Shameless

More insomnia means a curiously revealing and yet still dull year-end list.

Tonight’s this morning’s hell I don’t even know anymore’s list topic: things I should technically be embarrassed to like as much as I do, but I’m on this new “there’s no such thing as a guilty pleasure” kick.

The New Scooby Doo: Mystery Incorporated series
Except for maybe “The Powerpuff Girls,” any animated series aimed at kids has failed the second they make it smart enough for adults to like, too. I really like that the new series is for fans of the old series — they’ve got all kinds of callbacks to the original monsters, cameos from “New Scooby Doo Mysteries” celebrities like Don Knotts, and clever bits like casting Casey Kasem as Shaggy’s dad. And they have a season-wide story arc hinting at the original bunch of crime-solving teens in the same city, with their talking parrot. I hope it lasts.

Aquaman on the new “Brave and the Bold” series
The series isn’t quite as charming as it used to be, but Aquaman (voiced by John DiMaggio, who does Bender from Futurama and Jake from Adventure Time) is still the best character. Nice to see the guy finally getting a little respect, since he’s had a hard few decades.

Man vs Food
Everything about this show is just wrong. It’s a testament to gross American excess and waste, the host is plenty likeable but he talks through his nose, and they referred to Walnut Creek as “just outside of San Francisco.” But still, if it comes on, my ass is fixed to the couch and my eyes to the TV for hours, or until creepy Anthony Bourdain comes on, whichever comes first. I’m not proud of it, but it happens.

The Daily Puppy
is my favorite blog, hands down. Don’t tell my cat.

The “Walt Disney World Ephemera” group on Flickr
and the “Disney Printed Matter” group
There are billions and billions of groups for Disney fans on Flickr, but these two are specifically for maps, magazine ads, FastPasses, ride tickets, parking tickets, and old shopping bags. When I was younger, I used to sneak into my brother’s room and rummage through the bottom drawer of his dresser, because that’s where he kept the bags full of souvenirs from our previous trip to Disney World. (Other families hid porn, my family hid Disney souvenirs). To this day, the EPCOT Future World icons and original Walt Disney World logo and even this photo still trigger a glee response at the base of my spine. Also this.

More evidence that no matter what you’re into, there are at least fifty other people somewhere on the internet who are even more into it than you are. And yes, I mean the naughty stuff too.

And unrelated, but just because I love it a lot: “Whiners Can Be Losers” from the Cartoon Network’s golden days.

Si, so low we can’t hear you

Travel don’ts for the solitary urbanite

Down Main StreetIt seemed reasonable enough: I had to be in Orlando for business, I just left my job and felt like I could use a vacation, and I like Walt Disney World. Love roller coasters, love Aerosmith, hello. I still stand behind my logic leading up to this decision.

Perfect logic or not, I can’t recommend it. It’s not even like I’ve never been to places inappropriate for the Lonely Planet treatment. Paris? Just hit the Louvre, take photos from the top of the Eiffel Tower, and skip the moonlight walks along the Seine. Venice? Just glare at the guys trying to sell you roses and go to the next museum. Disneyland? I can’t really recommend it, but they get enough annual passholders that you can make a go of it solo. But Disney World may be the most inhospitable place for the single guy outside of a Lamaze class.

It’s not as if the parks failed me somehow; the place is just plain designed for families or couples on their way to being families. And the result of going solo is that you end up at the Orlando airport going through what felt like every single side effect listed in ads for Abilify.

But hey, Disney World! I’ve been at least thirty times and I still see something new each time, and this trip was no different. One of the unexpected highlights was the “Gran Fiesta Tour” in the Mexico pavilion at Epcot, formerly “El Rio del Tiempo.” It’s still not an E-Ticket, but it’s got exactly the right touch and tone: still all the charm or the original ride but without feeling embarrassingly dated, and still a tourist promotion for Mexico but without feeling too dry. Plus they brought the characters back, which is something Epcot’s always needed, and they did it the cool way by using the Three Caballeros.

The Main Street Electrical Parade isn’t new, but it’s back, and it still does a great job of making me feel like a six year old again.

