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This week in Disneyland: Good news for people who love bad news

Al Lutz has posted one of his quarterly Disneyland updates at MiceAge. Allow me to sum it up for you:

The Disney's California Adventure re-make is moving forward. A "preview of coming attractions" exhibit, the Blue Sky Cellar, opens later this month in the former Seasons of the Vine theater. But Al Lutz already told you all this ten years ago, before DCA even existed, so there's no point in your seeing this stuff with your own eyes. Al Lutz is your daddy, fools! Bow down before him! The Tinker Bell meet-and-greet area is almost finished. The Rainforest Scene was removed from it's a small world and replaced with a cloying American tableau. This is what happens when you break bread with Billy Ray Cyrus and his spawn. The new Monorail cars are going back into the shop; they need windows that open. I may never get to ride one. Disney's looking into buying Sea World and Anaheim GardenWalk. Could happen, could not. To be fair to Lutz, he's always careful to deliver these predictions with a degree of equivocation, which is more than can be said for the Jim Hills of this world. Disneyland's employee cafeterias apparently suck rope. "I hate Jay Rasulo I hate Ed Grier blah blah blah." Every time Lutz uses the shopworn phrase "sharp pencil boys" I am tempted to jam one into my own eye.

THE HEROES. These are the best Disneyland bl-gs I've discovered recently. They rock the casbah; they rock the Catskills. And you should add them to your RSS feeds if you haven't already. Jungle is "101." A former cast member reminisces on his years of skippering boats down Adventureland's rivers of adventure. ("101" is Disneyland's radio code for "out of commission.") His stories and photos are pure pirate gold. The Best Possible Job. Another onetime cast member delivers thoughtful ruminations on what it meant to work at Disneyland in the 1980s, and how it helped to shape his philosophy of living. Now I really wish I'd tried harder to get a job there back when it was more than just a job. Disneyland Nomenclature. An ambitious and eminently readable attempt to translate the whole of the Disneyland experience into an encyclopedia. The author of this bl-g knows the Park backward and forward, and "welcomes nitpicking." You should also be reading Broke Hoedown and Passport To Dreams Old & New but I've told you about those bl-gs before, so that's that, right? We're cool? STYLIN', PROFILIN'. I'll be at Disneyland from Tuesday, Oct. 22 to Thursday, Oct. 24. If you see me, say howdy. I'm the one with the camera. Much as I hate to dash cold water on this trip before I've taken it, I have an awful feeling that it's the last Disneyland trip I'll be taking for several months at least. To paraphrase Bing Crosby, I'm putting my leisure fund into an iron lung. If you're facing down a financial hardship I surely hope that it proves to be brief, and that you and yours come through it whole and unbowed. I hope that we're all able to visit the Park next year, and to spend tall money on pineapple whips at the Tiki Room and cocktails at the Uva. Even the sharp pencil boys.

The Adventurer's Club, 1989-2008

Jennifer and Lisa of Those Darn Cats! have graciously received me on their podcast for a second time. I'm always thrilled to talk katnip with the kittens, though I wish this edition of Cats! was driven by something other than the premature closing of Walt Disney World's wonderful Adventurer's Club. I've tried to explain the Adventurer's Club to friends several times over the past year and have continually come up short. Finally, I simply drew up the "interests list" that the Club would have likely had, had it not pre-dated LiveJournal by sixty years: Aeroplanes, absinthe, automobile racing, Around the World in Eighty Days, Ashanti Fertility Dolls, Arthur Conan Doyle, Bits O'Biffel, bullfights, Chester Babbit Rawlinson, Colonel Critchlow Suchbench, double-entendres, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Egypt, Emil Bleehal, flying carpets, French Postcards, Gypsy Rose Lee, Handsome Hathaway Browne, Harry Houdini, hoopla, Humphrey Bogart, India, intrigue, Jean Shepherd, Kungaloosh, Marilyn Monroe, martinis, Mel Brooks, Newton Hasselcrone, Papua New Guinea, Philo B. Farnsworth, pugilism, Ray Harryhousen, ribaldlry, Robert Benchley, Samantha Sterling, screwball comedy, spelunking, steampunk, Susan B. Anthony, Teddy Roosevelt, The African Veldt, The Firesign Theater, The Himalayas, The Marx Brothers, The North Pole, The Pan-Columbian Exhibition, Tom Lehrer, Tom Waits, weasel-bats I would have kept going, but the bar napkin was only so big. Kungaloosh, my friends. May we meet again at some future hoopla. Go listen to the podcast, dammit.

You say it's your un-birthday? It's my un-birthday, too.

Oh, fine. Now Disney decides to offer free admission to its American theme parks on what Talib Kweli calls "the born days." Until about five years back, I took a birthday trip to Disneyland every year and they didn't even offer me free parking. I had to wear a big, silly pin, and cast members called me out at every opportunity, sometimes in tuneless song. Uh-huh. I see how it is. The birthday thing is part of Disney's 2009 promotional campaign, "What Will You Celebrate?" (For beginners, I think we should celebrate the end of the three-year "Year of a Thousand Dreams," a promotional campaign that was beginning to take on the character of the Hundred Years' War.) It's an ingenious move by Burbank; this loss leader will draw thousands of celebrants, surrounded by an entourage of tens of thousands of singing and hollering friends, frenemies and sycophants. The tiara industry will explode. Personally, I'm a little disappointed. I understand that Disney needs to push hard these days -- it's kind of tough to make the calliope heard over the buzzing of gas pumps and the thud of falling banks -- but I was rather looking forward to a couple of months in which Disneyland was not bedecked in gaudy flags, banners, standees and other crap. I can't recall the last time I saw the Park au naturel -- wearing nothing but its own, innate charm.

Through the Black Whole: The 1977 Space Mountain, reviewed

We'll never have another 1977. It was the year of the New York Blackout; the year that punk and disco exploded in our big, fat, stupid faces; and it was the year that George Lucas' "Star Wars" and Disneyland's Space Mountain opened within two scant days of each other. Holy shit. "Star Wars" opened on Wednesday, May 25, and Space Mountain on Friday, May 27. If there's anyone reading under this bl-g who's under the age of 30, I want you to fully understand and appreciate what life was like in those medieval times. I won't say life was better -- most popular music was every bit as trite as the new stuff, and we wore some ugly earth-toned clothes -- but listen: There was no Twitter, there was no Ain't It Cool News. There were no spoilers, so we had no idea what a Chewbacca was, or what superspace penetration felt like. Now, imagine what it was like to be ten years old in that world. That was me. I rode Space Mountain shortly after it opened -- one, maybe two weeks -- and saw "Star Wars" not long afterward at the Big Newport. Since then, I've seen "Star Wars" and its lesser derivatives so many times that I scarcely recall the emotions that accompanied my first viewing. By comparison, every time I go on Space Mountain, I feel it. From the first time I laid eyes upon it, I was awestruck by the "Mountain" itself. The John Hench-designed structure, like Oscar Niemayer's similarly-shaped Brasilia Cathedral, is the Taj Mahal of Googie architecture. In his 2003 book "Designing Disney," Hench says that the attraction's conical shape and exterior beams were dictates of the track layout. Space Mountain begged to be cone-shaped; it wanted to echo the expanding spiral of the ride inside ... In the construction of the building, the engineers selected precast concrete and steel T beams for the main roof structure. They wanted the beams facing inside the building, but I wanted them facing outside, to provide a smooth surface on the interior on which we could project images. The exterior of Space Mountain looks much the same today as it did in 1977, with a few unfortunate cosmetic changes. The second-story queue used to overlook an open-air theatre, where Da Doo Ron Ron and Kids of the Kingdom played neutered uptempo rock for same-sex couples to dance to. It was roofed over and enclosed in 1984 to accommodate "Captain EO." I don't miss particularly the theater itself, but in enclosing a space that was not designed to be enclosed, some terrific views were cut off and the queue level was awkwardly transformed from a balcony to a roof. They've never quite fixed it. Anyway, as the queue rounded the balcony, I peered down into the theater and into the two-story video arcade (would it kill them to reopen the Starcade's second level again?), and before I knew it I was inside Space Mountain for the first time. I can clearly remember its silver, diamond-shaped hallways, antiseptic blue rubber flooring, and the constant, nerve-wracking audio drone that still plays inside the Mountain today. ("You are go for Earthside launch.") I remember peering into the "sneak preview" windows -- walled over in the recent refurbishment -- and watching the green-glowing "rockets" whip past. I started to get nervous. By the time the queue reached the expansive "Space Port," I was ready to launch into orbit without help. The tight spaces, low lighting and that everlasting ambient wash of voices and synthesized bleeps do an outstanding job of building tension. (You're barely aware of the queue today; thanks to FastPass, they run you through it at a sprint.) At the head of the line I asked for, and got, a front row seat. I raised my hands aloft through the first lift hill (red arrows pointing the way upward), the "meteor tunnel" (also changed in the last refurb) and an early iteration of the second lift hill (very low-tech, with blue-tinted mirrors creating a "to-infinity" effect. Then the coaster reached the top of the Hench's cone, and my hands slammed down on the handrail and stayed there. If you've never been on Space Mountain and aren't sure you're brave enough to try it, here's a test which you can do in your own home. Simply spin in place for a minute or so, then shut your eyes and fall to the floor. (Or do as I do: Drink an excess of gin shortly before bedtime.) This will result in a disorientation that feels something like floating, ass-over-teakettle, in a weightless void. Disney's Imagineers simply figured out a way to replicate that sensation for 2,100 riders per hour. The new Space Mountain, gutted and reconstructed in 2004, is so much like the old that there's little point in comparing the two. The track was exactly rebuilt and the effects updated. The "com chat" is the same, and the space port looks more beautiful than it ever did. In the final analysis, though, it affords the exact same experience I had three decades ago. I still feel the same fear, joy and wonder as I once did. For an attraction that predates some 90 percent of the parkgoers who queue up to ride it again and again, that's nothing short of remarkable. There is more I could tell you about Space Mountain 1977, but it wouldn't mean all that much to you. I could tell you that the on-ride soundtrack -- both the current Michael Giacchino composition and the Dick Dale vamp that preceded it -- was not part of the standard equipment the ride came with; it was added in 1997. I could tell you about the all-too-brief period when the ride's exit was themed to "The Black Hole." I could tell you about how it felt to exit the building without being forced through a souvenir shop. But none of that is what makes Space Mountain great. Disneyland's Space Mountain is "Star Wars" and punk rock and "Saturday Night Fever" and the New York Blackout, all made one single, glorious whole. It's all about believing, just for a moment, that you are riding the engine at the center of the universe. At that moment, you are ten years old, like me.

This week in Disneyland news: Guest Day on the MMC

DISNEY Those Darn Cats!, the only Disney podcast that you'll ever need to pour into your delicate ears, recently had me as a guest. Little old me! Can you believe it? Now, by "recently," I mean that it went up last night, and by "had me as a guest," I mean that Jenn and Lisa humored me as I stammered nervously through a 40-minute Skype call, fighting back a hangover and forgetting some 70% of what I intended to say. I even forgot the name of my favorite Disney's California Adventure attraction, the dreamy Soarin' Over California, for ten to fifteen torturous seconds. Next time I'll be better prepared. Maybe I'll even write something down beforehand. Gaffes aside, I enjoyed our chat thoroughly. Jenn and Lisa keep Disney bl-gs whose tone is very much in line with mine -- Broke Hoedown and My Life on the WDW D List, respectively -- and it was all kinds of fun to geek out for a while. Few of my friends and associates know how deep my Disneyland jones goes, and it's not often that I get to babble about My Weird Theme Park Thing. And oh mai oui, I babbled. Like a god-dammed brook. Babble babble. Anyway, the podcast is here. I'm unlikely to listen to it again -- I hate the sound of my recorded voice, always have -- but you ought to give it a listen. Once again, I thank Jenn and Lisa for having me as a guest, and I hope it won't be the last time they do. Plus, I hope my mom and my sister forgive me for not giving them a shout-out, as I did my dad. And I hope that you, savage reader, fully understands that I was hung over. Six Negronis, virtually no food. I make my Fun Land wherever I can, sweetheart. "OH YEAH ... EXPLAINING MY POSITION." If you've found me through the podcast, welcome. Before you proceed any further, please read the disclaimer in the sidebar. The one about dirty words. For your convenience, here are my positions on Disneyland and DCA: 1. Favorite Disneyland attractions, present day: Pirates of the Caribbean, Space Mountain, Haunted Mansion, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, The Temple of the Forbidden Eye, The Enchanted Tiki Room, it's a small world and the Disneyland Railroad. These are a must for every visit, and I'll enjoy them all even if it takes me all day to do it. 2. Favorite DCA attractions: Soarin' Over California, Disney Animation, the Sun Wheel, California Screamin', the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. I haven't rode Toy Story Midway Mania yet. 3. My position on the it's a small world redux: Opposed to the removal of the Rainforest Scene; ambivalent to the addition of Disney's animated characters. I'll wait. I'll see. 4. On the money: Admission prices are fair. Food prices are not. The Cast Members are underpaid. Outdoor vending is fine, in moderation. So-called "merchandise events" are tacky and may end up killing the Park. Locals shouldn't get admission discounts. 5. Management: The "nebulous cloud of idiot" I refer to in the podcast doesn't refer to people, but to bureaucracy and red tape. I don't think accountants should be castigated for doing their jobs. I think upper management should be castigated for fostering an environment where everyone feels like they need to cover their asses to stay employed. Also, I stole the phrase "nebulous cloud of idiot" from Tristan Farnon, who'd probably kick my junk into orbit if he knew where and how I was using it. BEAUTY, EH? The big news out of Disneyland this past birthday week actually was kind of big: The Sleeping Beauty Diorama is coming back. The walk-through attraction was closed in 2001 under mysterious circumstances -- some say post 9-11 fears, but most say the Mouse was too cheap to make the attraction ADA-compliant -- but the upcoming release of "Sleeping Beauty" on Blu-Ray has apparently stirred Burbank's financial and creative will. According to Disney's press release: The crafting of the 1957 walkthrough show fell to Walt Disney Imagineer Ken Anderson and animation art director and color stylist Eyvind Earle, credited with giving the motion picture “Sleeping Beauty” the distinctive and colorful look of storybook illustrations in medieval style. An entirely new look appeared in 1977 when the attraction’s redesign featured miniature dioramas, including moving figurines similar to the window displays in the shops on Main Street, U.S.A.

