The moment everyone has been waiting for is here, Wandering in Disney’s annual post relating classic attractions to the year’s Best Picture nominees. By annual, I mean the second time we’ve ever done this. And by “everyone has been waiting for” I mean… Well, I’m just lying. Nevertheless, I love the Disney Parks and I love movies so what better time to bring the two together than Hollywood’s biggest night! Oppenheimer, Barbie, Poor Things and the other nominees have plenty in common with Disney Park attractions. Just no one has put the pieces of the puzzle together. Until now!

I’m not going to bore you with rules here. The only caveat if you haven’t caught on already is that this is a big joke. What isn’t a big joke is the slate of movies nominated this year! I realize none of you are coming to this site for my movie takes but I like this group of nominees more than any year in recent memory. All of them are worth seeing and there may be some slight spoilers in this post, although this might be the funniest possible way to have a movie spoiled.

On a different note, several of the nominees are quite serious (Zone of Interest) and this totally meaningless post will tread lightly around those films. Anyway, go see movies! Let’s get to it.

Barbie as Storybook Land Canal Boats

No movie leapt to different worlds as seamlessly as Barbie did last year. Jumping between the Barbie Dream World to Southern California and back isn’t a hard comparison in terms of Disney Parks. The canal boats literally go from world to world while being in Southern California. Unlike being a woman, this was easy.

Past Lives as Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway

Past Lives follows two friends whose stories are tightly knit and then grow apart, with the theme of the different paths are lives can take. What attraction follows that idea better than Runaway Railway? Thankfully, Past Lives is a little more coherent than the different scenes in the attraction.

Anatomy of a Fall as Tower of Terror

Just read the title of the movie and think about the attraction. You get it. Some of these I try very hard and some are too obvious to pass up.

The Holdovers as Dinosaur

The Holdovers has such a classic story of an unlikely pairing getting left behind and trying to make the best of it. You’d think with a story like that, a comparison would come easy. Then you, and by you I mean me, realize the premise of this blog post and how dumb it is. Of course there’s no good comparison! All that to say, go with me here. In The Holdovers, our two main characters go on a trip that’s probably against what the school would like them to do. In Dinosaur, the riders and the guide take a trip that they’re explicitly told not to go on. Will someone definitely get fired? Could someone take a giant asteroid to this argument? The answer to both is yes.

American Fiction as Kali River Rapids

Honestly, this one was too hard. American Fiction is about a black writer that publishers want to write a more dramatic story for white audiences. He eventually writes that overly dramatic story under a pseudonym and it becomes a hit. How does a theme park attraction compare to that? It doesn’t! But Kali River Rapids feels overly dramatic for the sake of sympathy so we’ll roll with it and move along!

Maestro as Sorcerer Mickey in Fantasmic!

We’ll break from the rides to make the easiest connection. Both of these characters (or person, in Leonard Bernstein’s case) lose control of their own story before regaining some control in the end. Also, there’s the whole conducting thing.

The Zone of Interest as The Magic Carpets of Aladdin

Magic Carpets of Aladdin looks just fine. There’s no problems going on visually. Then the ride starts and you can hear creaking of the attraction starting and it’s very unpleasant. I’m not going to spoil The Zone of Interest but it’s a similar sensation but on a far more upsetting scale. Everyone please forgive me for making a comparison at all.

Poor Things as Frozen Ever After

There’s just not a lot of sexuality to most theme park attractions, if there was it would make a joke here much easier. That’s a sentence I never thought I’d write. Peel away all of the Poor Things sex scenes though and you find a woman who falls in love with living after being locked away and held back. It’s a Frankenstein story of sorts and more creatively told than Elsa’s story, where she’s locked away before becoming her true self. But Disney’s strongest female character is an apt comparison especially considering where else I could have taken this one.

Killers of the Flower Moon as Big Thunder Mountain Railroad

There’s a surprising amount of similarities between these two. Killers of the Flower Moon is about the horrific murders of the Osage people, done in the hope of gaining more power and money. Big Thunder Mountain is lighter than that but the Disneyland version does involve taking land away from Natives and then panning, mining and explosively searching for gold on top of a burial ground. No jokes here, just a troubling history that has spawned many different devastating stories.

Oppenheimer as Muppet-Vision 3D

Look, I could try to make a deeper connection but really all I can think of is this.

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