I finally got to play through all of the missions in the final version of the Kim Possible World Showcase Adventure, and it’s pretty cool, and it seems to be pretty popular. It also gets you into parts of the pavilion you haven’t seen before. In the Japan pavilion, I found the other new-for-me thing, an exhibit called “Spirited Beasts.” It has a display devoted to different types of Obakemono (creatures of Japanese folklore) with representations from traditional art, toys and anime. And it’s the perfect kind of exhibit for Epcot: it teaches about Japanese folklore by making it relevant to the audience. I was very impressed.

Plus it was the first time I’d ever seen the hotel I stayed at, and they let you take a riverboat to Downtown Disney. And the only advantage to going alone: they’ve got single rider lines all over the place, so I got to ride Expedition Everest like five times in a row. That coaster gets better the more I ride it.

So I still recommend everybody take an extended trip to Disney World, just take a buddy. And deodorant.

Update: Disneyland Still Fun

splashterror.jpgFrom the “posting just to say I’m still alive” department:

Last weekend I tagged along with some friends to Disneyland and it was, despite United Airlines’ best efforts, a great big ton o’ fun. One of the many things I like about Disney parks is that you can go hundreds of times, covering every inch of the park and even poking around back stage, and still manage to see something new each time you go.

Most of the time, the combination of familiar classics + a little bit of novelty + Dole Whips is enough to remind you why Disney does an outstanding job with the parks, but occasionally you’ll see something amazing. This trip I saw three:

  • Remodeled Sleeping Beauty Castle Tour: This has been closed off for years, rumored to be the blame of post-9/11 hypersensitivity. Even before then, it wasn’t a must-see; it’s always neat to go inside, but the Barbie doll figures re-enacting the dullest scenes weren’t exactly a big draw. Now, they’ve installed some amazing effects installations that combine 2D and 3D animation with flats and what seems to be rear projection and fancy particle systems and even an interactive section (like the brass apple at the entrance to the Snow White ride). I still have no idea how they did some of those effects.
  • The Toy Story Zoetrope in the Animation pavilion at DCA: I’d seen video of this in action, and apparently I’ve even been to the park since it was installed, but I never saw it working before. It’s absolutely incredible. I watched about five or six cycles of it and would’ve stayed longer if I’d been at the park for an extra day. There’s a “making of” display that explains the process and gives credit to the original zoetrope at the Studio Ghibli museum. So now I have to go to the Studio Ghibli museum.
  • Toy Story Midway Mania at DCA: This was open the last time I went to Disneyland, but we didn’t feel like waiting in a 50-minute line. As it turns out, that may have been a huge mistake. The idea of taking the Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters ride, converting it to carnival games, and adding 3D glasses just didn’t sound that compelling. I’ve talked to people who’d been on it, but never heard a review more enthusiastic than “It’s fun.” All this is either a sign that I’m completely out of the loop in things Disney-related (possible), or this is one of the most under-sold attractions in Disney history (also possible), because it’s fantastic. The effects are perfect, the controls are responsive, and the whole thing feels just seamless — it’s not just a dark ride that gives you a score at the end, but a real game that makes you want to come back and play again. And unlike any Disney attraction I’ve seen in recent memory, it doesn’t feel as if any concessions have been made. All the money was put into exactly the right places.

Sometimes I’m amazed at how creativity can survive under all the constraints that Disney is under: not just the usual constraints of budget, but the fact that you’ve got to make something that appeals to millions of people but still isn’t watered down for the lowest common denominator. And as the technology gets more sophisticated, it gets even harder: how can you deliver something with that “wow factor” and a five-year production cycle, when tech that’s cutting-edge today will be available in a Best Buy one year from now? (I can still remember when the touch screens at Epcot were an amazing thing). They seem to be taking the right approach here: make sure that the technology isn’t the focus; the characters and personality and fun are.

There’s so much that we share that it’s time we’re aware

it's a small world
So there’s a good bit o’ hoopla on the internet (at least among those of us who follow this sort of thing) about Disney’s changes to the “it’s a small world” ride at Disneyland. In brief: characters from popular Disney and Pixar movies have been inserted into their “home” countries, bits of Disney theme songs have been inserted into the soundtrack, and a new “America” section has been added.