When the attraction is unveiled later this year, the “show” will differ from the dioramas of the 1980s and ‘90s, returning to the unique style of the original 1957 show and motion picture. Enhanced with new scenes and special effects magic, the re-Imagineered attraction will employ technology not available in the 1950s to represent scenes from the story of Sleeping Beauty, including the magic of good fairies Flora, Fauna and Merryweather, and the more sinister spells of the evil Maleficent.

They had me at "we're bringing back Eyvind Earle." Look at the picture at the top of this article. Not only is it a stunning representation of the six-Negroni party I attended last week, but it's a breathtakingly beautiful piece of art. The promise of seeing Earle's distinctive work at Disneyland again is exciting indeed. By the way, Imagineering figured out the ADA angle: They're creating a "virtual walk-through" -- probably a home theater kind of deal, like the one they made for the Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage. It will be located in one of the former castle shop spaces. I will repeat that: Disneyland is closing retail space to expand an attraction. If I close my eyes and hold my breath, I can pretend that the 1990s never happened. YOU GOT NO REGARD FOR "THE MIDDLEMAN." And by God, you ought to. The Javier Grillo-Marxuach show mixes the best parts of "The X-Files," "Get Smart," "Doctor Who," "The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai," "Moonlighting" and even "Igby Goes Down" into the smoothest, creamiest, punchiest, most est-iest comic sci-fi concoction you've ever ingested. Don't believe it? Read what I wrote about the show in my other crappy bl-g. That'll show you. I've no idea why Disney chose to dump their best new show since "Pushing Daisies" into the tweeny ghetto of ABC Family, but it's there now and it needs your eyeballs to stay there. Get a free taste of the show here, and then start watching it Monday nights at 10. Don't risk the wrath of Ida.

Happy Birthday, Disneyland

Walt Disney's original Magic Kingdom -- the mf'n OGMK! -- celebrates 53 years of intergalactic theme-park dominance today. Felicitations, Big D. We like you, we love you, we want some more of you. Also celebrating today: "Linus and Lucy" composer Vince Guaraldi is 79, "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" star Donald Sutherland is 72, singer/actor/punchline David Hasselhoff is 55, "2046" director Wong Kar Wai is 51, indie-dance munchkin M.I.A. is 30 and Boing Boing editor/sci-fi author Cory Doctorow is 36 -- really? Only 36? Or is that the age of his most current backup? Art Linkletter is 95 today. He worked at the Park on his 43rd birthday. You're hardcore, Art. I am celebrating this occasion as I usually do: Wishing I were at Disneyland, then catching myself: "Nah, it'll be way too crowded." Every July 17, there's a moment when I think, hey, I could get a standby flight and be in line for Pirates by happy hour, a perfectly-chilled Dole Pineapple Whip in hand. The grim reality is that I'd be lucky to get into the parking structure. If the day visitors don't load the Park to capacity by 1 p.m., then the passholes* surely will. If you're going to Disneyland today, you lucky so-and-so, do make your visit count. Remember that it's a genuine miracle that the place happened at all. * Not you, of course. I mean them other passholes. Let's git us a shovel and whup 'em.

The operator with his pocket calculator: The wonderful world of 'Wall-E'

DISNEY/PIXAR I know, I know. I'm really late to the "Wall-E" love jones. Like many of you I think it's a masterpiece, a film for the ages. But as I watched the film a couple of weeks back, I wasn't thinking of the history being made before my eyes, but of something a friend of mine once said. My dear friend Gregory, a teacher and poet now living in New York, is the very definition of a hard sell. He's read a mountain of books, has worked as an art critic and has seen nearly every film made between 1888 and last week. (He also has a wicked geek streak, having been raised on Golden Age comics and sci-fi.) He approaches every piece of art completely impartially and very much in a "show me" state of mind. I am happy to say that Gregory appreciates Pixar. When first we saw "Toy Story," he shook his head in admiration -- not at the animation, but the script. "They just told the story," he said. "You don't see a lot of that these days." Meaning: No fart jokes, no excess of pop culture references, no ham-fisted moralizing. Other studios, including (recently) Disney, make animated films; Pixar makes animated fables. Their stories are every bit as compelling when told around a campfire. Just as "The Incredibles" took the superhero film and distilled it down to Only The Stuff We Wanted to See, so "Wall-E" refines the dystopian sci-fi epic down to the elements that matter. The story of a lowly trash-compacting robot who falls in love, "Wall-E" rolls over the ground once trod by Stanley Kubrick, Will Smith and Mad Max, but it makes those references seem coincidental. You're so caught up in the flow of the story -- and cowed by the astonishing visuals -- that you hardly notice the landmarks as you pass them by. Like Wall-E himself you are in love, and the world around you is a warm blur. I'm fairly dying to find out what Gregory thinks of "Wall-E." It is rich with elements that Gregory is passionate about -- dystopian sci-fi, silent film, visual poetry. And it simply tells the story. May we never become tired of Pixar's ability to do that.

Irons and Wine: 'Seasons of the Vine,' reviewed

Jeremy Irons, we knew you when. We knew you when you worked on indie films with Cronenberg and Soderbergh. We knew you when you gave the needle to Sonny von Bulow. We knew when your name wasn't synonymous with crap like "Die Hard 3" and "Dungeons and Dragons." We knew when you gnashed your teeth and bit the recess lady's breast. How can we forget? And, we knew you when you went to Disneyland. Irons has done three voice acting jobs for Disney of which I am aware -- the voice of the Von Bulow-like Scar in "The Lion King," the narration of Spaceship Earth (now replaced by Dame Judi Dench), and the narration of "Seasons of the Vine," a now-defunct short film at Disney's California Adventure. (He also appeared as H.G. Wells in "From Time to Time," a Circlevision 360 film that ran at the Magic Kingdom parks in Florida, Paris and Tokyo. Sadly, I never had the chance to see it firsthand.) The first two voice jobs are listed in Irons' CV on the IMDb. The third is not, even though it is an actual, live-action short film. Let's clear about this: Irons' IMDb listing includes instructional videos, video-game work and even his "Comic Relief" appearances, but not a film that ran at a Disney theme park for seven years. The reason for this apparent oversight is simple, and embarrassing: No one knew it was there. "Seasons of the Vine" had the dumb luck of being in the most anonymous part of Disney's least-attended and most-maligned American park. It had little in the way of visible signage, was barely mentioned in park maps and promotional materials ... and no thanks to some truly baffling operational choices, it was almost never open. ("Seasons" wasn't run by the attractions division, but by foods -- which meant that in order to get into the attraction, most days you had to find someone from the nearby wine bar and cajole him or her into letting you in.) "Seasons" is gone now. Its former space is soon to be occupied by a "coming attractions" showcase like that which used to sit on Main Street (next door to the Hills Bros. Coffee House/Town Square Cafe, which really needs to come back). While I readily understand why a short film about wineries didn't appeal to a crowd that was largely too young to drink it (and the prospect of a new Disneyland Showcase is exciting indeed), I do miss the film terribly. It offered a respite from the day, it put me in the mood to hit up the nearby wine bar, and by golly, it was a good Jeremy Irons movie. Much better than "Kafka." Gorgeously photographed in the heart of California wine country on Robert Mondavi's nickel (the winery dropped its sponsorship of the attraction soon after DCA opened), "Seasons of the Vine" is a perfect example of Disney's gift for the candy-coated sell. It reminds me of the films that debuted with EPCOT Center -- the lyrical "Impressions de France," the fanciful "Magic Journeys," the epic "Symbiosis." Every one of those films sells something -- paycheck environmentalism, Parisian vacations, Kodachrome -- but they do so in such an artful way that the golden glow of the medium lingers after the message had faded. As "Impressions de France" does for Le Tour Eiffel, "Seasons" makes you feel simply great about living in a world with winemakers in it. I don't know how long the above video link will remain valid, but it shows the entire film. Obviously the effect is somewhat diminished when viewing it at home without the promise of a glass of wine in your future, but at least one of those problems is easily rectified. Enjoy Irons' relaxed, avuncular narration; it's the warmest reading I've ever heard from him. "A celahbraaation of liiiife." To achieve it, he surely must have had a few. Also, give a receptive ear to Bruce Broughton's score. The Emmy-winning composer has penned his share of memorable themes fro the American West (most notably for Lawrence Kasdan's "Silverado"). "Seasons of the Vine" is very much part of that tradition -- after all, the vintners who took California's wineries to victory in the 1976 "Judgement of Paris" were also cowboys after a fashion. And though the film never mentions that fateful wine tasting, the Spanish and French elements of the score tip their hat to it as they weave in and out of one of the Copland-like Yankee Doodle compositions at which Broughton excels. The music, available on the official Disneyland/DCA soundtrack album, is all that's left of "Seasons of the Vine." Most people don't miss it; even the rose-colored lens of Yesterland dismisses it as "just a film." Maybe so. But I'll tell you this: I hear Irons and Broughton in the back of my head every time I walk into a wine shop or cellar. And when I savor a glass of wine on my palate, I now think of the journey it took to get there. I almost never think of "Dungeons and Dragons," no matter how drunk I get.

This week in Disneyland news: Promote Al Lutz!

All of a sudden the flume levels rise, the lines shorten, the Abominable Snowman cries "Maria!" and Walt's frozed-up head raises an insouciant eyebrow! Al Lutz has filed an update! The longtime Disney gadfly used to post his Disneyland insider reports weekly, even daily -- I see what you did there in Usenet, Mr. I Can Has Churro -- but, like me, he's dropped down to a monthly (sometimes quarterly) publishing schedule. Even as the hardcore, straight-edge Disney geeks hit the popcorn-strewn front lines to issue their reports of freshly-painted railings and perceived executive malfeasance, Lutz hangs to the rear of the company, wringing his hands and wondering What Hath Eisner Wrought. Lutz has, ah, been doing a hell of a lot of wringing lately. He's steadily becoming more difficult and less enjoyable to read. It used to be that you could count on Lutz to make you want to be at Disneyland -- either to enjoy yourself, or drive out the feckless middle-managers that took over the Park in the early 1990s. He even managed to position his one-sided feud with Paul Pressler -- quite possibly the most clueless man ever to don the mouse ears -- in a positive light, with his "Promote Paul Pressler" campaign. Judging from this week's update, he's no longer of a mind to promote much of anything: "Toy Story Midway Mania" is "a nice addition to (Disney's California Adventure)" with a "surprisingly reliable" ride system. "This was never meant to be an E Ticket," says Lutz, and as a second-tier attraction it is merely "living up to the goals set out for it by its designers and budget." Wow. Gee. I can't wait to see it; he makes it sound so ... adequate. "There is ... some evidence that perhaps (Walt Disney Imagineering) over-thinks some things they put into the parks." That's in reaction to a themed fast-food stand. Also: "Imagineers love to say that the magic is in the details, but sometimes they can be far too obscure to matter much." That's a man who's been writing about Disney for too long. Every piece he's written about DCA has related to the park's lack of creative detail. I never thought I'd read the words "Imagineering over-thinks" in one of his DCA pieces, or at least not so close together. There's more to the update, but honestly, I don't have the heart to slog through it again. It's as depressing a document as I've ever read about the Happiest Place on Earth. Hell, I'd rather go to Kafkaland, giant freaking cockroaches and all, than go to the park Al Lutz has been describing in his recent posts. "Gregor Samsa awoke to find that he'd been turned into a surprisingly reliable ride system." In any case, here are a few people who rode "Toy Story Midway Mania" and didn't feel the need to damn it with faint praise. LA Times funster Brady McDonald calls it "addictive" and "excellent." After a slow start, Laughing Place's Doobie Moseley comes around: "(If) I had to pick one ride to go on 5 times tonight, Toy Story Mania would probably be in the top 3." And the OC Weekly's Gabriel Ryan hates Disneyland, yet loves the new ride. I wonder what I'll think of it. Three more months, Mr. Lutz. Try not to harsh my mellow so much until I'm able to check out the new ride myself. I AM LEGION ... ER, LINCOLN. Peter Hartlaub of the San Francisco Chronicle rates "The Worst Disneyland Ride(s) of all time." He names "The Hall of Presidents," "Country Bear Jamboree" and "it's a small world," which tells me two things about him: 1) he thinks that one lone president equals a "hall," and 2) he hasn't queued up for "Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage." (For the record, Hartlaub counts "Captain EO" as the second-best Disneyland attraction of all time, which is just perverse enough to make me like him.) SOME LIMPNESS CAN'T BE CURED WITH LEVITRA. Comedy writer Ken Levine has posted a sweet-smelling fart of a Disneyland humor piece over at the Zsa Zsa Gabor Post. He starts off strong -- "Since becoming an adult, this was the first time I was ever there without kids or a joint" -- but soon descends into a series of one-liners that fall flat without rimshots. Best in show: "Gas prices are so high that for the Autopia, the cars are now just being pushed by Disney employees." G'night, ladies and germs! Tip your server! COME HOME, GEORGE LUCAS; ALL IS FORGIVEN. The Orlando Sentinel reports that a Florida man is suing Disney for discrimination: He refused to shave his beard, which he keeps for religious reasons, to fit the theme parks' grooming code. It amazes me that Disney would refuse to hire anyone willing to work for Mickey Minimum, but to paraphrase George Carlin, only terrorists have beards. Disney executives have whiskers. OUGHT TO BE THE THIRD GATE. Daveland and the Daveland Bl-g rule all known ass. They make me want to be at Disneyland. Imagine!

