The day after crunch mode ends on a project is like a bullet train hitting a concrete mammoth. “Brick wall” seemed too mundane. You’d think I’d be used to it by now, instead of finding myself sitting in a hotel room with nothing to do and too bored even to nap.

There’s still plenty to do, of course, but the key point is that I didn’t have to do anything today. I’m torn between halfway feeling guilty about goofing off today and then realizing that I don’t feel guilty about goofing off today and feeling guilty about that. Luckily things will get crazy busy again within a couple of days, and all that nonsense will stop.

I ended up going to Hollywood Boulevard to see Pirates of the Caribbean at The The El Capitan Theater. A while ago I complained about the El Capitan having too much of the Disney Regimented Whimsy vibe going on. That was a perfect example of what happens when Disney goes horribly awry; today was a great example of what happens when Disney gets it right.

The theater has piratey stuff over the sign, all through the lobby, and in the balcony. In the basement there’s a museum with props and costumes from the movie. If you pre-ordered your ticket, you got a bucket of popcorn and soda included (the tickets are ridiculously expensive, but a) that’s Disney, and 2) it was worth it). They had the organist going as usual, which is always cool; a drawing for tickets to Disneyland; and before the show started they did a flaming pirate skull/dungeon effect behind the screen, which was really well-done and great for getting geared up for the movie. It was pretty much exactly the promise of the theater — the Disney thing combined with the Great Movie House thing.

As for the movie itself: not bad. I’d been reading reviews panning it, and hearing people say they didn’t like it, but I don’t think it deserves the negativity. As far as movie-trilogy-franchise-building goes, it was suitably entertaining. And it worked all right as a movie in spite of being the Jan Brady of the trilogy — unlike The Two Towers (a better movie), Pirates had an arc to it.

What it needed was an editor. And a few more script revisions. In the first, stuff happened because it kind of made sense to happen. It was still as formulaic as a big Disney action franchise requires, but there was motivation for everything. The second just seems as if they threw everything they could think of up on the screen. I’m sure there was a thread through the whole thing that made it vaguely story-like, and I’ll bet that it was explained in one of the hundreds of lines of dialogue I couldn’t comprehend at all. Plus the thing could’ve stood to lose an hour or so.

Speaking of bad editing and meandering purposelessness, here’s a video I made from Hollywood Boulevard. I got myself a video camera for my birthday and was playing around with it and iMovie. But if you’re into that kind of thing, the internet makes it possible. Let me reiterate that this is a home movie, so don’t watch it expecting something interesting to happen.

The internet is full-to-bursting with self-important nerds who are simultaneously obsessed beyond reason with the minutiae of their chosen hobby and convinced that they could do a better job than the people currently in charge of that hobby.

This isn’t breaking news. It happens with movies, comic books, television series (somehow, Joss Whedon remains exempt), and I imagine it happens with stuff I’m not a nerdy fan of myself. I’ll bet that the world of Civil War re-enactments has its own little dramas playing out, with people resentful at the ego-maniac glory hound who insists on playing Grant with copper buttons on his uniform although any real devotee of history knows that Grant insisted on bronze buttons because of an incident in a copper mine when he was three.

So if this behavior is all just part of the natural gestalt of the internets, why does reading The Re-Imagineering Blog make me want to hit the writers of that site repeatedly over the head with a manure-filled sock?

Because, as we’ve learned from Robert Louis Stevenson and countless Lifetime TV movies, we fear the darkness that lives within us all. And I hate the Walt Disney World version of the Enchanted Tiki Room, and I think that the WDW version of The Tower of Terror is infinitely better than Disneyland’s.

I just don’t think you’ve got to be such a damn douche about it.

These guys call their blog “Re-Imagineering,” but they don’t do much other than bitch and moan, and parrot back public-relations quotes from Walt Disney about magic and imagination as if they’d just won some kind of argument. You could make a pretty convincing argument that the greatest talent of Disney (the man) was in selling himself and his ideas. As much as we like to believe otherwise, the real world doesn’t reward you with such a long-lasting legacy and reputation based on talent alone — you can be the greatest visionary the world’s ever seen, but it’s not worth anything if no one listens to you.

