Kingdom Keepers

One of the disappointing truths of the current state of the Disney companies is that they are not innovators in technology anymore. Oh, let’s be clear—some of the innovations attributed to the studio shouldn’t be; Disney did not create the first feature-length animated film. Still, there are technologies developed both to help with the filming of various movies and to create park rides that are copied by other companies and in some cases still haven’t been truly surpassed. But one of the greatest losses when Walt died was that few of his successors are in it for creation. I don’t know if the technology this series relies on for its premise is possible, but I do know it would not now come from Disney first.

Lawrence Finnegan “Finn” Whitman is one of five teenagers who have been selected to be models for Disney Host Interactive, a program wherein they are fully scanned and have holographic versions of themselves working as guides at the Walt Disney World parks. Their holograms will wander the parks and provide assistance and information to park visitors. Finn and the others start having what they think might be dreams wherein they’re walking the park at night. Elderly Imagineer Wayne Kresky, who was hired personally by Walt and still lives above the Main Street firehouse, tells them that they have been selected to fight the Overtakers, an assortment of Disney villains who want to use Walt’s magic to rule the world.

I’ll be honest, here—I haven’t read all the books. I haven’t read any of them in some time. The concept is interesting but kind of wore thin for me, and I stopped seeking them out. I grant you that I was already nearly thirty when the first one came out twenty years ago next month, but it did kind of feel as though Ridley Pearson, the author of the series, was trying to stretch an idea across more books than it needed to be. It’s an interesting concept, but it feels somewhat padded.

Pearson’s alleged observation to Wendy Lefkon, then the editorial director of Disney Publishing Worldwide, that every ride told a story, is not exactly true and where it is true not exactly groundbreaking information. There’s no story to Space Mountain, for one, nor even really such classics from the Walt era as it’s a small world. Or the carousel, which features in later books as a time portal. (Because why not.) Yes, most of the dark rides tell stories, but most of the dark rides are adapted from movies. Is it shocking that a ride about Snow White or Alice in Wonderland should tell a story?

Further, Pearson apparently refused to write the books unless he was given full access to the parks in off-hours, which was initially refused in turn. But I’m not sure you need access to them in order to fill in a lot of what appears in these books. I can tell you simply from having gone to Grad Night at Disneyland ten years before the first book came out that empty parts of the park are eerie at night, and the park was open behind me at the time. There’s a lot I think I know about the Disney parks without getting unprecedented access to the archives, that’s all I’m saying. Small wonder that Pearson’s first trip to Disney World was in 2002, nearly twenty years after his first book came out. That’s not the action of a Disney fan.