The opening of Disney’s California Adventure in 2001 was a heavily promoted event, and Disney made a cocky prediction that the park would be so crowded in its first few weeks that they would have to turn patrons away, but it was a lot less popular than they had anticipated.

The park was intentionally different from Disneyland, with attractions that were geared more towards an older demographic beyond kids, even featuring references to such Disney-owned properties as the X-Games and ABC soap operas. This was a huge miscalculation that only confused people, because the Disney brand is too synonymous with family entertainment for the public to wrap their head around such a radical idea, especially when there wasn’t even any nighttime entertainment. Bob Iger later called the park mediocre and, in more CEO-like terms, a “brand withdrawal.” In 2007, Iger attempted to revitalize the park and make it into a more idealized and fantastic version of California as opposed to the cheap spoof of California that many people perceived it as. That same year, perhaps as a subtle way to differentiate it from the disaster it was in the beginning, the park’s name changed from Disney’s California Adventure to Disney California Adventure.

In my last article about California Adventure I said the park was initially divided into four different areas: Sunshine Plaza, Hollywood Pictures Backlot, Paradise Pier and Golden State with A Bug’s Land added as a fifth area a year later. In the years between 2002 and today, all five of these areas were renamed and changed dramatically, and many of its attractions were completely revamped. So in the same order that I explored each area in my last article, I will explore each of them again post-overhaul.

Sunshine Plaza was renamed Buena Vista Street in 2012 and redesigned with more of a classic 1920s L.A. feel, as the city may have appeared to a young Walt Disney back when he arrived there to start a new animation studio and eventually create Mickey Mouse. With this retheme came a replica of the Carthay Circle Theater where Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs had its world premiere in 1937, a new statue of Walt and Mickey, and several storefronts and dining locations with Disney-fied name like Oswald’s Gas & Oil and Fiddler, Fifer & Practical Café. Even Julius Katz & Sons is a subtle deepcut reference to the Alice shorts of the 1920s.

One of the complaints from the Disney fans who visited Disney’s California Adventure in the park’s early days was the lack of Disney characters, so in the years since, Disney brought a lot more of their intellectual properties front and center, starting in 2002 when A Bug’s Land opened. The unpopular Superstar Limo attraction in Hollywood Pictures Backlot (which was renamed Hollywood Land the same year Sunshine Plaza was renamed Buena Vista Street) was one of the first attractions to get completely overhauled, and they used that as an opportunity to make another Pixar-themed attraction, this time based on Monsters, Inc. In 2006, Superstar Limo was replaced by Monsters, Inc. Mike & Sulley to the Rescue!, which was a much better dark ride where you were driven around Monstropolis amidst the chaos that ensues when a human child is spotted running loose in the city. Although this ride will reportedly soon be closing down to make way for an Avatar-themed attraction.

In 2008, the Sun Wheel at Paradise Pier was redesigned with Mickey’s face and renamed Mickey’s Fun Wheel, and the Toy Story Midway Mania! attraction opened in Paradise Pier in the same year, a couple of months after it made its debut in Florida at Disney’s Hollywood Studios in Pixar Place. More Disney-fied revamps came to Paradise Pier when the Games of the Boardwalk were given new Disney makeovers, including Bullseye Stallion Stampede, Goofy About Fishin’, Casey at the Bat and Dumbo Bucket Brigade. Plus the Orange Stinger was replaced by the Silly Symphony Swings in 2010, Mulholland Madness was replaced by Goofy’s Sky School in 2011 and the dark ride attraction The Little Mermaid: Ariel’s Undersea Adventure also opened in 2011, occupying the same area that originally contained Golden Dream before that attraction closed in 2008.

But a dramatic change came to Paradise Pier in 2018 when the area was divided into two new areas: Pixar Pier and Paradise Gardens Park. Pixar Pier would replace the Games of the Boardwalk with the Games of Pixar Pier, maintaining all the rules and mechanics but giving them new Pixar makeovers, with the only old game they retained being Bullseye Stallion Stampede while Goofy About Fishin’ became La Luna Star Catcher, Casey at the Bat became Heimlich Candy Corn Toss and Dumbo Bucket Brigade became WALL-E Space Race. That same year, Mickey’s Fun Wheel was renamed the Pixar Pal-A-Round, and the roller coaster California Screamin’ was given an Incredibles-themed makeover and renamed the Incredicoaster. A year later in 2019, King Triton’s Carousel of the Sea was replaced by Jessie’s Critter Carousel, and Inside Out Emotional Whirlwind made its debut in the area that originally contained the Maliboomer, which was turned into a walkway area after the Maliboomer was dismantled back in 2010.

As for Golden State, the attractions Grizzly River Run, Redwood Creek Challenge Trail and Soarin’ Around the World are all still open to this day, but the area has been whittled down to make room for expansions from other areas. Condor Flats is now called Grizzly Peak Airfield and Pacific Wharf got overhauled as a Big Hero 6-themed shopping and dining area called San Fransokyo Square in 2023.

In 2012, much of the Golden Stare area that Bountiful Valley Farm used to occupy became the home of Cars Land, based on the Pixar film Cars. Attractions at Cars Land include the high-speed dark ride Radiator Springs Racers, the musical attraction Mater’s Junkyard Jamboree and the bumper car attraction Luigi’s Flying Tires, which ran until 2015 and got replaced by the dance-themed Luigi’s Rollickin’ Roadsters ride in 2016.

In 2018, A Bug’s Land and all of its attractions closed down to make room for the brand new area Avengers Campus, which opened in 2021 as Disney’s first Marvel-themed park area. Although it was not Disney California Adventure’s first Marvel-themed overhaul because back in 2017, the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror in Hollywood Land underwent a redesign and the building is now home to Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: BREAKOUT!, a new drop tower attraction in which Rocket Raccoon (Bradley Cooper) asks for your help freeing the rest of the Guardians from captivity by the Collector (Benicio del Toro). The whole main film cast returns to reprise their roles in this, and even James Gunn directed the cinematics.

When Avengers Campus opened, Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: BREAKOUT! was re-established as a part of that area alongside the opening day attraction WEB Slingers: A Spider-Man Adventure, which simulates the feeling of shooting webs and swinging through New York City just like Peter Parker. The area also had shops and restaurants, meet-and-greets with various Avengers, Guardians and other heroes and villains from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and a ton of Easter eggs for Marvel fans. Future attractions will include the multiverse-themed Avengers: Infinity Defense and the Iron Suit flight simulator Stark Fight Lab, both currently set to open in 2017.

After all these revamps that happened under Bob Iger’s leadership, attendance at California Adventure increased by a lot, to the point where both Disneyland and Disney California Adventure are regularly equal draws from park visitors (plus they added nighttime entertainment when the light and water show World of Color premiered over Paradise Bay in 2010). So even though it had a rocky start, Disney was eventually able to salvage California Adventure into something profitable by giving visitors what they wanted: more IP representation. Which arguably kind of makes it feel more like another Disneyland than a brand new idea. You could say Michael Eisner was thinking outside the box when he decided to do something completely different from Disneyland, and I do appreciate when Disney actually takes the same kind of bold risks that Walt Disney himself would often take, but there’s a difference between doing something new and losing track of the reason why people love you so much. Admittedly, Disney had over 60 years of setting the bar high for quality entertainment at that point, but that’s because Walt was a perfectionist who had high standards and an intuition for what audiences like. How many CEOs are there in the world like that today?