Isn’t It About Time Disney Had a Competitor?

Well, Universal Studios Orlando’s Wizarding World of Harry Potter has finally opened, and it really shows what Disney Imagineers can do when they’re given a free hand. It’s just a shame they had to go work for Universal to get it. Kevin Yee’s review was especially effusive about Potter’s centerpiece attraction, a coaster/dark ride called Forbidden Journey that’s unlike anything Disney has right now. One line from his review especially caught my eye: “The ride itself spares no expense.” Spares no expense? You know, there was a time when Disney spared no expense. It wasn’t that they spent money recklessly, but a visitor to the parks or resorts never got the impression that the company was sacrificing customer experience to save a few bucks. That is not the case anymore. Let me cite just one recent example: the return of the Michael Jackson vehicle, Captain EO.

During its first run at the Disney parks, the show had in-theater smoke and laser effects that accentuated the action onscreen. Responding to the rumors last year that EO would be returning, Disney CEO Bob Iger said “It’s the kind of thing that, if we did it, would get a fair amount of attention and we’d want to make sure we do it right.” What happened? You know what happened: Captain EO opened at Disneyland on February 23 without the smoke and the lasers, and there’s no reason to believe they’ll be present at EPCOT or any of the show’s other venues at Disney parks around the world. I’d understand if the show was only going to be around for six months or so (actually, no I wouldn’t. This is Disney, for Pete’s sake, not Six Flags!) but the word is it’s going to be around for one or two years. The in-theater effects may have just been a gimmick, but I’d argue that this twenty four-year-old show needs all the help it can get.

Now, in all fairness things have improved from their late-90s, early-2000s low, when even basic maintenance was obviously being neglected just to save a few bucks. But a basic fact of the business world is that nothing puts the fear of God (or their customers) in a company like some serious competition. Another unfortunate fact is that a company that’s been without competitors for a long time will generally fail to recognize them when they materialize. For a real-world example of that, look no farther than Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s initial reaction to the iPhone. He laughingly dismissed it and expressed satisfaction with Microsoft’s current smartphone strategy. Never in his wildest dreams did he imagine that the iPhone would race past Windows Mobile like it was standing still and three years later Microsoft’s share of the smartphone market would be somewhere close to zero.

That’s why I’m worried about Disney. Florida’s Magic Kingdom has long been the most-visited theme park in the world, and the Walt Disney World Resort is Florida’s most popular vacation destination. Judging by Team Disney Orlando’s disinterest in making substantive improvements to the property, it seems obvious that they can’t imagine things any other way. On the WDWMagic forums not too long ago, Disney videographer extraordinaire Martin Smith listed just a few projects that the Orlando executive team has vetoed in the last three years:

• Imagination 4
• Space Mountain 2.0 (ostensibly with onboard audio, like the Disneyland version)
• a World Showcase project
• an Illuminations replacement called Skydance
• a “Lucasland” area at Disney’s Hollywood Studios
• a new attraction at Animal Kingdom

Why were these projects vetoed? From what people in the know are saying (and let me emphasize that I am not one of those people) the executive train of thought goes something like this: “Walt Disney World’s parks are some of the most visited in the world, so why should we try to improve anything when we can just spend the money on executive bonuses instead?”

“Ah, but what about the Fantasyland expansion project now underway about the Magic Kingdom?”, you ask. A lot of people may disagree with me on this, but the Fantasyland project is not Disney’s response to Harry Potter. It’s a response to the fact that on the busiest days of the year, the Magic Kingdom reaches its maximum capacity and is forced to turn away customers eager to enter the park and spend money there. Don’t believe me? Consider this: The Wizarding World of Harry Potter didn’t take anyone by surprise; it was years in the making. Disney had plenty of time to ready up a slate of offerings to compete with it. And what did we get for this, the Summer of Potter? Captain EO and the Main Street Electrical Parade! Zip-a-dee-frakking-doo-dah. (Pardon my Caprican)

The best thing that could happen to Disney right now is for The Wizarding World of Harry Potter to be such a huge hit that Universal is inspired to bring the rest of their parks up to that same level of quality. Hopefully, Universal sees Disney’s complacency and smells blood in the water. If they could start to steal visitors from Disney, to the point where the parks actually see attendance decline, maybe that would bite Team Disney Orlando in its most sensitive spot: right in the executive bonus. Maybe then they’d turn the Imagineers loose to make some of that old-school Disney magic.