Adventure Thru Kerned Space

Click to embiggen. Using Wordle technology, I created this lovely word cloud using the ride script of "Adventure Thru Inner Space." I borrowed the script from Steve Wesson's terrific Atommobiles.com site; I hope he doesn't mind. Mr. Wesson created the virtual "Inner Space" ride-through that made the rounds a few years back; it's absolutely worth tracking down a copy whether you're a fan of this defunct Disneyland attraction or not. No less august a geek personage than Wil Wheaton has bestowed his blessing upon it. As for my word cloud -- I'm finding somebody to put that sucker on a t-shirt. That's all there is to it. The period between the 1964 New York World's Fair and the 1982 opening of EPCOT was a particularly inspired time for Disney attraction scripts. They contained big words and clever turns of phrase, two notions that don't seem to have a lot of traction in the theme-park world these days. Many thanks to YSG compatriot Greg Dunlap for introducing me to Worldle, and consequently sucking up half my free time today.

This week in Disneyland news: Ay, chihuahua

Toy Story Midway Mania, the first new attraction to open at Disney's California Adventure since the last one, debuts on June 17. Presumably, there are press/cast member previews happening even now. Soooooome-where out there... I am not in Anaheim to enjoy those preview rides, and I have a lot of blame to spread around for that. I blame the Hollywood elite for not making me a half-a-millionaire. (Option me, Jerry Bruckheimer! Go easy, though, it's my first time.) I blame Disney for not hiring me out of high school, despite my long hair, insouciant manner and lack of a social security number. I blame society, because society is always good for a shitload of blame. But these are quibbles. For the most part, I place the blame on the rising price of oil. I just can't afford to jet from Seattle to Anaheim and expect to keep myself in the manner to which I've become accustomed. I imagine that Disney must be looking at spiraling oil prices and wishing that they'd subsidized that Anaheim-to-Vegas bullet train years ago. Disney has no problem filling both parks with discounted locals and "passholes," but it's the out-of-towners that feed the kitty by staying in local hotels, scarfing down overpriced meals and shelling out for three-day admissions. Disney is putting up a brave front, but I imagine that the face concealed underneath that big plastic Mickey head has a furrowed brow and an expectant look. Toy Story Midway Mania's big moment isn't going to be hobbled by Borderline Bankrupt Mountain or the Crispy Studios Tour. Improbably, it's going to be bit by the hand that feeds it. THE VON DRAKE REPORT, NOW IN 3-D! Google Earth has created a three-dimensional model of Walt Disney World. That in itself is wonderful -- but using Ludwig Von Drake, Disney's first hipster nerd (sorry, Cory Doctorow), to give the necessary tutorial pushes it into the realm of the sublime. I PROMISE TO WAIT UNTIL MILEY'S SCANDAL FINALLY BREAKS. Selena Gomez, a star of one of the Disney Channel original series that I don't watch because I'm not a 14-year-old girl, recently told Extra that she plans to abstain from sex until she's married. It's astonishing that she should even have to make this sort of thing explicit to the celebrity press, but y'know, Lohan. Cyrus. Aguilera. Spears. Disney execs must pine for the days of Doreen Tracey, when ex-Mouseketeers waited until they had cleared their twenties to go NSFW. BEFORE THEY INTRODUCED MUSTACHE RIDES. Vintage Disneyland Tickets has posted "The Disney Look," a 1970s-vintage Cast Member handbook detailing the Park's cosmetic dos-and-dont's. Good news: I can have an afro, as long as it's "neatly packed and shaped." NEXT WEEK'S "MOMENT OF ZEN." Terry McAuliffe, Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman and former head of the DNC, is going to Disneyland. Disney should hire him to campaign for Disney's California Adventure, which has yet to win the popular vote. DANCE THE APOCALYPTO. In the furor leading up to the release of "Wall-E," the Disney bl-gosphere has been negligent in promoting this little gem. Surely there was an easier way to get even with Mel Gibson and the makers of "Underdog." As is customary in the wars between Hollywood titans, the public pays the ultimate price: $10 a head and 90 minutes of their lives, just to have their humanity cruelly mocked.

Living next door to Alice

Via Cartoon Brew: Lovely downbeat techno tracks built entirely of samples from "Alice in Wonderland." A mad tea party, indeed. The producer's name is Pogo, and I hope he has an entire stack of classic Disney movies on DVD upon which to experiment. Download the above track, and three more, free of charge here before Disney's lawyers smack the fair use out of him. Also: It's good to be Jack Sparrow. "Dear Piratehouse Forum: I ne'er figgered I'd be writin' ye, bein' but a shy lad at a small Midwestern college, but..." And finally: Ain't that about a bitch?

The VMK Death Watch continues

To be honest with you I haven't been visiting much lately. Maybe a couple of times a month. Sometimes I'll get into a pattern of visits whenever they're giving away something nifty or whenever I get to missing Disneyland more than usual. On those occasions, Disney's Virtual Magic Kingdom - a free, Second Life-style online community based on Disney's theme park properties - is a godsend. It's a fishbowl and a toybox and a ViewMaster reel and all other manner of good things, and looking at it calms me down. Many times I've been content to simply stare at VMK, marveling at its friendly, colorful design and observing how players related to the environment. Some are consumed with the acquisition of in-game prizes, while too many others try to form meaningless boy-girl matchups (I had to turn off friend requests after a while to avoid them.) But I found that most players were like me - they weren't there to win prizes or make connections, but simply to get the feeling of a Disney park. Players sat on benches and took in the scenery or danced in front of the "Castle" at closing time, delighted simply to be "in Kingdom." Disney's decision to shut down VMK down permanently on May 21 illustrates perfectly why the entertainment giant can't get a Google-sized fire started on the web. Disney Online spokesman Seth "Yavn" Mendelsohn claims that VMK was created only to promote Disneyland's 50th anniversary celebration in 2005 - the single-most successful promotion the Park has ever seen, an event that really didn't need the help. "VMK was a valuable part of the Disneyland 50th Celebration, but it was never meant to live on forever," Mendelson wrote. "It's now time to focus our resources on our new virtual worlds." Meaning: We don't have the time or the resources to support a game that doesn't have a paid membership structure. Or our contract with Sulake ran out. Or we're tired of chasing down hackers and people who put their VMK prizes on eBay - to say nothing of policing the developing hormones of thousands of tweens. The real reason for the shutdown probably isn't important; the company has made up its mind, and once that happens it's only a matter of time the Peoplemover becomes the Rocket Rods. Besides, we'll never know what forced Disney's hand; the Mouse has mastered the art of non-transparent "transparency," in which they justify their unpopular decisions by citing a valid reason that ultimately doesn't matter in the final analysis. It's like blaming a house fire on the existence of matchbooks. Disney was likely unprepared for the outpouring of protest that followed Mendelson's announcement. Message boards and bl-gs have exploded with anger and disappointment; a petition has sprung up; and even Motley Fool columnist Rick Munarriz, one of the fondest friends the Mouse has got in the investment world, has tasked Disney over the decision. (By comparison, the recent debut of Disney's "Pirates of the Caribbean"-themed online world has made scarcely any impact at all. Game reviewer Alice Liang damned the game with faint praise: "If you're looking for a hardcore experience, you'll be sorely disappointed ... Outside of finishing the story-quests and general tomfoolery, there isn't much to do." Curiously, the same could be said of VMK, but users don't seem to mind.) It's logical that Disney should want to roll its VMK audience into "Pirates" or "Faeries" or "Toontown," but they need to understand a couple of important things. The audience can't be rolled from one property to another, and more importantly, they have only themselves to blame for that failing. It would be one thing if Disney had presented VMK as a simple trivia game or community site, but they did more than that: They offered up VMK as another Disney theme park. They didn't close Disneyland Paris when it was struggling, and it just made a profit, like, last week. The free play doesn't matter to players as much as the ability to visit a Disney theme park from their home, study hall or office. As of today you've got just under a month to shrink yourself into the Inner Space shop, launch fireworks over the Castle, photograph animals from the Jungle Cruise, capture ghosts at the Haunted Mansion or simply sit on a Main Street bench at the end of a long day in the real world. I'm no corporate strategist - but I don't think you need to be one to know when you're going against the will of your customer base. In creating VMK, Disney re-created the Disneyland experience in a new and wholly engaging way, and engendered brand loyalty. In killing it, they're telling an entire segment of their online audience that their wants never mattered. Welcome aboard the Rocket Rods.

This week in Disneyland news: The curse of the camera-phone zombies

Here's the news: I was at Disneyland exactly one week ago. May not be a big deal to the Southern Californians and Central Floridians who constitute nearly eighty percent of this bl-g's readership, but for those who don't live in a Disney Park state (literally- or metaphorically-speaking), it's kind of a big deal. I went to Disneyland, boys and girls! This isn't me sitting in a Seattle coffeehouse, ruminating over how awesome it would be to be at Disneyland right now; this is field work! Unfortunately, I mistimed my visit and caught the spring break attendance bounce head-on...and with scarcely two days to visit, a lot of attractions/lands got short shrift. The Matterhorn broke down just as I got near the head of the line. I missed the Enchanted Tiki Room (how? why?!) and its corollary, the Dole Pinapple Whip. And I didn't go on a single Fantasyland dark ride. Luckily, I did manage to do the holy trinity of Indy/Pirates/Mansion, got on Space Mountain twice and caught Soarin' Over California just before I had to fly out. Pinapple whip or no, that should be enough to hold me for a few months. Now, I know it's customary in the Disney bl-gosphere to write long, detailed "trip reports" that feature an itinerary of every attraction experienced, annotations on every meal consumed and itemized lists of every souvenir purchased. Once I read one that even listed the bathroom breaks, and notes on the cleanliness thereof. I ain't gonna do that for three reasons: 1) Trip reports by people you don't know are bloody boring; 2) why God why; and 3) my friend Greg D., a Disneyland virgin until last week, wrote a pluperfect first-timer analysis that neatly sums up how I feel about the Park, and also humanity in general. I quote it here with his permission: The rides are super-cool (and) the focus on theatricality and experience over G-forces is refreshing. Some really, really well-done classic theater effects in play, like the enormous room in Pirates so that the cannons really have a chance to echo when they go off. However, outside the rides the park is fairly insufferable, mostly due to the teeming masses of people. You know, you're in that ante-room in Haunted Mansion waiting to go in, and everything is staged really fantastically - the flashing "invisible" paintings, the rain in the windows - but it's really fucking hard to maintain any kind of mood when you have 200 people packed together and half of them are texting their business partners/fuck buddies/moms. "DUDE IM IN HAUNTED MANSION." It's worse than those assholes who get on their cell phones and wave behind home plate at ball games. Also flash photos during rides. Also stroller-pushing moms who feel they have the right of way in every situation. Also screaming children. Etc etc etc. Favorites: Space Mountain (has almost nothing to do with the coaster and 100% to do with the experience) Haunted Mansion Pirates Also enjoyed some smaller rides like Winnie The Pooh. At some point I decided that any dark ride would be worthwhile and I wasn't wrong. Didn't make it on the Matterhorn, which was my only regret. In comparison, Universal Studios is a total pile of fucking shit. I would add something to that, but I haven't been to Universal Studios in years. Welcome to the cult of the Mouse, Greg.

It's a sacrosanct world after all

I'm not in the habit of apologizing for long gaps between bl-g posts. I make my living as a writer - eight or more hours a day, five to six days a week. When I come home at night all I want to do is hit the gym, drink some sneaky pete and forget that the Web exists. But some nice people have inquired about the status of this bl-g in recent weeks (and not just my dad, though even he has chimed in), so I offer this stopgap post until I'm able to get back into the regular habit of making posts. And I am sorry, savage reader. Thanks much for your encouragement and compliments; it means a hell of a lot. I do feel like I should offer comment on the big news out of the Park this month: The controversial rehab of it's a small world that's currently in progress. There's a rumor going around the bl-gs that this nearly year-long rehab will add a few of Disney's animated characters to the ride-through dollhouse. They'll be designed to match the attraction's existing aesthetic, created four decades ago by the great pop artist Mary Blair. (In the case of "Alice in Wonderland," the Imagineers will actually be able to use some of Blair's concept art.) I think it's a wonderful idea, but the Disneyland fan community's take on it runs from indifferent to hostile. Never mind that it will freshen a ride that bores virtually everyone between the ages of eleven and thirty-five; never mind that it will grant badly-needed extra exposure to characters that - let's face it - are less relevant to today's kids than Miley Cyrus; never mind that the addition of storybook characters will only enhance the attraction's pop-up book charms. But haters will hate, y'know, and I have to respect their views even if I'm usually at a loss to understand where they're coming from. That being said, I am in lockstep with the haters in denouncing one rumored change: The removal of the "rainforest" scene in favor of something USA-themed. All political considerations aside (the Blair family called it "misplaced patriotism," in a vitriolic open letter that may do more harm than good), the rainforest is one of the loveliest set pieces in the attraction. Its color temperature is markedly different from the rest of the attraction - cool and blue as opposed to warm and pink - and the long, softly-waving strands of plastic that hang from the ceiling to approximate falling rain remain an ingenious effect after 44 years. The colors and "rainfall" give the set the character of an undersea world (which, fittingly, is the very next scene). It gives badly-needed contrast to the sunny scenes that precede and follow it, and it represents a part of the world whose existence needs to be made manifest in every little way possible. The real rainforest is falling victim to manifest destiny even as we speak, and it needs all the good publicity it can get. It may not be happening at all. Disney has not confirmed or denied the reports. (They seldom make any official statements where the Parks are concerned, at least until something breaks.) I have as much fun reading Al Lutz and Jim Hill as the next embroidered-hat geek, but I take their every word with a grain; they have only a fifty-percent success rate, the same as an Anton Chigurh coin toss. But if Imagineering is in the attraction right now ripping down trees and rainclouds, I beg them to reconsider. This isn't plugging characters into existing scenes; this is an act of dumbfuckery that will radically alter the tone of the attraction, and not for the better. As it is now, it's a small world is a compressed two-day journey, with the "night" scene of the rainforest acting as a segue between them. Removing it would be disastrous. We'll talk later this weekend, I hope. I have a few choice words to say about the closing of DCA's Seasons of the Vine, but I need to get good and liquor'd up before I spill 'em. Oh sneaky, sneaky pete.