So all the Disney quotes and truisms that get passed around do have some genuine value. It’s just not so much value for making a theme park, but selling it. Of course, that’s not all that Disney did — he had great ideas and very importantly, knew how to find the guys who knew how to make those ideas work, and get them on his side. Any idiot can just say, “Disney theme parks should be magical.”

And they do, repeatedly, all over the internets. There’s all kinds of moaning and hand-wringing and people saying, completely without irony, “What would Walt think?!?” But if the guys on this blog are putting themselves forward as “Pixar and Disney professionals,” it’s not enough to just complain about how things just ain’t like they used to be. They need to put up or shut up.

And, incidentally, stop being so long-winded, pompous, and sanctimonious. Everything I read from the writers of that site reminds me of the Achewood strip where they prank call Garfield.
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Disney magic has transformed a week-long business trip into a two-week-long business trip, since I’ve got to leave Monday morning for a week down in LA. On the plus side, I’m… well, saving on groceries, I guess.

Of course, it’s hard to feel too sorry for myself when last week ended up being as nice a “business trip” as you can get while still calling it that. That was the kind of thing I was imagining when I was thinking of some day working for Disney — getting stuff done, seeing enough of the behind-the-scenes stuff to be cool but not so much as to ruin it. And getting time to just goof off and enjoy it, to be reminded of the point of working for Imagineering in the first place (it’s not to make tons of money and climb up the management hierarchy, contrary to what the LA mentality may suggest).

This was my first real trip to Disney World as an adult. Going with the family doesn’t really count, since I’m stuck in perpetual 16-years-old-ness whenever I’m around my family, and also we end up just going around doing the same stuff we always do for nostalgia value more than anything else. And the last trip for work didn’t count, since I only had a couple hours here and there to rush into a park on my own and try (unsuccessfully) to treat it like a working vacation.

This time I got to see it as an adult would see it, and it’s pretty damn impressive. Disneyland is still more fun in a lot of ways, and there are a lot of things it gets right that Disney World just doesn’t master (Pirates of the Caribbean, for instance, and the Magic Kingdom at WDW just feels a lot more cold and empty and imposing, somehow). I guess the corny comparison would be that Disneyland is a single theme park done perfectly, while Disney World is an entire city built around the concept.

I’m sure that if I’d been spending the whole time worrying about how much everything cost, or how I was going to keep the kids well-rested and entertained, or any of the other genuine adult concerns that people have that make them critical of Disney, it would’ve been different. But as it was, I was free to just go around and be impressed.

Burbank is going to seem a lot more mundane, I’m sure. Tonight is a comedy show with Patton Oswalt, Sarah Silverman, and others, which I’m expecting to be anti-Disney. After that I’m going to do as much sleeping in my own bed and playing with my own videogames as I can until I have to get on another plane.

As it turns out, the rumors of the total lack of internet access were greatly exaggerated. When I was ironing a shirt this morning, I found an ethernet cable hiding in the back of the closet, and I grabbed it like a kid opening a Christmas present.

It doesn’t make that much of a difference, since I’m still not in the hotel room enough to keep up with my usual level of internet slack time. But it does at least let me talk about Expedition Everest to an audience other than those who are jaded about Disney rides.

But first, the trip in general. So far it’s going so well that it’s unsettling. The travel itself was painless — they’d originally stuck me in the dead center of a 7-seat plane for a 4-hour flight, but just as I was about to sit down, someone asked me to trade seats so I got an aisle. And the flight got in ahead of schedule.

The weather here has been perfect. Again, to the point of feeling unnatural — it’s just not right to be in Florida and not be soaking wet from a combination of sweat and sudden thunderstorms. But it’s been clear, sunny, and cool all week. The food’s been good, the people have been friendly, the parks have been fun, and the hotel is about perfect.

