Post #640541 by King Bushwich the 33rd on Thu, Jun 14, 2012 2:36 PM

A few years after Disneyland opened in Anaheim, CA, many novelty themed motels were built along Harbor Blvd., the main street leading to Disneyland. In order to compete for Disneyland tourist business, the motels were designed and built to get attention to potential lodgers.

Anaheim Vacationland
Roadside Peek
Yesterland

But of all people who were not happy with all these attention getting motels was Walt Disney who was very frustrated with the area surrounding Disneyland. He called it a “second rate Las Vegas" and thought that the motels were tacky and garish. When he was conceptualizing a new theme park in Florida that would become Disney World, one of his desires was to have control of the land surrounding the new theme park so that all these "tacky, garish" motels would not be built so close to the park.

As the years progressed in Anaheim, many of these novelty themed motels such as the Cosmic Age disappeared and were replaced by the corporate hotel chains and their generic monolith archetectured buildings. This may have made Walt Disney happy but for some long time regular visitors of Disneyland, they felt that traveling past all the novelty themed motels along Harbor Blvd on the way to the park was part of the fun of going to Disneyland.

Meanwhile on June 17, 2012 inside the Disneyland Resort in Disney's California Adventure, A new section opens called Carsland which is based on the movie Cars. It is made to resemble Radiator Springs, the fictional Route 66 town from the movie.

Included is the Cozy Cone Motel, a novelty themed motel with attention grabbing archetecture.

The kind which Walt considered tacky and garish.

I guess this is not a reason why Disneyland sucks or rules. It should be listed in a thread called "Irony at Disneyland" but I don't feel like creating a new thread so here it stays. But another good post for the thread, if it did exist, would be the irony of the Filmore character in Carsland.