Disneyland Doubloons: Eight Easy Pieces

You don't know what this is, do yeh? I be tellin' yeh. Y'see, there's a tiny shop at the exit to Pirates of the Caribbean called Pieces of Eight, which has served your every pirate-y need since long before the POTC concept was translated into three blockbuster feature films (one-and-a-half of them critically acclaimed) and even before the WaltDisCo got the bright idea of putting impulse buys at the end of every. popular. ride. in. the. Park. If you need a plastic sword, a handful of plastic jewels or to have your fortune read by Fortune Red, Pieces of Eight stands ready to serve, me hearties. Until recently, Pieces of Eight was home to one of those carny machines that would print any group of 30-some letters on a souvenir coin. You'd drop your four bits, swing a "Metropolis"-like clock hand to the desired letter and pull a handle -- and deep within the machine you'd feel and hear the satisfying, metallic thunk sound of the letter being pressed into the coin. (I'm not describing this very well. Come back, Paul Lukas! Your country needs you.) When you finished, you'd pull a handle and out would come your custom-stamped coin, which looked for all the world like a genuine doubloon. (Heh. A doubloon isn't the same thing as a real de a ocho, though never mind.) As satisfying as the printing process was, it was an even greater pleasure to hold the finished product in the palm of your hand. Other such carny machines issued coins of flyweight aluminum, but Disney gave you a nice, heavy piece of nickel alloy that actually felt like it had some value. You could melt it down for grapeshot. You could spend a lifetime attempting to transform it into gold. Or you could use it as a decorative anchor for your keychain, as I've done. I'd love to tell you to run down there and get your own customized filthy lucre, but the machine is gone, and has been for several years. There are rumors of occasional re-appearances (dropped off by the Flying Dutchman?), though when I query a Cast Member about its absence they either tell me that it's out for repairs (quite possible; it's a sensitive piece of machinery) or they don't know what the bloody hell I'm talking about. One strident teenaged girl insisted that the machine had never existed at all -- at which point I showed her my keychain. "Go soak yer head in the salmagundi, ye underpaid powder monkey!" I might have bellowed at her, if the talk-like-a-pirate thing weren't so played out. "Yer pwned!" And so, for the first and last time, I will address the Disney decision-makers who will never, ever lay eyes on this bl-g: Please bring back the coin-stamping machine formerly located at Pieces of Eight. (And if it's there now, please keep it there.) Oh, I'm sure that you have your reasons for having removed the machine, reasons that seem valid to you: I imagine that it's fairly expensive to maintain and stock the machine, and considering how skittish you've become about stitching nicknames on souvenir hats, I'm sure that you don't want today's teenage gangsta goths imprinting your souvenirs with four-letter words, gang slogans and Fall Out Boy lyrics. Here's the thing, though: I don't remotely care about any of that. Yours is a billion-dollar concern and you can afford to eat a few thousand bucks a year. If you have the wherewithal to make three Pirates of the Craibbean movies, you can build a second doubloon-stamping machine to sit in for the broken one. And if you're worried about teenaged kids putting blue words on their coins, get this: The coin on my keychain has bore a prodigious number of filthy words for nearly twenty years now, and as near as I can tell, it has created no great rift in the public decency. It's a pirate coin; what do you want? Pirates say naughty words, ye cowardly cacklefruits. An' no sea rat e'er palmed a coin that weren't already dirty.

This week in Disneyland news: Disney ex machina

Nearly every Disney-focused bl-gger -- including your obdt. scribe -- writes about Disney's corporate-made culture as if it were a religion. We defer to Walt Disney's opinions, even though the man's been dead for 41 years; we evangelize for animated movies that we don't personally like because we want the animators to keep their jobs; we get our Tinkerbells in a bunch whenever Imagineering fucks with Something Walt Made; and we fill our bl-gs with pious rhetorical questions like those found on the back cover of a Dianetics paperback: What would Walt Disney think of the Walt Disney Company of today? Page 25 What if the bare necessities of life don't come to me? Page 93 Is John Lasseter, like, the reincarnation of Walt Disney? Is he? IS HE? Because that would be totally awesome omigod I wet my pants. Page 119 According to Jennifer Porter, a professor of religious studies at Memorial College in Newfoundland and Labrador, the deification of Disney is as normal as the worship of Yoda, Buffy Summers and the Federation of Planets. This January, Porter will introduce "Religion and Disney: Not Just Another Mickey Mouse Course," a program which will presumably indulge your passions for both animated features and Theodor Adorno. Porter described the course in a Canada.com news item: "The theme park productions, fireworks displays and so on always involve a morality tale and a requirement of the audience to believe in the power of good, and believe in the power of wishes," she said. "So I'm interested in that - does that affect Disney audiences? Does that affect how they see the world?" The answer seems fairly obvious to me: No one cares, except for religion majors who have already explored every corner of the "Buffy Christ" syllabus and Disney freaks (like meeeee!) who are already soaking in pixie dust. Until the age of 18 I was a Jehovah's Witness, and Disneyland was one of the few "worldly" pleasures accorded to those of us who didn't celebrate birthdays or Christmas. (Even parts of Disneyland were off-limits to some Witnesses: Many would avoid the Haunted Mansion, which they believed to be "demonic." Fortunately, my parents didn't hold with that notion.) I have to admit that I've wondered, at least once or twice, if I re-forged my belief system while waiting in line for the Matterhorn, but I suspect Prof. Porter isn't the one to help me figure that out. That particular information I will share only with mental health professionals, certain bartenders and this bl-g's 45 readers. In happier, irreligious news, Disneyland took possession of the first of its new fleet of monorail trains, the Mark VII, this week. You can't ride it yet, but you can admire its paleo-futuristic lines and deep-burgundy paint job. It recalls Bob Gurr's original 1957 "Flash Gordon"-inspired design so completely that you have to wonder why the Park ever switched to the jet-inspired design that's still in use at Walt Disney World. Evidently, more than a few Imagineers believe they nailed it the first time, and sweet mother of Walt, they're right. Everybody's gonna want a ride on this beauty once it starts regular trips. It's the new iPod. The Orange County Register has the story and a few photos. Finally, Werner Weiss at Yesterland has written a review of "Disneyland: Secrets, Stories and Magic," a new, limited-edition two-disc DVD from the Walt Disney Treasures collection, and with it he demonstrates two things: Exactly what fans and non-fans can expect from this Disneyland documentary set, and why Yesterland is the ne plus ultra of Disneyland websites/bl-gs. Mr. Weiss never puts the burden of understanding on the reader, nor does he pretend to airs; he simply talks about Disneyland past and present in a way that really, really makes you want to go there. I have a dear friend who enjoys Pixar films because "They just tell the story," and I think that's an excellent way of describing what Yesterland does better than any other Disneyland site, including this one. Finally, a few housekeeping details: I've changed my bl-g's comment status to OpenID, so that my TypeKey, Wordpress, AIM and LiveJournal readers may comment on this stuff. (LiveJournal, I love you! Spasiba.) I'll be happy to receive your compliments/threats/lunacy, and I'll even take requests: One of my readers, a former roller derby queen and all-around fierce rulin' diva, has asked to hear my thoughts on Disneyland's security force. I'll spill that info soon enough, seeing as the statute of limitations has expired. I should probably also tell you that I'll be posting less through the holidays, but if you're reading this, you've probably figured that out by now. Happy holidays to you, and may the new year bring you joy and contentment.

Anything for a Buckminster Fuller: Spaceship Earth, (p)reviewed

I need to qualify this post in a couple of ways. Firstly, Spaceship Earth is at EPCOT Center at Walt Disney World in Florida, and I'm not going to make a habit of writing about WDW in this Disneyland-focused bl-g. WDW is not my Disney resort, and as I've previously said, the Passport to Dreams Old and New bl-g has the place expertly covered. (I may bust out a few more WDW posts in the coming weeks. I just spent eight days there, y'know, and the Adventurer's Club is fairly wonderful. But I'll try to bring it all back to California as often as I can.) Also, this is not a review. The revamped Spaceship Earth -- a twenty-five year old attraction that's enjoying a "re-imagining" thanks to an infusion of sponsorship cash from Siemens AG -- isn't officially open yet. I lucked into a sneak preview of the attraction on my last day at WDW, and the attraction is still in pretty raw shape. The outside construction walls remain in place, the show scenes continue to be tested and adjusted, and the ending of the ride is in a nascent state. It would be unfair of me to review the attraction in this transitional guise, unless I were to praise it. Spaceship Earth is EPCOT's signature attraction. It's got solid egghead pedigree -- it was named for a book by Buckminster Fuller and Ray Bradbury reportedly had a hand in its conception. Even today, two-plus decades after opening day, the attraction remains one of EPCOT's most literate and educational. Inside that 180 foot-tall silver ball (from Soho down to Brighton ... oh, never mind) is an 14-minute ride detailing the history of communication, from cave drawings to the internet, through a series of Audio-Animatronics set pieces. The revamp preserves Spaceship Earth's original gee-whiz factor and even improves upon it. The new narration, by an uncredited Dame Judi Dench (who succeeds a veritable gentleman's club of Vic Perrin, Walter Cronkite and Jeremy Irons), makes the historical thread linking the scenes more evident and easier to follow. Where Perrin, Cronkite and Irons delivered narrations that were respectively austere, avuncular and flat-out pompous, Dench takes the tone of a patient teacher, and her "Our Miss Brooks" schtick makes the attraction considerably more personal. The narration condenses the attraction's large concepts down to a size that any kid -- or TV-reared adult -- can readily grasp within seconds. (That said, I'm not sure about the Imagineers' assertion that the libraries of ancient Islam contained "backup copies" of the scrolls destroyed by the burning of Rome. It's a clever conceit, but it misses a lot -- and it's probably going to get Disney picketed.) New show scenes involving the creation of computers (specifically the home computer, in a "garage" scene featuring a faceless geek who may or may not be Steve Wozniak) sharpen the communication theme to a point, and the animation of those scenes has been greatly improved. The innards of Spaceship Earth's Audio-Animatronics have been replaced by newer tech and move more fluidly, and the lighting and sets around the figures have been freshened. (That said, I still think that the "skin" of your basic Audio-Animatronics figure looks like wet leather.) Spaceship Earth's ride vehicles run in one long, continuous train, and when they reach the top of the sphere, they turn around and lower you to ground level at an angle not unlike that of a dentist's chair. In his less-than-enthusiastic September 1983 appraisal of EPCOT in Rolling Stone, "It's a Stale World After All," John Rothchild used the prone ending of Spaceship Earth as a metaphor for the entire theme park: "I have never felt less control over anything." The ending is the most appropriate place for a sponsor to make its presence felt. Original sponsor AT&T did so through a tunnel filled with pretty lights, visual gibberish and a ghastly ad jingle called "Tomorrow's Child." Disney got Siemens to take another path, and it makes the ride worthwhile: By way of a touch-screen, Spaceship Earth now checks to see if you actually learned anything. Here's how it works: At the beginning of the ride, your picture is taken, and at the end, you're asked a series of lifestyle questions, and a snazzy, Googie-styled animation of "your vision of the future" is created. (Though the effect wasn't yet working, I assume that your face will be superimposed over the animated figures.) That's all well and good (and I love the fiber-optic "cube" that you travel through as you descend), but what I really love is that "while your future is being created" -- meaning, your big fat future head is superimposed on that Googie animation -- Dame Judi asks you to answer questions about what you've just seen on the ride. What was our first communication written on? What tools did Benedictine Monks use to record books? It's a particularly righteous tack to take, seeing as EPCOT's days as a field trip destination are long behind it. Nearly every ride in EPCOT's Future World section ends in a bank of touch-screen games that young kids delight in and everyone else ignores. Even Spaceship Earth has a post-show full of such games -- but they've also placed one on the ride, where even the most technologically-averse might feel compelled to reach forward and gently touch the screen in response to a query. Disney and Siemens are asking the unthinkable: They're asking kids to read, and parents to think. Not surprisingly, that part of the ride isn't going over well. I hope Disney toughs out the criticism and stays the course. For the first time ever, Spaceship Earth -- the attraction that details the history of communication -- is actually provoking communication between family and friends, between ride and rider. Control has been restored. When viewed in the context of its thrill-ride neighbors -- particularly the spectacular but empty-headed General Motors thrill ride Test Track, which shamelessly dead-ends in a showroom of 2008 Hummers -- the revamped Spaceship Earth and The Land pavilion are the only EPCOT attractions that are doing the holy work that EPCOT was built to do. They're clinging to their low-paying teaching jobs, even as the other Future World pavilions go for the big bucks in public relations. I've a small gallery of Spaceship Earth shots here. Please forgive the blurriness and poor light; I didn't want to pop my flash and ruin someone else's ride. Wish everyone else felt the same way.