First, back up a step, for something disclaimerish: Pretty much every genre of thing you can imagine has its own brand of obsessive fandom, but Disney’s in its own weird territory. There are people right this moment in the darkened comic book corners of the web, going into nerdrage over the developments of Final Crisis or whatever, but comic books are always going to be a relatively tiny subset of the population. Not so with Disney: they’re making stuff that has to appeal to millions of people, from the people who drop in for a weekend for the first time in 30 years, to the people who go to every ride and take obsessive pictures of peeling paint in the ride queues to post on their “What Would Walt Think?” blogs.

I’m definitely on the nerdy Disney fan end of the spectrum, but not quite enough to go into a sputtering rage over anything the company does. Except for the Tiki Room renovation in Florida. Whoever was in charge of that pissed on my childhood and should suffer for it.

So back to the “it’s a small world” (note my use of the preferred capitalization, a reminder of my Disney nerd status). A tribute to UNICEF, created for the World’s Fair, and Disney marketing suits are coming in and trashing it with crass merchandising possibilities. What a horrible insult to Disney and Mary Blair’s art and character design!

That’s the story you’re being told, anyway. If you look at pictures of the actual characters, though, it’s a little different. I’d had an image of Disney suits sweeping through the windows of the stores on Main Street and taking the character models out, then cramming them clumsily into a classic ride. (For an example: see the Tiki Room renovation in Florida). But the characters in those photos are done in exactly the same style of the “it’s a small world” characters that have been there for decades. If it hadn’t been picked up by the AP and spread throughout the internet by indignant Disney fans, I might’ve assumed that Alice & the White Rabbit had always been there, and I just never noticed.

So to make it clear: this is in fact a terrible, terrible idea. The people complaining have a point: the ride wasn’t intended to be about Disney characters, it had its own “world” and its own theme. Over the years, the company has managed to chip away at every “original IP” attraction that’s unique to the parks — the Swiss Family Treehouse, the Country Bears, Haunted Mansion, Pirates of the Caribbean — and insert Disney characters, turning the parks into a big homogenized — but synergistic! — mess. The quotes from Disney reps about how “Walt always wanted the park to never be finished” seem like a total cop-out in this instance. They could’ve revamped the ride, added a section that was true to its theme, anything to refresh it and make it feel new. There would’ve been complaints (because everything DIsney does gets complaints), but they would’ve been unjustified. Adding existing characters isn’t new or fresh or imaginative, however. It’s the opposite of new.

But. If they had to do it, it looks like the best job they could’ve possibly done. Based on the photos, it seems much less intrusive than the addition of movie characters to the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, and that ride suffered from the changes but wasn’t ruined by them.

So the question is: did they have to do it? Probably not. It’s not going to add riders, since they people who ride “it’s a small world” are going to ride it no matter whether Aladdin’s in there or not. Are they going to buy Aladdin or any of its direct-to-DVD sequels after seeing him in the ride? Probably not.

But consider this: so many people have complained about the theme song, and complained about hating the ride, and how grown-ups don’t enjoy going on it, that an eighteen-year-old attraction in Disney parks have parodied “it’s a small world.” If the ride now has an activity that parents can do with their kids, pointing out the characters they already recognize, is that the death of Disneyland as we know it?

Team Possible

I wanted to say congratulations to my friends at Disney Imagineering for completing the Kim Possible World Showcase Adventure at Epcot in Orlando. The attraction went into “soft opening”/preview mode last week, and everything I’ve seen online says that it’s a big hit so far. One of the quotes from this article about the attraction says, “It’s like a modern day Tiki Room, but on a grander scale — I think Walt himself would get a real kick out of this attraction.”

It’s a great concept, and it sounds like they made all the right decisions when making it permanent after the playtest. Now I’ve got to find some time to make it down to Florida and try it out for myself. And encourage them to install a version of it at Disneyland.

My favorite place on (Google) Earth

epcotfountain.jpg
Disney has added models and textures for Walt Disney World to Google Earth. While the blog entry describes it as “the second best thing to being there,” it’s a little slow and fuzzy, and it’s more like walking through a papercraft version of the parks and hotels than it is like exploring a new virtual reality action excitement realm in 3D cyberspace.

