Every aspect of a Disney park is planned. Cast members, as Disney insists on calling them, have strict dress code (a dress code that’s finally starting to show a bit more sensitivity toward cast members, but never mind) and are never supposed to be seen going through one land in the uniform of another. (Backstage at the Disney parks is its own wonder.) The paths are subtly different. The landscaping. Even the trash cans are distinct as you cross the border from, say, Adventureland to Frontierland. And one of the most important but under recognized aspect of that is the incidental music.

Oh, it’s not as though Disney doesn’t have plenty of soundtrack to draw on, more even than there was when the first Disney park opened decades ago. It’s certainly easy enough to play score from The Apple Dumpling Gang in Frontierland and Tron in Tomorrowland. (Tomorrowland in particular has gotten far, far easier in the years since the park opened; Walt liked science but not science fiction, and practically nothing released in his lifetime can be considered science fiction.) It’s also true that a lot of the incidental music in the parks is instrumental versions of familiar songs. This is definitely true in the Esplanade, the area between Disneyland and California Adventure, which is attempting to set a mood that will be appropriate regardless of which park you’re attending.

But think about that challenge—the two parks are intended to be distinct. However, they do share a common area. An orchestrion cover of “California Girls” will make you think of California, of course, but it also has the particular styling that will feel right as you walk onto Main Street, USA. This is more than alternating music to do with one park and music to do with the other; this is putting thought into how the two flow together. And it’s doing so on a loop long enough so the cast members’ brains aren’t leaking out their ears by the end of a workday.

What’s more, with a few exceptions, there are not a lot of hard boundaries from one land to the next. At Disneyland, this is most notable along the Rivers of America, where there’s a spot that could simultaneously be seen as part of Frontierland, Adventureland, and New Orleans Square. It’s a fairly open space, too, without much in the way of sound baffling. Well enough when they’re playing, say, Fantasmic! It’s a little more challenging at three in the afternoon. And all that with the music being loud enough to notice but not loud enough to be distracting. Atmospheric, not overpowering.

From what I recall—I haven’t been in decades—Magic Mountain just played top 40 hits and had done with. After all, they weren’t going in much for immersion; they were going for “go on roller coasters all day and have something to listen to while you stand in line.” Knott’s Berry Farm tries a little, but most of their music is from other sources. The rides of Disney have their own music. If they’re based on something, the music from that is part of it, but even Star Tours and Indiana Jones have original music written for them. By an Emmy-winning composer, yet. And that music itself becomes so iconic that it ends up included in the music played in the land the ride is in.

So you’re not going to sit and listen to park incidental music unless, um, you’re like me or Anthony Pizzo. You have to have a pretty high fondness for Disney music, which we both do. For starters, you can’t run screaming from the room at the first notes of a certain earworm from the Sherman Brothers or the Swisskapolka or similar. In the park, you might not even notice it. I’m not sure how old I was when I first did, beyond one or two places where the music is louder than usual. That makes it all the more impressive that they’ve put the level of thought into it that they have.

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