The World is, the World is...

Heh. It's funny: For the first time in nearly twenty years, I'm gearing up for a Disney trip that won't take me to Anaheim or VMK. By this time Sunday, I'll be at Walt Disney World ... EPCOT Center, most likely. I haven't been there since October 1988. I'm looking forward to the trip, but I don't feel as giddy as I do before a trip to Anaheim. WDW isn't the kind of place you can hug. It's big -- twice the size of Manhattan. It's smack-dab in the middle of the state that prosecuted Pee-Wee Herman and houses Ann Coulter. (Don't get me started on my "Florida is the site of every miscarriage of American justice over the course of the last hundred years" rant.) Cory Doctrow may disagree with me, but the place just doesn't have Disneyland's whuffie.1 Fortunately for me, I was given a gift a few weeks back: I was made aware of Passport to Dreams Old and New, a bl-g "devoted to the serious documentation, study and discussion of facets of the unique methodology of themed 'space'." More to the point, it's devoted to Walt Disney World's themed "space," and it's easily the most intelligent writing about WDW I've read outside of Dave Hickey's brilliant August 2005 essay in Vanity Fair.2 I know how parts of WDW make me feel, but Passport to Dreams offers a educated and refreshingly bracing perspective on why they make me feel that way. More importantly, the author explains why they make me feel, period. Passport to Dreams delves headlong into the many social and artistic elements that inspired the parks, the relationship of WDW's structures to their environment and even the resort's psychologically-loaded use of color from an educated, honest and even sentimental perspective. It's terrific reading, and I may print out some of it to take with me into the snarky, self-deprecating heart of darkness that EPCOT has apparently become. But, y'know, it's good to have an open mind even if wind does blow through it occasionally. I'm going to Florida with an open mind and a Nikon D80 at the ready. I'm going to find the "vacation kingdom" that Walt Disney set out to build, and the modernist vacation resort that Walt's survivors did build. And should I trip over the fiefdoms, sign pollution and "bad show" that Michael Eisner allowed to take root, I'll just brush myself off and keep going. This is a voyage of exploration, man. Plus, I'm old enough to drink this time. (1) I haven't yet read Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. I'll probably burn through it on the plane. (2) Hickey wrote of the Magic Kingdom: "This goody-two-shoes American institution is promoting a primitive, animist religion dedicated to investing everything with life, to animating everthing from teacups to trees ... with the pulse of human aspiration."

Rush for a change of atmosphere: Pirates of the Caribbean, reviewed

It's better than the movies. Pirates of the Caribbean, the 40-year-old Disneyland ride, is better than the hit movies it spawned. Also, it's better than more than half the rides in the Park, better than half the movies you've ever seen, better than half the moments in your life, and perhaps better than at least half the sex you've ever had. Everybody has their off days, y'know. POTC is such an impeccably awesome attraction that there's really no point to my writing about how awesome it is. Were I to go off on such a tear I'd just end up sounding like Chris Farley's Saturday Night Live character: Hey, Walt Disney, y'know that Pirates of the Caribbean ride you made? Dude, it's awesome. We nod our heads in solemn agreement, and talk inevitably turns to things that are less cool and awesome, which as I've said amounts to roughly half the things on this planet. I used to have a friend who, back in the 1970s, would drop off his daughters at the Park, spend the entire afternoon drinking at the Disneyland Hotel, and enter Disneyland only to ride Pirates six times in a row. He hated Disney and Disneyland, but loved Pirates -- a contradiction that more or less proves my 50% theory. This brings up something I've bean meaning to address here and haven't yet had the opportunity to do: I want you to know why I'm keeping this bl-g in the first place. I can break it down to three basic points: 1. I love Disneyland but I run hot and cold on everything else Disney. In the plus column is Pixar, pre-1990s EPCOT Center, the animation of the Nine Old Men, the "Little Mermaid"/"Beauty and the Beast"/"Aladdin"/"Lion King" streak and the Jack Kinney "How-to" Goofy cartoons. In the minus column is Mickey Mouse, the bastardization of Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh, the company's arbitrary stand on copyright issues and every animated film the company has produced since 1994. (I would have listed ABC in the red column but for "Ugly Betty." Damn you, America Ferrera, for ensnaring me with your humble and winning nature.) 2. I love Disneyland as a piece of American pop art. It's on a par with Dave Brubeck's "Take Five," Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye," MGM's "The Wizard of Oz," "I Love Lucy," the Holiday Inn sign and the works of Edward Hopper. Like those iconic, oft-imitated works, Disneyland is absolutely one of a kind and not even Disney's other theme parks can hope to stand up to it. Disneyland IS Walt Disney -- the parts of him that he'd like for you to remember, in any case. When you walk around Disneyland, you walk in his footfalls, take in his sights, breathe the air that he breathed. Perhaps no other American artist has created so eternal a work. 3. I love Disneyland, but I also love a lot of stuff that's as diametrically opposed to Disney as one can get. I listen to Steve Reich, Art Blakey, Turbonegro and Cut Chemist. I read raunchy erotica, obscenity-laden fiction and revolutionary screed. I dig on the "pop surrealism" of Ryan Heshka and Audrey Kawasaki. I love dive bars and urban decay as much as I love swank cocktail lounges and gleaming futurism. In other words, while Disneyland is part of my range of interests, it's not all of it. With a few exceptions -- some of which are linked at right -- most of the Disneyland sites I've read seem to be rooted in a giddy love of all things Disney. To paraphrase a popular Todd Haynes movie, that's fine only if you don't look at the world. So, when I write in here, I'm talking to you. Yes, you. You've never read a Disneyland bl-g before and don't know why anyone would, or you read the bl-gs but balance them with RSS subscriptions to Boing Boing, Gridskipper, the New York Times and Audacia Ray. The world is full of hardcore Disney fans and I bless every one of them from their Mickey Mouse-embossed flatware sets to their lanyards covered with collectible pins, but I'm writing this for the other fans -- those fans whose love of Disney is concealed beneath of a love of geinōkai or on a slightly deformed Malificent sticker on the backside of a bass guitar. I'm here for the fans whose love of Disneyland dare not speak its name. And as such, I think we can all agree that the recent, movie-themed additions to Pirates just don't hold up. Sure, the Audio-Animatronic Johnny Depp figures are okay -- they're well-crafted and they don't intrude on the original story. Ditto the mist curtain that reveals the hentai-like visage of Bill Nighy's Davy Jones. But replacing Paul Frees' taunting buccaneer with a Geoffrey Rush-voiced Barbossa figure is right fucking out. I like Rush an awful lot, but his voice is too thin to fill out the battle scene the way Frees' did, and the Barbossa character just doesn't read that well from a distance. (Now, if the Imagineers had added Rush's character from "Quills," that would have been all right with me. That would give the attraction a shot of ribaldry that's been sorely lacking since the pirates stopped chasing the wenches and vice-versa. And the nudity would be no problem: as I recall, Rush's package was artfully concealed.) Are these additions enough to fully diminish the awesome? No, not really. I still get a rush (not a Geoffrey Rush, though my first name is Geoffrey ... so I guess it is kind of a "Geoffrey rush," though never mind) when the flatboat plunges into the darkness of those lonesome, haunted caverns. I never fail to hum that earworm of a theme song as the boat winds through scenes of plunder, carnage and destruction. I will always declare my undying devotion for the redhead. Oi, redhead. (By the way, if you search for "pirates" and "redhead" on YouTube, you get a girl doing a clothed, semi-work-safe pole dance to the "Pirates" movie theme. Just saying.) No matter how many times I ride Pirates of the Caribbean, I still hop out of the boat with the intent of getting back on immediately. I could do it a dozen, two dozen times in one day and relish every beautiful moment. It's the last story Walt ever told, and it ranks with his best. By comparison, I have trouble getting through any of the "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies without hitting fast-forward or skipping a chapter.

'We both admit to your stupidity': Captain EO, reviewed

I come here not to bury "Captain EO," but to heap very qualified praise upon it. The 3-D space opera, which enjoyed an exclusive engagement at Disneyland and EPCOT Center from 1986 to 1997, came "to change the world," and it did. From its mighty Tiberian banks flow such mighty tributaries as "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace," "High School Musical" and Michael Ian Black's comedy bits on VH1. It is an epochal work. More than anything else, "Captain Eo" represented the first time, at least in my estimation, that artists from the cream of every artistic discipline -- director Francis Ford Coppola, writer George Lucas, actress Angelica Huston, cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, choreographer Jeffrey Hornaday, the creative corps of Disney Imagineering and, naturally, musician Michael Jackson -- had consciously set their minds to make a flawed, but pretty piece of cult-movie crapola. It's no big deal these days -- Robert Rodriguez makes one such film almost every week, and I hear they're taking "Xanadu" to the off-Broadway stage. But "EO" was the first, and I think the best. While Lucas may have honestly believed "Howard the Duck" had artistic merit, I'm pretty sure he had no such illusions about "EO." By the by, I won't use this opportunity to speak ill of "EO's" author and executive producer. I mean, who among us has never dreamed of sullying the memory of one of the best-loved cinematic trilogies of all time with three new films that amounted to a parody of the originals? Wouldn't the original "Star Wars" films have been that much better with more minstrel-show histrionics and ham-fisted allegory? C'mon. The 17 minute-long "EO" has a relatively straightforward story arc. It goes a little something like this: MINUTE 1. Story opens with an effects shot of a spiral galaxy and a tumbling asteroid that looks like a spray-painted potato. (It's the best 3-D shot in the film, and one of the best in-theater effects: The starfield extends off the screen and into the proscenium.) The late, great Percy Rodrigues intones "The cosmos (is) a universe of good and evil" and claims that "the rag-tag band led by the infamous Captain EO" will somehow save us from it. A laser blast destroys the asteroid and we are introduced to a spaceship full of puppets that were unconvincing even in their day. One of them is voiced by "Bad Santa's" Tony Cox. MINUTE 2. Michael Jackson introduced in a head-to-foot shot that also introduces the greatest jewel-encrusted speed-suit since the halcyon days of Elvis Presley at the International Hotel. He utters a masculine line that made the opening-night crowd giggle nervously. Puppets say cutesy things. Jackson rallies them to action with a speech assembled from stock cliches. MINUTE 3. Shit starts blowing up. A hologram of Dick Shawn appears, complains. Objects fly off the screen; practical laser effects fire over the heads of the audience. MINUTE 4. Shit continues to blow up. MINUTE 5. Spaceship crash-lands on a planet made of gravel and futurist machine parts. Dick Shawn delivers necessary exposition. MINUTE 6. Jacko and his rag-tags are captured by dancers with metal shavings glued to their jumpsuits. They're taken to Anjelica Huston, who is made up in H.R. Giger-like face paint and brandishes long metal claws. She's suspended from the ceiling by hoses, and looks thoroughly badass -- almost as frightening as she was in "The Grifters." MINUTE 7. Oscar-winner Huston banters with Jackson. Jacko: "We come here uninvited and unannounced." Huston: "So we both admit to your stupidity. Why have you come?" Jackson tells her that he's there to reveal her inner beauty -- no, seriously, that's the point of the whole thing, to reveal Anjelica Huston's inner beauty. MINUTE 8. Fan service for the 3-D geeks. Jackson's puppets turn into musicians and instruments through a series of stop-motion animations. "We Are Here to Change the World" begins. MINUTES 9-14. Pretty much the same dance routine -- pyramid formation! -- that Jacko did in "Thriller," with assorted 3-D and break-dance asides. Huston writhes in pain. MINUTES 15-17. Huston is transformed to, um, a hippie occult shop owner. Cyberpunk set is transformed to a Maxfield Parrish wet dream. Jackson sings "Another Part of Me" and leads puppets out the door in triumph. Spaceship takes off into star field, leaving a rainbow trail behind it. Fade out. Looking at "EO" today (it's available, in pieces, on YouTube), I have to say that there's very little of it that doesn't make me feel ... uneasy. The "cuddly" supporting characters have a rubbery, somewhat unsavory look that seems to anticipate the plastic surgery disaster Jacko would soon become. And there's the matter of those two child molestation acquittals, both marked with an asterisk. Back in 1986, I couldn't even have imagined the circumstances under which Disney would be reluctant to cash in on a long-form Michael Jackson video, and yet "Captain EO" is in the proverbial Disney Vault, and there it will stay along with Vivian Leigh's head. "Song of the South" will probably emerge before "EO" does. However, as bizarre and discomfiting as "Captain EO" may seem today, the experience of watching it on Disneyland's big screen was something else entirely. When it debuted at the Park in September 1986 we waited hours to see it, and we were not let down. As I mentioned before, the in-theater practical effects -- the lasers, the smoke machines, the 3-D starfield -- were exceptional even by today's standards, and Jackson's two songs were absolutely tremendous in surround sound. Disney would later make 3-D films that were even more successful in bringing the action off the screen ("It's Tough To Be a Bug" is the best of the bunch), but "EO" was more imaginative and original than the films that succeeded it. It's also batshit insane, but I'm relatively certain that Disney will never release it again. The madness is contained, and our cosmos of good and evil can go about its business.

