Here’s a post from the blog of C Martin Croker (TV’s Zorak from “Space Ghost” and “The Brak Show”) from a little over a month ago, about the changes recently made to Disneyland’s Pirates of the Caribbean ride.

I haven’t seen Disneyland’s new version yet, but I have ridden Walt Disney World’s, and I agree with him on just about every single point he makes. It’s kind of frustrating, because to me it seems like the whole thing is the best of a bad situation.

Technically, they did a great job. The new animatronics are very well done, the best I’ve ever seen of trying to emulate a real person. They’re integrated well into the scenes without overpowering them. (In the Florida version, the end scene is completely replaced, but that was always an anti-climactic and weak scene).

And I’d even say that as a concept, it made sense — the movies have been huge successes, and the first was genuinely an “instant classic.” (I didn’t like the second one as much, but it could still work if the third one delivers the pay-off).

But it just doesn’t fit all that well. As the blog says, you’re left wondering “who’s that guy wandering around the Pirates ride?” But if they’d tried to do a Marc Davis-style characterization of Capt. Jack Sparrow, I can guarantee you it would’ve just come across as a failed animatronic of Johnny Depp. So you’re stuck with never touching the ride except for refurbishments, or trying something new and getting criticized for not being “true to the original vision” or only being out for cheap marketing tie-ins. It’s not a position I’d want to be in.

Like I said, I haven’t been on Disneyland’s version yet. According to Croker’s blog, the bits voiced by Paul Frees got the boot, which worries me. That was my favorite aspect of the ride.

P.S. I just saw in that Wikipedia entry that Paul Frees was the voice of K.A.R.R. in Knight Rider. Which is so unbelievably awesome.

I got this weekend off, so I’m cramming into two days all the stuff I imagined I’d be doing when I first heard I was going to be spending a month at Disney World.

Even though I’ve been to Disney World more times than a normal person would admit to, I still see something new every trip. This time (as a guest, anyway), it’s been the water parks. Today I started at Typhoon Lagoon and found my new hands-down favorite thing to do in the entire resort. It’s called Castaway Creek, and it’s a river that runs around the entire park with various places you can get in or out. You get on one of the inner tubes and let the current take you gradually around the entire length of the river, under bridges, past waterfalls, through caves, and into a misty rain forest area.

It’s awesome. From now on, whenever anyone asks what I’d rather be doing, my answer is “lying and floating.” I intentionally left my watch and cell phone back at the hotel, but I estimate that an entire circuit around the river takes thirty minutes, and I must’ve gone around two and a half times at least.

I also rode the new “Crush’n Gusher” water coaster they’ve installed, and it was fun enough but no big deal. I would’ve hit the other slides and then taken another couple of hours in the river, but they closed the park on account of approaching thunderstorms.

The thunderstorms finally hit once I was on Big Thunder Mountain at the Magic Kingdom. (I’d stopped by Epcot and rode Mission: Space, and it was every bit as headache-inducing and uncomfortable and anti-climactic as I’d remembered). The rain washed out any hope of riding anything else, since it drove all the people into the ride queues and I didn’t feel like waiting, but it cleared up long enough for the fireworks. All totaled it was a pretty good day. Still not as fun as going to the parks with other people, but there’s something to be said for doing whatever you feel like doing on your own schedule without having to wait (or make them wait for you to finish smoking).

Tomorrow I’m planning on riding Expedition Everest again, then heading to the other water park Blizzard Beach. At the moment, I’ve got the kind of tired that comes only after a day filled with age-inappropriate activities, so I’m going to dream about fireworks and inner tubes and Gary Sinise spinning me at 4Gs.

The Orlando Sentinel put up a video covering the Team Possible game at Epcot, and it came out pretty good. You can watch it here (assuming you’re running Windows; I can’t figure out how to get it to play in Safari).

The video has a lot of interviews with the VP of Imagineering R&D talking about the game, interspersed with shots of kids playing it and of several of the effects in action. I’m still planning on going through the game with a video camera sometime next week, but I doubt I’ll do as good a job capturing the effects as the professionals did.

It looks like it’s finally safe to talk about what I’ve been working on for the past year. (With the reminder that this is a personal blog and neither I nor this website is a representative of the Disney company. I don’t speak for them, they don’t speak for me, etc.)

It’s a playtest for an adventure game in Epcot’s World Showcase based on the Kim Possible series, using wireless devices to give you the next clue to solve your mission. This Disney fan site has a description of the game with pictures (and yes, the creepy guy standing in front of the Kim Possible logo is yours truly). I’ve taken my own pictures of the first half of the game; the next half will come whenever I get a chance to play through it as a guest again.

