.

Let us know your thoughts. Next time, I will review Adventure/Frontierland.

Nick LoCicero