Defunctland’s Disney park research goes far beyond park fandom

For someone who really loves theme parks, Disney history, and the stories behind childhood favorites, I became a fan of Defunctland way too late, but I’m so glad I did. The channel has a wonderful range of videos, from the feature-length documentaries that the channel is best known for, to the shorter, faster bite-sized dives into beloved educational children’s programs.

Created by Kevin Meineed, every video on Defunctland is sharp and funny as well as incredibly informative. And all of those things appealed to my interests, to the point where once I started watching, I had to ration them so I wasn’t just rushing through the channel in one go.

For years, Hollywood Studios was my favorite Disney World park for two reasons: first, it was originally home to a Disney animation studio that made two of my favorite Disney films (Mulan And Lilo & Stitch), and second, it has historically been a hot mess with an identity crisis that has only increased over time. But when I clicked on the American Idol Experience video, I didn’t expect that it would actually just be about Hollywood Studios, especially using this one very strange attraction as a touchpoint to really zoom in on what is historically strange and has been foreign to Hollywood Studios as a concept since its early days as MGM Studios.

That’s what Perjury does so wonderfully. He takes one specific thing – the American Idol Experience, FastPasses, the four notes of the Disney Channel theme, the Garfield dark ride – and uses it to explore not only the bigger story of whatever theme park/media property the video is about . , but also places it in a larger cultural context. What started as a YouTube series dedicated to the history of now-defunct (get it?) theme park attractions has grown into a channel with some of the most insightful cultural analysis on the web.