What is it with theme parks and recreating San Francisco?
My children were surprised and delighted to stumble across “Fisherman’s Grotto” during a pre-pandemic visit to Universal Studios Florida, TBI covered the Osaka version and, last August, Disneyland’s California Adventure debuted San Fransokyo, a Japanese-inflected fantasy version of our city from the movie Big Hero 6. Mid Autumn Lantern
Here’s the premise — in Big Hero 6, Japanese immigrants rebuilt SF after the devastation of the 1906 earthquake, over time giving it a distinctly Japanese-American stamp (and, I guess, the new name).
None of the areas featured in Disneyland’s San Fransokyo are featured in the film, with the exception of Aunt Cass’s Cafe, so Disney had free reign to come up with whatever they wanted. San Fransokyo is actually a rebrand of the earlier “Pacific Wharf” area, a kind of anemic mashup of Monterey and Fisherman’s Wharf that managed to make exactly zero impression on me during my prior visit to California Adventure; I literally forgot that it existed.
San Fransokyo, on the other hand, is friggin’ adorable — from the relentlessly bouncy J-pop beats that play on background, the bright Baymax-themed Japanese festival lanterns strung overhead and the ever-present familiar-but-not SFS logo plastered on signs and trash cans.
Japanese lettering, like the addition of the word “chocolate” in katakana to the lit Ghirardelli sign, add both a nice pop of color to the area and a cross-cultural ambiance that will be familiar to anyone who has spent any amount of time in Chinatown.
So will the food, which brings some SF classics, like clam chowder in a Boudin sourdough bread bowl but adds a touch of miso (to the clam chowder) or the option to have Japanese beef curry in your bread bowl instead. Dole whip notwithstanding, San Fransokyo probably has the best food across both parks (and because it’s in California Adventure, it also has beer).
There aren’t any Mission Burritos (yet?) but you can get quesabirria tacos and birria ramen. Oddly, while you’d think San Fransokyo would be the perfect place for boba, the offerings are sparse — just one thai tea drink with pearls. Maybe the drink is too Taiwanese in origin for inclusion? Unclear, but since my children are basically 40 percent boba tea based on intake, they found the omission confusing.
But they loved everything else — my eldest described it as “what she wishes SF to be,” which probably primarily reflects the K-pop and sushi-drenched teen cultural swirl her and her classmates exist in, but it’s definitely not hard to see the appeal of an SF with squeaky clean streets, a lack of fentanyl overdoses and ready access to beef curry in sourdough, despite the relentless veneer of Disneyfication atop of everything.
While the name San Fransokyo implies an equal mix of SF and Tokyo, this space is definitely mostly SF. Credit to Disney for all of the loving detail went into this area, including a recreation of the Port of San Francisco sign along the waterfront, the Fisherman’s Wharf sign (now sporting a culinarily inclined octopus, instead of a crab) and of course, the Golden Gate Bridge, which comes in the requisite International Orange, but with the torii-gate-style arches featured in the movie.
Disneyland has been gradually rolling out additional changes and food items since San Fransokyo’s launch in August of 2023, it’s unclear if there are future plans to tweak the interiors of the Ghirardelli Soda and Fountain Shop or the Boudin Bakery Tour, which remain largely unchanged from their Pacific Wharf incarnations save for the addition of Baymax-shaped bread. As both companies were fairly well-established in San Francisco before 1906, this would actually track historically (for the tiny percentage of the population that actually cares, like me).
Check it out if you’re at Disneyland any time soon and maybe lobby the Disney powers that be for better boba options (or cioppino, whatever floats your boat). I clearly loved it, although I still await a version of SF in pop culture that includes a taste of my beloved foggy avenues.
Jan Chong is a San Francisco-based parent and writer.
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