This week in Disneyland news: Two eyes, four sites

There are a lot of Disneyland bl-gs and websites out there. Most of them are fan sites, as sweet and tasty as a stack o' flapjacks. Some examine the Park's storied past in depth, and in doing so transcend Disney fandom. And there are a handful of muckraking sites, whose authors are determined to find the worms just beneath the Park's polished veneer. I follow a good number of these Disneyland websites on a daily basis, though not a lot happens at Disneyland from one day to the next. However, when viewed from a weekly perspective, the Park generates a fair amount of news -- and it is my pleasure to direct you to it. Disneyland for the Dead (MiceAge) In his monthly report today, Disney acolyte Al Lutz talks about the epidemic -- the word is not too strong -- of illegal funerals taking place at Disneyland. What was once an urban myth has allegedly become a dusty reality, as scores of the bereaved have taken to spreading the ashes of their loved ones inside the Haunted Mansion, Pirates of the Caribbean and other attractions. Maintenance crews try to vacuum up the scattered remains as quickly as possible, but in some cases attractions have to be shut down for extended periods and cleaned. Mr. Lutz often breaks stories like this one, which Disney management dismisses with haughty non-denial denials. (He was the one who first broke the story about overweight guests sinking the boats of it's a small world.) His information seems pretty solid, though it's sometimes couched in an unfortunate superciliousness. If you're not his kind of fanboy, by God, he has no use for you. Still, Mr. Lutz's aim is true. On an unrelated note, I liked the studio overture CD that Mr. Lutz produced while he was working for RCA. It's nice to know that I have "Syncopated Clock" handy whenever I need it. The Haunted Mansion redux at Walt Disney World (Jim Hill Media) If Al Lutz is CNN, Jim Hill is Fox News: His reporting is even more nakedly biased and sensationalized, and it's smarmy as hell ("What do you think, folks?"). That's not to say that it isn't fun to read, particularly when he goes apoplectic in denouncing the Disney/Pixar merger. I only wish he'd have somebody look over his posts beforehand. Because he uses a lot of sentence fragments. Which drives me up the wall. Last week, Mr. Hill talked about the long-overdue refurbishing of the Haunted Mansion at Walt Disney World -- a manse that, unlike Disneyland's, is not infested with wood cutouts of Tim Burton's "Nightmare Before Christmas" characters (and according to Mr. Hill, it never will be). It's a fascinating look at Imagineering's creative process and I recommend it highly. What do you think, fellow freaks? Broke Hoedown It's not always Disneyland news, but by golly, you can always use it. Kitty-chan's "PG-13 rated" Disney bl-g is a sheer pleasure to read, whether she's talking about Disneyland-related labor issues, Disneyfied pinup girls or gay Muppets. Her enthusiasm for Disney's world is tempered by her interest in real-world concerns, and that balanced approach makes for some highly intelligent and entertaining reading. Plus, her list of tags is fascinating -- it's filled with subjects you'd never expect to find on a Disney site. Here are a few: Alan Cumming Banksy Gay rights Kidnapping Pornography By the by, I'm not just saying this because Kitty-chan, a woman I've never met, has been kind enough to link to this crappy site on more than one occasion. I am honored, Kitty-chan, and also challenged: Now I feel like I should write a post in which Alan Cumming kidnaps Banksy, and the two of them make a porno on it's a small world. (As Mr. Lutz so helpfully points out on his site, there are no security cameras inside that attraction.) Gorillas Don't Blog Perhaps not, but they do post vintage color slides of Disneyland on a daily basis. Even if you have no interest in Disneyland whatsoever (and if you're reading this, it is plainly obvious you do not), GDB is a must-see for anyone who loves Googie architecture, pop surrealism or pure visual candy. The same goes for the fine Stuff from the Park bl-g, though Gorillas Don't Blog is a bit more colorful, a bit more irreverent. I'll try to post one of these updates every week, though as I said earlier, not a lot changes at Disneyland from day to day. Such is the primary appeal of a timeless place. Plus, I'm lazy.

Subbacultcha! Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage, reviewed

Hey, you know what? I just noticed the word "guide" up there. It's the strangest thing: Ostensibly I'm writing a souvenir guide to Disneyland, and I haven't yet given you even one word of useful information in that regard. But that changes now. For next 52 weeks, I'll write a review of one Disneyland attraction every week. By the time we're done, one year from today, you'll know all there is to know about the better attractions at Disneyland and Disney's California Adventure -- and the WGA strike should be just about finished. Knock wood. Disneyland Park's newest attraction, the tortuously-named Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage, is actually one of the Park's oldest. The original Submarine Voyage opened in June 1959 and ran until September 1998, at which time the attraction was unceremoniously closed down and left to rot -- another victim of then-Park president Paul Pressler's inept handing of Disneyland and then-CEO Michael Eisner's late-career ennui. Disneyland is still suffering the effects of their collective indifference, and will continue to do so for years to come. Shortly after new Park president Matt Ouimet took over in 2003, the Disney admin-o-sphere was somehow convinced to refurbish the attraction and give it a thematic overlay based on Pixar's "Finding Nemo." In the interim, Robert Iger took the departing Eisner's job, promptly brought John Lasseter and Pixar fully into the Disney fold, and the old Submarine Voyage quickly became one of the most technologically-advanced rides in the Park. Thankfully, the attraction's main elements remain unchanged. You still board a 40-seat "submarine" which is essentially similar, in principle at least, to a glass-bottomed boat: While you do ride below the surface of the water, your craft does not fully submerge. Great cascades of bubbles are released underneath the boat at key points, which give the illusion of submerging when viewed through portholes. This modestly simple trick, conceived fifty years ago, remains the Submarine Voyage's most convincing illusion, and it delights me every single time. Ditto the "dive" into "deeper" waters, which neatly coincides with another bubble curtain and the sub's entry into an enclosed show building. I defy you not to get that Jürgen Prochnow feeling as the diving officer takes her down to two-five-zero feet at 10 degrees down angle. I start to feel all cooped up in these U-Boats. I had a bad experience once. The original Imagineers knew their stuff. However, at that time they were severely limited in their ability to convincingly animate figures underwater, and the colors of the Submarine Voyage's painted "coral reef" quickly faded in the heavily-chlorinated water, two conditions which created countless maintenance problems over time. In revamping the ride, Disney's new Imagineers found ways to solve these two problems for good. One of them works creatively; the other does not. The story of the Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage, which (spoiler!) is almost exactly similar to the film of "Finding Nemo," takes you, inexplicably, to Australia, where your sub plies the waters of the Great Barrier Reef. The underwater sets are almost breathtakingly gorgeous. The rock work is perfect, completely indistinguishable from real coral. The automatic figures of divers and fish, while still limited in their range of movement, are far more evolved than the crude figures that the attraction opened with 48 years ago. And the colors really pop, thanks to a Imagineering brainstorm: Instead of paining the "coral," they sprayed it down with powdered glass, which will never fade and glistens even in the chlorinated water. But your time in the Great Anaheim Reef is limited, and before long you're plunged into the darkness of the show building, where the "Nemo" story unfolds apace. There's very little narrative explanation of why the fish have begun speaking in punchlines, and that's fine; I have no problem with the ride's new theme or cartoony vibe. Whay does bother me is the means by which the Imagineers have added the attraction's new theme: through high-definition video, projected onto sheets of glass. Some time ago, Disney decided that three-dimensional animation was too cost-prohibitive, and have turned increasingly to video to achieve effects. This works in some controlled cases -- Star Tours comes to mind -- but in a richly-imagined "real" environment like the one that the subs travel through, video projections look like, well, video projections -- flat TV images floating in a 3-D world, like that creepy goth girl from "The Ring." I couldn't see them as anything but digital avatars, regardless of the detailed, real-world sets that surrounded them. This fault put the entire attraction into sharp relief for me, and I became aware of other things that wouldn't have bothered me otherwise: The new-agey soundtrack, the cloying dialog (couldn't Disney have enlisted the writers of the film?) and the substantial lag between the end of the ride and actual disembarking. These things, taken individually, are minor -- but when the video projection aspect is factored into the equation, you really get to wondering why you waited in line for ninety minutes. You could have watched the entire movie in that time. A Nemo-ized attraction is far preferable to having no subs at all, and as the curiosity around the still-new ride dies down and the long lines winnow away, I can easily imagine the new Submarine Voyage growing on me. Still, I think back to the day in late 2004 when I saw one of the old subs parked in the lagoon (pictured above), and I remember thinking, wow, the Imagineers must be doing something thoroughly amazing in there. Never would I have imagined that they were simply screening the "Nemo" DVD against a glass wall.

Melodyland: (Mostly) Punk Songs About Disneyland

I have made a minor hobby of collecting Disneyland-themed pop songs. Many of them are in the pop-punk genre, the Park being an easy and familiar target for punk songwriting. Not surprisingly, many of those songs are just plain terrible -- nearly every one of them a metaphor-heavy ode to anti-skateboarding laws, dropping acid, Ronald Reagan and the mind-numbing dullness of life in Orange County. (None of that stuff matters today. Ask any 15-year-old Orange County kid what the 1980s were all about, and he or she will point to the conception, and subsequent birth, of Vanessa Hudgens.) Even the good punk bands that stormed the Magic Kingdom's gates did so halfheartedly. They couldn't even be bothered to hate the place. Half of those old-timers are probably at Disneyland right now, bouncing a tiara-clad daughter on their knee and hoping they don't run into anyone they know. Still, I collect the songs. The advent of music downloads has made it easy. Several of the songs on the following list were regular fixtures on pioneering alternative radio station KROQ, back in the days when radio still kind of mattered. Other tracks were easily obtained through iTunes for the standard 99-cents-per-DRM-file fee, though not all of them are worth that much. Artist: Frankie Goes to Hollywood Song: "Disneyland" What iTunes should charge for this track: $0 This obscure b-side from the one-and-a-half hit wonders who made "Relax" and "Two Tribes" is something of a trifecta. It's the worst song to bear Trevor Horn's production stamp. It's the worst song in Frankie Goes To Hollywood's repertoire (as far as I know, anyway; I can only compare it to "Krisco Kisses"). And it's the worst god-damned song about Disneyland in all creation, with the band tunelessly bellowing the chorus from Jimmy Dodd's "Mickey Mouse Club March" over a confusion of bass bleats, reverb-heavy guitars and synthesizer flatulence. No, Frankie, you relax. Artist: Five For Fighting Song: "Disneyland" What iTunes should charge: 10 cents I have a strong bias in this instance: I believe the music of Five For Fighting to be irresolute wussy-crap. It's a shame, too, because this is one of very few songs about Disneyland that actually seems to like the place. Singer-songwriter John Ondrasik (if that is his real name) paints Disneyland as a lover's utopia, a place where "everybody's got a little house (and) a bank account managed by Mickey Mouse/and all we fight about is the Lakers." The chorus goes, "It's a nice day if you wake up in Disneyland." It's a fine sentiment and I agree with it, but I rarely make it to the chorus. Seriously, Five For Fighting's music is the most awful kind of generic indie-pop pablum. And there's not even five guys in the band. Just the one guy. Artist: Guttermouth Song: "Disneyland" What iTunes should charge: 15 cents Going to tread carefully here, because once I start listing anti-Disneyland songs by Orange County's skate punk bands I'll be stuck here for a month. I think every O.C. punk band has a song in which Disneyland is a metaphor for The Man, and some of those tunes -- like Guttermouth's -- are even halfway worthwhile. Over a skittering, one-two-fuck-you punk rhythm, Guttermouth uses Disneyland to wring its hands over Manifest Destiny: We'll chop down the rain forest and build another Disneyland Who gives a hoot about the lungs of the Earth? I give a hoot, Guttermouth. I care about the Earth's lungs, its lower intestine, and maybe even its pancreas. Artist: Alabama 3 Song: "Disneyland is Burning" What iTunes should charge: 20 cents A3's best-known song, "Woke Up This Morning," was used as the theme to "The Sopranos." If you're thinking that "Disneyland is Burning" drives the same stretch of the Jersey Turnpike, fuggedaboutit. This bluesy ballad is as bland as they come, and it has as much to do with Disneyland as "The Sopranos" does. Artist: No Doubt Song: "Tragic Kingdom" What iTunes should charge: 45 cents I like Gwen Stefani. You're talking with someone who enjoyed his first No Doubt show -- at Las Vegas' Huntridge Theater in early 1995, shortly before the band broke big -- and enjoyed subsequent shows as well, though not as much. (I identified with scrappy, punkish Gwen far more easily than I'm able to relate to the garment maker and towering hollaback girl she ultimately became.) That said, when taken in the context of No Doubt's catalog, this song is pretty awful. Considered to some to be the ne plus ultra of Disneyland-themed pop songs -- hey, it even starts off with a Disneyland sound sample! -- "Tragic Kingdom" illustrates perfectly what a lot of my old-school punk buddies hated in No Doubt: its cartoonish take on punk-ska, too-busy arrangements and Stefani's occasional dips into shrill hysteria. The metaphors are shopworn and tired (the "frozen Walt Disney" myth is revisited, and with far less humor than "Robot Chicken" accorded the subject), and the bit about "the parade that's electrical ... (taking) up a lot of juice" would mean a lot more coming from an artist whose touring apparatus probably consumes more crude oil in a night than the Main Street Electrical Parade burns in a month. But it is Gwen Stefani. I like listening to Stefani as much I enjoy not listening to Stefani, which is why "Tragic Kingdom" gets a half-vote. Truth be told, I actually prefer the a capella version of the song, performed by the Johns Hopkins Octopodes. Artist: Eyes Song: "Disneyland" What iTunes should charge: 55 cents I first heard this song on Rodney Bigenheimer's KROQ program, back when they still allowed Rodney on the air before midnight. Though I'm still fond of it, I have to admit that the song has not aged well. It's yet another one-two-fuck-you punk number that ends with the Park -- and Anaheim -- in flames. You could pick up the basics the song in five minutes and learn play it better than the band itself in less than twenty. But it is one of the better punk numbers about Disneyland, and when the band wrote the song, the parts of Anaheim that surrounded the Park would indeed have looked better on fire. Artist: The Vandals Song: "Pirate's Life" What iTunes should charge: 70 cents The story is a familiar one. A young man takes seven hits of acid, goes to Disneyland and finds himself press-ganged into service with the Pirates of the Caribbean. The Vandals give the story a epic, romantic scope ... naw, I'm kidding. It's yet another scuzzy little punk number, but it's pretty fun. "Pirate's Life" has an unexpectedly Gore Verbinski-esque twist at the end. The young man is imprisoned with the other bone-and-cup-bearing scalawags, trapped forever "'cause that damn dog's got the key." Poor punk-assed kid. To be a true cowboy was his fate. Artist: The Dickies Song: "Stukas Over Disneyland" What iTunes should charge: 75 cents Mastermouse gonna feel no fear Mickey's gonna lead us to the new frontier Everybody wants to be the perfect Mouseketeer Yes, the Dickies saw Disneyland as an adjunct of Nazi Germany. Eventually, with the help of Jiminy Cricket, the Park's "liebestraum (is) extended to Huntington Beach." Pucker up and blow! It's a sick and twisted scenario, and I'd probably find "Stukas Over Disneyland" very upsetting indeed if the song, with its giddy Beach Boys-like vocals, weren't so much damned fun to listen to. Artist: Dada Song: "Dizz Knee Land" iTunes should charge: 80 cents This song is arguably the best-known of the songs on this list. Its status is questionable because, as you can see, the song isn't really about Disneyland but "Dizz Knee Land," which is a place where minor criminals, drunks and other assorted malefactors find safe asylum. I can't find it using Google Maps. Funny thing, though. When the song was first released in 1992, the bit about "flipping off President George" seemed dated, almost quaint; after all, the first George Bush presidency was all but over. Never in our wildest dreams did I imagine that we'd receive the gift of a second President George, and I'd take such pleasure in flipping him off. Note: The version of the song that's currently available on iTunes is a live cut that's decidedly inferior to the original studio cut. Unacceptable. I'm flippin' off President Jobs. Artist: Sparks Song: "Mickey Mouse" What iTunes should charge: 99 cents Life's most satisfying truths are often its most bizarre and unlikely. Take this one: One of the best songs ever written about Disneyland came from two guys, Ron and Russell Mael, who I am fairly certain have never been there. It was on an album called "Angst in My Pants," the cover of which features one of the Maels -- Ron, the one with the Hitler-like mustache -- in a bridal gown. Its chorus is the most insidious of earworms: And my name is Mickey Mouse To my right is Minnie Mouse And we have a little place in Disneyland, California Disney should use this in their ads to snag sweater-clad emo kids. I'd gladly pay a buck for this song if I didn't already own it. This will probably be the first such entry of many. Hear me, Britt, Kanye, Bjork, Sufjan and Alehouse: The gauntlet is thrown.

