A Panel For the Rest of Us

In an effort to reach out and “connect” to all the Disney World neophytes who visit the parks, Disney has this thing called a “Mom’s Panel”. Maybe you’ve heard of it. Basically, it’s a place on the official Walt Disney World website where people who are unfamiliar with the parks can get answers and trip-planning advice from non-threatening Mom’s panelists. Not all of the panelists are women (some are men who have been biologically altered to bear children) but they’re there to give commonsense advice from the perspective of a parent with kids, as opposed to a professional travel agent. So, not only can they answer travel agent-y questions about resorts and ticket prices, but they can also tell you what to do if your three-year-old ralphs all over Mickey. (Note: that joke about the male panelists being biologically altered to bear children was not true. As far as I know.) It’s pretty obvious by their advertising that Disney markets their parks mainly to families with preteen children. The Mom’s Panel is a natural part of that, and I want to emphasize that all of the Mom’s Panelists are fantastic people who are great at what they do. Especially ones like Zanna who link to this blog.

Anyway, I got to thinking about the Mom’s Panel recently because Disney had some kind of social media event for them last week. My Twitter timeline was full of #DisneySMMoms hashtags accompanied by tweets about what a great time the tweeter was having at World Showcase or Adventureland or some other Disney World location that was much more fun than my cubicle at work. Naturally, this made me a little jealous. It also reminded me of an idea I’d had for a sort of Mom’s Panel alternative.

While the relentlessly sunny demeanor of the Mom’s Panel fits well with Disney’s company image, the fact is that the Internet is largely populated, nay, infested with people who have strong opinions and an ironic sense of humor. You know, people like me. Shouldn’t we have our own panel? I’m thinking of a sort of Disney Geek’s panel. Only we’d call it the WEDHead’s Panel because it sounds cooler. How would the WEDHead’s Panel differ from the Mom’s Panel? Let’s take a look: (NOTE: The Mom’s Panel answers given here are simulated, and should not be mistaken for the real thing)

Question: What’s the best time to visit Epcot?

Mom’s Panel Answer: There’s always something to do at Epcot! In the spring, you can enjoy the Flower & Garden Festival. And don’t forget to come back for the Food & Wine Festival in the fall!

WEDHead’s Panel Answer: 1989. Next question.

Here’s another example:

Question: My six-year-old daughter loves the fairies and I know she’ll want to drag me along to meet them. The thing is, I’m a 40-year-old man. I love my little girl very much, but the thought of standing in line to meet Tinkerbell just makes me feel foolish. Do you have any advice?

Mom’s Panel Answer: The magic of Walt Disney World makes everyone into a kid again! Don’t feel foolish about meeting Tinkerbell with your daughter; rest assured there will be lots of other dads in line with their daughters, too. And don’t be afraid to play along with the characters! It’s lots of fun and it’ll give your daughter a memory she’ll cherish forever!

WEDHead’s Panel Answer: I know where you’re coming from, dude. I mean, what’s a grown man going to talk to Tinkerbell about, the pitiful state of the New York Knicks defense? But look at it this way: Tinkerbell and her friends are attractive women in short skirts who are required to pretend to be nice to you. As long as you’ve got your daughter in tow, you can go see them and your wife will be totally okay with it. Just don’t do anything creepy and you’ll be fine.

And one more:

Question: My three-year-old tends to throw up when he gets nervous. What if he vomits on Mickey during a meet-and-greet?

Mom’s Panel Answer: I really hope this doesn’t happen to you and your child, but if it does, don’t sweat it! Disney’s Character Attendants are well-prepared for these little accidents.

WEDHead’s Panel Answer: Start loudly insisting to anyone within earshot that this is not, in fact, your child. Then run away.

After witnessing these examples, how can you doubt the usefulness of a WEDHead’s Panel? Still, I know what a lot of you are thinking: “This WEDHead’s Panel of yours is just a scheme to get Disney to let you into their parks for free just for being sarcastic on the Internet.” And you would be correct. But aren’t I also opening Disney’s eyes to a new market? I mean, we opinionated and sarcastic Internet denizens may not always say what people want to hear. But we’re a sizable market segment that, if catered to properly, will pay top dollar for pretty much any fool thing you can think of.