Fear and Nausea: Now THAT’S Entertainment!

As I was being turned upside down at sixty miles per hour, I understood why EPCOT Center was never as popular as it should have been.

Perhaps I should explain that.

I have a longstanding phobia of roller coasters and coaster-like thrill rides. I’m okay with simulators; Mission:Space or Star Tours give me no problems. I just can’t handle steep drops, barrel rolls, hairpin turns, and inversions. Nevertheless, everyone’s always saying how much fun these rides are, and how they or someone they know used to feel the way I do, but then they rode <insert coaster name here> and now they can’t get enough of them. And so I bowed to peer (and spousal) pressure, screwed up my courage, and climbed aboard Rockin’ Roller Coaster at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. As the ride took off at sixty miles per hour and sent me though a dizzying array of turns and inversions, I realized that rides like this are specifically designed to trigger your brain’s automatic fear and nausea circuits. I couldn’t just relax and enjoy the ride because the ride doesn’t let you relax. And this is what people consider to be fun. Heck, I could’ve experienced the same level of enjoyment by standing on my head and sticking my finger down my throat. And that, my friends, is why we don’t have EPCOT Center any more.

You see, EPCOT Center’s designers thought that the general public wanted Animatronic dark rides and CircleVision films. It’s easy to understand why they thought so; the dark rides and CircleVision film attractions at the Magic Kingdoms in Anaheim and Orlando were consistently popular with park visitors (although I admit that I don’t get the CircleVision thing. Who wants to stand in line just to go into another room and stand some more?) But unlike Pirates of the Caribbean or the Haunted Mansion, EPCOT’s attractions had a more scholarly tone. Aside from Journey Into Imagination and  World of Motion, there was no fluffy escapist fare. EPCOT Center was designed to engage your brain on a higher level. And judging by the general public’s disdain for EPCOT Center, and its corresponding love for rides like Rockin’ Roller Coaster, it’s safe to say that people don’t want their brains engaged on any higher level. They want them engaged on the level that makes them sorry they had lunch at Pizza Planet.

It’s a point of view that I acknowledge. Just don't ask me to understand it.

Well, my business trip to Orlando at the end of the month has been canceled. However, my wife and I will be heading down there at the end of July to check out the Summer Nightastic festivities. We’ll be there long enough to squeeze in a visit to EPCOT, so I should have some pictures for you and a review of the Coral Reef Restaurant. Thanks for reading!

Thoughts on Star Wars Weekends

This past Saturday (June 5) my wife, her brother, and I headed down to Disney’s Hollywood Studios to experience Star Wars Weekends for the first time. Despite the heat, humidity, and crowds, it was an unqualified blast! The best thing about Star Wars Weekends is the wonderful sense of humor the event has.

The fun starts about fifteen minutes prior to park opening when two Stormtroopers appear atop the turnstile plaza and entertain the crowd with their humorous banter. This year, they were joined by Boba Fett:

Throughout the park, there are several Star Wars characters doing meet-and-greets. Some, like Darth Vader and Chewbacca, have designated greeting areas. Others, like Stormtroopers, Tusken Raiders, and Gamorrean Guards, roam freely.

Here’s a picture of my brother-in-law and I with a Stormtrooper:

And here’s a Tusken Raider clowning around Darth Vader’s greeting area while the Dark Lord was on a 5-minute break:

One cool thing about Star Wars Weekends is the fans in costume. Usually, Disney prohibits guests from wearing costumes in the parks, but this policy is relaxed for certain events. We saw several people in very authentic-looking Jedi costumes, one guy in an excellent Lando Calrissian outfit, and someone dressed as Han Solo from The Empire Strikes Back, complete with the late-70s/early-80s hairstyle!