So it’s just been a slacker’s vacation on Corporate Entertainment’s dime, right? Actually, no. Because we’ve got a smaller group here and because we’re far enough along in the project to know exactly what we’re looking for, we’ve gotten a lot accomplished, and the meetings have been going well. (Because I can’t say more than that on the internets, and because I don’t want to jinx it, that’s all I’m saying about that).

And because it’s been productive, there’s been more time to just relax. We went to Animal Kingdom yesterday and rode Expedition Everest two times (keeping in theme with the trip, the line was less than 15 minutes long), and went back today to ride it again (the line was a little less than an hour this time, which was actually good because it gave us a chance to see all the details in line).

It’s an astoundingly good ride, totally solid and a hell of a lot of fun. The Asia section of the park has remarkably detailed theming, and the ride fits in with that. The queue has tons of details throughout and combines a tourist center, a shrine to the Yeti as protector of the mountain, and a Yeti museum. That theming extends to the ride itself, as the lift hill goes through a temple that’s as detailed as anything you saw in the queue. And the rest of the ride crams everything good about Disney coasters into just over a minute — effects, animation, some innovation, an some genuine surprises (even though I knew the basic layout going in).

Apparently the word going around was that it was a “gentle” coaster, but it’s not. It leaves you with the same overall feel as Big Thunder Mountain, but it’s a good bit more intense, especially the section in the dark. And the Yeti (hope I’m not ruining the ride for anyone, but yeah, you do see the Yeti) is just awesome. As much as I enjoyed the ride, it was even cooler seeing groups of kids getting off clapping and cheering and running right back to the entrance to ride it again. It looks like they’ve got a hit.

Me, I got off, bought a T-shirt for it (I’d said I wasn’t going to buy any more Disney T-shirts, but this one was too cool to pass up), and casually walked back to ride it again. If the park hadn’t been closing, I would’ve tried to ride it one more time. There’s still two days left to get my chance…

When Robert Iger showed up at that Apple announcement last year to bring “Lost” and “Desperate Housewives” to the iPod, people were saying it showed that Steve Jobs and Disney were close pals now that Michael Eisner was gone. Maybe there was something to that, because Disney finally bought Pixar.

I guess things were going in that direction for a while, so it was inevitable. I couldn’t be less of an insider as far as the film/animation studio business goes, but at least from a surface assessment (Disney animation needs more innovation, Pixar animation needs more market profile) it makes sense. I also like seeing press releases that mention billions of dollars of stock transitions and “imagination” and “dreams” and “the child in everyone” all on the same page.

I didn’t notice any mention of whether they’re going to keep the Pixar brand name. If nothing else, it’ll reduce some of their ad text, so for parades and rides and such they can finally stop saying, “A Walt Disney Animation Production of a Pixar Studios Film Monsters, Inc.“

A Disney podcast called Inside the Magic has posted two ride-through videos of the Expedition Everest ride at Animal Kingdom in Florida. It is what we Imagineers like to call so totally wicked awesome.

The video is from a roller coaster, so it’s dark and bumpy and blurry and such, but then that’s why The Zapruder Effect is in play. You can see the cool Yeti shadow effect, and the twisted tracks sequence, as well as pretty much the entire ride in the video. But what’s going on in all the pitch black sequences? And what’s it feel like on the ride itself?

I’ll find out the next time my job takes me to Orlando. I’m feeling lucky!

If you use iTunes, you can get at the video podcasts part one and part two.

(And the goofy picture of me is just to test out ecto, a blog-writing app that I’m thinking of using.)

Tonight after work I decided to go see Chicken Little at The The The El Capitan Theater in Hollywood. I’ve been wanting to see the theater for a while now, and I had to do something to make up for not going to Disneyland this trip, and it was showing in Disney Digital 3D! I’m not familiar with the details, but apparently the theater is all historical and shit. It’s not as big as Grauman’s main theater, but they make up for it by making a big production out of everything.

When we went in they gave us all the Chicken Little 3D glasses to keep as a souvenir — and because you don’t want to be wearing the same glasses that some freakshow off Hollywood Boulevard came in and wore before you. As we went into the theater the guy was already playing on his swinging organ on stage. That was really cool — he did a whole Disney medley and they had it somehow hooked up in stereo so it was like being surrounded by organ. Yes I used the same dumb double entendre twice in a row. Then the theater manager came out and welcomed everyone and announced upcoming shows. And then we saw trailers of some movie about snow dogs that get lost in the Arctic, and The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe.

