Yes, I’m a Disney nerd. Or at least a Disney theme park nerd – ever since I was a nipper I’ve found the whole Imagineering thing, the way technology meets creativity to make magic, just endlessly fascinating. I also like video games! So you can imagine why Fortnite’s new Disneyland Game Rush mode – pitched as a sort of interactive 70th anniversary celebration of the park and its most iconic attractions – immediately appealed. But after diving in for a few hours this week, hoping to come away buoyed by some Disney magic, I’ve once again found myself wondering who exactly the mega-machine of Fortnite, with its bafflingly conceived corporate collaborations, is for.
A few years back, as companies desperately scrambled to please investors by proclaiming themselves all-in on the whole metaverse thing, Disney announced it was acquiring a $1.5bn stake in Epic Games and partnering to create a “games and entertainment universe” in Fortnite. The accompanying concept art suggested it was working toward some sort of digital theme park where children and the young-at-heart could frolic in the IP fields, their lives enriched by endless experiential brand awareness. I wasn’t convinced back then, and now I’ve played Disneyland Game Rush, I feel like I’ve had a first-hand glimpse of that bewildering future.
Let me set the scene, though. Disneyland Game Rush – officially a “playful, limited-time experience for fans that brings the happiness of Disneyland Resort to Fortnite players” – is presented as something like a virtual theme park. It all starts in the plaza-like “celebratory hub” (accessed using Creative Mode code 4617-4819-8826), where you’ll find a gleaming sculpture of Sleeping Beauty’s castle in the centre and glimpses of familiar attractions – Space Mountain, the Haunted Mansion, and so on – around its perimeter. It’s all loosely reminiscent of Disneyland’s own Central Plaza; a kind of vibrant abstraction of reality that manages, at least in part, to capture some of the park’s essence using Fornite’s familiar visual language – in the way Epic has gotten very good over the years in its endless quest for total cultural absorption.
Not that you’re given much time to appreciate it. Before you can screech a single, ‘Let it gOOooooOO”, you’re whisked off for the main event – a breakneck collection of seven mini-games, all inspired by classic (and some not-so-classic) Disneyland theme park rides. Each round begins with a brisk introduction by way of a fairytale picture book – exactly the kind that used to bookend Disney movies like Sleeping Beauty and Snow White back in the day – and it’s immediately clear a decent amount of thought and effort has gone into this whole anniversary experience thing. The actual mini-games are full of fan-service – and, really, who can resist the small, self-congratulatory thrill of spotting a reference and thinking ‘I recognise this thing’?
Indiana Jones: Tomb Runner, for instance – a chaotic top-down race through a booby trooped temple against other players – begins with the deity Mara admonishing players for looking into their eyes, just as it does on the Disneyland ride. And as you dash frantically onward, slaloming through spear traps and runaway boulders, you’ll occasionally hear the eeeeh-woooo-oooohhh that plays as the ride’s jeep bounds into Mara’s cavernous domain. It’s neat!
The Haunted Mansion mini-game is particularly well done, opening in the ride’s iconic stretch room as a snippet of Paul Frees’ classic Ghost Host spiel rings out. Soon the doors spring open and it’s time to go treasure hunting – scrambling through a gloomy graveyard to the jaunty sounds of Grim Grinning Ghosts, or rampaging through the dining room as spectres waltz and whirl. And over in Space Mountain, Epic has even included the familiar loading bay – still stuck somewhere in the 70s – before players launch into space to rail-grind for victory. Then there’s the flashy, Rise of the Resistance-inspired Stormtrooper Showdown, challenging players to tear through the Death Star and murder the most Stormtroopers before the timer runs out, or Matterhorn: Slip-and-Climb and its chaotic grapple-gun alpine climb to the peak.
Admittedly, if we’re looking beyond the slick fan-service, the mini-games themselves range from mildly diverting to rubbish (and Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: Sneak Out is frankly inscrutable). And like most of the official Fortnite Creative Island collaborations I’ve experienced in the past (not a massive number, I’ll admit), there’s an ever-present sense of unpleasant jankiness, presumably as ambition strains against the available tools. Really, it’s only the gun-based stuff – Stormtrooper Showdown and the shooting-gallery-like Web-Slingers: Spider-Bot Blasters – that comes anywhere close to feeling convincingly enjoyable to play, which isn’t that surprising given the Fortnite foundation all this is built upon.
But the thing that struck me most is how little time you’re given to appreciate the attention to detail; it’s hard to describe Disneyland Game Rush as anything but chaotic brain-rot guff. There isn’t a moment when you’re not in the presence of an on-screen timer counting down the scant two minutes until you’re spat out somewhere else, lest your attention begins to wane. Every inch of the world is festooned in collectible goobers and trinkets to catch the eye and distract the brain – but I’m not sure the tweens are falling for it, given how quickly my sessions emptied. There are secret keys to find and cheap-looking rewards to unlock, and at one point everything suddenly ground to a halt for a scheduled dance party as fireworks took flight to this. It was about that time – as Homer Simpson, one of my session’s few remaining players, began gyrating purposefully toward me – I realised Disneyland Game Rush probably wasn’t for me.
Which begs the question, who is it for, if not a Disney fan and game enjoyer? I’m almost certainly not the first person to see Billy the Puppet, Leatherface, or (and I’m still not quite over this one yet) Art the Clown in the Fortnite store and feel my sense of reality slipping away. Fortnite has long been the centre of a black hole into which corporations fling their junk, no matter how misplaced, out of a vague sense it’s where things must be. And I thought I’d made my peace with that. But seeing the weirdness of this extravagant, mystifying corporate folly up close in Disneyland Game Rush – where presumably not-insignificant amounts of money are being spent on bewildering “experiences” for unenthusiastic tweens and confused adults – has clearly sent me into an existential tailspin. I am old, I have glimpsed a world I do not understand, and I may never be the same again. And now I’m even less convinced by this whole “games and entertainment universe” plan. I did like the stretch room bit though.
