Why Stitch’s Supersonic Celebration Really Failed

Most hardcore WED-heads (myself included) are not huge fans of Stitch.

It’s not so much the character himself we dislike, it’s the way that Disney has tried to force him upon us. For the past few years, the company has been shoving him in our faces at every opportunity, as if to say “THIS IS STITCH! HE IS VERY POPULAR! YOU WILL LOVE HIM AND ADORE HIM AND TAKE OUT A SECOND MORTGAGE TO BUY ALL HIS MERCHANDISE!” So naturally we threw back our heads and gave a hearty laugh last year when Tomorrowland’s new show “Stitch’s Supersonic Celebration” was taken out and shot after less than two months. Some fans saw it as proof that Disney’s slow-witted management had finally realized that Stitch is not as popular as they thought he was. However, I think that that there was another, more basic reason for the show’s failure.

Stitch’s Supersonic Celebration premiered on May 9, 2009. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Floridian weather patterns, that’s the time of year when temperatures began to creep up from Merely Warm to Unbearably Hot And Humid. Now, through the magic of Google Maps, let’s take a look at the prime location that Disney selected for Stitch’s twenty-five minute show:

Image borrowed from Google Maps

Notice the abundance of concrete and the lack of any shade or seating. I’d argue that Stitch’s Supersonic Celebration was no more insipid than any other stage show in the parks (confession: that syrupy wishy-dreamy show at the foot of the Castle makes me retch) but it failed because people had to stand in the hot sun for a half hour to watch it. Never mind that it’s hard to see a video screen in the bright sunlight.

Of course, this means that the Team Disney Orlando executives are even more clueless than we thought they were. It’s bad enough that they they prefer to ignore common sense and make decisions based solely on spreadsheets and focus group data. Every large corporation does that. But the simple truth that nobody wants to stand for thirty minutes on a large unshaded concrete slab in the middle of summer is an inescapable fact of life in Florida, and the idea that Disney could spend maybe thousands or millions of dollars to develop a show that ignores that makes me think that the group of executives we call Team Disney Orlando is, in fact, a group of trained seals that communicate by clapping their flippers together and barking.

And that gets me thinking. You know how people are always starting silly irrelevant Internet petitions to get corporate executives to resurrect a TV program that no one was watching or something like that? Well, I have a much better idea: let’s just send buckets of fish to the Team Disney Orlando office building with a note that says “Fix Journey Into Imagination and there’s more where that came from”, or “Want more? Fix the Carousel of Progress.” I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before.*

 

*Note: That suggestion was made purely for satirical purposes. Under no circumstances does futureprobe endorse the sending of buckets full of aquatic or other life forms to the Team Disney Orlando offices. I can’t believe I actually had to say that.

My Year at WDW: Animal Kingdom

Between 1981 and 2007, I made maybe eleven trips to Walt Disney World, most of them before 1990. However, I was able to afford an Annual Pass in late 2009, and since then I’ve taken ten trips. As a result, not only do I know the best places to go the bathroom, but my perspective on the parks has undergone something of a metamorphosis.  My next multi-part ongoing series, entitled “My Year At WDW”, will delve into that new perspective a little bit.

Let’s start with Animal Kingdom.

When the Magic Kingdom opened in 1971, it was missing a lot of the attractions we think of classics: no Space Mountain, Carousel of Progress, or PeopleMover, no Pirates of the Caribbean, and no Big Thunder Mountain. By the time the park celebrated its twelfth anniversary in 1983, all of those attractions had been added, and the Magic Kingdom as we know it today was largely complete.