And isn’t that what Disney really wants?

Horizons, Simulated

First of all, I want to thank all 44 people who voted on the poll concerning the blog’s recent visual overhaul. Three-quarters of you liked the new look, so it will stay. If anyone has any suggestions on how to improve things, please fire away in the comments. Now, on to today’s topic:

The future is never what we imagine. Sometime in the mid-80s, my parents bought my sister and I a set of educational National Geographic books. One of them, entitled Science-It’s Changing Your World, contained this picture of a kid playing a futuristic videogame:

I have absolutely no idea how this game was supposed to have worked (I think it involved lasers) or why the kid was wearing a motorcycle helmet, but it looked so futuristic, like TRON! I was sure that, by the time I was in high school, I would be able to go down to the local arcade and play the Laser Pod Game for myself.

By the time high school rolled around in the early-90s, I had forgotten all about the Laser Pod. Instead, I was anticipating the newest Big Thing That Was Just Around The Corner: virtual reality! As crazy as it sounds, we spent most of the ‘90s believing that the future of video games looked like this:

Which is why I wasn’t one bit upset when I learned that EPCOT Center’s CommuniCore was being replaced by something called Innoventions. In the beginning, Innoventions was advertised as the place you could test drive all the new technologies that were about to revolutionize our lives, including virtual reality. Because I was young and stupid, I assumed that this was EPCOT’s way of taking the first step into the New Millennium. I imagined that, on future EPCOT visits, I’d spend some time playing with the virtual reality in Innoventions, then head out to ride updated, plussed versions of Horizons, Journey Into Imagination, and World of Motion.

And just like we arrived in the 1990s without Laser Pods at our local arcades, the Innoventions of 2011 is significantly less exciting than we imagined it would be. Excepting the Sum of All Thrills exhibit, it seems more geared to showcasing stuff we already have in our living rooms.

^{Case in point}

Also, the place seems largely empty. Imagine how Future World would look if every sponsor-less pavilion got bulldozed. Clearly, Innoventions needs some fun, permanent exhibits that aren’t dependent on corporate sponsorships. For example, a Horizons simulator.

This is not a farfetched idea. The guys behind WEDCon are already building one that could easily fit into one of the larger plots of empty exhibition space. And Chris Wallace, the guy behind the Horizons Resurrected project, is in the midst of creating a virtual reality version of everyone’s favorite lost EPCOT pavilion that could be utilized in a much smaller space, like where the Wall O’ Playstations currently resides. It would be Disney’s favorite type of attraction: a relatively inexpensive, permanent exhibit that, aside from regular maintenance, never needs any costly upgrades. (Okay, that’s not completely true. Disney’s favorite “attractions” are actually revenue generators like gift shops and character Meet-and-Greets)

Over the past year or so, little things have been happening at the park that delight EPCOT Center fans. Universe of Energy was returned to its old exterior color scheme, the painted monoliths on Spaceship Earth’s legs were removed, the Fountain of Nations got that cool new railing, and the whirlygigs are disappearing from Innoventions plaza. Clearly, someone with decision-making authority at the company has at least a passing affection for old-school EPCOT. So why not a Horizons simulator, or maybe a 21st century refresh of old CommuniCore exhibits like Energy Exchange? Not only would it make people happy, but it could fuel an expansion of the extremely popular line of retro EPCOT merchandise.

So come on, Disney. You know this needs to happen. In fact, I am willing to throw a little something in. Remember how I once promised to publicly embarrass myself before the whole Internet if the Imagination pavilion ever gets a worthy overhaul? That promise still stands, but now I’m going to add to it: if a worthy Imagination overhaul happens OR if Innoventions gets a Horizons simulator, I will celebrate like a crazed chipmunk, and said reaction will be posted on YouTube for all the Internet to see. So come on, Team Disney Orlando. Do the right thing. Make me embarrass myself on the Internet.