There was also a rather large gentleman I saw sitting on a bench, wearing a white T-shirt, white shorts, and a Clone Trooper helmet. You know how Stormtroopers have different outfits for different environments? There are sandtroopers and snowtrooopers and swamptroopers and even spacetroopers. Well, this guy must have been dressed as a Floridatrooper. You’ve got to admit,the T-shirt and shorts are way more practical than that hot plastic armor! And yes, I do have a picture of him, but to avoid seeming mean-spirited I’m not going to post it.

One feature of Star Wars Weekends that’s become a regular thing at the Studios is the Jedi Training Academy for kids:

I wish the photo op portion of the show was available for adults; I imagine there are lots of guys in their 30s and above who would love to get a picture of themselves crossing lightsabers with Darth Vader. I know I would!

The highlight of Star Wars Weekends, though is the Hyperspace Hoopla show that closes out each day:

It is, in my opinion, one of the best shows at Disney World. Hyperspace Hoopla’s only problem is that not a lot of people are able to watch it in its current venue. The stage is not that far off the ground, so anyone farther back than about three people deep has trouble seeing. The terrace of the adjacent Backlot Express restaurant is a good place to watch from (that’s where we ended up) but again, there’s not a lot of room there. I really hope that the upcoming Star Tours 2.0 refurb addresses this. Alternately, the show could just be moved to one of several locations in the park that are better suited to handling the large crowds that Hyperspace Hoopla always draws.

So, my final verdict: despite the crowds and the Florida heat and humidity, Star Wars Weekends are a can’t-miss event.

One other thing: I may have mentioned in the past that I’m not a big fan of thrill rides, especially roller coasters. My phobia of coasters is matched only by my phobia of large spiders. However, at the urging of my wife and several friends, I decided to take the plunge and ride Rockin’ Roller Coaster. After all, it only lasts one minute and five seconds, how bad could it be? Well, here’s a picture of me after the ride was over.

I’m not vomiting, I’m kissing the ground. More accurately, I’m pretending to kiss the ground for comedic effect. No, roller coasters still do not agree with me. Still, the experience got me thinking about the popularity of thrill rides, what people consider to be entertaining, and how that relates to EPCOT, so that will be a subject of a future post.

Lastly, in three weeks, I’ll be spending three days in Orlando on business, and after trashing the Coral Reef Restaurant a couple of times on this blog, I thought it only fair that I at least eat there one time to see if it really sucks as bad as I think it does give it a fair shake. Hey, I survived Rockin’ Roller Coaster didn’t I? I feel brave. So I made a dinner reservation there, and I’ll be writing about that experience, too. It’ll be my first-ever restaurant review.

Until then, happy trails and thanks for reading!

Here’s What’s Coming Up Next:

On Saturday, June 5 I’ll be at Disney’s Hollywood Studios for Star Wars Weekends, and next week I’ll post pictures and a review of the experience.

Next, if all goes according to plan, my Clark Kent job will be sending me to Orlando for three days at the end of the month for training on a new software package my team will shortly become responsible for managing. Class is from 8-5, which leaves me free to head to the parks during the evening. I plan on spending one evening at the Magic Kingdom to witness the recently-returned Main Street Electrical Parade and the new Summer Nightastic fireworks show, and the next evening I’ve made myself a reservation at EPCOT’s Coral Reef Restaurant. I’ve been pretty hard on the place in the past, so I figure I really should have a meal there and provide y’all with a firsthand account of it.

Thanks for staying tuned.

Why EPCOT Matters To Me

I’ve been trying to write this post for quite a while. I apologize in advance if it seems to be overly long or rambling.

<ramble> If you’ve read some of my posts here, you probably figure that I indulge in nostalgic mourning for lost attractions as I walk through EPCOT, and to a certain extent that’s true. But EPCOT represents something more to me than just cool rides and an appealing futuristic philosophy, something that was weighing very heavily on my mind two weekends ago, when I saw my grandfather for what will probably be the last time.

We’ve always had a special relationship; I’m the firstborn grandchild, and I’m named after him. Upon my first trip to EPCOT in 1984 at age 6, I quickly fell in love with the place, and as soon as my grandfather found out he bought me my first copy of the definitive EPCOT Center book: Walt Disney’s EPCOT Center: Creating the New World of Tomorrow.