Disney Studios Burbank: All This and Heaven Too

I had the chili. The commissary at the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank still serves the chili that Walt Disney used to wolf down between trips to WED, the screening room and the animators rooms. According to Bob Thomas' biography -- still the best of the batch, by the by, Neil Gabler's overrated book be damned -- Walt used to travel with cans of Hormel and Dennison's in his suitcase, and he'd mix them. That's what the studio chili tasted like: it was very salty, no-nonsense stuff. Wouldn't surprise me a bit if they were, in fact, mixing the ingredients of two industrial cans in the kitchen. The chili was just a small highlight of my walking tour of the studio last week, given by a friend of mine who is now owed a huge, huge favor. We poked around the ABC building, the interior of which should look familiar to anyone who watched "Alias." We passed by the oft-photographed signpost at the corner of Mickey Avenue and Dopey Drive. (Alas, I didn't take a photo of it, or of much else; I didn't want to call attention to my friend, and I didn't want to look like a rube.) We peeked inside the Disney Archives, which is more quiet and dignified than you'd think. I peered through glass at the "Feed the Birds" snow globe from "Mary Poppins," eyeballed the personal film cameras used by Walt on his South American jaunt, admired the artistry of the Wardrobe from the Studio's "Narnia" adaptation (I like the cabinet more than the film, truth be told), studied shelves full of out-of-print books and decades-old merchandise, and stood this close to the Multiplane Camera. The freaking Multiplane Camera, people. The camera that shot "Snow White" and "Pinocchio" and "Fantasia." That Multiplane Camera. (The archives also contained the bedknob and "Isle of Nabumbu" comic from "Bedknobs and Broomsticks," the magic rings from the many permutations of "The Shaggy Dog," the U-shaped laser guns from "The Black Hole" and a bunch of reference volumes that I would have killed to study. These things weren't quite as important to me as the other items, but I wanted to mention them at least parenthetically. So I have.) The studio itself is a strange place, not at all what you'd expect of a film production facility. Most studios are indiscernible from self-storage facilities; they are essentially great plots of warehouses, from which pour out electric carts and key grips and Kelsey Grammer. Disney's lot has more in common with a modern-day software campus -- its pathways are shaded by tall trees and buffeted by green grass, and even the relatively new administrative buildings, created by Michael Graves, match the pedestrian scale of the studio buildings erected in 1939. (The lone exception to this rule, the monolithic, Venturi/Brown-designed Frank G. Wells Building, stands out like a sore thumb. My friend tells me that it's the most disliked building on the lot.) There are two other things I can't imagine on any other modern studio lot. One is a kind of "wall of fame," Disney Legends Plaza, filled with iron-cast hand prints of Disney's legendary creative stars -- animators, writers, producers, executives, actors, Imagineers. (Angela Lansbury's strong handprints indicate that she could probably snap your neck like a twig.) And the studio has meticulously-preserved bungalows from the Studio's original location on Hyperion Avenue. Disney doesn't offer tours of its lot, which has allowed its buildings to exist more or less in a pristine state, unmolested by tourists or a merchandising division that needs more boutique space. It was such an overwhelming experience that I'm only now beginning to get a grip on it. My God, I felt like Robert Benchley. Funny thing is, the screening room that he was trying to find in "The Reluctant Dragon" is mere feet from the main gate, and clearly marked by a sign. He must have been distracted by the scent of chili on the air.

In Russia, Disneyland visits you

I am happy to report that the next Disneyland will be built in Krasnoyarsk, Russia. This is straight from the Newslab website, which as any child can tell you is the place to go if you want to know where the action is in downtown Krasnoyarsk. Check it, it's gold: Disneyland to be built in Krasnoyarsk Disneyland will be built in Krasnoyarsk by 2012. It was announced by Krasnoyarsk deputy mayor Anatoly Grigorenko at the news conference on October 30. Grigorenko said it was planned to build the children park in the area of Northern Highway, which held much promise for construction. Disneyland Krasnoyarsk: it just rolls off the tongue. A quick Wikipedia search tells me that Krasnoyarsk is the third largest city in Siberia and a significant junction on the Trans-Siberian Railway. Its January mean temperature is four degrees below zero, which is more or less perfect for, oh, FREEZING TO DEATH. Either the WaltDisCo has been putting out feelers for mainland China purely as a diversionary tactic, or I've discovered the Russian equivalent of the Onion. "Area deputy mayor fellated."

It's Fun to Stay at the D-C-A

Disneyland fandom is jam-packed with people who hate Disney's California Adventure. Though many of those hardcore Disney fans kinda creep me out, I fully agree that many of their criticisms of the "second gate" theme park -- located where Disneyland's hundred-acre parking lot used to be -- are perfectly valid. Former CEO Michael Eisner opened the park with too many shops and too few attractions, firm in his belief that people wanted a mall with rides. Some parts of the park aren't particularly attractive (the park's designers opted for a "modern" look that was dated by the time the park opened its gates). And no matter where you go in DCA, the most perfect theme park ever created is never more than a few hundred feet away. Today, the Wall Street Journal reports that Disney is going to spend a billion dollars over the next five years to remedy DCA's many problems. (I would have linked to this story months ago when Disney gadfly Al Lutz first broke it, but this blog didn't exist back then. Plus, he creeps me out.) Disney's Imagineers have all manner of Golden State-themed goodies ready to drop, including a new Main Street-like entry plaza themed to Hollywood of the 1930s, complete with a replica of the Carthay Circle Theatre; a top-to-bottom redo of Paradise Pier that includes new "Toy Story" and "Little Mermaid" dark rides; an updated "Walt Disney Story" (wonder what will become of the WDS attraction in Disneyland proper?); a Bellagio-style fountain show; and an entirely new land based on Pixar's "Cars," provisionally (one hopes) called "Cars Land." The latter will bring the only E-ticket ride of the expansion, using a next-generation version of the technology used on EPCOT's Test Track. Good stuff. My only hope is that in adding all this jazzy new shit, Disney doesn't remove the things that I like in DCA right now. Here's my top five: 5. The Sun Wheel (pictured). If a Ferris Wheel was good enough for the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, it's good enough for Disneyland Jr. Many of the annual pass-holding NIMBYs who choke the fun out of the Disneyland-related chat boards hate this thing so much that I have to wonder if some childhood trauma is involved. The Sun Wheel's coming to get you, Barbara! 4. Ariel's Grotto Bar. It has a great view of Paradise Pier -- which actually looks pretty spectacular at dusk -- and they serve a potent highball. My friends and I call it "Ariel's Blotto." Oh, to be part of that world right now. Note: The downstairs restaurant serves a "character dinner," populated by Disney's tiara klatch, that will make you feel uncomfortable if you're not three-to-nine-years old or in the immediate company of a three-to-nine-year old. By the by, since when is Mary Poppins a princess? Oh, P.L. Travers would have so called polite British bullshit on that. 3. Seasons of the Vine. This short film, narrated by a dryly erotic Jeremy Irons (is there any other kind?), affords a modestly poetic window into the making of good old sneaky pete. The Bruce Broughton score is quite lovely, and the cinematography more crisp and colorful than many Hollywood movies that don't involve long, lingering shots of wine grapes. The whole enterprise reminds me of old-school EPCOT films like "Impressions du France" and "Symbiosis." Most days, there's no one staffing the theater, so you'll have to ask a cast member at the nearby wine bar to run the film for you. Ask nicely, because you'll be returning there immediately afterward, with a thirst unlike anything you've known. 2. The main lobby of Disney Animation. Scenes and production images from Disney's animated films screen continuously on a 360-degree panorama of overlapping screens. It's a stunningly beautiful piece of cinematic bricolage, one that stirs the emotions while blowing out the senses. (This YouTube clip barely does it justice.) The entire loop is about a half-hour in length, and yes, I've watched the whole thing from start to finish more than once. 1. I realize that there's absolutely no danger of Disney removing Soarin' Over California; it's the park's only critical and commercial success. However, if anyone from Disney is reading this, I ask two things: Please don't sue me, and please never remove or modify Jerry Goldsmith's gorgeous "Soarin'" score. It transforms this attraction from a mere IMAX flying simulator to a spiritual experience. Nearly six years after opening day, people still fucking applaud when the ride ends. Every time. Having said all that, I am nonetheless excited for this expansion. I do get to missing California sometimes, especially in the deep gray Seattle winter, and it's nice to think of Disney's concentrated California Adventure -- a California that never ages, never loses its optimism, never elects a former action star to the governor's office. This California only exists in the fever-dreams of those old enough to remember its last panicked, dying gasps in the early eighties - just around the time Michael Eisner took the top job at Disney, come to think of it.