Sinkholes and Showtunes

When EPCOT Center opened in 1982 it was, to put it mildly, kind of a big deal. Disney excels at making even regular occurrences look like big events (the opening of the Magic Kingdom every morning, for example) and for EPCOT they pulled out all the stops. There was a huge publicity campaign, including a grand-opening TV special hosted by Danny Kaye. Take a look:

Whoever uploaded this video obviously can’t spell “century”

These days the idea of using a showtune to announce the 21st century’s early arrival seems a mite cheesy. However, this was a time when shows like The Love Boat, The Dukes of Hazzard, and Joanie Loves Chachi sat near the top of the Nielsen ratings. It’s safe to say we were on an all-cheese diet.

However, I find this little musical number interesting primarily for the revisionist history it presents. It’s a clean, very Disney-esque narrative: Walt Disney had a dream called EPCOT, and in 1982 it came true. The truth, of course, is that the EPCOT project went through numerous iterations. Michael Crawford at Progress City USA wrote an excellent couple of articles about the many forms that EPCOT took after Walt Disney’s death in 1966 (check them out here and here). The publicity campaign that surrounded EPCOT Center glossed over all that, though, and pretended that the park that opened in 1982 was exactly the thing that Walt had dreamed up back in 1966. No mention was made of the original plan to build a futuristic city on the EPCOT Center site. Almost thirty years later, I assumed that was still the company line.

Interestingly, though, it appears that Walt’s EPCOT city has found its way back into Disney’s official company history. When I took the Undiscovered Future World tour the guide actually mentioned the EPCOT City, but said that it was scrapped because the land was too swampy to support the complex. That’s not entirely true, of course. It was actually Walt’s death that sealed the fate of his Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. However, construction in central Florida has unique challenges. When I lived in Lake City, a shopping center that was less than twenty years old had to be abandoned and demolished because a sinkhole opened up next to it. Sinkholes have swallowed up houses. And plans for the Venetian/Mediterranean Resort, which would have occupied a site between the Transportation and Ticket Center and the Contemporary, had to be scrapped after the land proved to be too swampy to support the structure. So, it’s not outside the realm of possibility that the construction of the EPCOT city might have been complicated by sinkholes and swampy conditions. It’s nice to see Disney admitting that their founder’s vision of EPCOT differed from the park that was finally built.

Maybe in another thirty years they’ll acknowledge the real reason why.

What’s In a Name? (or Acronym)

Recently, I got into a little bit of a Twitter argument (or Twargument) with someone over the “correct” capitalization of the word/acronym EPCOT. Now, I am not the kind of person who enjoys arguing on the Internet. I’m not one of those people on message boards who’s always single-mindedly ranting about things he doesn’t like and attacking people who disagree with him. So, this post is not an attempt to get the last word in a conversation. It’s simply an attempt to explain why I do something (in this case, spell EPCOT in all capitals rather than use the Disney Parks-approved “Epcot” spelling) without being bound by Twitter’s 140-character limit.

There are two ways to look at the EPCOT-vs.-Epcot “issue”. You could point out that the real EPCOT-Walt’s Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, was never built and that the name of the theme park located at Walt Disney World in Florida has been named “Epcot” by the Walt Disney Corporation which owns and operates it. And you would be correct.

I take a different view. Although Walt’s grand futuristic city was never built, EPCOT Center was founded upon the ideals it embodied. Only a small number of people would actually have lived in Walt’s EPCOT; most people would have experienced it as tourists. Concerning his Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, Walt Disney said “I believe we can build a community that more people will talk about and come to look at than any other area in the world.” Why did Walt think the general public would want to visit EPCOT in large numbers? To ride rollercoasters, perhaps? To meet Mickey Mouse? Of course not, that’s what the Magic Kingdom was for. People were supposed to visit EPCOT to be amazed, to be inspired, to go home feeling energized about the possibilities of the real world.