During a family trip to Plant City in the fall of 1986, he decided to stop off at EPCOT on the way home (home, by the way, was three hours to the north in Lake City, so it was no small detour). My parents weren’t in favor of the EPCOT visit (after all, my brother was barely a year old at that point, and dealing with a cranky and tired baby at a crowded theme park isn’t exactly fun), but he wanted to go, and he knew that I wanted to go, and so we went. 1986, of course, was the year The Living Seas opened, and even though the line to get in stretched almost to the monorail track, we waited in it, and were rewarded with a fascinating trip under the sea. I was a little mystified as to why the pavilion I visited didn’t line up with its description in my EPCOT Center book (answer: that description was based on WED’s original concept for the pavilion, which sponsor United Technologies vetoed in favor of the cheaper pavilion we ended up getting), but even so the Living Seas was the coolest thing 8-year-old me had ever seen. I actually believed the Hydrolators took you under the water, and that the Seabase was inside the massive saltwater tank, surrounded by water.

Three years later, in the summer of ‘89, he took me on perhaps my best EPCOT trip ever. Wonders of Life was brand new then, as was the World Showcase’s Norway pavilion. We did everything I had always wanted to do at EPCOT. It was the last time I saw the original Universe of Energy, World of Motion, Earth Station, and CommuniCore. In retrospect, 1989 was probably EPCOT Center’s best year. Three new pavilions had been opened in the previous three years, and the “older” attractions still looked new and cutting-edge. The future looked bright. Without my grandfather, my only trip before the place got Eisnered in the mid-90s would have been that half-day in 1984.

In the Magic Kingdom, they’ve done a pretty good job of making changes without totally destroying the place I remember from my childhood. EPCOT, though, is where some of my fondest memories live. Sure, it was always meant to change with the times, but that change was supposed to be positive. Too often, however, EPCOT’s changes have been motivated by managerial cluelessness and an overriding desire to be as cheap as possible. If the Magic Kingdom is meant to be a place of eternal childhood innocence, then EPCOT is adulthood distilled; its journey from the late-80s to the 2010s mirrors the one most of us take from youth to adulthood, a journey that begins with grand ambitions and limitless possibilities but becomes a series of compromises until we reach the point where we’re happy if we can just keep our head above water most of the time.

I wish it didn’t have to be that way.

I wish that there were more than just glimpses of the old EPCOT Center underneath all the layers of cost-cutting and ill-advised attempts to be hip, so I could go there and maybe, just maybe, recapture a little bit of what life used to be before my treasured older family members began to die off, back when “If we can dream it, then we can do it” was a promise for the future instead of a relic of the past. </ramble>

According to the widget on the right-hand side of the page, futureprobe now has 30 followers! I’m impressed; I never really tried to have an audience; this blog was just supposed to be a place for me to write about things that were meaningful to me. Thank you one and all for reading. As a native Floridian, I’ve long maintained that only a fool would willingly head down to Disney World during the summer months. With that in mind, I’ll be in the Studios on June 5 for Star Wars Weekends. The weather promises to be unbearably hot and humid, and I’m sure that there will be an hourlong wait for everything, including the bathrooms. Still, at some point in my life I’d love to have my picture taken with Darth Vader and tell him that I’m a big fan of his brother Chad (Google “Chad Vader” if you don’t know what I’m talking about), and this looks to be my best opportunity. So I am going to willingly subject myself to ridiculous heat and ridiculous crowds at Disney’s smallest Florida park. I’ll try to have pictures and a full report within a few days after my trip.

Thanks for reading!

The Carousel of Progress: Should It Move Forward or Stand Still?

One of the main criticisms leveled at Walt Disney World management by people like me is that they’re too quick to discard much-loved older attractions in favor of things that are more “thrilling”, cheaper to operate, or that tie in better to whatever licensed characters the Company is currently trying to market. In light of this climate, it’s truly amazing that the Carousel of Progress is still operating.