I think I’ve just been spoiled by virtual fly-throughs in movies and games. Still, even though it feels a little like something we should’ve been able to do in the mid-90s, it’s neat to get a bird’s-eye view of everything, and to get a better feel for the gigantic scale of the resort. Making so many models must’ve been a huge task; considering how many fans like me would’ve paid (and actually have paid, in the past) for a virtual fly-through of the parks, it’s nice to see it rolled into the marketing budget and given away for free.

It also lets me send out a link to my favorite spot on the planet. (I’m new to Google Earth, so I’m not sure if there’s an easier way to link to specific locations & views than just sending the file around. Their “community” features seem designed specifically to keep you from uploading stuff to the site.)

You can’t see the actual fountain in Google Earth, but seeing it doesn’t explain why it’s my Happy Place, anyway. It’s an inexplicable combination of nostalgia, proximity to Test Track, being with my family, being on vacation, the passing monorails, the Epcot theme music looping in the background, being surrounded by the 1980s Vision of the Future, the womb-like moist heat of central Florida in summer, being full of not-particularly-good-but-somehow-comforting theme park food, and realizing I’m at the nexus point of a thousand cool things to do.

Other favorite spots are my favorite hotel and my favorite ride. I’m sure there’s non-Disney World-related stuff on Google Earth that’s interesting to see, but even the blurry, low-poly version is hard to leave.

Triple Mountain Whammy

The Proto-StacyLast year when I was stationed at Epcot, I wrote about the promotional video that runs in a constant loop on the TVs in all the Disney hotels. It’s hosted by the annoying and yet inexplicably alluring Stacey, who guides you, talking incessantly, through all the theme parks, water parks, golf courses, and stores of Walt Disney World.

Sure, they let you turn to other channels on the Disney TVs, but I’d be lying if I tried to pretend that this loop isn’t kept running non-stop every second I’m in a hotel room at Disney World. It’s not because it’s changing or giving out any new information; after just a day in the hotel, you can pretty much recite the whole thing from memory. I really watch it just for the same reason you scream when you see the Matterhorn from the freeway, or why my brother and I would scream at our parents to turn on the radio when we were driving down to Disney World and passed a sign that said “Disney Info 1540 AM.” It’s a constant broadcast reminder that you really are at Disney World!

But now, we can all cheat. A friend at Imagineering sent a link to the whole video on Google Video. The internet finally pays off!

Enjoy, won’t you? Some of my favorites:

  • 03:20: Stacey is, for some reason,being interviewed about her golf game. These David Lynch-style breaks in continuity are frequent and nonsesnsical; do not be alarmed.
  • 04:29: Please don’t say “waterslides out the wazoo” again.
  • 04:50: “Summit Plummet,” “Let’s get it on!” and “waterpark wedgies”.
  • 05:38: “Look at all these lazy people in the lazy river.”
  • 10:30: The infamous Triple Mountain Whammy.
  • 15:50: “Love roller coasters. Love Aerosmith. Hello!”
  • 19:00: Stacey embarrasses white people everywhere by talking about the tribal rhythm in her blood.
  • 20:30: Stacey confirms most Disney World visitors’ suspicion that Africa is a disease-ridden hellhole.
  • 26:40: Cougar Stacey makes inappropriate advances on the Gelato guy.
  • 27:00: Stacey has “pretzels und bier” and drags out 12 other cultural sterotypes in 30 seconds. Note that she has nothing of interest to say about Canada other than acknowledging that she’s in Canada.

Is it weird to go over a promotional video in such detail? Definitely. But like I said, I’ve watched this thing more times than Oliver Stone watched the Zapruder film. Having it on the internet is a dream come true.

And if you’re old-school like me, you’ll probably make similar noises of excitement when you see they’ve got older versions as well. Most of the times I’ve gone to the park, they were running this paper-cutout version — if you’ve ever wondered how long it takes “Zip a Dee Doo Dah” to get out of your head after hearing it incessantly for 5 days straight, the answer is: never.

Even more rare is the version from 2004, which was evidently the test run for the Staceyfied version. It’s hosted by a primitive, more realistic, less abrasive but somewhat less inspiring proto-Stacey named “Chrissa.” When I went in 2005, I was surprised and disappointed that Chrissa had been replaced. I like to imagine that Disney holds a battle to the death each year to determine the host of the in-hotel promotional video.

You may be at the top of the Triple Mountain Whammy for now, Stacey, but can you defend the title? You’re safe… but for how long?!?