EPCOT Center was not the community Walt envisioned, but it was built with the same purpose: to inspire, educate, and amaze. I believe those things are important. The Disney executives of the mid-1990s disagreed. Lowercase Epcot, to me, represents all the worst aspects of the lowest-common-denominator approach to the park that almost ruined it in the mid-90s to early 2000s. And I refuse to surrender to that.

So I’ll continue to refer to my favorite theme park as EPCOT. Because “Epcot” is a meaningless nonsense word, but EPCOT is the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. It’s an acronym that still means something to a few people out there. Including me.

25 Years Ago Today

On January 28, 1986 the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded seventy-three seconds after liftoff, killing all seven astronauts aboard. Millions of people have died since that day, and their deaths are no less tragic, to be sure. But, even though I was only seven years old then, I still remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when I heard the news.

I wrote about the Challenger tragedy at length last year, but I encourage everyone to take a moment today to remember Dick Scobee, Michael J. Smith, Ellison Onizuka, Judith Resnik, Ronald McNair, Christa McAuliffe, and Gregory Jarvis.

Never forget.

Some Thoughts on the Tiki Room

First of all, you may have noticed that the blog has acquired a glowy new TRONified look. Although I enjoyed TRON: Legacy, the main impetus behind the visual overhaul was making it look better on larger monitors.  If you’re using a monitor that runs higher than 1600x1800, you’ll notice that the background image is no longer tiled, meaning that the blog no longer looks like a GeoCities website from 1995. Please let me know what you think of the new look by voting in the poll to the right. Thanks!

Now, on to the Tiki Room. On Wednesday, January 12th a fire broke out in the Tiki Room’s attic and damaged several animatronics before it was extinguished by the sprinkler system. The Disney fan community reacted with shock and dismay, until we learned that no one had been hurt, and the fire was in the “Under New Management” Tiki Room at Walt Disney World. Then we reacted by dancing the Funky Chicken of Joy in front of our computers. This created problems if we happened to be in a public place.

Michael Crawford over at Progress City U.S.A. has written an excellent article about the fire and what changes may come to the Tiki Room as a result. Like many of us, Michael hopes that Disney might decide to go ahead and bring back the original show for the park’s 40th anniversary. After all, they’ve already done it at Disneyland, and the current show is disliked by both hardcore fans and casual vacationers. However, the way I see it there’s just one teeny tiny little problem: the reason the old show went away in the first place was that it became unpopular. People were staying away from it, or getting up and leaving in the middle of the show. If it were brought back, mightn’t the same thing happen again?

I’ve never been to Disneyland, so I have no way of knowing how popular the show is with audiences there. However, it’s a well-known fact that a larger percentage of Disneyland’s visitors are Annual Passholding locals who are quite intolerant of classic attractions being replaced by crass commercials for current Disney franchises. By way of contrast, the vast majority of Walt Disney World’s customers are one-time-only casual vacationers who can’t  tell the difference between a classic Disney attraction and a hole in the ground. Many of these folks have never seen the original Tiki Room and have no warm, fuzzy memories of it. Sure, in the ‘60s, ‘70s, and even into the ‘80s, singing Animatronic birds were kind of impressive. Now, not so much. Modern audiences might very well turn their noses up at the classic Tiki Room, just like they did in the ‘90s. (Although many of these same people think reality television is entertaining. The world is stupid.)

On the other hand, Captain EO seems to have picked up a whole new generation of fans who weren’t even born yet when it debuted in 1986, and that show lacks the timeless quality of the original Tiki Room. Maybe the same thing could happen in Adventureland.  Personally, I think that the best-case scenario would be a “remastered” version of the original show. Make the Animatronics a little more lifelike, with the smooth, fluid movements you see on the newer models. And, although it pains me to say this, the show may need to be condensed a little to hold the attention of modern A.D.D.-addled audiences.

And those are my thoughts on the Tiki Room. As always, thanks for reading and commenting. I hope the new look doesn’t hurt your eyes.