As a fan of the Disney parks (and, yes, of the Kim Possible show), I think it’s just a brilliant idea, and I was sold as soon as I first heard the concept. The playtest is going on for the next two and a half weeks, and the results are still being analyzed by all the different divisions of the company. But on a personal note, I think it turned out pretty cool, the work that the guys at Imagineering R&D put into it is amazing, and it’s one of the two projects I’m proudest to have worked on.

The coolest is seeing kids around the park playing it and getting excited about it. And the family who was leaving the finale, and the dad came back upstairs to give the whole team the thumbs-up sign. Working in “normal” videogames, you never get that kind of instant feedback, and wherever the project goes after the playtest ends, it’s just cool seeing something in the park and working and seeing people enjoy it.

Today was the first day I’ve had off in a couple of weeks. I spent the bulk of it napping, interspersed with rides on the Tower of Terror.

After being awakened (awoken?) by fireworks, I headed to Downtown Disney to the Adventurers Club. Full disclosure: this was my second night in a row there, and I went alone, and I did get a little tipsy. Still, I can be smug and sanctimonious enough to point out the people there who were messed up.

I’ve never been consistent enough in my bar-going to spot the regulars, but I know they’re out there. They have their routine, and their regular drinks, and their awkward conversations with the barstaff, and in the most uncomfortable of situations, they prey on younger bar-goers. Combine the sadness of the barfly with the loneliness of the Disney “That Guy,” and you end up with the Disney Drunk, a sight so melancholy it’s like the saddest song played on the black keys of the world’s most depressing piano.

The Adventurers Club, in case you don’t know, is on Pleasure Island at Downtown Disney, and is actually an extremely cool concept. It’s kind of a dinner theater thing without the dinner, set in an adventurer’s club in the 1930s. The cast of characters roams throughout interacting with the drunk guests, and there’s lots of stuff on the walls that talks. Disney plus improv comedians means some of the corniest innuendo you’d ever want to hear, but somehow it all ends up working. Tonight during one of the bits the guys launched into a rendition of “Puttin’ on the Ritz” from Young Frankenstein that was pretty hilarious.

The place has its own slogans and in-jokes and cheers and such, so you get a lot of repeat guests. In addition to the hairy guy wearing the tropical shirt (me, who was referred to as “mustache man” for much of the night), there was:

• A good-looking and very well-dressed man in a suit with Adventurers’ Club pins in his lapel. He did all the cheers and would go from group to group, chatting with anyone who made eye contact.
• An older gentleman in a black T-shirt and shorts, who went from room to room just before the show would start, like clockwork, and occasionally chatted with
• A young woman dressed in black, wearing make-up much like a woman who learned to wear make-up when she was in her Goth phase in high school and outgrew that but never had anything to fall back on.

The latter two told me to avoid sitting in a corner seat I’d picked out, because I’d be hit when the door of a cabinet flew open during the show. (I did, and I almost was). They chatted amongst themselves about which actor was playing which part this evening, calling both by name and referring to the club’s different shows in some kind of code (e.g. “Bob’s doing Hathaway tonight in the 11:50 Mask Room.”) In other words, they’re insiders.

It was all fascinating, and became even more fascinating the more I drank. It was like its own little ecosystem in the middle of the gigantic entertainment megalopolis of Walt Disney World. The only barfly I’ve encountered at Disneyland — the “Velvet Misery” — was a lot more depressing, because it seemed more personal. Everything at Disney World is on a much grander scale, which makes it all seem like a giant social studies experiment. Including the absolutely shitfaced young woman who kept telling the cast that it was her boyfriend’s birthday, and how they ended up with several members of the cast giving him a spanking with a tennis racket while onlookers laughed somewhat nervously, and how we all knew that they deal with this kind of thing every night and that there’s probably some Operations Manual written down somewhere telling them that spanking a young drunk man with a tennis racket is acceptable behavior and where exactly that line is drawn.

Also, I overheard one of the cast talking to a group of people about the project I’m working on. That was cool.

Speaking of the ineffable genius of marketing types:

By way of The Disney Blog, here’s Kroger’s press release for Old Yeller Chunk Style Dog Food.

You can go ahead and read that press release without fear of spoilers; for some reason, they don’t mention how the movie ends.

So look forward to a long life with your dog thanks to Old Yeller Chunk Style Dog Food. And when it comes time to put your faithful companion down, why not try Bambi’s Mom brand bullets? They’re in your local Kroger right next to Grave of the Fireflies brand fruit candies.