Hooray for stuff I worked on!

I’m starting to regret all that stuff I said earlier about videogames being non-union, because a writer’s strike would be pretty sweet right about now. Not because I have anything in particular to protest, but because it’d be nice to get a little break. Yet another problem with doing exactly what I want to be doing while working for a company I like.

The first episode of Sam & Max season two, “Ice Station Santa” has been released to generally favorable reviews, and it sounds like the audience is liking it pretty much.

Also, a while ago I mentioned that you could get “Abe Lincoln Must Die!” from the first season for free over GameTap; now you can get it for free from Telltale’s site or via Steam, if that’s how you roll. It’s a pretty good indicator of what the games are like, and a good free test to see whether you like old-school point-and-click adventures still.

In unrelated news, the Kim Possible playtest at Epcot that I worked on last year just won a THEA award for Outstanding Achievement, which I hear is the Theme Park industry equivalent of an Oscar. So congratulations to Jonathan and the rest of the team at Imagineering R&D! The playtest was one of the coolest things I’ve seen at a Disney park in over a decade, so I think the award was well-deserved. I’m really looking forward to seeing (and playing) what they do with the technology in the future; there’s so much potential there and I’d like to go through it just as a park guest.

Now, I’m going to spend the next day or so doing stuff completely not Sam & Max-related for a change.

Manos, brazos, pies, y piernas

It's a horseI went to Disneyland over the weekend, and it was fun. There’s not a ton of new stuff going on at the park, and we’ve gotten pretty ritualistic with our trips — get up ass-early, drive down, eat at the Apricot Tree, check in at the hotel, sleep, get up and drink, get up ass-early, go to Disneyland, ride everything, take pictures, eat a big-ass steak, get up slightly later, ride everything else, go home, write about it on the internets. So you might think that it’s just a chance to have fun and relax with friends, and there’s no way to get any self-obsessed blog material out of it.

Not so! I’ve got not one, but two observations:

1. I think I might be insane. Since I live alone and work from home, this weekend was the first time in a long while I’ve been expected to actually make conversation for an extended period of time. And I was forced for the first time to actually listen to myself. From my experience with mentally unstable people — in the city and on the buses, and that documentary I saw that one time about the schizophrenic — they have a particular speech pattern. It’s a lot of mumbling, with obsession on decades-old grievances or a single memorable experience, along with plenty of totally non-sequitur pop culture references.

In a news report I saw one time about a panhandling ban somewhere in the south bay, they interviewed a homeless guy on camera. In about 30 seconds of talking, he mentioned his time in Vietnam twice, and started a statement about how the ban was unfair that ended with: “I’m just a good old boy, never meanin’ no harm. Beats all you ever saw, been in trouble with the law since the day I was born.” In two days, I mentioned my trip to Japan at least 20 times, and ended about every other sentence with a random quote from Achewood or a sitcom. Not even voluntarily, half the time; it’s like post-modern pop-culture Turette’s.

On the bright side, though, I’m pretty sure I’ve been like this for as long as I can remember. So if they are signs of insanity, I’ve been insane for a very long time.

2. Riding Big Thunder Mountain during the fireworks is one of the most awesome things a human can do. I’m a sucker for fireworks shows, and Disney does the best. I can go to the appointed optimal viewing area at the designated 15 minutes before the show starts, stand with thousands of strangers, and watch the show with its accompanying soundtrack, and enjoy it perfectly. But one trip, we skipped the fireworks and rode the roller coaster instead, and by accident happened to be on it just as the show’s finale was happening. It was cool enough to do it on purpose.

And riding what’s already a brilliantly-designed coaster, and coming out of a dark tunnel just as a huge bloom of fireworks is going off overhead, is such a cool combination that it couldn’t possibly be topped by any pre-orchestrated Disney presentation.

I was wondering about this on the long drive home — would it be practical or even possible to design a roller coaster so that you see fireworks blasts every time? It’d be expensive, sure, but barring the cost, how would it work? At this point, Disney’s got pyrotechnics down to the point where they can shoot off an explosive finale at will and have it work perfectly every time, night after night. At one of the dance clubs at Pleasure Island, they fire a blast at the stroke of midnight, every night, right in sync with whatever song is being played by the DJ. (At least, they did several years ago, back when I was young enough to be at Downtown Disney around midnight).

