Review: Disney's Official Park Albums Hit iTunes

Today, for the first time ever, Disney's new Official Albums for Disneyland and Walt Disney World are available for digital download on iTunes, Amazon and Disney's own online music store.

The Good News: Most of the tracks are available for individual purchase, so great new selections from both coasts such as "Radiator Springs Racers," "Test Track," "A Suitcase and a Dream" and "Be Our Guest" can be added to fans' playlists without purchasing both entire albums ($19.99 each). This is a great plus for buyers who already own most of the tracks from previous editions of the park CDs.

The Bad News (but we knew this was coming): Longer tracks (and a couple of short ones, such as Pooh) are only available if the entire album is purchased. There's no way iTunes would offer the nearly 20-minute long Fantasyland Dark Ride Suite for $1.29, after all.

Whether you call Disneyland or Walt Disney World your "home" resort, both of these albums are terrific collections of some of the best music ever produced under the Disney banner. There's actually very little duplication between the two albums. Toy Story Midway Mania, for instance, is represented by two completely different tracks on each set.

What follows is a quick overview of the collections. I'm going to assume most of you already own most of the classic tracks. If not, you can't go wrong buying both albums in their entirety.

A List of iTunes Disney Park Albums

 

Main Street's 20th Century Music Company is one of my top-priority shop visits on every trip to Disneyland. No visit's complete without a look at its selection of Park CDs.

The recent release of several Disney Park albums onto iTunes and Amazon MP3 brings a little bit of that shop's magic to the online music market. Unlike Main Street's music store, however, iTunes doesn't make it particularly easy to find all their park-related selections.

To help Disney music fans zero in on the digital albums, I've put together a page dedicated to keeping track of what's available. I certainly look forward to adding more titles as they're released!

Happy listening!

Photo by Lana Whitham

The Forever CDs: Disney's All-Time Best Souvenirs

In the late 1990's, Disney introduced a new concept in merchandising at the parks: Disneyland Forever and Walt Disney World Forever. Fans could scarcely believe the good news; Disney was opening the vaults and allowing guests to choose their favorite park music on touch-screen kiosks, and then burn their own CDs. To Disney fans, this was a Willy Wonka Golden Ticket moment.

Across the country, die-hard park fans bumped up their vacations, called in sick to work, and began scouring the internet for lists of available tracks. So much treasure to choose from!

It was all so much fun. For the next several months, whenever a co-worker or friend would mention they were headed to Disneyland, I'd beg them to do me one tiny favor, then hand them a list of music and a twenty dollar bill. Before I even set foot in the park again, I'd gotten the biggies: all the available Pirates, Mansion and Tiki Room tracks.

A very nice internet friend volunteered to obtain my requested WDW tracks and mailed the disc to me without charging anything over the cost. 'Cause Disney fans tend to be awesome.

My little collection -- I know some fans got every single track.

And when I finally got down to Disneyland in person, I was ready. Boy, was I ready. For those of us on a tight budget, the fun -- and frustration -- was in deciding which of the tracks were most important. At about $20 for each disc of ten tracks, the Forever CDs weren't cheap, and thirty second sound effect clips cost the same as eight minute ride narrations. Like many fans, I stood there at the kiosks, checking my list, creating and ordering CDs until I ran out of cash.

A typically eclectic track list

The Forever kiosks were wonderful while they lasted, but the system had its flaws. The sound files were all over the map in terms of sound quality and volume level. The system broke down a lot. And--in the end--the process of creating and ordering a CD was too time-consuming and confusing for the average park goer. Fans loved it, but most guests ignored it. Sadly, the most wonderful souvenir system to ever grace the parks disappeared.

In the years that followed, of course, the cultural landscape changed. Sharing music became easier than ever, iTunes and Internet Radio became more and more prominent, and Disney themselves, with the help of great producers like Randy Thornton, turned out some amazing park soundtracks. The release of the 6-Disc Musical History of Disneyland made, for the first time, a comprehensive collection of park music and attraction ride-throughs easily available to consumers. Recent CD releases such as Finding Nemo: the Musical and Cars Land show that Disney seems to be more aware of the public's desire to take the music and ride soundtracks home.

The Inside Cover Dedication on each DL Forever CD

In this age of digital downloads, there seems to be no reason why Disney can't bring an updated Forever System online. They could set up an expansive and wondrous online store for purchasing park music and attraction sound files. The question is, do they want to?

They should, and they should make the purchasing an event in itself. They could offer the best-quality recordings and give purchasers club points for each download to be used toward obtaining limited-release collectibles.

Disney's current top brass certainly seem to have their eyes on the future. I just hope they don't forget to bring the treasures of the past along, and use today's technology to revive a great idea.