>>102097422That's because Walt didn't go into theme parks exclusively to synergize off of his cartoons and films, but to blaze trails in a new medium. Most of the original Imagineers consisted of animators and artists from the animation studio and the crews coming off of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. It was to a point where animators nicknamed Imagineering "Cannibal Island" because Disneyland was absorbing a shitload of talent. Pirates of the Caribbean, Haunted Mansion, and all that iconic original shit from the 60s and 70s were pretty much all Marc Davis projects.
Fantasyland was pretty much the cartoon containment zone at the beginning and pretty much every other land was doing its own thing. Yeah, Adventureland started off as a riff on the True Life Adventures nature documentaries, but Jungle Cruise ended up evolving into its own distinctive entity really fast. And while people like to think "Oh Frontierland was just to shill Davy Crockett", it was more like the other way around as the Davy Crockett serial was put into production so the Disneyland television show would actually have something to represent the land in the park, as the live-action film library didn't really have any Westerns to turn into serials. Like in the original year, the only Frontierland shows they had besides Davy were chopped up versions of "So Dear to My Heart" and fucking "Treasure Island".
