July 25, 2005

Please try to contain your excitement while I make the following announcement, as excitement is very hard to get out of the carpet: Disney World is having an anniversary celebration this year! YAY! Who knew? This is very unlike previous years at Walt Disney World, such as 2004 (the 25th anniversary of Roy Disney’s appendectomy) and 1997 (the 50th anniversary of the last time Mickey Mouse was funny), both of which are widely known for being extremely previous. But this anniversary is hardly previous at all! And that’s what makes it so magical.

In fact, the first week in July the family and I took a vacation to Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida to go see what this little anniversary celebration was about, and maybe, in the process, declare bankruptcy. Orlando is a good eight hour drive from my hometown of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, a full nineteen of which were driven by my newlywed brother Jonathan, at least according to him. He is probably just bitter that in the last leg of the trip he got a taste of that famous “Florida sunshine,” which is how Floridians refer to daily torrential downpours that have been known to bring down B-52s. But we assured him not to worry. “Not to worry!” we said with a hearty laugh. “It can’t be like this every miserable, rotten day, forcing us to wear thick, sweaty ponchos that do nothing but funnel the rain directly into our shoes when it is not somehow allowing the rain to soak our wallets! Ha ha!” It turned out we were wrong, of course.

But we were not ones to let a little monsoon keep us from enjoying some Disney World magic. And there was plenty of magic to go around, this being an anniversary celebration and all. You may be asking yourself what exactly it is the anniversary of down at Disney World, but your self is about to get sorely disappointed, because nobody knows. The signs say only “50 Years of Magic!” So I suppose we are celebrating the 50th anniversary of… magic. But the real answer is “Who cares?” I mean, would Eeyore care? Heck no! Because when Disney celebrates something, that typically means brand-spanking new attractions of the highest caliber … and also Stitch’s Great Escape.

Stitch’s Great Escape is the latest in a long line of Disney “eviscerations,” as I like to call them, in which a great classic ride has its guts unceremoniously ripped out and replaced with something… less than magical. Stitch’s Great Escape used to be an attraction called “ExtraTERRORestrial - Alien Encounter” in which hapless theme parks were strapped in theater chairs, plunged into darkness, and subjected to terrifying squirts of water, air, and sound effects. The entire purpose of the attraction, as evidenced by the capital letters spelling “TERROR” in the terrible pun of a name, was to terrify people. It was so obvious, in fact, that people were all the time bringing their dark-o-phobic two year olds onto the attraction and then writing letters of complaint to Disney, SHOCKED and DISMAYED that an attraction called “TERROR” had been scary. Well, Disney couldn’t just keep something open as terrible as an attraction that delivered on its promise, could it? Heck no! So Disney Imagineering brought out its crack Evisceration Squad and, before you know it, Alien Encounter became Stitch’s Great Escape. The scariness was removed via the highly technical process of replacing the giant, terrifying alien creature with a fluffy blue animated alien. The result? No more terror! Imagineering intends to follow up on this stunning success by removing the rock and roll from Rock n’ Roller Coaster and the haunts from Haunted Mansion.

But not to worry! Disney Imagineering has brought in several other fun new attractions to keep the celebration of nothing rolling along smoothly! In Epcot, for example, there is a new ride called “Soarin’” (slogan: “If this were a serious educational attraction, there would have been a ‘G.’”). This is a fabulous ride in which a hangglider-like vehicle swings in front of a huge IMAX projection of all your favorite landmarks from, for some reason, California only. It fits in perfectly with Epcot’s new non-educational purpose of… of… “being too expensive to be taken down and replaced!” It’s too bad Epcot lost its fun futuristic educational theme from back in the 80’s. Technical progress has been hard to get worked up about ever since, anytime some technical progress was made, they started downloading it immediately onto our desktops along with 4,000 all-caps ads for “male enhancement.”