The Carousel premiered at the 1964 World’s Fair, and by all accounts it was one of Walt Disney’s favorite shows. Its four scenes showed the impact of electricity and electrical devices on the American family in twenty-year increments, starting in the 1900s and ending in an idealized version of the 1960s, with the family enjoying technologies that were supposed to be right around the corner. In 1975, the show made its home on the southeast corner of Walt Disney World’s Tomorrowland in Florida, featuring a new theme song “Now is the Time” and a slightly updated closing scene depicting an idealized home of the 1970s. The Carousel was updated a few more times over the years (most notably in 1985 to remove all references to GE after that company ended its sponsorship) but it received its biggest overhaul in 1993, as part of the “New Tomorrowland” rehab. The original theme song, “Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow” was restored, the show was renamed “Walt Disney’s Carousel of Progress”, and an introductory video was added to the queue area to emphasize the show’s connection to Walt and the 1964 World’s Fair. Also, the final scene was tweaked yet again to show the family enjoying virtual reality video games and accidentally burning their Christmas turkey in a voice-controlled oven. None of the featured technology looked to hit the mainstream for another decade at least. The scene could easily remain in place for six to eight years without looking dated. Or so it seemed.

Experience 1999 in 2010 the way we imagined it in 1993 

Unfortunately, as early as 1995 the “present-day” Carousel family was beginning their slide toward obsolescence. Why? Because the creators of the ‘93 show failed to account for the Internet revolution. To be fair, in 1993 the Internet was not much of a blip on anyone’s radar. According to technology pundits at the time, virtual reality and CD-ROM were the Next Big Things. And since the show had received at least one update during each decade of its operation, it was reasonable to assume that by 2003 or so, the Carousel would be tweaked again to keep up with the times.

Seventeen years later, we’re still waiting. And each time the “modern-day” daughter character remarks to the grandfather that people of his day “didn’t even have car phones”, you can be sure that at least one kid will tug on his mom’s sleeve and whisper “Mommy, what’s a car phone?”

Also, how crazy is it that the son and the grandmother are playing their video game with Power Gloves?

Sorry, but I just had to work the Power Glove joke in there.

Seriously, though, something needs to happen with the Carousel. And I don’t mean simply updating the final scene again to reflect the world of 2010. Consider: the original show showed us the innovations of the 20th century in twenty-year intervals, starting at the turn of the century and ending in the ‘60s. If you reset the final scene to the modern day, then you’ll have a show that takes three twenty-year jumps forward followed by one huge fifty-year jump. And that’s just silly.

The original Carousel was a look back at a period of time that was still fairly fresh in everyone’s memory. In order for the show to resonate with modern audiences in the same way, you’d have to overhaul the entire thing. The first scene would be set in 1950s, the second in the 1970s, the third in the 1990s before we arrived at the 2010s. However, keeping it fresh and relevant would necessitate a big upgrade every ten years in which the “oldest” scene would be discarded and a new final scene set in the current decade would have to be designed and built. Given that Team Disney Orlando is extremely reluctant to spend any kind of money at all on the Florida theme parks unless it comes from a corporate sponsor (TDO did not want to embark upon the costly Fantasyland expansion project; they had to be ordered to do it by Corporate headquarters in Burbank) I can’t imagine they’d actually do this. Which leaves us with only one other option:

Since it’s already called “Walt Disney’s Carousel of Progress”, why not just restore the final scene of the show to what it was in 1964? I mean, the first three scenes are almost exactly as they were in ‘64 (minus the General Electric references) so you might as well be consistent. Sure, it means turning the show into a museum piece, but really that’s all it is anyway. Currently, it’s caught in the awkward position of trying to pretend it’s still up-to-date even though everyone knows it’s not. If they restore it to its 1964 incarnation, it’ll become the kind of attraction Team Disney Orlando likes best: the kind that requires only periodic maintenance. Disney could promote it with some kind of a “you won’t know where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve been” theme.

Sure, it might seem incongruous to have an attraction devoted to the past in a place called “Tomorrowland”, but since the rest of the land is devoted to cartoon characters, gasoline-powered go-carts, and a roller coaster that hasn’t changed much since the ‘70s, the 1964 Carousel really wouldn’t be so out-of-place.

What do you think?