The Parks Desk Dispatch
The Pixar Tributes Hidden Inside Cars Land
Cars Land isn't just a recreation of a Pixar film, it's stacked with in-jokes about Pixar itself. Here's what's hiding in Radiator Springs and where to find it.
ANAHEIM: Cars Land is the rare theme park land built from a movie that was already computer-generated, which meant Imagineers weren’t translating hand-painted backgrounds into three dimensions so much as building a physical stand-in for a world that never had a physical version at all. It opened in 2012 as the anchor of Disney California Adventure’s five-year, $1.1 billion overhaul, and the studio note that got passed down to the design team was reportedly to make Radiator Springs feel less like a replica and more like the town had simply always been there.
Worth knowing: the painted mountain range behind Radiator Springs Racers, officially called the Cadillac Range, is a forced-perspective nod to Cadillac Ranch, the real roadside art installation outside Amarillo, Texas, where ten Cadillacs are buried nose-down in a field.
A number that shows up in nearly every Pixar film
Pixar has planted the code “A113” in the background of its movies going back to the mid-1990s. It’s the room number of the graphic design and character animation classroom at CalArts, where several future Pixar directors studied together, and by now spotting it has turned into a minor sport among Pixar obsessives. Cars Land keeps the streak alive, according to longtime Easter-egg trackers who’ve clocked it tucked into the land’s signage, though Disney has never officially mapped out exactly where, so it’s more scavenger hunt than sure thing.
A three-inch Buzz Lightyear, buried in plain sight
The Cozy Cone Motel, the row of orange cone-shaped snack stands near the Cars Land entrance, has a faux motel office at its center that guests can only view through the windows, never enter. Inside, on a desk stacked with cone merchandise, sits a half-hidden Buzz Lightyear figure, frozen in the pose from his famous street-crossing scene in Toy Story 2. It’s a quiet crossover between two Pixar productions that otherwise share nothing, connected only by the fact that John Lasseter directed both.
A neon sign for the person who made Pixar’s computers work
A few storefronts down, a lit sign reads Catmull Oil. It’s a tribute to Ed Catmull, the computer scientist and Pixar co-founder whose research made the studio’s entire visual style possible before a single frame of Toy Story existed. Placing his name on a gas-and-oil sign in a town literally populated by cars is the kind of joke that only lands if you already know who he is, which is exactly the point of an Easter egg like this one.
The town’s names aren’t random either
Luigi and Guido, the tire shop owners voiced by Tony Shalhoub and Guido Quaroni, come with an Italian pedigree baked into their design: Luigi is modeled on a 1959 Fiat 500, the “Nuova” (new) 500 that succeeded the earlier Topolino model, the car Cars 2 would later give its own separate nod to with the character Uncle Topolino. Fillmore, the Volkswagen bus who sells organic fuel next door, was voiced by George Carlin in one of his final film roles before his death in 2008, three years before Cars 2 released and roughly four years before Cars Land itself opened.
Cars Land’s opening also happened to line up with one of the more unusual nights in the resort’s recent history: Disney’s 2013 three-park, coast-to-coast 24-hour party gave a lot of visitors their first look at the land, less than a year after it debuted, with trip reports describing empty queues for Radiator Springs Racers well into the early morning.
Worth the trip from Orlando
None of this is essential viewing. You can ride Radiator Springs Racers, eat a churro at the Cozy Cone, and never notice a single reference above. But Cars Land rewards the kind of traveler who reads every storefront window, on a quick day trip and a full multi-day Disneyland Resort itinerary alike. A day in Disney California Adventure is a reasonable add-on for any Walt Disney World regular who hasn’t made the trip west, if only to see how differently the two coasts interpret the same company.