But wait! There’s more! At Disney-MGM Studios, for example, they have a brand new stunt show imported straight from France, so you know it’s good. It’s called “Lights! Motors! Action! EXTREME Motor Stunt Show,” because “Lights! Motors! Action! FRENCH Motor Stunt Show” didn’t do as well in focus groups. The premise of the ride is simple. First, you get a FastPass, because you are smart and theme park savvy, and then, at the appropriate time, you get into a long, wide queue vaguely reminiscent of Chicago meat packing plants. Then, you are herded underneath a set of giant concrete bleachers where you are air conditioned by a single, creaky ceiling fan rotating at the very French speed of .5 kilometers per hour. Then, after about seven hours of waiting, you die of heat exhaustion. I highly recommend this stunt show.

Fortunately for those Orlando tourists tired of magical atmosphere and high quality customer service, there’s always Universal Orlando practically next door! And not to be left out of the profits-er… magic, Universal has a couple of exciting new attractions as well. Most notably, there’s “Revenge of the Mummy: the Ride,” which advertises itself as “UNLIKE NOTHING YOU’VE EVER SEEN BEFORE PROVIDED YOU’VE NEVER RIDDEN A SHORT INDOOR ROLLER COASTER!” With all the hype, we had to try it.

The theming on this ride is excellent. The queue line is set to look just like an eerie Egyptian tomb, or maybe a museum of antiquities in New York, or maybe a movie set that looks like an Egyptian tomb, but either way, it looks just like it because the walls are brown. And also the lights are dim, letting you know to be tense because, around possibly any corner, a short indoor roller coaster might be lurking! And then they pile you into your ride vehicle for an adventure for the purpose of – well, that’s never explained. But then the ride begins. Before we’ve finished our first room, an impressive full-scale animatronic mummy rises from a tomb and waves its arms menacingly at us, intoning the following dire warning:

“HAHAH *** static *** HAHA *** more static *** I *** khkhkh *** EAT YOUR SOULS!”

After this, the lights go out over him, and we sit there for a few uneventful minutes before the vehicle suddenly lurches into more vibrant storytelling action! Soon, random things start setting on fire, corpse-like animatronics rise from the floor, and, in a coup de grace unlike anything we’ve ever seen, the ride vehicle goes completely backwards for a full 1.8 seconds. And then, just when we thought it couldn’t get more unlike anything we’ve ever seen, we are launched into a short, but yet somehow lame, indoor roller coaster. Fortunately, though, the ride did accomplish the incredibly noble task of bulldozing Kongfrontation, the stupid King Kong ride that had been there since something like 1924, so for that I will always be grateful.

I should also mention, before I sign off, the incredible quantities of rain we experienced that week. What? I already mentioned that? Well, too bad, because man it poured while we were at Animal Kingdom (Disney’s very own zoo which, they are fond of emphatically reminding you, is NAHTAZU because it also has rides). When this happened mom dutifully brought out the ponchos. I refused to wear mine on the grounds that I would rather be wet than trapped in sweaty plastic. So there we stood at Animal Kingdom, getting drenched, trying to look at animals who were nowhere to be found because they, being smarter than us, had gone to find shelter. Even more annoying, absolutely everybody in my party, on separate occasions, tried to tell me the joke that the park animals were leaving two by two.

Ooh! I should also mention that I highly recommend the Fort Wilderness Resort, Campground & Trailer Park, which comes complete with many fun features, including:

• Exquisite theming designed to make you feel like you are really in the middle of a Florida swamp!
• Convenient bus system available to drive you the seven million miles between your trailer and the outpost, or is it the settlement?
• Horseback riding, provided it is not raining!
• No pizza deliveries!
• Built-on smoking deck!
• Highly amusing and excitable Asian security guard who is very happy to have his picture taken with you (“Gosh, this is the fifth time people have asked me that today! They must really like Disney security!”), or to share with you Disney’s philosophy on why they did anything (“Because we want your money! Ha ha!”).

No, really, it was an awesome trip, and the best part of the trip, or possibly, of my entire life, was when, at Medieval Times, our Green Knight slew the Red Knight, who was at the time being cheered by what looked to be an entire middle school of Brazilians who, evidently, had just consumed their nation’s entire coffee output. At this, the Brazilians promptly – and this is so glorious I get goosebumps just remembering it – shut up.

Have a magical rest of the summer, everybody.