Monthly Archives: May 2011

The Raiders of Castillo del Mar

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It is with great pleasure (mixed with a healthy dose of empty nest syndrome, chased with a glass of pride) that I finally get to announce something that has been in the works for awhile now.  Justin Bieber is getting a new tattoo.

For the legions of Bieber fans that also love funny Disney stuff, this is about as good as it gets.  And on top of everything, I should also mention that my first novel (what the French call a debut) is finally available for purchase on Amazon.


100% Pure Adventure!

Am I allowed to spend a whole post talking about myself?  Because today I’m going to.  Hey, it’s my site, so you’ll have to indulge me a little self-promotion on the day my novel comes out.  Let’s face it, after all the awesome Lindsay Lohan jokes and John Muir references I’ve treated you to over the years, I think it’s only fair.  The book itself actually has nothing to do with Disney, but just so I’m not completely off-topic, there is a Disney connection, which I’ll share at the end.

So what is this book about?  Here’s a description (what the French call a blurb):

Crisscross the centuries on an epic treasure hunt for a lost pirate fortress!

Anne Dubois be a right cunning lass, whose legendary sword carves a vicious brand of buccaneer vengeance across the Spanish Main. But when she chases a fabled jewel into uncharted waters, only All-Star quarterback Johnny Socko can solve the mystery of her disappearance. Now he must dive every shipwreck, decipher every code, and deploy every gadget in his supersleuth arsenal to escape a similar doom.

THE RAIDERS OF CASTILLO DEL MAR is a rollicking send up of 1950s teen detective fiction, fused with a powder keg of swashbuckling adventure. Anne and Johnny are two halves of the same treasure map, destined to collide in the tempest-tossed Caribbean isles, where an unholy secret lurks in the dread spires of Castillo del Mar.

She vows to plunge the stronghold into darkness. He plans to light it back up. 

Sounds great, right?  My brother and I have co-authored this, and it’s been a few years in the making, but we think we have one of those stories that is fun from start to finish.  High adventure with the pirate stuff, and a comic sci-fi vibe in the teen detective stuff.  The coolest part is that the story has this alternating structure, so that neither side (pirates or teenagers) understands the whole puzzle until the end. Also, this book is for young adult readers on up to full-blown adults (the ones who like things like theme parks; we don’t want any stuffy, un-fun adults reading it).  In other words, it’s a book the whole family can enjoy (sounds familiar).

The price is extremely affordable:  Just $2.99.  So if it sounds like something you might be interested in reading, please buy it!  It’s cheaper than a large fry at Cosmic Rays.  Heck, you could buy two copies for the price of a vinylmation!  And if any of you want to review it on Amazon, share it on Facebook, book me on Oprah, well, I’m not going to stop you (the Oprah thing would be cool though, especially since I hear she retired).

Right now, it’s available exclusively for Amazon as a kindle ebook.  What if you don’t have a kindle?  You don’t need the actual device!  That’s what makes it so awesome!  All you need is a PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad, Blackberry, Android, or Atari 2600 and you can download the FREE Kindle app!  Of course, that means you’re reading it electronically rather than on paper.  We don’t have a hardcopy version just yet, publishing economics being what they are, and what are you anyway, some kind of tree-killer?  (that’s a joke; we’re working on getting a printed version out there, but because this is a good-sized novel, the price is liable to be… more).

If you were to ask me to compare it to another book, I would say it’s like Harry Potter meets Twilight, wrapped up in the DaVinci Code — but that’s only because I have unrealistic sales goals.  No, actually, this story had two inspirations.  One, I was a huge Hardy Boys fan as a kid.  And two… I think you Disney fans know what really provided the inspiration for this story.

Now just where in Walt Disney World can you find this?

Fair Game

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Flashback to 1999.  Beloved EPCOT Center attraction Journey Into Imagination has closed to make way for one of the most horrible abominations ever to grace a Disney theme park:  Journey Into YOUR Imagination.  Gone are Figment and Dreamfinder, replaced by everyone’s favorite Monty Python sell-out, Eric Idle.  The ride has been gutted, replaced by sparse sets, awful dialogue, and perhaps the most insulting storyline every foisted on the American theme park public.

