Pap the Disney Gamer's Highlights: Kinect Disneyland Adventures: Easter Egg or Honest Mistake?

At this point on Gamer Tuesday's nearly 2-year run, what else can I say about Kinect Disneyland Adventures for the Xbox 360? Very little, as a matter of fact. So why am I writing about it yet again? Because recently, I've discovered a very peculiar Easter Egg that calls out to Disneyland's cousin from the south, Walt Disney World.

For those that want a full rundown of the game as a whole, you can read my Gamer Tuesday article about it here (insert link here). The short version of it is that Kinect Disneyland Adventure sets out to recreate the full Disney theme parks experience thanks to the innovation of the Kinect motion sensor camera. One of the activities you can partake in as a brief diversion is meeting characters, taking photos with them, and getting their autographs.

Ah yes, autographs. People have mixed views on character autographs. Some completely ditch them in favor of direct interaction with the characters as well as awesome photo opportunities, while others embrace autograph books as they feel they make the experience more complete. Whatever your stance may be, Disney has set out to make it part of the experience by selling autograph books at their resorts and online store. You can get Disney Princess themed books, some that double as photo albums and some that even play music! Just the variety alone of the books can make autograph collecting fun.

The designers behind Kinect Disneyland Adventures know this when implementing said feature onto the gameplay. In order to get autographs, you must first buy autograph books (in Kinect Disneyland's case, you must buy specific books for certain characters), then you do the motion gesture of presenting the book to the character. While watching gameplay footage of this one day, I noticed something peculiar about the book the main playable character was presenting to Mickey Mouse.

The book is the basic blue one that features Mickey and the gang gracing the cover in front of the park's various icons. However, if you take a closer look at it, you will realize that the book is actually from Walt Disney World!

How so? Well, the icons shown are from each of the four parks at Walt Disney World: Cinderella's Castle for the Magic Kingdom, Spaceship Earth for EPCOT, the Sorcerer's Hat for Hollywood Studios and the Tree of Life for Animal Kingdom! It's even odder when you consider that there IS a Disneyland autograph book that displays the correct iconography: Sleeping Beauty's Castle, the Matterhorn, Grizzly Peak and California Screamin'.

So, what happened? Why does Kinect Disneyland Adventure displays imagery from its Florida counterpart when the game is supposed to celebrate all things Disneyland? I've come up with two possible stories as to why we have this autograph book in the game:

1) At the tail's end of the game's development, the artists had the simple job of applying a texture map to the model of the book to make it look more authentic to the Disney theme parks merchandise line. This was easy enough, as all they needed was to either scan in the book's cover onto the system, or download one from the internet. Some of the artists, however, got confused by the book's cover and chose the Walt Disney World instead by mistake, and by the time they had noticed the game was already nearing completion. So they left it in hoping no one would notice.

2) This is the developer's own shout out to the Florida project. Considering that both Disneyland and Walt Disney World shaped the entire theme park industry as we know it, and WDW had the great honor of being completed by Walt's older brother Roy Disney after Walt had passed away, they felt it was necessary to pay honor to that park without having to openly reference it in a Disneyland-centric game.

Whatever the case may be, this is a fun Easter Egg for Disney theme park fans to find. It goes to show that one way or the other, the Disney theme parks will always be connected to each other, either by Walt's own spirit of imagination or through shows, attractions, and characters.