I’m convinced they could do it, and I think they could even work out a way to make it feasible for something as high-volume as a coaster. But it just wouldn’t be cool. A lot of the awesomeness of it is knowing that it just happened, and there wasn’t a team of people working behind the scenes to get it to happen perfectly, exactly on cue.

Most Disney critics — the normal people looking in from the outside, not the jaded and embittered people so mired under theme park obsession that their only link with the real world is criticizing every move that corporate management makes — fault the company for being too orchestrated, saccharine, and fake. The company has to innovate within the bounds of catering to an inconceivably large and wide audience (and that’s not a crack about obesity of Orlando park-goers), and as a result, they have to design experiences that injure no one, offend no one, and play exactly the same way for every person, every minute of every day.

Therefore, in the real woods of Tom Sawyer Island, for example, you get plastic tree stumps designed to look like real tree stumps, housing speakers playing bird calls and other nature sounds. It’s an experience so far removed from nature that it feels even less real than Tomorrowland.

That’s the core of why Disneyland is more appealing than the parks in Florida, Tokyo, and Paris, even though the others are more impressive in size, engineering, and overall spectacle. Even today, Disneyland still feels less orchestrated and more spontaneous and random. The live entertainment is more accessible and feels less scripted (even though it’s definitely not). There are just too many people now not to have designated character greeting times, with an orderly line for each, but you can still manage to see characters wandering around the park, having random interactions with guests. Somehow the park still manages to feel more casual, more like a bunch of people getting together to have a good time, instead of being admitted to an enormous, orderly, well-maintained and meticulously organized, but ultimately a little cold and sterile, machine.

And that’s why I think their new “year of a million dreams” promotion — where prizes are given out not for going through a turnstile or having a raffle ticket or entering a drawing; but randomly and spontaneously, no matter where you are at the time — is such a great idea. No long lists of rules presented by armies of lawyers, or angry, tired guests jockeying for position to be the big winner. It’s an ingenious way to tell guests that they are special, just like the millions of people in the parks with them at the same time, and make it actually work.

Take a wild ride with hot, screaming teens

The Disney Blog posted links to two videos recreating the Test Track ride at Epcot using the game Rollercoaster Tycoon 3.

My favorite of the two is below. Test Track isn’t a roller coaster, and the other video looks a little bit more like the actual ride. But this one gets my vote for including the original soundtrack and for doing the whole thing from the queue to the final photo:

As far as I’m concerned, Test Track is the quintessential Epcot ride, and possibly the most solid Disney ride there is. I really wish “works well within its constraints” didn’t sound like damming with faint praise, because it’s really tough to do, and no other ride I can think of manages to do it as well. This attraction had to:

  • Bring a thrill ride to Epcot, which had gotten a reputation (only partially deserved) for being too dry and educational.
  • Still be educational.
  • Replace a beloved attraction with Marc Davis designs, one that was still cool but definitely showing its age and no longer a big stand-out.
  • Use a corporate sponsorship without seeming like heavy-handed advertising.
  • Be a Disney thrill ride, which means being exciting while still supporting as wide an audience as possible.
  • Support a ton of riders, as it was on Test Track’s shoulders to be the new main attraction for the entire park.

And it manages to do all that, and be a fun and entertaining ride on top of everything. I don’t know if I’d put it in my list of top 5 Disney attractions (and yeah, I do have such a list; several, in fact), but it’s one of my favorites. From the excellent pre-show movie — which has one of the most clever “little touches” Disney has ever done (the “surprise tests” gag) — to the final loop, it just all works. (Plus, the show and ride have John Michael Higgins, who I always remember as “Bill MacKim” because of the ride). A definite classic.

Best sign of the staying power of the ride: last summer I drove underneath Test Track on my way to work every morning (did I mention how cool that job was?). And because it has a single rider line, it was one of the only rides I could go on during my lunch break, so I rode it at least once every other day for a month. And I never got tired of it.

Are you seeing an increase in lateral forces? Sure am!

Update: This YouTube video has shaky footage of the entire ride, if you don’t mind getting spoiled. Watching it makes me want to ride it again right now!

Devils, black sheep, really bad eggs

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.