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.