So far it sounds like great old-time movie house experience. Well, that was before the cute young singer in a short skirt ran out on stage and started dancing to one of the songs from Chicken Little and she brought out two people dressed as Chicken Little and the Ugly Duckling to dance on stage with her. And then she asked everybody in the audience to stand up and dance with her. Sure, it’s a G-rated kids movie. But it was at 10pm on a Thursday night, too. I didn’t go out to dance, and I didn’t go out to feel curmudgeonly, either, dammit. Luckily, nobody else stood up either. At the end of three minutes of dancing they launched the confetti cannons and started the movie.

And the problem is that that whole attitude of forced commercial whimsy carries on through the whole movie. The movie’s technically very well done, and the 3D is neat without being overdone. But it’s all just kind of flaccid and weird and formulaic and forced. It’s not even Dreamworks bad, like a mean-spirited Shrek movie that’s desperate to show how hip it is. This wasn’t cringingly unfunny; in fact it was pretty clever in some places. But there was no spark to it. Not just because of a lack of imagination; it feels like the imagination was actively supressed to make room for the songs and the commercial tie-ins.

I’m still trying to figure out exactly what it was, because the movie doesn’t have the usual Disney formula but still feels completely formulaic. I had somewhat high hopes, too. Not because I’m rooting for Disney in the whole Disney vs. Pixar thing, but because I’d like to see more good CGI movies coming out. Pixar can only release a movie every so often, after all, and I can’t say I’ve got high hopes for Cars. I’d even be rooting for a Dreamworks movie to be good if they ever announced one with any potential.

My point, I guess, is that I’ve been a Disney fan for so long that I tend to automatically filter out the stuff that people complain about the company. It’s vaguely unsettling to see it all laid bare.

(I won’t mention the bit about how I don’t know my way around Burbank and Glendale like I thought I did so I ended up driving all over the place for an hour and missed the 7:30 show and had to wait two hours for the 9:45 one so I missed a whole night of writing and I’m feeling all guilty about it).

No Disneyland for me this week, since they’re only keeping the park open until 8pm every night. Even I’m not stupid enough to drive at least an hour and a half through Los Angeles rush hour traffic to be able to spend 30 minutes to an hour in the happiest place on earth.

Okay, I am, but not this week. There’s just too much to do. I think we’re making a lot of progress on the project, which means that when I get back to the hotel I’ve got plenty of stuff to write on the design document. That’s good! But I’m so very, very tired. That’s bad. Still, having too many ideas and not enough time and energy to commit them to (virtual) paper is a hell of a lot better than vice-versa.

I did get to tag along on a tour today of the R&D presentation, following a group of Japanese employees of the Oriental Land Company (they run Tokyo Disneyland and Tokyo DisneySea). The demo was really cool; there’s some really neat stuff in development. Plus, as it was all run through a translator, I got the abbreviated version that hit on all the special effects and visual “Wow” stuff. And I’m pretty sure that’s all I’m allowed to say about it.

Even if I didn’t have work, there’d be too much to do for Disneyland. I’m still fighting under the ever-escalating word count deficit. The zen of “it’s okay; I can do this” has gone away since I haven’t really made a dent in my fictional masterwork (fictional in that it’s a work of fiction and it doesn’t exist at this point), and I still have only introduced one character at this point and haven’t even gotten to the main plot.

And of course, yet another distraction. The game The Movies came out this week, and it’s one I’ve been semi-interested in ever since it was announced. It’s getting fair-to-middling reviews, but I’m still intrigued enough to check it out; the only question is finding time to do it. The game sounds like it does a pretty good job of Sims-like emergent behavior, getting results that were completely unexpected. Something as completely unexpected as GameSpy running a genuinely funny article, about one columnist’s attempt to make a western and ending up with Brokeback Mountain.