In this ride, it is not only insinuated, it is stated as FACT that YOU have no imagination.  Dr. Nigel Channing is giving you a tour of his new Imagination Institute, and he scans your brains at the start of the ride.  Sure enough, YOU the guest are a brainless, uncreative moron.  He then proceeds to take you through the Institute, exposing you to a train sound gag from the defunct Mr. Toad, a mirror-box sight gag from a tacky tourist shop, and an upside down house gag from I-Drive.  And supposedly we’re the ones lacking imagination.
Also ripped off:  The inside of this tourist trap, which is just another glorified Image Works.
The ride did not last long.  Disney quickly realized that insulting its paying customers wasn’t quite the roaring success they thought it would be.  The ride was quickly retooled into some kind of Five Senses funhouse.  Once again showing themselves to be supreme masters of imagination, they added a Beavis and Butthead fart gag, then bailed on the Five Senses idea when someone pointed out that the Touch and Taste labs were not only difficult to execute, but also likely to result in some very serious litigation.
They also acquiesced to fan uproar and brought back Figment — making him so thoroughly annoying that fans should never ask for anything ever again, lest we suffer more destruction of our precious childhood memories.
Two of the many forms of Gozer the Gozerian.
I thought that Disney had learned its lesson when it comes to getting people to pay money to be insulted.  But apparently not.  I stumbled across this t-shirt now for sale at Disney’s Hollywood Studios.  For those of you that aren’t former Cast Members, just be aware that this is a very popular quote among CMs for making fun of someone, and that someone isn’t Goofy.

Walt Disney World FTW of the Week

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No major news in this post, but I just wanted to give a shout out to the young lady who sat across from me on the Jungle Cruise last night (May 21, 2011).  You have my respect for thinking to do this, and my utmost super-respect for walking into Guest Relations to actually follow through.

I didn’t want to be the creepy stranger who tried to take a picture of your chest, but your button was totally awesome.  Here is my faithful recreation of what you were wearing:

Misadventures Thru Inner Space

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Indulge me one final plug for Magic Pursuit, our puzzle quest game through Disney’s Hollywood Studios, happening this Sunday!  You can still register your team!  Now, on with the blog…

It’s said that as you get older, you grow wiser.  I think I mostly just grow nostalgic.  I’m not new to the whole Disney thing.  I’ve seen some of the classics in their heyday.  Those original Future World attractions?  I saw them, which is more than I can say for some of you.  Let’s face it, if I say “Old Epcot,” some of you think of Food Rocks.

I’ve ridden Dream Flight, picked my own Horizons ending, driven Mr. Toad’s car.  I remember a time when parades didn’t stop every 30 feet to perform some kind of hyperkinetic kindergarden playground game.  I’ve even seen those Universe of Energy Radok screens in action — and believe it or not, I saw one of the early previews of Ellen’s Energy Adventure projected on those very same tiles (though of course, they didn’t move)
The last thing you want is Bill Nye’s face rippling across the landscape like some Amityville phantom.
But there actually is a period in time where memory fades into nothingness.  Truthfully, I have only fragmented recollections of the Orange Bird.  I can just barely recall the Mickey Mouse Revue (King Louis scared me), and have no familiarity with Spaceship Earth narration prior to Walter Cronkite.  And don’t even ask me if I remember my mother.  My real mother.
Just images, really.  Feelings.
So there is a point where my Disney experience stops.  Everything that came before is but a hanging chad on my geek street cred ballot.  Some of these things I can sort of get a sense of without ever having seen them.  Like Flight to the Moon.  I mean, I saw Mission to Mars.  The seat sinks, the circular TV shows a grainy landscape, the bird blocks the runway.  I think I get the gist.  Or Magic Carpet ‘Round the World.  Aren’t all CircleVision movies kind of the same?
But there are many rides I never got to experience, and while I’d love to be able to walk through the House of the Future or catch a ride on the Pack Mules, the one big regret I have is missing out on Adventure Thru Inner Space.
I have romanticized this ride in my head for years now.  Every description I’ve read makes it sound very much like another EPCOT dark ride.  It had its own theme song. An educational storyline.  An omnimover.  A weird air conditioning smell.  I’m sure the reality was a little more hokey (more If You Had Wings than World of Motion), but it’s just something I really feel I’ve missed out on.
Even though my life overlapped with Adventure Thru Inner Space (it was open well into the 1980s), I never got to see it simply because it was on the West Coast, and my family always went to Disney World.  We took one trip to Disneyland in ’86, and I remember seeing a stencil on a dark Tomorrowland window that read “Adventure Thru Inner Space.”  It sounded intriguing at the time, but there was no hint of any actual ride.  Just that forgotten stencil.  I had no way of knowing that I was a year late.  Inner Space had closed to make way for Star Tours.
It didn’t really show up in the literature.  This was before the internet, and as a kid, my exposure to classic Disneyland rides came only from any souvenir books I managed to scrape up, or some bare-bones info in one of the three Walt Disney biographies at my school library.  I went years before finally understanding that ATIS was a dark ride.  I think it wasn’t until I got my hand on David Koenig’s Mouse Tales that I finally read something longer than a sentence about it.
Oh, and along these same lines, don’t even get me started on Disneyland’s “PeopleMover Thru The World of Tron.” This was listed on the guidemap during my ’86 Disneyland trip, but for some reason was closed for refurbishment.  For years I thought I was missing out on some awesome new Tron ride.  Turns out it was just a lame speed tunnel overlay.
Star Tours 1.0 apparently contained a nod to the “Mighty Microscope” from ATIS.  I’m sure this is a great thrill for long-time Disneyland fans.  But the reference always slipped past me.  I know it’s somewhere in that opening scene (the big swinging piece of equipment that almost takes out our speeder?), but I really have no context.  I’m not in on the joke.
Also, any self-respecting Mighty Microscope would have a big block M on its chest.
I’ve since heard the theme song (Miracles from Molecules, a tune that can only belong to the Sherman Brothers) and even listened to the entire narration, thanks to that awesome Disneyland 50th CD collection.  But I’ve always avoided watching YouTube video of it, simply because I have built this thing up so much in my head now.  I don’t want to be confronted with some half-baked Body Wars precursor.  I want the intellectual equivalent of Horizons, with tasteful corporate message, matched with the elegance of Tomorrow’s Child!
I’m pretty sure with dialogue like “Will I possibly survive?”, I’m in for disappointment.  Maybe this weekend I’ll finally dig up an old ride-thru and see what I’ve been missing.  But part of me really doesn’t want to.
Especially if I’m going to be confronted by a parade of shadowy alien fetuses floating through the molecules.
This post is especially timely, with Star Tours 3-D officially opening tomorrow.  The ride that replaced Adventure Thru Inner Space is itself being replaced.  And even though Disney announced that the original Tiki Room may be coming back, it’s doubtful that they’ll ever rebuild a 1960s dark ride.  I’m sure many of you have similar regrets, and part of the fun is sharing with everyone else.  What rides or shows did you miss out on?  And please, no votes for Doug Live.

