I have a confession to make. I love Disneyland. Sure, the corporation is a large, nameless, faceless ogre that destroys everything in its path. Sure, it has worked tirelessly to restrict copyright laws (no kidding; Disney lobbied the hardest for the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act because Mickey Mouse was close to coming into the public domain), and Michael Eisner is pure evil.

But I love Disneyland. I'm a sucker for good art direction, and Disney has by far the world's best design team. They're called Imagineers and they're half production designer and half engineer. They work tirelessly to make Disneyland seem more real than real -- what Baudrillard calls "hyperreality" in his work Simulations and Simulacra, in which he uses Disneyland as an analogy for the rest of the United States: a reality filled with signifiers with no signifieds behind them.

So even if Disneyland is filled with mere illusion, I still like it. Its New Orleans Square seems more real than the real New Orelans (and it's certainly cleaner and less filled with homeless people and drunken fratboys). Walking into Frontierland is like stepping into a 1950s romanticization of the Old West. Adventureland is like walking into a 1950s idea of what the "East" must have been like: green, mysterious, full of adventure. Edward Said would have a heart attack. But then he would go on the Jungle River Adventure and everything would be okay.

No one does theming (the creation of an illusory reality based on particular architectural or historical styles) better than Disney. This is why I gasped for joy when I read at Boing Boing that someone had made thirteen CDs' worth of Disney sounds and music. A lot of these are general park soundtracks, but some of them are actual ride tracks. The older, the better. Pirates of the Caribbean and the Haunted Mansion are the best of these tracks, and it's probably no coincidence that these attractions are both located at New Orleans Square. (Here's a fun story about New Orleans Square: Club 33, the posh dining area in New Orleans Square which is invitation-only -- and the only place in the park that serves liquor -- is filled with authentic New Orleans antiques wrangled by Imagineers on Walt Disney's orders. Disney wanted Club 33 to resemble an authentic New Orleans mansion and had the Imagineers obtain real artifacts from New Orleans to populate Club 33.)

These audio tracks are great, but they open in pop-up windows, so downloading all thirteen CDs of music and sounds will be a pain in your behind.