Helter Skellington: The (Haunted) Mansion Family

When I moved to Seattle I was forced by necessity to begin scheduling my Disneyland excursions in the autumn and winter months, when the kids are in school. I don't want to fly 1500 miles just to stand in hour-long lines. So far it's worked out well: My friends and I manage to see all the things we want to see, and the Uva Bar has outdoor heaters, thank God. The only drawbacks to this cold-weather approach are that some attractions are closed for refurbishment, and the Haunted Mansion -- one of my top five favorite attractions in the Park -- is infested with characters from Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas. Yeah, I'm gonna cap on the Haunted Mansion Holiday. And just when we were getting to like each other, right? The thing is, a lot of people ask me about "that Tim Burton thing at Disneyland," and here's what I tell them: It's nice, but don't go expecting a lot. For those of you who haven't yet had the pleasure, I'll explain it in brief: About a month before Halloween, the characters from Burton's stop-motion classic film are placed throughout the Mansion in human-sized representations that range from painted wood cutouts to full Audio-Animatronic figures. (Jack Skellington and Oogie Boogie figures make appearances, and are voiced by the original actors.) The Mansion's theme song, the catchy "Grim Grinning Ghosts," is replaced by a cacophonous mash-up soundtrack of public-domain Christmas carols and Danny Elfman's "Nightmare" songs. The attraction, normally dark and muted, is re-lit in vivid colors and the sets are augmented by cartoonish props and background scrims. I should hasten to say that I love The Nightmare Before Christmas, and I'll freely admit that that the Haunted Mansion Holiday overlay is worth seeing. An annual six-to-ten-week run would be a nice thing to look forward to. However, the overlay overstays its welcome, running from late September through mid-January. That's too long a time for a bunch of temporary sets and overlays to occupy an attraction that wasn't intended to support a second storyline. Just as Nightmare's Jack Skellington took over Christmas and ruined it through good intentions, so Disneyland does with one of its best attractions for just over a third of each year. The Haunted Mansion isn't exactly terrifying, but it is all of a piece -- as complete a mood-making and storytelling experience as you'll get on Pirates of the Caribbean next door. From the minute you enter the stretching room to your fleeting last look at Little Leota ("We've been dying to meet you..."), you are caught up in a story that's intended to inspire a feeling of ... I suppose I'd call it an amused unease. By supplanting that moody atmosphere with Burton's characters and visualizations, Disney under-delivers on both experiences: You get something that's not as good as a dedicated Nightmare Before Christmas dark ride, and the Mansion is diminished. The ride even seems shorter. It could be worse. For a hot minute after Walt Disney Pictures released the terrible Eddie Murphy comedy based on the attraction, there was talk of replacing Madame Leota -- voiced by the great Eleanor Audley, whose magisterial voice would scare the crap out of me even if it were reciting pre-flight instructions -- with Jennifer Tilly. As much as I love the buxom poker champion (I hear her whispering Oh, Corky! in my dreams, which I shall not document here), using her face and voice as Madame Leota would have pushed the Mansion further from the imagination and closer to Hollywood. Disneyland is an hour away from Burbank as the crow flies -- so why does Disney management feel the need to bring the two closer together? So, I'm going to Disneyland in a few weeks. And I'm getting Tim Burton's Haunted Mansion once again, a prospect I relish as much as a second viewing of his "re-imagined" Planet of the Apes. At this point, I don't imagine that even Burton cares if this tradition continues year after year. But luckily for him, he works in Hollywood -- and he can go to Disneyland any goddamned time he wants.

Expo '82: Happy birthday, EPCOT Center

EPCOT Center at Walt Disney World is now 25 years old. I won't write about Disney's Florida property that often, because aside from EPCOT, the monorail system and the 1960s-swank resort hotels -- the Contemporary and Polynesian particularly -- I don't have a whole lot invested in the place. The EPCOT I knew as a kid is long gone, and Florida is the site of every gross miscarriage of American justice of the last 200 years, from the Pee-Wee Herman arrest to the bungled 2000 election. I may well enjoy my upcoming visit to WDW -- my first in 19 years -- but even as I succumb to that futuristic nostalgia, at some level I'll be aware that Katherine Harris could be lurking around the next corner, waiting to jump out and melt my face off. My first EPCOT visit was in October 1983. I can remember its every aspect with keen detail: The awe-inspiring scale of the Future World pavilions, the faux-sulfur smell of the burning of Rome in Spaceship Earth, the cream-filled pastries at the France pavilion, the feeling of the Image Works pin beds on the palms of my hands. At EPCOT I tasted my first bite of sushi and first heard the music of Saint-Saens. I learned how a hydrogen engine worked, how many rooms the Forbidden City contained and what "symbiosis" meant. After dark I would sit serenely underneath the massive "geosphere," listening to the Buddy Baker-arranged loop of EPCOT's musical themes, and I felt challenged and hopeful. The future didn't have to be the dystopian Los Angeles of Blade Runner -- which also turns 25 this year, fancy that. Rather, the future could be hydroponic farms and magnetic levitation trains and orbiting space colonies. I must confess that for the longest time I never believed that Blade Runner would win out, and that 25 years later we'd be in a staring contest with the polar ice caps. When I listen to that EPCOT music loop today, I remember that optimistic euphoria -- but it's striped through with melancholy. We should have gotten there by now. We should have traded up to electric cars and idealism. Nevertheless, it's EPCOT's birthday, and no one wants to be reminded on their birthday that they haven't changed the world, or even lived up to the ideals of their parents. See that picture above? That's a shot of my copy of EPCOT's pre-opening souvenir program, which is filled with concept paintings and giddy promises. I read and re-read it until it fell apart, and that was long before EPCOT even opened its gates. You can't feel that kind of love and not feel something like it years later, even if your own heart has changed. At its heart, EPCOT still believes that the future is going to be a fine place to live -- and until we get there, who am I to say that it won't be?

Slamdance Cosmopolis! Disneyland's Videopolis, reviewed

When Space Mountain debuted at Disneyland in 1977, there was a small, open-air ampitheater at its base. Cheesy cover bands and D-list pop stars played that stage for years, and the good times might have gone on forever if Michael Eisner hadn't taken over Disney in 1984. In 1985, the ampitheater was roofed over and enclosed -- and the 3-D space musical "Captain EO," starring a pre-vitiligo Michael Jackson and a bunch of puppets, began screening there forthwith. (Produced by George Lucas! Directed by Francis Ford Coppola! I think it's a good idea that we continually remind these cocky sons-of-bitches that they worked on this project.) This left Disneyland without a large performance space and dance floor, and at a time when kids were dancing to the new-wave music in large numbers. Fortunately, there was a sizable chunk of usable land in Fantasyland next to it's a small world and Steve Wozniak had a enormous stage rig left over from his Us Festival two years before. Bringing the two elements together, Disney Imagineering created Videopolis. The whole process took just 105 days, from hasty napkin sketch to neon-accented reality. I'd like to say I was there on opening night in June 1985, but I wasn't. Actually, I'm not even sure that I want to say that I wish I could have been there. There was nothing in the print or radio advertising for Videopolis that made me want to abandon Orange County's handful of 18-and-over dance joints -- Nightscape, Jagg, Odyssey, Old World. Those places, with their black walls, booming sound systems and doorless toilets, were there own kind of theme park, where we could make out with each other, smoke red-box Marlboros, sit around and look petulant and, time permitting, dance to Dead Or Alive, Prince and Bauhaus. Plus, Videopolis had a jingle, which was enough to make it uncool. The radio ad, also played as a kind of overture when the venue opened for the evening, was just plain awful: Tonight’s the night, gonna do it right Gonna use my very best moves, show what I can do Dance till I drop, 'cause the music’s so hot Goin to the top, Videopolis Gonna make it rock Videopolis, Videopolis Sorry, I've already checked: Bryan Adams didn't write it. My friends and I avoided Videopolis for nearly a year after it opened. Then, one May evening in 1986, we capped a day at Disneyland with a night at Videopolis -- and there we stayed, well into autumn. Virtually every summer weekend, we'd go to Disneyland and Videopolis, sometimes bypassing the former in favor of the latter. There were many reasons for our change of heart. Some of our favorite clubs closed down. (Nightscape was demolished to make way for the Santa Ana Mainplace Mall, and Jagg later became a strip club called Captain Cream's Tussling Tootsies.) The remaining clubs were becoming more violent, and we felt like the hippie all-of-us-together vibe -- which had never existed -- had left the building. These things drove us to a 5,000 square-foot dance floor flanked by 70 video screens, several rows of teal-colored bleachers and enough stage lighting to incinerate a herd of cattle ... but it was the fireworks that kept us there. At that time, Disneyland's nightly fireworks show was launched from a backstage area where Toontown now stands. Most people watched the show from a remove. ("Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls ... please direct your attention to the sky.") The fireworks exploded directly over Videopolis, so close you could feel the ground tremor as they blew, and get the powder smell in your clothes. Disney played it up. At 9:35 every night, the tech crew would dim the lights and bring up "Two Tribes (Annihilation)," by Frankie Goes To Hollywood. That big fucking siren noise would scare the hell out of us every time, but then the orchestra would kick in and a cheer would rise from the dance floor, diminishing to an awed sigh as the first skyrockets blew. We kept dancing even as colorful warfare was waged in the heavens. Other Orange County clubs would give us minor skirmishes, turf wars. Videopolis gave us armageddon. It had a nice beat and you could dance to it. There were other things worth remembering about Videopolis, but none as extraordinary as the fireworks. The Videopolis crowd was big-haired boys and bigger-haired girls, dancing awkward hip-hop steps to Janet Jackson's "Nasty." The scenery was okay, but oftentimes we'd get bored with the glibness of the crowd and we'd pine for the old club crowd we once knew -- geeky, black-clad and willing to be felt up in a dark corner. On a somewhat related note, we once spotted staunch conservative radio host Wally George in the crowd. He was smiling, which was kind of disappointing; we had hoped he would at least pull a mild sneer and denounce us for a bunch of perverts. Videopolis' tech guys -- I believe they preferred to be called "VJs" -- played videos by New Order, Eurythmics, Expose and the like, and they'd mix the videos with live footage of dancers in the crowd that was video-toastered almost beyond recognition. LED strips hung on the lighting rigs, and if you happened to glance past one quickly you'd get an afterimage of a fleeting shape of a dancing figure. There were massive video screens above the stage showing the action, and sometimes you were allowed to dance on the stage itself. Videopolis was our reality TV. We stuck with it until gangs began to move in and tried to establish turf. As soon as the first colors were flashed, Disney management had no choice but to close the dance floor forever. The venue still stands, but it's called the Fantasyland Theater and it's been roofed over with a two-posted tent that even the most pious of Disney geeks calls "The Wonderbra." Disneyland has no teen dance programming to speak of, unless you count the cover bands playing the Tomorrowland Terrace stage. That seems appropriate. No one really dances in straight dance clubs anymore -- they're too busy getting piss drunk from overpriced bottle-service gin and trying not to look like every other idiot who's wearing the exact same outfit. They don't know what it's like to move yo' body to the sound of World War 3, and they never will.

Throttle Rockets

Today, Werner Weiss at Yesterland has a lovely piece on the evolution of the Rocket Jets. The Jets are not one of my favorite rides in the Park. It's not an altogether unpleasant three minutes, but the line for this spinning ride is invariably more than twenty minutes in length. That's too long to wait for a trip that doesn't go anywhere, scenic and dizzy-making though it may be. There are compensations, though. The Rocket Jets -- I'm sorry, the Astro Orbitor -- is one of the most photogenic attractions at Disneyland, especially after dark. That said, I agree with Mr. Weiss: The Orbitor was moved too close to the Castle during the half-assed Tomorrowland reboot of 1998. Oh my. If you want to get me uselessly fired-up, just mention the godawful Tomorrowland reboot of 1998. By the by, I'm easing you into Disneyland fandom as gently as I can. Yesterland is one of the oldest Disneyland-themed websites, and also one of the best. Mr. Weiss writes spare prose about attractions which have been closed and removed from the Park, and he's just sentimental enough to really make you feel for all those vanished dark rides and buried automatons, while enough of a pragmatist to make you realize that Disneyland is not a museum. If it were, they'd have a docent program, and I'd probably toss several other candidates from the Rocket Jets for a chance to run it.

Jolie Holiday

I have set up a Google Alert for Disneyland. Every time the name of the other Happiest Place on Earth (1) pops up in a news story or bl-g item, it's flagged by our robot Google overlords and compiled into a daily digest that's emailed to me daily. Most of the items are stories I've already read or stories that really aren't about Dinseyland at all; the name of the Park has long since been assimilated into the cultural vernacular as shorthand for something cloying or phony (2). Today, however, I lucked out: There was a geneuine Disneyland item in several of the cult-of-celebrity blogs. One of those, StarPulse, I will quote here without permission: Angelina Jolie Visited Disneyland After Taking Acid Angelina Jolie once took powerful drug LSD before a trip to children's paradise Disneyland. The star admits taking the hallucinogenic drug before a trip to the tourist attraction in California. She says, "I remember taking LSD before I went to Disneyland. I started thinking about Mickey Mouse being a short, middle-aged man in a costume who hates life. Those drugs can be dangerous if you don't go into it positively-- I gave them up long ago." The rest of the item is here. Prepare to have your optimistic world-view utterly shattered. Angelina Jolie has done drugs? That's disturbing. Now we can't run her for president. Now, the funny thing about that item is that I can absolutely picture a teenaged Angelina Jolie floating serenely around Disneyland, pausing occasionally to light a clove, to consider the perfect forest green color of a lamppost or to lick the side of a popcorn cart. I may have given her a light, for all I know. The Disneyland I knew as a teen was a place where people smoked, gathered in whimsical cliques and, yes, dared to wonder what Mickey's had going on underneath that big plastic head. My friends and I held annual passes. I got my first pass in 1985 and I still have one today, even though I no longer live in Southern California. We went to the Park nearly every weekend, and after I while I began to feel comfortable enough there to get into Jolie-like mischief. I had some of my early, furtive sexual encounters on Adventure Thru Inner Space, drank sickly-sweet vodka drinks in the parking lot and nearly got into fistfights at Videopolis. I could have dropped acid on the Peoplemover, if only Angelina's crowd had been considerate enough to proffer some. So, yeah, I can understand what brings un-Disneylike individuals to Disneyland, and when they tell me they love the place as much as the white, Christian straights for whom Uncle Walt ostensibly built the place, I believe them. Disneyland is not an entitlement; it belongs to everyone. It belongs to communists, to moody goths, to coked-out drag queens, and not least of all to Angelina Jolie. (1) Next to the Double Down Saloon in Las Vegas, of course. (2) I lived in Las Vegas during the years when the casinos tried to pull in a family crowd. It was the first time I'd heard the overused term "Disneyfied." (3) It's not a rum and Coke. Don't call it a rum and Coke.