Day for Night

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Before diving into today’s little rumination, don’t forget about Magic Pursuit this coming Sunday at Disney’s Hollywood Studios!  Register to reserve your spot in a FREE puzzle-quest game created by Kevin Yee (miceage.com, ultimateorlando.com), John Frost (thedisneyblog.com), and myself (parkeology.com).

Now on to strange things that fascinate me …

Of all the Disney mountains, Splash Mountain has to be the most story-centric.  It’s populated with a cast of hundreds, it has dozens of show scenes, it builds to a thrilling climax.  By contrast, the Matterhorn has a single hairy guy and a lot of ice caverns.

Splash is more than just a thrill gimmick.  In terms of execution, it’s up there with the great story rides like Mansion, Pirates, Indiana Jones Adventure, or the great Future World omnimovers.  But it also has something special going for it.  It’s one of the rare rides that actually plays tricks on your sense of time.

Now of course rides like Spaceship Earth or World of Motion tell a story that spans centuries.  Each scene is a small vignette from a snapshot in history, all threaded together by a common theme (communications, transportation, etc.).  And certainly the linear storylines of the Fantasyland dark rides have a start and a finish.  But Splash is rare in that the story seems to happen in real-time.  We are with Brer Rabbit every step of the way.  Yet it is staged as if the journey is hours in the making.

Regardless of whether you ride during the day or at night, Splash Mountain always begins in the daytime.  As soon as you zip down that first Slippin’ Falls into the mountain, where the Geese and Frogs are singing “How Do You Do?”, the setting is clearly in the bright, sunlit South.  As you progress through the ride, the day slowly changes to afternoon and the shadows grow long.  And of course, by the time you reach the base of the big lift hill, lightning is crackling in spite of that yawning opening at the top showing you the real time of day.

I call this scene:  ”Chickens under a blood-red sun.”

When you leave the Mountain for your brief trip downstream into the Briar Patch, you are thrown back into the real world.  But just as quickly, you round the bend and are back in the Old South, with Gators and Chickens singing Zip-A-Dee-Do-Dah, in front of a brilliant sunset.

The last few scenes in the ride take place at night.  In fact, our last glimpse of Brer Rabbit is of him relaxing outside his Briar Patch, under the light of a full moon.

He’s sitting outside at night with his knapsack, which makes me think he lost his keys.

It’s been a short 15 minute journey for us, and we’ve not skipped a beat, but clearly a whole day has passed in story-time.  This is quite a change from Mansion or Pirates, in which the whole thing is clearly at night, and thus unfolds in real time without any continuity errors.

Rides like Snow White do switch time frames.  It starts in the day (Snow White on the steps of the palace), transitions to night (the haunted forest, chasing the Queen up the Mountain), and then finishes back in the daytime (Snow White waving goodbye).  But the experience is more like a compressed version of a movie, rather than a real-time storyline.

Splash feels like a movie without any cuts.  Just one long continuous take.  I can’t think of any other rides that are able to pull off a transition from day to night in one take.  Am I forgetting any?

Photo Attribution:
Sunset: Bart Hanlon
Night:  Josh McConnell