Animal Kingdom opened in 1998 with only two rides, a smattering of shows, and lots of room for expansion. Surely, all kinds of stuff must have been added in the twelve years between 1998 and today. Let’s compare an 1998 guidemap and a 2010 guidemap and marvel at all the new attractions the park has! Well, there’s Expedition Everest, that’s a big one. Asia has gained Kali River Rapids-a little on the short side, but good on a hot day-and the Maharaja Jungle Trek. Over in Dinoland, they built that Chester and Hester’s Dinorama thing that nobody likes. And that’s it. Two rides (one of which is built around an Animatronic that doesn’t work as advertised) a walkthrough attraction that’s not much different from something you can see in one of your better zoos, and a cheap carnival area. And hey, the cheap carnival area is all concrete and metal, making it one of the best places to enjoy Florida’s blistering summer heat! To make things worse, the park’s only dark ride, Dinosaur, has had so many effects deactivated over the years that it’s hardly worth experiencing. Check out Martin Smith’s excellent Dinosaur tribute video for more details on that.

Another issue that I have with Animal Kingdom is that it’s basically the Star Trek: Voyager of Disney World parks. It’s the one they never should have built. The idea was that a fourth park on property would induce people to extend their vacations. Instead, it’s just cannibalized attendance and maintenance dollars from EPCOT and the Studios. If you want to hear more about this, I encourage you to check out Episode 46 of the WDW Fanboys podcast for a very insightful discussion on it.

My personal feeling is that while there are some nice things at Animal Kingdom, it’s just not worth my time. The executives obviously feel that having the Disney name on the park is enough to overcome its shortcomings, and that spending any money on the place is unnecessary. Fine. If Team Disney Orlando doesn’t want to spend any of their money on Animal Kingdom, then I definitely don’t want to spend any of my money at Animal Kingdom. Unfortunately, my wife likes the place, so I’m sure I’ll be dragged there at least once per trip. But I sure won’t be buying any merchandise or eating any expensive table service meals there.

And that’s it for Animal Kingdom. Next week, I’ll take a look at another park.

The Minicot Project

As I mentioned in my last post, I had the extremely good fortune to take the Undiscovered Future World tour recently with the guys behind the Minicot project. What is Minicot, you ask? Well, rather than tell you about it, I’ll just show it to you. Or rather, I’ll let YouTube show it to you:

Now, if only somebody would give these guys several million dollars and a 5-story, 130,000 square-foot building, I’ll bet they could come up with a pretty excellent re-creation of Horizons.

The Undiscovered Future World Tour Reviewed

Okay, first of all I know the Disney literature calls it the UnDISCOVERed Future World tour, but I refuse to spell it like that. It looks like the Caps Lock key got stuck. I’ve wanted to take this tour ever since I first learned of its existence a few years ago, and when we got Annual Passes last year I vowed that I would do it before they expired.

If you’re an EPCOT geek (and if you’re reading this, I assume you are) then you have to realize that you’ll find very little that’s new or informative in the script that your guide is required to recite, and really that’s to be expected. You do, however, get to go into some really cool areas where your average park visitor is not allowed. For example, the Living Seas VIP lounge:

Sorry for the poor picture quality; my camera isn’t very good in low-light conditions. I was surprised by how large the lounge is. It’s easily as big as the Coral Reef restaurant, probably bigger. In a perfect world, it would be converted into an exclusive lounge for EPCOT Center aficionados, and the password to gain entry would be “George McGinnis”.

You also get to go into Mission:Space’s Mission Control and take a close-up look at the control console prop that you can see from the queue:

The level of detail is very high; the buttons all work, and some of the little video screens are playing the footage of the bird that always set off the alarm in Tomorrowland’s old Mission to Mars attraction.

You also get to go into the (surprisingly small) backstage area at Universe of Energy. There are a couple of unused pterodactyl Animatronics stored there, and they’re the only thing you’re allowed to photograph backstage, as long as you don’t photograph them from an angle that reveals more of the room.

The best things on the tour, though, is the stuff the guide doesn’t point out to you, the little pieces of EPCOT Center that litter the backstage areas. Things like a Magic Journeys-era sign with Figment on it that tells guests where to deposit their 3D glasses after the show, a prop from Kitchen Kaberet, or what looks to be a vintage Universe of Energy operations manual sitting on a shelf in a back room. That’s the stuff that really makes the Undiscovered Future World tour worth the money.

