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[Asherdan]

[pmcd9]

I don't know about happiest place on earth, i've never been there.  Lots of people think it's someplace they should travel halfway around the world to see, but for me I can't imagine it being more than mildly entertaining.  Maybe if I went on Goth day.

As for Walt's Wood, he's hanging a little low don't you think?  Perhaps more disturbing, that's Mickey's nose right?

~Paul

[Hobot]

Holy crap, I didn't even notice that until Paul reiterated the photo's title.  Maybe I should learn to read.

I thought you were commenting on the Sieg Heil/Hitler salute-reminiscent nature of Walt's pose (which, considering his rumoured antisemitism, is chillingly appropriate).  Either way, disturbingly hilarious!

[Roger]

Holy crap, I didn't even notice that until Paul reiterated the photo's title.  Maybe I should learn to read.

I thought you were commenting on the Sieg Heil/Hitler salute-reminiscent nature of Walt's pose (which, considering his rumoured antisemitism, is chillingly appropriate).  Either way, disturbingly hilarious!

At first glance I thought it was Stalin. Then I thought "hey, the Kremlin in the background looks a little funkier than usual".

[side_show]

Thanks for causing me to have a flash back to "Pooh Day in the Park" - all those scary Disney people yelling at me that what I was doing was "not ups to Disney standards."  Bad times.

Also, that is a scary shape for a wang.

[CortJstr]

Thanks for causing me to have a flash back to "Pooh Day in the Park" - all those scary Disney people yelling at me that what I was doing was "not ups to Disney standards."  Bad times.

So you weren't taking an old story, moddifying small bits, removing anything remotely scary (or interesting) and claiming it as your own? Shame on you.

[Carlos del Vaca]

We read a bunch of stuff about Disney's theme parks in B-school. Interesting corporate culture to say the least.  Especially in the "cast member housing," apartments provided by the company for people working at the park.  Your outside-world stature didn't matter, it was all about your role in the park.  The guy playing Mickey could be the biggest freakin' dork, and the guy sweeping up could look like Clooney and be the captain of the football team... didn't matter, Mickey ruled and the janitor is low man on the totem.

[misterqueue]

I think Neal Stephenson described my absolute horror at all things Disney the best:

" I was in Disney World recently, specifically the part of it called the Magic Kingdom, walking up Main Street USA. This is a perfect gingerbready Victorian small town that culminates in a Disney castle. It was very crowded; we shuffled rather than walked. Directly in front of me was a man with a camcorder. It was one of the new breed of camcorders where instead of peering through a viewfinder you gaze at a flat-panel color screen about the size of a playing card, which televises live coverage of whatever the camcorder is seeing. He was holding the appliance close to his face, so that it obstructed his view. Rather than go see a real small town for free, he had paid money to see a pretend one, and rather than see it with the naked eye he was watching it on television.

And rather than stay home and read a book, I was watching him. "

From this

[CortJstr]

Who goes to the Magic Kingdom anyway. The one time I went to Disney World we ended up spending a day each at Epcot, MGM, and Universal Studios and about 2.5 hours at the Magic Kingdom. Thunder/Space Mountains were neat and that was about it.

[robot_god]

Maybe if I went on Goth day.
~Paul

Goth day?

[V-Adore]

I'll admit it: I way, way prefer EPCOT to any other Disney park. I went there when it was nine, and holy crap, there were manatees! And cultural attractions! And animatronics! One day I know I will be one of those parents who takes their kids there and dorks out, while the kids are going "geez, Mom, can we just go ride the teacups already?"

[wombat]

Confession: I went to Disneyland a few years ago and I had a grand time.  Perhaps because we were reliving my Californian friend's childhood, I don't know, or they pipe drugs into the air? But it really didn't seem nearly as evil as I expected.  I went on Mr Toad's Wild Ride twice, because it was supposedly about to go extinct.  It was lovely. (I don't know if it did, and DON'T TELL ME.)  The teacups were nice because I had an Alice in Wonderland fixation in my youth, although it wasn't about the movie, but Disneyland is no place to nitpick.  And the lady let us each have our own flying Dumbo when we said we didn't want to share one.  And, thank God, the 'small world' ride was not functioning that day.

I don't think I ever need to go again but I was glad I went, partly for the lesson in how wrong I was.

[Lister]

I enjoy Disney parks differently depending on which part of me I let take over active thoughts.

Part of me loves looking at the structures themselves and finding how they exploit sight lines, etc.  I like seeing how they disguise necessary structural details when they'd rather them not be there, and I like the sheer detail they put in to their construction.

Part of me hates the perfection of it, where everyone's smiling even if it would be understandable that they wouldn't be.  It doesn't seem like they allow their "cast members" to act like "humans."

Part of me likes all the cool stuff they have in EPCOT, and misses the future when we'd all live in space and have flying cars.

Part of me can't help but wonder if the current songs they pipe through are all available on affiliated record labels, and if those CDs might be featured front-and-center in any gift store.

I guess it just comes down to how cynical and jaded I'm feeling, which in itself is something to think about, because I know the parks evoke child-like wonder because they are *designed* to evoke child-like wonder, and should I feel good or bad about that?

I will say this, though, as a former resident of Orlando: We hate you, tourists.  We hate you and your rental cars and your gleeful acceptance of $8 beer.  We hate you for making us drive through your traffic to see shows because they're all in the part of town you hang out in.  We hate you for filling up our restaurants and airline flights.  Go away, please.

[CortJstr]

I will say this, though, as a former resident of Orlando: We hate you, tourists.  We hate you and your rental cars and your gleeful acceptance of $8 beer.  We hate you for making us drive through your traffic to see shows because they're all in the part of town you hang out in.  We hate you for filling up our restaurants and airline flights.  Go away, please.

You need to take lessons from DC. On the news today they announced we're the 2nd most confusing city for tourists to navigate (we're coming for you, Houston. fuck*ng Texas). You need to intimidate the tourists and show them that they aren't wanted.

DC doesn't even like people from the immediate suburbs coming in for sporting events.

[Carlos del Vaca]

You need to take lessons from DC. On the news today they announced we're the 2nd most confusing city for tourists to navigate (we're coming for you, Houston. fuck*ng Texas). You need to intimidate the tourists and show them that they aren't wanted.

Houston hardly counts.  There's nothing for tourists to do there.

We went to Disneyworld FLA about five, six years ago (pre-kids) and had a fine time, but I was disappointed at how much stuff had NOT changed since I had been there as a kid in the early 80's.  Vaguely *****ic anamatronic characters were pretty cool back then, but seem kind of quaint now. 

More Disney B-school lessons:  The Winnie the Pooh ride at Disneyland Tokyo has cars that seem to steer themselves--there's no track, they all use GPS to follow a pre-programmed course.  Lots of other technical wizardry at work there.  The relatively new Pooh ride in Florida has... old cars that run on a track, and painted flats.  See, good old Walt used to say something like, "People don't come here and give us their money so we can go buy big cars for ourselves.  They do so, so that we can build something even cooler for the next time they come.  So get to building."  The Tokyo operation is majority owned by a Japanese company, and they've adopted Walt's mentality.  But Disney itself, since Walt died, treats the parks like a cash cow.  They aren't going to plow millions into developing a bad-ass new ride when they can do the tried and true on the cheap.

I miss Walt.