I must admit, though, I felt kind of like an invader in some of the backstage areas, particularly in the Cast Services building. When they’re onstage, Cast Members are expected to stay “in character” at all times, and be friendly, cheerful, polite, and happy regardless of what’s going on in their lives. Backstage, away from the prying eyes of demanding Disney vacationers, they can decompress a bit and drop the Public Relations smile for a moment. All the Cast Members we met were exceptionally friendly, of course, but I still felt like an intruder.

A few of my online friends encouraged me to ask the guide to take us to the old upstairs ImageWorks. We had a large group, though, so it really wouldn’t have been feasible. However, I had a good fortune to have a couple of the guys from Minicot in the group with me.  These guys have, among other things, built a scaled-down Soarin’ replica at their home in Minnesota. I’ll have more about their impressive work in my next post.

So, is the Undiscovered Future World tour worth the time and the money? Absolutely. Your casual Disney visitor would probably find it rather boring (except the part where you get to ride Soarin’ via the VIP entrance, that is) but in the absence of a true EPCOT Center Geek’s tour, Undiscovered Future World is the next best thing.

Whatever Happened to the City of the Future?

In September 1966, the original Star Trek debuted on NBC, and gave this blog one reason to exist. In October, Walt Disney gave it another one: the EPCOT project.

From Vimeo via EPCOTMedia

Not many people love EPCOT Center more than I do, but if I could take a one-way trip to a universe where Walt’s original concept was realized and EPCOT was a city instead of a theme park, I wouldn’t even hesitate. The way I see it, PeopleMovers beat Omnimovers every time.

I must admit, it’s bittersweet (okay, more bitter than sweet) to look back on a time when Disney’s creative energies were focused on urban planning and futuristic transportation systems rather than merchandise sales. But thanks to the Internet, an innovation Walt Disney never could have imagined, the good ideas that made up the original EPCOT project are still floating around in the electronic ether, waiting to be discovered by new generations. Maybe one day they’ll resurface, and we’ll get our pedestrian-friendly city of PeopleMovers and Monorails after all.

Gangsta Mickey?

Disney fan community, I owe you an apology. You see, on Saturday, October 16 I was standing in EPCOT’s Innoventions Plaza a few minutes before rope drop, and I overheard a couple of middle-aged ladies behind me decrying how today’s kids don’t know the words to the Mickey Mouse Club song.

“Before long, they’ll probably bring it back as a rap song,” I joked.

The ladies laughed.

“Gangsta Mickey!” I said, certain that Disney would never do anything so ridiculous.

They laughed even more.

I should have kept my mouth shut, because Disney obviously has listening devices hidden throughout the parks, and whenever a tourist, their brain functions dulled by the phenomenon I call Vacation Stupidity, says something like “I wish there was a show where Stitch ate a chili dog and then burped in your face,” or “You know what the Tiki Room needs? Gilbert Gottfried!”, it sets off the Bad Idea Alarm at Disney Corporate Headquarters, and the Imagineers are ordered at gunpoint to bring this idea to life.

How else can you explain the show Disney Dance Crew, which debuted one week later in Anaheim? Perhaps you are not familiar with Disney Dance Crew. Allow me to enlighten you:

If you’re like me, your reaction to that show went something like this:

Normally I try to have at least one positive thing to say about the stuff I criticize, but this time I’ve got nothing. Nothing at all. Disney Dance Crew is nothing more than a pathetic attempt by a committee of middle-aged suit-wearing white men to appeal to a young audience they don’t understand and don’t particularly like. It’s more degrading than reality television. And it’s all my fault.

Still, I guess we should just be thankful that Mickey didn’t come out holding a gun sideways, or introduce Minnie as his “’ho”.

Oops, I’d better not say that when I’m on the parks. I don’t want to set off the Bad Idea Alarm again.